What an unexpected development! On the verge of standing up, slamming the door shut, and running away from the phantasmagoric world where saints are monsters or vice versa, Gromov exercised restraint and patience.

He kept an inquiring face as if Simone brought up a mere juicy gossip. If not for the mysterious appearance of demonic Samara, which was an event he could not rationalize, he would not bother any longer.

Unfortunately, he could not deny Samara's disturbing presence. It was not only the demoness herself, but inexplicable dizziness he started to feel after she had disappeared.

Originally, he blamed the hangover (the vodka he bought back then was a cheap one, after all), but with the passing time, subtle cues began to manifest, indicating a drug than alcohol intoxication rather.

Does the egg affect my brain, he wondered. The syndromes were akin to an LSD trip with uncomfortable shifts in his perception, in which the walls were becoming transparent, almost glass-like, with endless dark space behind them.

"Are you alright?"

With concerned eyes, Simone watched him when he staggered on the spot and firmly grabbed a barstool to avoid falling down. From her point of view, he must have been drunk and ruined.

"I'm ha-llu-ci-na-ting," he gasped. "See-ing things. Ghosts. Ha-ving mo-tion sick-ness. No-thing se-rious."

"Sounds serious to me! Hey! Hey!"

At once, she jumped forward and tried to hold him in the upright position. But the body was too heavy, so the last thing he saw was her panicking expression, which changed into a twirl with the female feet at the end of his short and abrupt journey.

"Captain Gromov! Captain Gromov! Hallo!"

Sharp pain in his cheeks awakened him. With vigor, Simone was slapping him left and right, stretching her arms wide as a tennis player serving the ball.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked calmly. "Would you mind stopping it? I said, stop it!"

Reluctantly, she relaxed and retracted.

"Oh, sorry."

"What happened?"

"Down you went. Like a log. You were ten minutes off."

"You kept hitting me for ten minutes? Next time, please spare me your first aid."

"I was about to give you a heart massage."

"Ten minutes after? A late bloomer, aren't you? Anyway, I'm glad you didn't. I like my ribs how they are."

"You fell on your head. Do you have a concussion? How many fingers you see?"

"About fifty," Gromov grunted and got on his feet. "Thank you, Simone, but I'm fine."

Surprisingly enough, he was not lying. The temporary unconsciousness left him refreshed with no symptoms whatsoever with one caveat - when he had focused on Simone's erected fingers, he could see through flesh, decomposed to bones and a network of capillaries.

Gromov shook his head.

"Now, back to our leisure talk," he continued. "A saint turning into a monster, was it? Simone, what love-hate relation do you have with a guy that was allegedly living five centuries ago?"

"Not going to talk anymore. I've been observing you, Sava. You are not in the condition to go on any further. Even before you'd collapsed, you felt absentminded and distracted. Hallucinating! You said it yourself."

"And I told you I was fine. Do go on, please."

"No. Stop being selfish, Sava. I get it. You are a strong, resilient man who needs no babysitter - even if you hit the floor hard with your stubborn head. But this is not about doubtful manliness. Remember your responsibility. What happens with us if you die? This ship is yours. We don't have its passwords. Without you, we are screwed."

"Aren't you burying me a tad soon?"

Gromov knew she was right. But he also knew they were running out of time. If Samara the Demoness was real and there was an ongoing synthesis (no matter of what kind,) then he had to find out the truth until tomorrow.

Moreover, he could not stop thinking of what the Space Forces taught him about how the Plantarian virus worked. The described symptoms were similar with one difference: the infection took about a month to fully develop. Contrary to that, his condition kept changing way too fast, as if he got a dosage of the virus on steroids.

Was the egg a biological weapon? Were his circumstances related to the egg at all? What if the Zhutra's ship had been infected before he entered there? What if Khamal and Simone were subjugated ones or perhaps infected beforehand, and they forgot to kindly inform him about the matter? After all, he could refuse to save them if a suspicious illness had been involved, especially when the Solar System went hysteric about the Plantarian threat.

If Samara told me the synthesis would have been finished in twenty hours, should he take it at face value? Thinking of her over and over, why did he not question his sanity instead of taking her words for granted?

Had she ever told him anything he did not know before? Her first appearance in the dreams? Only extraction of his memories, perhaps a reminder out of his subconsciousness still troubled by the unspoken love he felt for the woman who belonged to another man.

When she transformed into a demoness, was it because he wanted Samara and still someone different, exclusive to him? She was unique to the bone, a hellish yet beautiful phantom designed to satisfy his futile desire for being exceptional.

If she was a mere construct, a dreamy being coming out of Plantarian fever, then all her further appearance made sense. Elusive and never seen by anyone else, she never told him any information he had not known before, except for the epitaph.

But considering a virus messing with his brain, he could just have forgotten he had read the epitaph in Brown's book.

