[9-A]Her body wanted to run and hide, her mind full of nothing but panic and frustration.

  She had rushed to her home, her trinket faithfully lighting the way despite its brush with the moose monster. While she knew the Pages would likely have an answer to her current problems, she didn’t have the time to look through them all.

  She had turned to the People in the box and intended to ask for their help, but no matter how she maniputed the box the People remained trapped and would not respond to her questions. She was pacing about now, the People babbling in the background, trying her hardest not to panic.

  She really had only two choices.

  Let the moose monster have its way or find another source of magic to beat back the emptiness. Even now she could feel it slowly draining from her, the cold beginning to take hold again. Even if she now knew that the magic didn’t change her mind, she was still reluctant to simply let the moose monster do whatever it wanted with her.

  She sunk to the floor and stared to look through the Pages once again. All the times she had looked before she had sought to tame the monster and become its master. Having a monster with magic like that doing as she told it would make everything trivial.

  Now, she wasn’t so sure that the monster cked enough intelligence to be tamed. If it was like the Others or the trapped People and could simply outsmart her, she wouldn’t be able to tame it. She knew that the Pages mentioned trading between people, but she had never seen a people outside of the box. While the Others may be close enough, they seemed just as trapped as she had been before the wall cracked open and the box People even now.

  Was that where they had gone, they had been trapped and found a way to escape just like her?

  Maybe she could find where they had been trapped and escape that way?

  No, that would never work, she still needed the moose monster for its magic. She had to find a way to keep it close without letting it do anything that popped into its head. If this ‘trading’ worked between people, maybe she could modify it to work with the moose monster as well. She just had to find enough examples to understand it. If she could establish trade with the moose monster, she might be able to trade her cooperation in holding the magic it wanted with its cooperation in helping her the rest of the time.

  Moose’s were supposed to be slow and zy monsters and her moose seemed to fit that part at least. It might not like doing everything she wanted it too, but it may find that keeping her close and compliant was less work than trapping her whenever it wanted to eat the magic in her.

  It seemed like a good trade to her, she didn’t want to give up the magic and wanted the monster to do things for her, the monster wanted to eat the magic and be zy. They both gave up something they wanted and got something that was almost as good.

  At least so long as the monster wanted the magic more than being zy, it was hard to tell at this point.

  Sheer panic gripped her and she whirled around when she heard the monsters rumble. The panic faded to confusion as she looked at the opening to her home, finding it just the way she left it when she came in. More rumbling made the confusion worse as she looked around and found nothing moving. All of that faded as she turned towards the trapped box.

  There was a people she had never seen before and as she watched, it rumbled in a simir way to the monster.

  This… the People in the box had never spoken like that before. Always they had spoken in a high chirp, not the low rumble the monster used.

  Was this what it was looking for?

  It had been looking at words the whole time she had seen it, always staring and rumbling to itself. Had the box trapped something the monster wanted?

  Maybe, was the box a safe pce as well as a trap?

  It could expin why the People in the box never tried to escape, always seeming happy to stay right where they were. What could she get from the moose monster if she traded it this box?

  Its magic might even be powerful enough to free the People inside.

  Trading it would mean letting the monster into her home though. The box was far too big for her to bring it to the monster. She still sat and listened though. If she could manage to learn the secrets of how the monster rumbled like that, she would be in a much better position to get what she needed in a trade. This new people she had never seen before rumbled for quite a long time and she managed to grasp a lot of the words it was trying to…teach?

  It seemed like it was teaching at least. She couldn’t tell who or what it was teaching but that seemed like the overall goal.

  With her new words and a pn to trade herself for the monster, to the monster, she set out to find said monster. Even she understood it was a terrible pn at this point, but the magic insider her had faded enough to be uncomfortable and she needed to try something. Anything that would change the situation she was in and give her more options to work with. Something to help push forward……

  If only she could find the monster.

  [B]Well now he just felt dumb.

