Serix tipped his head back to look up at the building, but even then he couldn’t see the top of it. He had been standing in front of it for a little while now, trying to guess where the entrance to the storage room would be located. From what he could see, it wasn’t accessible from the outside. He would have to enter the building and go from there. If he was lucky, he would find the entrance to the storage. If not, at least he had a safe place to rest and recover. He tried the door. It was unlocked, so he pulled it open and stepped inside.

Despite the layers of dust, the main room was breathtaking. It had a high ceiling and exotic furnishings he had never seen before. The robotics storage could wait. He wandered around the spacious room, taking a closer look at it all. If this was just the entrance, he wondered what the rest of the building would be like.

Serix heard a noise from one of the nearby hallways. He paused in his examination of the room and fixed his gaze on the corridor. Had one of the other Scouts come this way? He couldn’t remember. The pilot had held him back to give him the new belt, so he hadn’t seen which direction the others went. It was entirely possible that one of them had wandered into the city ahead of him.

He crept closer to the hallway, instinctively angling his body to shield his wounded arm in case the noise wasn’t from a Scout. At one point, the hallway turned sharply to the right. He couldn’t see anything without exposing himself to whatever was on the other side. He steeled himself and stepped around the corner. Immediately, he saw an all too familiar flash of blue light. He jumped to the side and the projectile whizzed past his head, barely missing his cheek. In that moment, he thanked his father for the quick reflexes he had inherited.

Now all that was left was the question of who was attacking him. The weapon was quite plainly a Silencer, but the Scouts wouldn’t shoot at each other like that. If anything, the other person would have called out a warning or revealed himself first. The fact that he or she had waited for him to approach first meant that he or she had been trying to stay hidden. That left only one option. He looked up.

[i]Oh no,[/i] Serix paled. Cassie was approaching him with a grin. He might have been happy to see her again too, except now he was being closely monitored by the pilot. To make matters worse, she began trying to talk to him. He frantically held up his hands – the gesture sent another shooting pain up his arm – and shook his head, silently pleading with her to stop. She seemed to understand something was wrong, because she fell silent and gave him a puzzled look.

Serix looked around, searching for a way to explain his situation without words. An idea came to him. He waved his hand to tell Cassie to follow him, and then headed back to the front room where he started going through drawers he had noticed earlier. He found a writing utensil and a stack of thin, white sheets. He pulled one off the top. This would work. He glanced at Cassie. He wasn’t sure if humans shared the same written characters as Lunairans, but they should be similar enough for her to understand, right? Either way, it was worth a shot. He scribbled down the explanation, hoping she could read his sloppy writing. He was ambidextrous, but he still wrote better with his left hand. The wound in his arm had forced him to switch to his less dominant right hand, so the words turned out shaky and strange.

[b][i]I WAS ASSIGNED A NEW INTERCOM. MY PILOT IS LISTENING IN RIGHT NOW.[/i][/b]

He paused, thinking for a moment, and then went on to write something else.

[b][i]CAN YOU SHOW ME THE STORAGE ROOM?[/i][/b]

He felt his cheeks grow warm and he looked away. It was foolish, but despite the situation, he still wanted to see the robots.