The elevators didn’t work. The buttons remained inactive and the doors wouldn’t open. Nothing was lit, not even the ‘out of service’ sign. Burst pipes oozed active sludge that ran down the walls. The little piles being fed under the pipes quivered as tendrils reached into the aisle. Helen opened her palm and extended her hand as she passed. She scanned them with a blue light while keeping her focus forward. Io kept to the left and performed the same scanning. The gurgling little blobs stiffened. Tendrils fell into become stains. Lauren stayed in between the two.

“So where exactly are we going?” she asked.

“I need to get Gregoire. I’m not leaving without him.”

“Leaving, leaving to where?”

“Leaving this base. Do I have to explain everything to you?”

“Well, forgive me for not instinctively knowing your plans all seeing one.”

Io remained silent, but nodded before giving her sister a little smile. Helen huffed, adjusted her dress, and used her power to make a stain on the fabric absorb back into her palm.

“Of course you don’t know anything, you’re a witless human. Who even are you and what were you doing under the pipes?”

“You can call me Lauren. I’m the mechanic for extraction team 21. Maybe you’ve heard of us. We’re pretty highly ranked. Well, we used to be. We’ve been going through a dry patch because they kept ordering us into the middle of nowhere.”

“I don’t concern myself with resource extraction. You can call me Helen. My sister is Io.”

“Nice to meet you. But well, you should concern yourself with it. We’re not just hunting for metal and artifacts. How do you think we get the soil used to grow the greenhouse vegetables? It had to be dug out of the earth in bags. At least that was before the asphalt sucked all the life out of it. If it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t be eating.”

“I don’t have to eat if I don’t want to.”

Lauren turned to Helen, “Then how do you get energy and nutrients to move and repair yourself?”

“I can survive by aggregating nutrients from the environment and absorbing any kind of compatible radiation. And it’s not like I can’t eat. I can do everything you can do, but more efficiently.”

“You don’t have any weaknesses then?”

“None that I’m going to tell you about! Now hurry along before we leave you behind.”

They walked at an easy pace as they deactivated silhouette blobs along the walls. Lauren didn’t have any trouble keeping up, even though she slowed to think on the situation. She’d never seen either of these two women on the base until today, but she didn’t want to pester with more question. Helen seemed to irritate easily. Io kept her thoughts a mystery.

“So how do you plan to leave the base?”

“You’re with an extraction team. You’re a mechanic. Figure it out. Now let’s go.”

They climbed stairs. Signs for the arena hung on the wall. This was a peripheral tower near their team’s hangar. Footsteps echoed on the staircase as they climbed to the fourteenth floor. Suite twenty was unlit except for emergency lighting. Plush leather sofas shone dimly under the reddish glow. There was an unstaffed bar with a cabinet containing an assortment of bottles. The Berber carpet had gritty boot stains. Shards of glass glistened from the veranda and spread over the floor. A brown-haired man in a white lab coat stood at the edge of the precipice while staring at the hardened blobs of aggregate on the pedestal below. He sniffed and scratched at his poorly kept hair as he turned around and stretched out his arms. Lauren had never seen the doctor before. Her eyes were captured by the pocket of flesh under the missing left lens of his glasses. She’d rarely seen him, but certainly did know of him. He was a top researcher.

“You’re Doctor Gregoire?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Correct, the third,” he said, rubbing his hair.

He stretched out his arms as he stepped over the broken shards on the carpet. A forced smile destroyed his grim expression. The lab coat stained with yellow and tan streaks and spots hung limply down his shoulders and around his hips. His legs trembled slightly.

“Io, Helen, to what do I owe the pleasure? I don’t have long. She’s finally coming for the other eye. I think I’ll have another cup of instant coffee. That’ll do the trick just nicely.”

“You’re shaking,” Lauren said, “Are you okay?”

Alfred walked to the bar counter and grabbed a steel canteen to pour himself a mug of watery room temperature coffee with no milk or sugar. With trembling hands, he spilled half of his sip down his chin to add to the stains on his lab coat. Coffee grounds clung to the sides of his mouth.

“Your concern is noted, and undeserved. You see, my sins have arrived to collect payment for the piper. I should have known, whenever Lavinia shows up, she follows.”