  After running his hand along what he had previously thought was a support pilr, he found a patch that felt different. Investigating that patch led to him discovering a panel simir to that in the cryo room. Invisible to the eye until it was activated by his hand, at which point it formed some kind of tactile hologram. The pilr he now knew to be a rge elevator shaft seemed to be where he needed to investigate next.

  After he had found that mysterious page with future english on it, he had taken the other papers he had collected to try to learn the nguage back to somewhere more comfortable. It seemed that whoever had been here really didn’t want anyone to know what they were up to. The pages had been filled with code and possibly even misdirection.

  He knew there was code because they mostly stuck to one nguage, that being the one he couldn’t read and simir to the wall markings, while bits and pieces were in the future english that he could parse, barely.

  And what they said was…enlightening.

  He couldn’t understand much of the other nguage used in the papers as it wasn’t just simple words and required context. While he could recognize a word here or there that he had run into before, they lost all meaning in the greater mass. The bits in future english though gave him enough insight. He still had to fill in the bnks, but it seemed they were doing some kind of genetics testing. The mad scientist pods he had found alongside the papers were exactly that, some kind of artificial environment for testing.

  Probably people testing if he had to guess, as there were mentions of sickness and immunity.

  Really didn’t help the paranoia when you are basically dropped into a Resident evil plot. If any of the pods had been broken or dirty in any way he would be treating things very differently right now. Fortunately, everything seemed clean and sanitized, so his running theory right now was that everyone had been caught.

  The contents of the paperwork may not be clear, but the intent to hide very much was. Mad scientist bs combined with cndestine paperwork painted a pretty clear picture of wanting to remain uncaught. State projects didn’t tend to hide from the people that gave them funding, so there would be no reason to hide from authorities if they had that kind of backing.

  Seeing as there was a ck of mess or of things left out, it couldn’t be some kind of surprise raid or unexpected catastrophe due to the research. At least on the level he was on, everyone had left mostly calmly. This of course prompted him to consider why he and his partner in feline crime were still here.

  A quick gnce at the cryo room with this new info made the answer btantly obvious. The color line that wasn’t there led to rooms that ‘weren’t there’. When the cryo room was closed it looked like a normal wall. There was no indication it existed until you found and used the invisible panel.

  Why the main elevator was unmarked he had no idea, maybe this whole level was supposed to be ‘unknown’, but it was the same. You couldn’t even tell where it was until you found the panel. Fortunately, thinking back to everything he had explored up to this point, the only pces left for invisi-doors were in the b. If this pce still followed the ws of physics he could account for any ‘room sized’ pces elsewhere.

  So, having confirmed his suspicions that things were not great and not wanting to waste all that courage he had spent time gathering, he had wrapped a sheet around his face and shoulders, making a makeshift bandana and poncho. It wasn’t much for protection, but it was better than nothing and his trusty pan would do most of the work anyways. Even if it had cooled down by now.

  It took him a bit to find the panel inside the elevator, it having been pced on the side in a non-obvious spot. He nearly gave up right there as well, the choices not being an obvious ‘floor x’ button but a rather a confusing block of text. Fortunately, the ‘code’ seemed to be a universal thing, bits and pieces of future english in the text.

  There seemed to be three distinct ‘codes’, one for a ‘hold’, probably cargo receiving if he had to guess, one for a ‘deck’, no idea where that went, outside maybe? And the st one was pretty cryptic as all it said was ‘hope’. At least that’s what he thought it said, that st one was harder to parse than the others.

  Given he had been looking for a way out this whole time, picking deck seemed the most pertinent move. Hoping he wasn’t dooming the poor girl to starving alone, he touched the hologram where it said deck and crossed his fingers. When nothing happened he went to try something else but accidentally brushed another part of the hologram.

  When the doors closed he figured he was on the right track, even if he had fallen into it. When they opened again a few moments ter, he wasn’t as sure as before.

  It looked exactly the same. Peeking his head out to look for any differences he still couldn’t be sure he had moved at all. It seemed like he would have to spend a lot more effort to decipher this elevator. He may even have to reevaluate if it was an elevator.

  “This is seriously hurting my smart guy image.”

