“Here, take this personal device. I’m going to see if I can get any info from it,” she said, shoving it at him.

He backed away, wondering what tricks she had learned while living with them, to get them to talk. As far as he knew, getting anything from one was like pulling teeth, and since they didn’t have teeth…

It stared at her, obviously not sure what she was about to do.

She tucked her hands into her armpits, and took a wide stance with her knees bent and her feet pointing out. Dustin gaped at her. Was this some kind of joke? Doing the chicken dance was supposed to get them to talk? He knew that they were bird people, but still!

As she high stepped towards it, she would pause with one foot in the air, and turn her head to look at the hunter out of one eye. Dustin looked from her to it, and was amazed to see a look of fear come over its face. No way in hell this was working?!

As she finally got close enough to kiss it, if she wanted, she said, “I haven’t killed anything today.”

It pissed itself. Dustin had to turn away. He was going to bust something trying not to laugh. All the suspense of the past couple of moments, to have the chicken dance terrify the big bad hunter was too much.

“Where did you learn that?” it asked in a terrified whisper.

“From Master Ghaou.” She straightened up, letting her hands fall to her sides, and grinned. “Tell me about the space port, or I will start my quota today with you.”

“The AI sentry analyzes our personal devices to see if we have evolved in the past 24 hours. Since we have a time limit of 20 hours to check back in, that ensures no prisoners escape. There is a grey zone, where initial entry will initiate the sentry guns, to give the hunters time to deal with any potential tagalongs.”

“And if you don’t check in before the 20-hour limit?”

“It is assumed we are dead.”

Dustin busied himself, turning the meat near the fire. It was starting to smell good, and he didn’t want it to burn. He had to do something to keep from butting questions in.

“How do you arrange transport on and off the planet?” she asked, her voice a strange monotone, as if she were talking to a classroom of boring teenagers.

“None of you have ever escaped. Our security is overseen by some of our best hunters. You would never get through the check point. Our personal devices log our entry into the planet, and we have to log our exit. You have no entry log.”

“So, there are shuttles that take you back and forth to a space docking station?”

“Yes. Only the Josagn are allowed on the station. If there is any sign of contaminated genetic material within you, you would be thrown out an airlock.”

A couple of bone foxes had shown up, and started a fight between some of the three-tailed foxes over the tongue. Apparently, his venom was short lived after killing his prey. Grimacing at the memory, he decided they were welcome to it.

“How far does the sentry stretch from the shuttle bay?” she continued, still in that annoying tone of voice. He was starting to get fed up with it, but managed to ignore it by focusing on the action between the small predators.

“Only half a mile. Though it is set to kill anything that is not a Josagn within that area. Your PED’s should not be capable of evolving with our genetic material. All of this talk is a waste of your time.”

“Why can’t our PED’s use your genetic material?” Her voice changed. She was obviously surprised by this concept.

“Where do you think your human government got the technology from?” it asked in a condescending tone.

Baring her teeth in anger, she slashed at its face, leaving a gash over one eye, that caused one eye ball to start leaking fluid. Its feathers began to quiver, but no noise came from it. Snarling, she bit its shoulder, and jumped back as it started spasming.

With a sigh, Dustin said, “Oh, now you’ve done it. Our source of info is gone.”

Looking back at him in confusion, she caught sight of the dragon, with the foxes and lizards swarming over it, feasting to their hearts content, and realization dawned on her face.

“Our bite is that toxic?” She looked down at her hands, then at the dead Josagn.

“Yep.”

“You really have been busy. I don’t think I want to know what you had to do to get that ability.”

“It wasn’t fun, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Pulling the body free from the vines, they threw it into the bushes for the creatures around to enjoy. Dustin pulled the hunters bike out of the bushes to sit next to the one in the clearing.

“My PED is too low functioning to do a complete evolution into a different species. It needs two devices from the hunters, of which I now have, to get it to that point. But yours will need four devices to get it that far.”

“How long have they been using bow and arrows?” she asked, picking up the bow it had dropped on the ground.

“Since the first day I’ve been here, so today would be day three.”

“And I take it, none of the hunters have made it back to the shuttle bay?”

“No, why?”

“They’ll assume you are harder prey, and start using more advanced weapons starting in the morning.”

“Then we don’t have much time. I can upgrade your PED for you, like I did mine, but you have to give me a good reason not to just leave your butt here.”

“I know the Josagn. I can get us through that security and onto a ship away from here.”

“We’ll need two more devices each, to get them upgraded enough to evolve us completely. What did that thing mean about us not being able to use their genetic material?”

“It’s something they’ve coded into them. If they are the ones selling the evolution devices to the government, there’s no telling what codes they’ve programmed into them.”

“I take it the Josagn are purist?”

“Religiously. I knew they had access to the devices, and loved to use them against other species in order to hunt things that are deadlier, but it never occurred to me that they would code it into them never to manipulate their own genetic makeup.”

“Well, we’ll worry about that later. For now, we’ll focus on the first couple of steps and worry about the later ones when we get there.”

“Alright.”