The man, dubbed Tugs by Kit after Lex tugs on his tail, is moved into the clinic and becomes the center of attention as Valero and Casey work to revive him.  They discover that the device attached to his arm is made of a kind of metal they've never seen before that seems to be sapping life energy out of him.  Casey falls on the metal, accidentally cutting herself.  Tugs starts to stir, but no one can determine how or why.  Casey also admits she's never seen his species before, but that he shares many genes similar to those Lex possesses.

 

A gruff man named Anmalo bursts into the House, demanding the return of his prisoner who turns out to be Tugs.  Adriana gets a bad feeling from the commissioner however, and orders Valero to stall.  Valero tells Anmalo that he cannot release Tugs until he's been healed of his injuries.  Anmalo agrees to give Valero three days, then departs in a huff.  Tugs wakes enough to beg Valero to remove the device from his arm.  Quickly, Tugs begins to recover, explaining that the device is used on prisoners as a means of transferring their life energy to terminally ill people to punish them for their crimes and save lives.

 

Lex meets with Tugs who identifies her as a Thunderian, just like him.  He explains their race, consisting of seven clans and two strict castes.  Their homeworld was destroyed ten years ago, but Anmalo, a bit mad, still feels it his duty to punish Thunderian prisoners.  Tugs admits that he is a criminal, his crime being that he pretended to be of the noble caste when he was really a peasant.  Lex feels a strange closeness to Tugs - his real name is Ogden or Og for short but he prefers Tugs - who, in spite of his vanity and crassness, answers questions she's carried her entire life.

 

Determined to keep Tugs from falling back into Anmalo's hands, Lex and Pala both work to find a means to keep Anmalo from taking him.  Aden admits to Pala that if the Thunderian homeworld is gone, Anmalo's claim is questionable, but that there's nothing he can do.  On the night Anmalo returns, Lex and Tobias both drug Tugs, making him look dead.  Meanwhile, Adriana stalls by demanding that Anmalo sing for Joey.  She tells him to head into the clinic.  When he does, Joey announces that Anmalo was responsible for the fireballand that he's out of his mind.

 

In the clinic, Anmalo finds Tugs in a death-like state.  At first, he is unwilling to accept the death, shaking the body and shouting.  Finally, Lex and Tobias convince him that Tugs is dead.  Dejected and lost, Anmalo leaves.  Lex revives Tugs.  Grateful for everything she's done for him, he agrees to stay in the House for a little while, if only to answer more of her questions about what she is and where her mother came from.