[A]She had learned her lesson about pying with magic.

  She had thought that by mimicking Moose she would be able to learn something of the magic it had used. Something of the spell to make the disks. Well, she had learned that the spell was dangerous.

  She had managed to get the magic to do something. She had seen the haze above the surface as the magic took effect. It looked almost like she had gotten water in her eyes but only when she looked at the space directly above the surface. She didn’t know the significance of the way her hands had moved, or why they needed to move where they did, but she had accomplished her second spell!

  As she had moved to brush at the wobbly haze atop the surface, she had also learned her first great lesson.

  Magic was dangerous.

  Luckly, she had felt it before it got worse. The build up of heat, the start of pain. The overload of her sense caused her hand to jerk back. This magic had been potent. Or simply used incorrectly. Possibly both. She would have to be extra careful anytime she was experimenting with magic on her own. It was clear that Moose had a grasp on things she couldn’t replicate and her ck of knowledge was holding back her abilities.

  She could clearly use the magic that Moose did. She had just proven it to herself. Not knowing or understanding the significance of what she had done meant she couldn’t use it the way Moose did, or perhaps even the way it was intended.

  She had no idea if even Moose was using the spells correctly.

  Moose did seem to know she accomplished something though.

  Even when she had done her best to return the area to exactly how she remembered it, it was clear that Moose could see changes she couldn’t or didn’t understand. As if it knew exactly what had happened. Moose rumbled at her a bit and turned her towards the door. She caught it doing something out of the corner of her vision as she was turned, but didn’t get a clear view of what.

  She would need to be careful not to leave mistakes for Moose to correct. She may be deemed as too much trouble and abandoned otherwise.

  She didn’t want to try and survive without the magic she was coming to rely on anytime soon.

  She looked at the wall where the opening to her home was.

  Or at least had been.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to close it now.’

  When Moose had come towards her home she had started to worry. If it found the Pages and could somehow block her from entering before it, she would lose all ability to trade. As she had closed the wall to block off the opening she had run into an unexpected problem though.

  How did she open the wall from this side?

  All the times she had pulled the wall in to hide her home there had been a small gap where her hands had been. That gap had always worried her, if a monster found it there was nothing she could do to stop the wall from being pulled back to reveal the opening.

  She didn’t have that problem now. She had snuck away from Moose as it did whatever it was doing nearby. She was afraid that her home had been found or that Moose had sensed the magic inside her coming this way. When Moose had gone towards another area nearby, she had taken the chance to sneak back to her home and tried to hide it.

  She had worried Moose would see the gap, but as she had pushed the wall into the opening that led into her home to close it, the wall had completely melded with the walls around the opening. It now looked as if there was no opening, that it was just a stretch of wall the same as all the rest.

  To get out of her home after she had closed the wall was easy enough, she just pushed it open. But this? She was looking at just a wall. There was nothing to grab and no way for her to pull the wall from this side. She supposed that meant her home was safe from pretty much everything, but it also meant she didn’t know how to get back in. Not until she learned the magic to move walls from Moose.

  If she was going to follow Moose to learn everything she could, then the only real loss was her stash of treats. She didn’t know enough about anything to say which books from the Pages to trade and the People in the box didn’t seem interested in being all that helpful anyways.

  It did mean she couldn’t use her home to hide from monsters until the situation was resolved.

  Was she happy about that? She didn’t want to lead monsters to her home to begin with and couldn’t close it completely from the inside. It wasn’t a great pce to hide if something was actively searching for her. It was safe if nothing knew to try looking, but there was nothing preventing her from being hunted like the wall around the garden.

  She pondered this new situation as she padded back to Moose. It didn’t look like anything had changed while she was gone. It was clear that Moose was creating new words and taking words from the many things scattered around the area. She had always thought this area was strange but had never had any context to know why. It seemed that Moose had that context and was gathering a great many words.

  Could Moose be making a new spell?

  She didn’t know, but there was certainly a great deal to learn from what was happening. Moose had sat on the floor with the debris spread out in front of it. Making more and more words in the small book it carried.

  She wanted to watch, but she had been standing a lot and didn’t know how long they would be here, so she couldn’t stand behind and watch over Moose’s shoulder.

  ‘The floor is cold and Moose is warm. I…I don’t like sitting on the cold.’

  [B]To say he was surprised when the girl crawled into his p would be an understatement.

  While he had sat on the floor because the chairs present were too small be too comfortable, he was still close enough to the desks to use them in his attempts to transte more things.

  It was only a little disconcerting that they remained at a usable height even when he was sitting.