  After copious amounts of staring bnkly, sorta-educated guessing and some tactical littering, he had determined that whatever this was did indeed move. Wiping his brow after such immense progress, he felt pretty pleased with himself. He now even knew that ‘hope’ was the floor he woke up on, or at least looked very simir around the elevator, and ‘deck’ was a yet unexplored area.

  ‘Still no idea what ‘hold’ is though.’

  Hefting his trusty pan, he confidently walked to the first intersection on the ‘deck’ level. Seeing that the lines weren’t beled at this part, he quickly shifted gears to start mapping the corridors with his notebook and let the pan be relegated to a clipboard.

  It didn’t take him very long to figure out that the floor pn here was completely different from the other floor. Sighing heavily, he settled in to do a quick check of the floor to get a rough map. If this floor was anywhere close to the size of the st one it would take him days to fully map the rooms here.

  He was somewhat looking forward to the project. Not only was it something to do, he could also hear more industrial noise on this level than he could back in the ‘living quarters’ he had first explored. Hopefully that meant he would be able to find something he could use to make or repair the things he might need, like say, a knife to fight off any nasties he may yet encounter.

  Still, something to do other than wait for his inevitable demise was a welcome distraction, even if it set his hairs standing straight up from paranoia.

  Several hours and a quick nap ter, he realized he had completely underestimated the size of this area. He hadn’t taken into account that the ‘hope’ level seemed to be a ‘secret’ area and could have been quite small. Because it was tiny compared to the ‘deck’ level.

  It was starting to make more sense where every one had gone. The ‘hope’ level hadn’t had many people to begin with and they seemed to be a secret level without a lot of common access. The ‘deck’ level on the other hand was a full working level meant for a rger number of…. Workers?

  He wasn’t sure at this point as it was just as empty, though a rge pce like this getting shut down and the secret area above having to be abandoned to maintain appearances made a lot more sense than a raid leaving crucial evidence behind. This level was clearly more ‘used’, as there were markings on the walls and floors that were likely caused by logistics, moving rge amounts of stuff from one pce to another kind of logistics. That meant it would be easier for things to get ‘lost’ and end up somewhere less poputed, like a secret level few people knew about.

  He had yet to find any living areas for this level, but with the size of the space that wasn’t surprising. All the doors on this level seemed to be closed as well. He couldn’t tell if that was just protocol or if it was something more nefarious going on. He continued to make notes as he made his way back to the elevator.

  As much as he wanted to do a quick pass, there was too much ground to cover in one session. If he wasn’t on strict rations he could just go hungry for a bit, but the ck of extra food made missing even one meal dangerous, especially when he was moving around like he was.

  Getting off the elevator back on level ‘hope’, he made his way toward the showers. He was looking forward to a quick shower and a nice rexing snack in his little nest while he studied what writing he had found and tried to consolidate his notes on the ‘deck’ level. Things would go faster if he could tell where he was.

  What he didn’t expect was to see little miss Kitty looking lost and spooked near the bathroom.

  Had he really scared her that much?

  It was a shame he didn’t have a choco-stick on him, he might have been able to entice her to shower again. He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers a little while he gave her a quick “here, kitty, kitty”, though without much hope in it. He expected her to bolt and he would get to shower in peace.

  Suffice to say he was quite shocked and nearly dropped his pan shaped clipboard and the notebook he had been looking at when she smmed into his hand and proceeded to try to both wrap his hand around her chest and herself around his hand at the same time. She was comically unsuccessful at both, but clearly something had spooked her worse than his little stunt with the shower.

  Given he had zero hands at the moment, one holding his notebook and the other being glommed by a feline enthusiast, there wasn’t much he could do about it other than make some comforting noises.

  She did still seem wary of him, her attempts to steal his hand happening at a distance she wouldn’t accidentally touch the rest of him, so he didn’t want to try to pick her up or hug her, but he needed to at least get to the bottom of what had spooked her.

  Doubly so when she appeared to be trying to give him the stuffed cat.

  ‘So much for a rexing night of reading, I guess today is a charades day.’