“Is he dead?” Asked Lexa. We were both standing over the still body of her manager.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, remembering the silhouette I had seen crawl out of another robotic assailant.

  I knelt down to examine the body. The old man’s face looked like an old man’s, mostly. There was a gash, or more exactly, a “tear” in the skin that wrapped around the metallic frame of the thing. The body of the thing, that is to say the mid-section, was punched through like swiss cheese. There were more entry wounds than exit wounds, but they were small, and if there was a chamber in the man’s chest that allowed something to pilot it, like I suspected might be the case, then it was too dark inside to tell from just my bullet holes.

  I stood up and kicked the robot shell. .

  “We need to turn off the sound system, but I don’t want to leave this thing where we can’t see it. Mind giving me a hand?”

  Lexa agreed to help carry the limp robotic shell of her manager. She and I grabbed a leg each, and dragged the body behind us as she led the way to the control console. It didn't take longer than a minute to navigate the large backrooms. The old man had punched a hole through every wall between the control room and where we had been.

  I whistled.

  “How did you survive back here?”

  “Good cardio,” she said, smirking. Her breathing was heavy from having to drag her share of the body’s weight, but I think she was handling it better than me. “Actually it was like playing one of my dad’s horror games. I just kept running and hiding, trying to find a way out. I never realized this place didn’t have any emergency exits.”

  Lexa took us through one more hole in the wall, and stopped.

  She had taken us to the room where she’d called Gav and I. The monitor she’d shown us the footage on was there, except now it was showing Gav fighting off the small army of gym bros. The monitor sat on top of a large console with lots of flashing lights, buttons, and switches. Part of the console looked like it’d been smashed in.

  “That was you guys,” she said, pointing at the smashed section of the console. “The moment he saw Gav taking out all the brainwashed gym members he had a fit.”

  “Hah, How’d you manage to see that?” I asked, beginning to examine the console.

  “I noticed he wasn’t looking for me anymore. I guess that was when you guys showed up. He absolutely lost it when Gav started kicking ass. That’s when he hit the console.” Lexa laughed. “He was pissed!”

  While Lexa recounted her story, a sense of panic began to well up within me. It had nothing to do with Lexa’s story, but everything to do with the console and its buttons. None of them had any labels. It almost looked like the console of a flight deck.

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  “How’d you figure out the door to the lock?”

  “I had to open the door for my manager a couple times. It’s the only button I knew, but I flipped everything here last time.”

  “Christ. Okay.”

  As much as I didn’t want to, I started trying buttons and switches at random, checking the monitor to see if anything had changed. Nothing had.

  On the monitor, Gav was really starting to lose ground. For as many gym bros as he’d taken out, there were as many more to replace them. He was one against many, and the inevitability of numbers was going to do him in if I didn’t find the switch that would unbrainwash the horde.

  My flip switching and button mashing became more panicked. My anxiety was growing into a pique, when I heard a rustling. It was coming from the supine heap of the old man.

  In a flash I had my pistol out, summoning it from its holster in one swift motion. I had it trained, ready to fire at the old man’s bulging chest.

  The tracksuit’s top unzipped itself and out climbed a little green man. His head was bulbous, and his eyes were large black orbs. His hands, which only had three fingers instead of four, plus a thumb, were raised high.

  “Don’t shoot!” said the little green man. “I– I can help your friend, just stay calm monkey. Don’t go blowing your boom stick, and we can save your friend.”

  “Oh my god!” yelled Lexa.

  “Let’s start with how to get that horde of innocent civilians out of zombie mode,” I said, still aiming my gun at the little green man’s head.

  “Sure, monkey, sure, just let me–” The little green man started approaching the console.

  “Nope,” I said, waving the gun. “You can just tell us which button it is, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Not wanting to take my eyes off him, I had him instruct Lexa in finding the right button. A minute later, her finger was hovering over it.

  “I want you to know if this does anything other than turn off your brainwashing waves, I’m splattering your brains against the wall there.”

  “Easy, easy, I get it,” he said. He still had his hands raised up.

  Lexa hit the button. She didn’t make a sound, and I didn’t want the little green man out of my line of sight.

  “Lexa? Is anything happening?”

  “They’re all unconscious, except for Gav. He’s alright. He looks a little confused, but he’s alright. But uhm…”

  “Lexa?”

  “He looks green, and I mean, really green. I know that isn’t uhm… normal, but is he going to be alright?”

  “He will be,” I said, staring daggers. “Alright green man, tell us where the neutralizing agent is.”

  The little green man growled. “So you know about the neutralizing agent, ay monkey? But you don’t know where to find it, and this ship is a lot bigger than it looks.”

  “This is a ship?” asked Lexa.

  “That's right she-monkey, it’s a ship.”

  “Call me a monkey one more time and you’ll be begging Mr. Alvarez to put you out of your misery.” She took a step toward the little green man, and he flinched. “Heh.” she smirked. Then she turned to me. “Mr. Alvarez, I think I know where the neutralizing agent is. Remember where you found me?”

  “The room with all the Mars Gym merch?”

  “Yeah. A truck came in about a week ago with some boxes that had weird symbols on it. He had me put them away for him.” Lexa let out a grunt of frustration. “Gah! I knew that the delivery driver was weird. He– you– you guys were aliens?”

  “That’s right she-monkey–”

  “One more time!” screamed Lexa, going for the helpless green creature.

  “Hold on Lexa, I still need him. Do me a favor and get that neutralizing agent.”

  Lexa did as I asked, giving the martian one last mean look before she stomped through the hole in the wall.

  “You have me all to yourself now monkey, what do you want from me?”

  “Answers,” I said. “What were you doing here? Why were handing out shakes that turned people into moldy plants?”

  “We weren’t trying to hurt anyone! Promise!” pleaded the martian. “New tech is hard to get a pass on back home. Testing on people is illegal, so we figure we round up a bunch of monkeys and–”

  I’d heard enough.

  “We’re apes.”

  “What?”

  “We’re great apes, you little green piece of shit.”

  His head splattered into green goo.