“Who follows?” Lauren asked, but was ignored as the doctor gulped coffee.

Lauren stepped backwards to the wall and made herself scarce. Helen walked behind the counter to grab two bottles of whiskey. One remained in her hand and the other plopped on the counter. Io uncorked hers and drank the bottle down in a series of gulps without losing a single drop. Helen did the same. The empty bottles clattered in the sink. Alfred helped himself to another cup of coffee, all while Lauren observed from the wall.

“Why aren’t you operating the console?” Helen asked with a sharp edge to her voice.

“The power demands can’t be met. Besides, we’ve lost the base. Nyx infiltrated the main power distribution centers and redefined the EMP wavelengths. I can’t fix it from here and only death awaits down there. Any EMP devices drawing power from that station will be completely ineffective against silhouettes.”

Io frowned and reached out to Helen, who handed her a half full bottle of Jägermeister. Io looked to Lauren and found a glass bottle of distilled water from Helen in her other hand. She ran to the human and handed over the water with a polite smile, “Here you are. Please refresh yourself.”

Lauren grabbed the container with both hands and chugged the water. Then she excused herself to use the restroom.

“I’ve always found the need for water is so quaint,” Helen said.

“And the inefficient assimilation of foreign bodies is suboptimal.”

“Quiet Io, nobody asked you.”

Io frowned for a moment but quickly assumed her usual neutral expression. Alfred leaned over the counter as Helen helped herself to a bottle of vodka and Io finished off the Jägermeister. Two more empty bottles clattered in the sink. Helen let out a satisfied sigh.

“Quick energy boost. Too bad it wears off so quickly. I think I’ll keep half of it in reserve.”

Io patted Alfred on the back and looked over his shoulder, “It’s o-”

Helen put her fists on her hips, “Stop acting like you’re already dead. We’re getting out of here and starting over somewhere else. Gather your things. Never mind, there’s no time for that. Let’s get out of this place. Do you need to use the bathroom first?”

“I’m too old for this,” Alfred buried his hands in his face.

The door creaked open and Lauren peered out, “I’m done. Does the old man need to use it before we go?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. And my name is Alfred!”

He moved a bit slowly. His nasal breathing wheezed as he shuffled past Lauren with his hands behind his back. The door closed behind him with a slow click. Turret fire echoed in the distance from the floors below the arena. The broken window tempted Lauren and she went to peer over the edge. For a moment the piles of crumbled tarmac that used to be Tray could be seen clearly. A small chunk of rock fell off a larger chunk and scattered into smaller pieces. Lauren blinked. The lighting turned off with the opening of her eyes. The reddish glare of sparse emergency lights turned the depth of the arena into an abyss.

“Hurry up in there Alfred!” Helen yelled, “When did you start taking so long in the bathroom!”

“You obviously don’t know how aging works!” he shouted back from behind the door.

Lauren looked back at Helen and Io, “Just how old are you?”

“How old are you?” they said simultaneously.

“I’m thirty-eight. But don’t answer a question with a question. How old are you?”

“We’re thirty-two years younger than Alfred, who is one-hundred and thirteen years old.”

“So, you’re both eighty-one years old?”

“Precisely eighty-one years and one-hundred and forty-seven days,” Io said.

“You ladies need to share your beauty regimen with me.”

They responded in perfect unison as if after receiving a prompt, “You would need to have been created in chamber to maintain your appearance so consistently. The best service available for evolutionary mitosis-based entities is the bio-MER infused into Alfred. We’re sorry, bio-MER compatible with the human body are in the proto-type stage of development and currently unavailable for insertion.”

The door to the restroom clicked open and Alfred shuffled out with toilet paper stuck to his shoe. He glanced at Helen and Io, then at Lauren.

“Don’t mind them. They still have a few automated responses leftover in their programming code. But I assure you, they are not robots and their brains function much in the way a human brain does. They have minds of their own and are fully functioning, aware, and reasoning individuals.”

Helen puffed out her cheeks, “I truly despise you for some of them. But I think we should be going. Miss Lauren, if you would be so kind as to take us to your hangar.”

“Helen is quite the coy charmer,” Alfred said on the way out.

Io giggled.