Luckily while all this was going on no unexpected threats lunged from the shadows to attack us, so maybe this place really was empty, there had been a lot of bodies in those pods after all, and it was kind of unlikely for much to remain of any residents who had not been vacuum packed for freshness, although honestly being half jerkified was hardly a better fate. Well, we still had one survivor. A kid no less, we needed to get out of here for their sake if nothing else, and believe me there were plenty of other reasons, though I figured the universe would not weigh my need to re-watch Buffy the vampire slayer, and firefly (well what little there was of it) very high on a list of reasons to survive, then again every little helps.

I decided it was probably best that we stay in this lobby area for now though, just to be safe, labs gave us all the creeps and unknown creepy bunker labs? That’s just a triple whammy of nope, nope, and HELL NAW. Let’s just stay here in the big wide-open bit where we can see all the doors until we know exactly what we’re dealing with, and our heavy hitter is no longer about six seconds from becoming a poster child for cybernetics induced rampages eh?

Right now though I had bigger priorities anyway, it took a lot for Jenel to forget about being a big buff action gal like that, and when she did it meant she was really hurting. We set up a barrier system for a while and started the process of making the place as comfortable as we could, ideally we would have dealt with the triggers too, but since the biggest switch that had been flipped was the environment itself the best we could do was to crack open a few perfume capsules and hope that smell would be enough to hold it off.

Meanwhile, I fished out a few emergency rations (dehydrasnax ham and pineapple flavour, oh yum, you can imagine my joy. It always baffled me how something that had been processed and flavoured to hell and back could taste of practically nothing, and be marginally more nutritious than the packaging it came in, maybe, but food was food, and we wanted to hold off on the cooked food till the ponics bay started working better.)

From the look on Nara’s face, she wasn’t a big fan either, as for Jenel, well she wasn’t exactly the picky type at the best of times, though she did draw the line at my cooking, which was fair enough. So she just chewed blankly, I had the feeling it would probably take a little time to process all this for her, and in the meantime, the inhibitors had her a little numb. We both hated that feeling, but until it shut off offering more hugs wouldn’t really help. Have you ever been hugged and felt nothing? Yeah, not fun.

So we did the only thing we really could, we lay down, one of us on each side of her, and just stayed there. We had to at least let her know we weren’t going anywhere and had her back.

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Jenel looked at the girls beside her, as the haze faded further. She felt lousy about losing control like that, if somebody had gotten hurt back then she never would have forgiven herself. She really wanted to reach out and touch them, but looking at the bruises from the struggle to restrain her she felt the guilt gnawing away at her, was she in control of the situation? Of course not, but no matter how many times she told herself that logically there was a treacherous little voice in the back of her head insisting it was her fault. Those bruises were her doing, and she felt like hell about it.

She hesitated for a moment before reaching out to touch them again. She couldn’t really feel it yet, but still, it was reassuring to have them there. She’d carefully placed her weapons at the far end of the base camp for now, after all, better safe than sorry.

She noticed Bleyk was still keeping their distance warily, weighed up the pros and cons, and decided for better or worse they hadn’t shot her, so maybe it was time she gave them a fair shot.

“Hey Bleyk, mind if we have a little chat?”

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Bleyk was nervous, they didn’t exactly have much experience with purely organic evolved species, let alone species who had chosen such a brute force and obtuse method of enhancement. Also, Jenel made them nervous given that within her herd she was a chosen protector. Upsetting such a dynamic usually went poorly if historic records were to be believed. Even worse those enhancements were crude and unstable even as far as such enhancements went. Sensory inhibitors, emotional stimulation suite. It was like somebody had slapped together a number of enhancers with no rhyme or reason. Surely no sane creature would voluntarily fit such wildly malfunctioning enhancements into a living creature, that was reckless in the extreme.

Bleyk hesitated in their approach, unsurprisingly given the situation they were rather nervous here. They were a newcomer in this group dynamic, and past observation of primate species indicated that they often saw a deviance from the usual form as a threat. (Though it seemed to Bleyk that maybe their species had moved beyond the possibility of eating anything they viewed as a potential danger, which was a somewhat relieving thought so long as they were correct.)

Yet even in their worst state, Jenel had refrained from doing any actual harm. Albeit only due to careful reassurance from her pack-mates, if she had meant Bleyk harm, restraining weapon or not Bleyk realised that there would have been nothing between themselves and a very painful dismemberment (and maybe devouring). That alone was an absolutely terrifying thought, and one they sincerely wished they had never thought in the first place. To make matters worse right now they were trapped down here together, eventually, if they wanted to survive this they had to take a chance. So, they rounded their shoulders and stepped forward.