Way back when Alix was a Junior at Farside University, she had to take a little class called Survival 1101.

It was brutal. The class exhaustively covered everything from foraging, to trapping, to fighting off both sentient and animal attackers, to building a shelter out of branches and mud. There was a constant barrage of written and practical exams, and any score less than eighty-five percent got you booted from the class. There were also frequent ‘field trips’ where students were abandoned in some Earth-based wilderness overnight, such as the Amazon rainforest or the base of the Himalayas, and required to camp out alone until the drop ship came to grab them the next morning, just to see how well they could survive on their own.

This all was made no easier by Alix’s instructor, a battleax of a woman by the name of Professor Matson. Professor Matson was gray-haired, sported a scar across her face that she attributed to a different alien monster every time she was asked, and loved to torment her students with pop quiz questions or tests of skill.

Particularly Alix.

Somehow, Alix ended up the target for one of these quizzes or tests every other day. Alix had worked hard over the years to scrub away the memories of impossible questions and William Tell-style knife-throwing lessons, but there was one pop quiz that had always stuck with her.

“Ms. Alix Daring.” Professor Matson picked her out from all the way in the back row of the lecture hall. “Can you tell the class what your most important asset will be once you are all actually out on the field, traversing unexplored planets?”

Alix thought a moment. “Raygun?”

“A raygun can malfunction, or be lost.” Professor Matson waved her hand dismissively. “And you can always find another weapon, in any case. Anything can be a weapon if you’re smart. Have another try, Ms. Daring.”

“Smart tablet?” Alix tried again, heart racing as the whole class watched her, expectant. “Rope? Filtrating water bottle?”

“None of those things, Ms. Daring. Not a thing at all, in fact,” Professor Matson said with a small smile. She gestured toward the entirety of the class. “The most important asset, when you are worlds away from home, will be the people around you. Your teammates. We humans these days are too quick to forget that we began as a communal species, and that even with the advent of smartphones and starships, our nature has not changed. We do best when we collaborate. In a survival situation, you will need to trust those with whom you are working.”

“But how will we know if we can trust them?” Alix asked.

“Well, that will be up to you. You will need to use your wits and instincts when you choose your allies to begin with. And after that, you’ll need to keep the faith in them that made you choose them in the first place.”

Professor Matson’s words echoed in Alix’s head now as she sat in this dark, alien prison cell. It felt as though it had been at least an hour since her pint-size captors had thrown her in, though, of course, she had no way to actually know. Nor did she have any way to know what had become of Figaro.

Alix hadn’t seen so much as a glimpse of the little robot since he snuck into an Aexon’s satchel. She had no idea why he hadn’t made his escape during any of the numerous opportunities for him to do so. She had no idea what was going through his head.

There was nothing to do or see within the walls of her cell, and trying to break down the door had been an exercise in futility. So she had spent her confinement thinking back to how their situation had unfolded. Specifically, she thought about how it was Figaro who had first suggested that the Aexons were more intelligent than she supposed. Figaro had also cautioned her against following the Aexon into unmapped territory. That made for two opportunities to trust her teammate, and in both, she had ignored him.

Now she was presented with a third, in the form of a pressing choice. Stay and hold out hope that Figaro would somehow come through, or try and make a break for it alone through the window.

Alix was fairly sure she had a good chance of squeezing through it. She’d looked out, and while her cell was high up, there was a ledge encircling the first tier. She could exit out the window, risk traversing the ledge all the way to the stairs, and try to make it out of Ratlantis on her own. Without a map, her chances of finding the way out of the caverns wouldn’t be great, but they wouldn’t be zero.

But she’d be leaving without Figaro. Abandoning her teammate.

Alix stood at the window, looking down at the ledge and the city below. She could do it. She could escape this very moment. Or she could put her faith in Figaro.

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It wasn’t even a choice, really.

Alix moved away from the window, sat cross-legged in front of the door to her cell, and waited.

***

After what felt like an eternity of sitting in front of the door, Alix suddenly heard soft clicking noises on the other side, then heard the louder click of the door lock. She froze. The door didn’t open, and no one spoke from the other side.

Alix rose slowly. She reached toward the door, uncertain. Would it be her ally or her captor waiting when the door opened?

A voice hissed through the door crack. “Hey, meatbag! Push the door open already!”

Alix grinned and pushed against the cell door. Thanks for the lesson, Professor.

Alix blinked against the blue light that flooded in as she stood at the entry. She held out her hand. The familiar tickle of Figaro jumping into her palm and scuttling up her arm flooded her with relief. She turned her head to look at Figaro.

“You are a sight for sore eyes, mon ami,” she said.

