The screen countdown continued to flicker. I expected it would end soon, but with each tick it continued to go. It was nerve-wrecking.

Cleetus and Dr. Snively seemed less concerned.

"We don't know what happens when this countdown ends," offered Dr. Snively, "perhaps whatever it's supposed to do is broken."

"Besides, the dragons are far away by now," added Cleetus.

"Are we going look around the rest of this space?" asked Laurence, trying to look forward beyond the area we found ourselves in. He began to wander in that direction.

But I did not care what Laurence was doing- my eyes remained on the screen, particularly on the dragons. They seemed to be behaving as if this countdown- whatever it meant- had not yet had any impact. One dragon kind of wiggled its snout as if it had an itch. They were remarkably well-programmed creatures, even if the book that Detective LaLouf was translating suggested they had become power-hungry killers that completely destroyed their masters.

The countdown on the screen began to flicker even more intensely.

"Is there somewhere we can hide?" I asked panicked, looking around. We had broken down the door to get into this place so it wasn't like we had that level of defense anymore. But other than the tables screens and pile of corpses, the room seemed pretty barren.

Then, suddenly, the screen began to blink brightly. I froze.

"What's it doing?" I asked in fear.

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"Looks like the countdown is done," said Cleetus.

For a few moments, nothing seemed to happen. I wondered if I had assumed too much and should have remained as calm as my companions.

But then, from all around, unearthly horns started blaring a strange and unusual song. To me- and presumably my fellow humans- it just sounded like random toots, but to the Martians, perhaps it was considered a fine pop song.

The suddenness of the sound made us all jump. In Dr. Snively's case, his backside released his own trumpet noise. We all proceeded to clasp our hands over our ears.

"Stop it!" exclaimed LaLouf, crawling over to us.

"How? This is incidentally what the countdown was for, but no one else gave a fuck," I answered, still scanning for a hiding place. As my eyes fell back on the screen my concerns were confirmed- the dragons were now all alert and active, like us looking around at the sound of music.

They then appeared to let out roars- though we couldn't hear anything on the visual, the sound in the right tunnel did echo all the way to our spot in the left tunnel. The dragons sounded PISSED.

"Oh shit," exclaimed Cleetus, showing his first sign of fear, "how close are they? Do they know we're here?"

The dragons, as the monitor showed, were now riled up. They started to flap their wings and ascend, some even disappearing from view.

"They're on the move!" announced Dr. Snively, though he sounded more excited than fearful, "what amazing creatures!"

"Do they know we're here?!" Cleetus repeated, "we gotta get out of here!"

"And go where?!" I countered. I hadn't wanted to even come down here, and now everything I feared had come true. Once again my thoughts turned to my seemingly soon aporoaching fiery end. On the monitor, the dragons were all disappearing, flying high as their metallic roars continued to echo nearby.

"Laurence!" exclaimed LaLouf suddenly, "Look at Laurence! He's found something!"

We turned to see Laurence indeed standing in front of another door; this one appeared to be unlocked as it was still on its hidges as he stood halfway through, beckoning us to come.

He couldn't have had much time to explore over there, I thought, but frankly I didn't care. With no idea if the dragons were coming to find us, a door that could shut them out seemed like a perfectly fine place to be.