Serix had to bite his tongue to keep from crying out when Cassie took him by the arm. The flash of pain made him see stars, so he closed his eyes. The injury must have gotten worse somehow, because he didn’t see how such a shallow wound could cause him so much agony. He felt the pressure disappear. Cassie had pulled her hand away.

He opened one eye to see her looking down at her hand. The palm was colored scarlet. He must have been bleeding through the sleeve of his shirt. No small cut could do that. Maybe he should have taken a closer look at it back on top of the building. Cassie gave him a chiding look, as if to say ‘how could you be so stupid?’ He managed to smile in response, but it quickly distorted into a grimace when he was struck with another wave of pain.

She brought him to a hidden passageway that contained a set of stairs leading down below the floor. It was a clever hiding place that Serix probably wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t shown it to him. They descended the stairs and Cassie led him to another room that was filled with many different assortments of supplies. She pointed at a chair and he guessed she wanted him to sit in it, so he did.

While he waited for her to get whatever supplies she was searching for, he rolled back his sleeve to check the damage. The gash was still bleeding, which was a bad sign in and of itself, and upon closer inspection he could see that the beast’s fang had pierced much deeper than he had originally thought. Through the adrenaline of the fight, he hadn’t noticed how badly he was actually injured.

Cassie knelt in front of him with a bag of what looked like medical supplies and took his arm. She expertly cleaned and bandaged the gash, her fingers swift and nimble as if she had done so many times before. But who knew; maybe she had. He flexed his wrist when she finished tending to his injury. It was still sore, but the sharp pain that used to accompany any movement was gone. He flashed her a grateful smile and stood up.

Finally, Cassie took him to a large metal door with no handle. He gave her a quizzical look until she pressed her hand flat against an electronic pad and the door slid open automatically. Somehow the building’s electricity was still functional. He wondered how that happened. The rest of the city seemed to have blacked out long ago.

Serix didn’t wait for Cassie. He stepped into the adjoining room as soon as the door had opened. He held his breath when he saw the robots. They were even larger than he imagined, varying in numberless colors and designs. He weaved between the mechanical giants, trying to get a look at them from all angles. They were truly awesome in the fullest sense of the word. The endless creativity of the human beings struck him once again. How could his people have killed them off so thoughtlessly?

Serix froze when he heard a popping noise. It sounded like a single clap. Suddenly he heard the steady buzz of static. He looked around in confusion, but there was nothing to have caused the sound. How peculiar. Then another possibility crept into his mind. He looked down at his intercom. It was no longer flashing. [i]What happened?[/i]

Serix looked up. High above his head, a large charcoal-gray disk hung suspended from some kind of mechanical arm on a vehicle. He tilted his head, and then realized what it was. His own people used tools like this, but on a smaller scale. It was a huge electromagnet, probably used to pick up heavy metal pieces and move them about. He remembered how the older Lunairans would always warn the children to keep magnets away from electronic devices because they could interfere with the motherboard. Now, he had just stepped under the biggest magnet he had ever seen. It probably demolished the circuitry in his device. He turned back to Cassie and grinned.

“We can talk now,” he said excitedly, pointing up at the suspended electromagnet. “This thing just fried my intercom.”