“No kidding. You look like hell. Luckily, your knight in shining armor is here with the goods!” Figaro said brightly. Clamped in two of his back limbs was a folded piece of parchment smaller than her palm. Alix took it from his grasp. The parchment had a light, grainy feel, likely composed of grass fibers or something similar. Alix unfolded it quickly. Inked onto the parchment was a layout of the cavern network, labeled in hieroglyphs similar to those Alix saw carved on the ziggurat steps. Seeing it all down on the map made Alix realize just how extensive the network truly was, far more than she’d have guessed. There was a true underworld beneath Kabir’s Crimson Forest, and it was populated by dozens and dozens of Aexon villages, towns, and cities. Alix’s thoughts raced as she took it all in. Were all these villages and metropolises united as a single civilization, or conquered under an empire? Were they separate city-states? Was each cave pocket its own country? At that moment, Alix would have given her right hand just to be able to read the hieroglyphs, just to have a chance of getting answers to these questions.

There was a drawing of a vast, shining city at the center of a large space within the cavern system, which Alix took to be Ratlantis. There were three tunnels leading out of Ratlantis, but only the southerly one seemed like it matched what Alix could remember of the tunnel they’d arrived from, given its length and the illustration of its outlet.

“You’re the MVP today, Figaro,” said Alix, folding up the map again. “Took your time, though. I was starting to get twitchy in there.”

“I know, Boss, but I had a good reason,” said Figaro. “See, when I slipped into Sqwikii’s satchel—”

“Who?”

“Oh, the Aexon! That’s his name, approximately. See, when I slipped into his satchel, we were still swamped with that crowd, all of ‘em chattering with the guards and leaders and whatnot. I figured, what better time to give a lingual analysis one last go?” said Figaro. “So I ran it and got a way better analysis thanks to all the extra data. Not enough to go write a novel or anything, but enough to catch some of what our new friends were saying. Well, I overheard their plan to chuck you in the cell until they could bring you to their leaders. I decided it’d be better to hide out and wait until they did that and left both you and the satchel alone, that way we could make our escape completely undetected. All I had to do after that was sneak off and pick your lock.”

“Figaro.” Alix grinned and gave him an affectionate pat. “You’re a clever little robot.”

“I’m well aware! Now let’s blow this joint.”

Alix looked around, satisfied that they were still alone in the massive hall, then broke into a jog toward the door at the other end. It might not be easy to stay ‘undetected’ once they were running down the temple stairs, but it would give them enough of a head start. She wasn’t expecting too much trouble from the civilian Aexons, after all. No random bystander on the street was going to pick a fight with an alien. Hopefully.

Alix made it to the door and shoved it open to find a dozen armed Aexon guards waiting on the stairs, including the ones with her raygun and tranq gun.

“Ah, donkeyballs,” sighed Figaro.

The one with the raygun aimed at her with a piercing trill.

“No thanks!” Alix shoved her weight against the door and swung it shut again before the guards could rush them. That would hopefully buy them a minute. In the meantime, Alix ran down the hall before turning into the entrance of another hall.

“Do you have a plan B, Figaro?” she asked him as she ran toward the stairwell across the room. From the direction of the main hall, Alix heard the frantic voices of the guards as they burst into the building. The blast of the raygun echoed behind.

“Of course not!” he huffed, clinging to her shoulder desperately. “I thought I had this in the bag, dammit!”

“It’s okay, we can still give them the slip!” Alix bounded up the stairwell. They’d have to split up to search all the different halls and rooms the main hall led to. With any luck, they wouldn’t think to check this one until she and Figaro were long gone.

“Only if we can get to another exit. Is there another exit?”

Alix got to the top of the stairs and rounded the corner. “Well, if we go out a window, we can try inching across the ledge—”

“Pass!” Figaro said.

“Okay, just let me think.” Alix looked around. She was in yet another hall, surrounded by yet another labyrinth of halls and rooms, the beady eyes of the figures in the hall mosaics watching her. There wasn’t enough time to search the entire tier. She summoned up a mental image of the ziggurat from the outside. She remembered the stairway leading to the first tier, of course, but there was another one leading down from the fifth tier, connected to a ramp that led down to the first tier. If she remembered correctly. She sure hoped she did.

“I think I remember another way out,” Alix told Figaro. She started walking again. “At the very top.”

“The very top? How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”

Alix glanced up as she passed from the hall to an enormous chamber. Above them were rows upon rows of stairs, connecting the various floors for each tier, leading up beyond sight.

Alix trotted over to the first stairway as the sounds of the guards echoed from down the hall. “Let’s find out.”