  They were a little high for writing on, but they were perfect for keeping the important reference papers he was working with at an easy gnce. He had been sitting cross legged so he could write on his knee, as he had still yet to find a decent writing surface. It also let him lean down and reach the papers in front of him without having to move from his spot. It wasn’t the most comfortable, the metal being cool, but the only other real choice was to haul something. Either the papers to his room or a mattress to the b. The bnkets were thin enough to need several if he wanted any kind of thermal protection, so more hassle than the other options.

  Laziness won out, so the floor it was.

  It seemed that it put him in the perfect position for the girl to make herself comfortable as well. He still didn’t know why she seemed uncomfortable before, but it was entirely possible she found this pce frightening. He could understand that. With the growth vats and other scientific equipment alongside the rows of desks, it wasn’t the most inviting area.

  He couldn’t rule out the possibility that it wasn’t her first time here either. All evidence pointed to her being awake before him and this b was here for a reason. For that matter it might not be his first time in the b either. Something had changed the expected outcome of the cryo experiment. While he still didn’t really have the time to be looking into it, there was every possibility he was a subject of study for the b. The only reason he knew he had never been in a growth vat was because he had yet to find one rge enough to fit.

  That didn’t hold true for the girl.

  He might have been a full-grown adult before he went into cryo, but there was nothing saying the girl hadn’t been stuck in one of the vats before she outgrew them. Hell, she could probably fit in one now, though it would be a little cramped. This pce could very well bring up unpleasant memories.

  Why she had wandered off on her own in that case he didn’t know. She might be a lot of things, but one thing she wasn’t was a coward that was for sure. He didn’t think for a moment that an unpleasant past or fear of the area would stop her from doing whatever thing she got into her head.

  Actually trying to guess what thing she got stuck there was basically randomized guessing at this point though.

  Her little jaunt through the area seemed to require comfort though. She might not let fear stop her, but that didn’t mean she was ok with it. She seemed to have goosebumps, but as soon as she sat down she rexed and took an interest in his notebook. He wished it wasn’t just random scribbles at this point, putting transtions wherever he had room to conserve paper. He might be able to teach her some words if there had been any order or organization to it. As it was, it probably just looked like random scribbles to anyone that could read, he didn’t want to know what it looked like to someone who couldn’t.

  He was happy to let her try and parse what she could, though he moved her around so that she wasn’t in the way. She might need a hug, but things weren’t getting less desperate and she was comfortably enveloped. Well, enveloped at least. Comfortable was debatable. He had to keep moving her to weird angles to grab the right papers or see something on the floor.

  Not a prime therapy environment, but he doubted it ever would be.

  If she could read the papers she would be able to celebrate with him, he was having a very good session gathering information and learning things. The downside being that the things he was learning were…. Not great. It also didn’t help that he wasn’t learning to transte better.

  No, the more he learned, the more it seemed he had found the very important papers. They had things that would be critical…. If they ever managed to survive long term. They were also very heavily written in future english, little of the other nguage present. There was enough to frustrate his reading though. It was clear that some of these papers were not meant to be read beyond a very specific group with a very specific training. Something he didn’t possess. Said group was also likely attempting to destroy the world…

  …Or save it. It honestly could go either way.

  He had learned where they were. It made him very gd he hadn’t been opening doors on the deck level after that first mad dash. Very gd and very lucky. It seemed they were somewhere code named ‘Atntis’. Unless the future people had lost the desire to codename things with something meaningful, that meant the two of them were very likely not leaving the facility.

  Not in anything short of a submarine at least.

  It seemed he would be learning genetics engineering then. He didn’t really see any way to have a consistent food supply in a submerged facility that didn’t involve that water pnt. The sea food would likely be their only sustainable calories until someone sent a resupply mission. Or he found a grow area he had yet to find. That and seeds to actually grow in said area.

  He wasn’t entirely worried about food. The new revetion meant that there was definitely a freezer or other food storage somewhere. Water should be ok as well, the water pnt more than enough for their needs if he didn’t miss his guess on the purpose. The only problems now were just finding that food storage and discovering whatever reason had left them alone on the seafloor.

  ‘No big deal, right? All you have to do is discover the mystery of a submerged facility and find enough food to st until you can literally create life. Easy’

  Waking up in a genetics facility hidden on the sea floor that was working on deadly pgues sure as hell sounded like a story and it made it very difficult to be objective. He wasn’t sure that meeting the people that operated this pce was in his best interest anymore.

  He certainly didn’t want to find out how badly they would want to keep the information in his head and not on his lips.

  ‘I’d rather take my chances with the radiation leak. At least that one can’t stab me in the back.’