Teddy knew better than to expect an Administrator to appear from the sky in a ship. He made sure his guards knew someone was coming--they would be forgiven if they reacted badly but it was a bad idea--and just sort of paced nervously. The two scrappers he usually had help him salvage stuff from the things were now sitting by the side waiting to see what came next.

He didn't really like this. He didn't like fetching stuff out of corpses. He didn't like opening up corpse-boxes and finding stuff in them. He didn't like selling stuff out of corpses. Corpses, corpses, corpses, everything he did revolved around corpses, and nobody knew, and he hated it.

He paced, trying not to think of the half-naked woman he had butchered with a knife, trying not to think about the idea that she was alive and might have memories of being trapped there for ages, seeing someone finally arrive who might have saved her, and being butchered.

He shuddered, pacing back and forth, trying to think of anything other than corpses. He was still doing the same when a portal opened next to him with a sound like an electric zipper opening, and a small woman in a reasonably nice black pantsuit stepped out.

Like all Administrators, she was immaculate. Her hair, her clothes, her posture... the only thing that differentiated her from any of the other administrators (except Ciddia, but she was clearly something else) was the asian cast to her features and her small studded earrings. Also, he realized after a moment, her sunglasses were probably a little less dark than the others. He usually couldn't see their eyes, and he could just barely see hers.

"After you, Mr. Helmann," she said simply, as the portal zipped shut behind her.

Teddy nodded nervously and made his way into the shop. The Box remained open, and he jumped headfirst into the opening without hesitation, snagging the ladder and pulling himself up easily. Now he was glad for his decision to hang walkways instead of chopping up the floor; it soothed him to know that he had done no violence to this place, at least.

His thoughts slid towards very bad places again, and he brought them back as fast as he could.

The ladder led to the walkway, then to the short ladder, and then he was on the platform. He turned, expecting the woman to be right behind him, but she seemed to be taking the whole thing more casually, looking around as though she'd never seen the inside of a Box before.

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Maybe she hadn't. Teddy had a weird sense of revelation when he realized that in spite of it all, Administrators might just be humans after all, and not some kind of mythical things beyond all reason or logic. They were not... normal. Not a part of his world. They stood above and could spend as much time as they wanted to on appearances and not get bogged down in survival and killing and static monsters and whatever else.

He was still stewing over this when she finally got up to where he was. He took a moment to notice her, then immediately turned to the next level and climbed up to the computing floor. "I didn't get any further than this," he said suddenly into the stillness as he was halfway up the ladder. "The first thing I always do... is to put the command into the computer to get rid of the body. I... want to give them rest. So when it wasn't normal I stopped and didn't go any further. I haven't... haven't looked at anything else."

"I will keep that in mind," replied the Administrator, evenly.

The terminal was just where he left it. The only thing that had changed on the display was the clock, which showed an accurate time and date according to a calendar and clock system that really didn't matter to anyone anymore. Still, it was always kind of calming to know that the systems worked--that they made sense, that they were grounded. He could forget that they came from--no, nope, no. Stop.

So Teddy fidgeted and started pacing as the woman stepped in front of the console and appeared a tool out of nowhere, which she inserted into a slot on the side of the machine. Teddy wanted desperately to look over her shoulder, stare at the things going by, but they couldn't help him. Without having those tools, seeing how they worked did nothing for him. These were people who probably could make use of the equipment as it was today, could make new Archons if they wanted, but they didn't. Seeing her with those tools didn't change anything.

"According to this computer, Miss Elaine is indeed still alive." The Administrator's words reached him through the haze of his self-recrimination. "Apparently she has been... effectively asleep all this time." She looked at him. "If you can bring me to her body, we should be able to re-insert the Pandora Engine and awaken her."

"Yeah... yeah, sure." Teddy glanced at the computer screen. It was mostly taken up with a text file, although the sidebar continued to show a number of indicators that were probably the health of the body, or something. They were always the same for each Archon... until he destroyed the body, and then they went dark. "It, uh, will take a couple hours to get there. I hope you don't mind a ride."

"That will be fine." The Administrator offered a polite smile. "I will also take care of any dangerous entities we meet."

"Oh... yeah, good. There were a bunch along the way." He gestured to the ladder. "After you... unless you have something else.

She kept the same even smile and started down the ladder.