I drop the bag I was rummaging through and grab Remus's arm as he starts to leave. "We can't skuttle the ship."

He smiles, clearly brushing off what I just said thinking it's a joke. "Of course we can. It's easy, we just sabotoge a few systems and blow a hole in the hull."

I grab his other arm, and look him straight in the eye. His smile falters, "If we want any chance of a peaceful solution to all of this, we can not sink the ship and kill a full crew complement of humans."

"Do you have any idea what they did to us? How many died here? They deserve to die!" He is spitting his words now, eyes and smile feral. He is our main assassin. Sinking this boat and killing everyone aboard would be trivial for him at the best of times. It is not the best of times.

I tighten my grip. I am not a fighter, I am a strategist. If he decides to escape me and sink the ship there is no way I could physically stop him. I maintain eye contact with Remus while I say "Belenus, can you use your fire to erase every trace of us in each cell and corridor? Ever skin cell, hair, scale, and drop of blood needs to be eliminated in every spot we may have been."

"It will take a moment, I'll have to go cell to cell, but it should be no problem." He flames out.

Remus is fuming in my grasp. "You know they deserve to die. Let's just kill them instead of this. It is the more honest way."

Humans know me as the god of lies, and that is predominatly because I engage in manipulation of this kind, but the mythology surrounding my 'silver toung' has permiated the minds of the elders—even if it is not fact. They like to throw it back in my face when they are angry, insinuating everything I do is false.

"They do deserve to die," he scoffs and looks away, "no. They do. I agree with you. But millions of years ago, when Ra and the others left, they deserved to die then too." He reels back, shocked. "They have always been impulsive and greedy. Willfully bending the earth to their will instead of working with her. They have no respect for other intellegences, and gleefully torture the animals they keep as pets and farm for food.

But," I force him to look me in the eye, "but you saw hope for them all those millions of years ago. You saw kindness, care, and love. You saw all they could be and you stayed behind to help guide them like a parent might. You made that choice for yourself, and for me because I was too young to choose. And now, these children have made a mistake. A big one. But if you respond to violence—especially when they don't fully understand why what they've done is wrong—with violence, then you are guarenteeing a war that will quickly end them. If there is even a small part of you that thinks humanity still deserves the chance you staked your life on millions of years ago, then we can not sink this ship or kill any of its crew."

Stolen novel; please report.

He deflates and sighs, "what do you propose instead?"

"The humans need plausable deniability that they knew about us before first contact happens. We need to take all physical records with us, including any samples or bodies they may have. If I know my girl," I nod to a camera, "she is already copying their database and erasing anything remotly related to us. She will probably then use the codes to hack other government databases and erase anything relating to us the whole way through." The camera nods in agreement. I let go of one of his arms, and use the other to steer us toward the lab.

"Why not just have Belenus destroy everything in all the labs?"

"Because we need to go through the research notes to see if they have other ships like this one."

"How will we tell that from the notes."

"I'll have to go through them, but they may refrence other trials, or have refrences to other ships. I won't know until I look."

We reach the first lab, and I start packing up everything I see and shoving it in the bag while Remus stands watch with the sword. I don't really look at anything, I just take it knowing I will sort through it later when we are safe. It takes bout a minute to clear the room.

"Heista, love, will you clear a path for us to the next lab?" I ask the camera. She responds by unlocking the hatch that allows us to exit the room. We move silently from hatch to hatch, as Heista unlocks each one when it is clear to move, until we enter the second lab. I clear it out and then we keep moving.

Belenus catches up with us in the third lab, and I ask him to sanatize the other two labs while we clean out the fourth lab. By the time I'm finished cleaning out the fourth lab, the bag is overflowing. I've stuffed the rest of the stuff in a body bag they kept in the labs. Its size makes it a bit akward to carry, but I have no intention of leaving anything behind.

I'm surprised when the hatch unlocks after the fourth lab. "Heista, dearst, is there somewhere else we need to clean?" I ask the camera. It nods.

We follow the trail she gives us, just like before. We encounter a couple of sholdiers this time that Remus efficently knocks out before they percieve us. It isn't long before we find ourselves in a morgue. There are sixteen of us dead in the freezers, and I have to talk Remus down from just killing everyone on the boat again.

Belenus catches up with us, just as we have finished stacking and tying the body bags together for transport. He looks at the stack and grimices. "Destroy everything in this room too?"

"Yes, but transport us out first," I respond, trying to lighten the mood any way I can.

"Hold on." He grabs us and envlopes us in flame, transporting us and destroying all evidence in the room simultaneously. As we finally depart this horrid place, I hear the alarm sirens blare.

They are too late. We are gone.