When Samara told him about Simone being disgusted by him, was it not just another projection? He himself found it hardly believable that the woman would be attracted to a man more than ten years older - not to mention that in their previous encounters, Simone Yeuxbleu expressed clear disdain for his person.

Alright, Samara called The Emperor In The Mask his creator, but what? Whom else should have Gromov's subconsciousness mentioned once influenced by Zhutra's blabbering, Brown's sensational book, and Simone's love-hate relationship with that monster-saint guy?

So far, he had no proof for anything his passengers had claimed. The egg itself could have been an ordinary piece of polished metal. The supernatural powers he attributed to it might have been the result of an infection, and the same went for the existence of Samara the Demoness.

"I wasted too much time with you, Simone. Let's end it!"

The tone Gromov used was so icy that the young woman shivered.

"First, the armory you robbed... What type of weaponry did it contain?"

"I have no idea. I saw some weapons, but I was not interested in them. According to Khamal, most of them were obsolete."

"Oh! Obsolete, you say? Found on a military base of your unparalleled genius? I should've realized sooner what nonsense you two fed me. No need to get agitated, Simone. Just keep answering my questions. The next one... Did you see any symbols or warnings on the walls, crates, or entrances?"

"Yes. Mostly pictograms."

"Had Khamal or you any idea what they meant?"

"Of course, we had. We were fully qualified to explore the space station. And for the record, we did not rob it. It has been abandoned."

"For what reason?"

"No clue."

"In what state you find the station? When they abandoned it, did they leave a mess behind? Corpses? Documents?"

"Everything was clean and well-conserved. These bases were usually autonomous. After that monster's death, most of them switched into standby mode. We found no documents. As for data, computers were out of order, and we had no passwords or meanings of how to get inside."

"About the pictograms. Would you know if they were related to bioware, biotechnology, or bioweapons?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And what?"

"Have you seen some pictograms indicating biotechnological research?"

"Yes. Few of them."

"Why was I not informed about that?"

"You didn't ask. And it was not important."

"What? I misheard your last word! It was not what?"

"Not important," Simone insisted, switching to a soothing, condescending tone. "Look, Sava. Khamal and I are well-trained professionals, and this was not the first time we had explored an abandoned habitat in outer space. We took all possible precautions to avoid problems, including Plantarian virus - if this is the reason why you've started acting so strangely."

"Precaution my ass," Gromov opposed silently. "According to the interplanetary law, the only correct procedure when encountering a space object, possibly containing an infected material of unknown origin, is never to approach, inform the nearest space forces, and wait for them to shoot the object with a nuclear missile. If you have been infected, or there is even a possibility of being infected, you have to put yourself into strict quarantine. The chances are the called space forces will include you into the nuclear explosion to be safe than sorry."

Simone burst into laughter.

"This is so stupid that it is not even funny," she said. "You were ridiculing me all the time, and it turns out you believe in the most outlandish conspirational theory yourself. Space forces of any nation do not kill innocent civilians willy-nilly."

"No?"

Patiently, Gromov waited for her to stop laughing.

"Three years ago, I was part of a mission," he continued. "My group's task was to prevent any space vessel from fleeing from a living habitat that happened to be under quarantine. The Plantarian virus was suspected but not confirmed. Still, the habitat is no more. More than one thousand people were evaporated in a nuclear blast. I would not go so far as to claim that any space forces kill the innocent willy-nilly, but they do so, and legally. Of course, they do not want to disturb the public audience with nasty details, so the related report is often supplemented with a more intriguing sensation. If I recall those times correctly, our voters were in no mood to bother with some obliterated habitat in a galaxy far, far away when they got served a juicy scandal of one actress punching one actor. The most heated debate focused on the unsolvable problem of whether punching a man by a woman is morally appropriate."

"This can't be true!"

"Yes, it is. I learned back then it the punching was alright because the actress only paid back all men for centuries of humiliation and chauvinism. I guess you'd side with the victorious and noisy side, wouldn't you?"

"Not that. The nuclear shelling. One thousand people? This is horrible!"

"A standard procedure, I'm afraid. Look, Simone. We do not have your Instant Communication Devices anymore, so no wonder people do not care what happens to some distant strangers. Voters care about rampaging actresses more than about long-forgotten settlers, located in the middle of nowhere."

"You could've protested! You could've denied the order!"

"Sure. I could have done so and gotten myself executed."

"I would not hesitate if I were in your position!"

"A pity it was me being there. But rejoice, my little samaritan, you exploring team managed to accomplish something that even Colonel Steiner has failed to do."

"What is it?"

"Kill me. In fact, kill us all. But you and Khamal were dead the moment you entered the space station and ignored those pictograms. So, forgive me for calling you both selfish swine for dragging me down with you. No comments, please! Or are you under the impression that the military will make an exception once your fantastical duo assures them you're qualified explorers - or what the hell you think you are?"