Every conversation in the cave stopped.

Guns were lowered.

Silence filled every square inch of air and fell heavily on everyone’s shoulders.

Slowly, Amanda opened one eye, and peered cautiously at the floor beneath the table. The mysterious piece of equipment had cracked open and several flat pieces of material had fallen out of it. The cat was still lying on the table, tail wiggling slightly. The eyes of every single person in the cave were drawn to it.

“Okay,” Amanda told herself, getting up from the floor, “that… is a result.”

“Did you do this, human?” Sue demanded, rushing for the table to collect the pieces of the mystery device. “Do you understand what you just did?”

“I’m pretty sure it was the cat,” Dirk pointed out but was ignored.

“I understand,” Amanda nodded, making one cautious step forwards and immediately regretting it as dizziness almost made her lose her balance. “I can see it,” she tapped her temple lightly, “that, has landed just in the right way to force and emergency reset. Which means that every single person you have neutralized since you had landed is now waking up.”

She saw it in her mind, people waking up in their hospital beds, gasping for breath and trying to pull out tubes from their throats. Somewhere in Seattle, both Orson and Kevin McDougall came to life at the same time, in the same room, just a few meters away from each other.

“You haven’t a clue what this will do,” Sue hissed through the translator.

“And you have no idea what else I can do,” Amanda replied. “Seriously,” she pulled her magic wand again, “you all have to shut up immediately, take a breather, and then start discussing everything amicably or I swear to god I’ll turn you all into beetroots.”

“You can’t do that,” Sandi dismissed with a laugh.

“How sure are you about that?” Amanda asked. “Huh? Sure enough to risk your life? Your career, maybe? Don’t think you can be a great manager as a fucking beetroot!”

Evidently, that was a credible threat, as everyone followed Amanda’s advice of shutting up.

“Right,” Amanda said, swaying, and leaned heavily against the wall, “now can someone deal with this mess? Dirk, maybe? Cause I need a lay down and a lot of candy.” And she slipped down the wall to the floor as both Vogel and Martin rushed in to help her out.

“Happy to help,” Dirk beamed, immediately taking the center stage. “You,” he pointed at Ken, “first of all, rude? You come all the way here demanding things, and then you don’t even listen to us? Second, and this you would know if you had let us explain, you’ve been pointing the gun at the wrong person. She is Prometheus,” Dirk explained, pointing at Lilly, “not Roger.”

“Impossible,” Ken scoffed, “we only have two distinct descriptions of Prometheus and he is a man, likely in his late seventies or early eighties.”

“Things change, pal,” Lilly said. “Leave Roger alone, he has nothing to do with this. I was the one to fix your stupid toys and I know enough government top secrets to prove this.”

“Third,” Dirk continued, “in case you haven’t noticed or figured this out yet, Lilly and her unfortunate employers over here are not human, and I doubt they will be as cooperative as the other people you’re keeping prisoner at Black Wing.”

“Yeah I’m not going anywhere,” Lilly confirmed casually, “you can die wishing.”

“I was not expecting a voluntary transportation,” Ken seemed unaffected by this, “that is why I brought a gun and asked for reinforcement.”

“You are not getting her,” Sue interfered, “because she is going with us. She is our citizen and also a criminal, and will be tried and judged by our laws.”

“And what if that doesn’t align with my plans?”

“I have never seen so much arrogance,” Sue chuckled. “Well, does a full commercial guard force of a species far more technologically advanced than yours unleashing its power on this planet align with your plans better?”

“You would be annihilated,” Sandi added. “We would lose a trading point, which is unfortunate, but has been done before.”

“Basically, you’re screwed,” Dirk summed up. “Also, your phone has been buzzing non-stop for the last ten minutes.”

“My… phone?” Ken asked, now struggling to process everything that was going on. He pulled the phone slowly out of his pocket and, still keeping a firm grip on the gun, pushed a few buttons and put the phone to his ear. “Supervisor Adams. Yes. Yes I can talk.” A pause. “You had a what?!”

There were no more remarks, suggestions, or threats on Ken’s side. He just stuffed the phone in his jacket and went straight for the elevator. Five minutes later he was already in his car, driving back to the Black Wing facility.

“He will not like what he will find there,” Amanda said, biting into a Twix. “Ominous transmission from witch over. Back to our conversation.”

“Thank you for the ominous transmission,” Dirk nodded, “now let’s roll back to where we were before this whole unfortunate interruption.”

“You mean trying to persuade us to commit corporate crimes with Elid?” Sue asked. “Cause after everything that just happened, I am suddenly less inclined to agree.”

“You sure about that?” Lilly said, giving her one of her famous nasty fake smiles. “Oh look, what do we have over here,” she added, walking up to the remains of the mysterious device on the floor and kicking it lightly with her foot, “oh right, some pathetic remains of a universal command modulator. Impressive how it just completely fell apart after a fall from this teensy tiny table huh? They just don’t make them to last anymore,” she tutted, “planned obsolescence and all.”

“Where are you going with this?” Sandi interrupted, one piece of the modulator stuck awkwardly in between her fingers.

“Well, you know what this means,” Lilly shrugged, kicking the pieces again, now with a little bit more force, “all the humans have woken up with their memories, every piece of tech you’ve wiped is working again… you’ll have a lot of issues to deal with, my friends, and at least one modulator to fix. And guess who is very good at covering up alien tracks and fixing devices?”

“Yes!” Dirk exclaimed, delighted, and clapped his hands a few times for good measure, “Brilliant! Exactly what I was going for. Don’t you see?” he spoke towards the bosses. “You need her. This is the best possible arrangement for both of you. Take her place. Tell everyone back home that she’s dead. Clean up each other’s messes and part ways as grateful colleagues.”

“You’re not giving us much choice,” Sandi pointed out, “twisting our arm, more like! I assume Elid here would not keep her mouth shut about every single instance of incompetence on our part she can think of…”

“I will be very loud about it, yes,” Lilly confirmed, grinning. “I’ve kept notes on my phone too.”

“Horrendous violation of seventeen different aspects of our corporate code,” Sue pointed out.

“Just because its lawful doesn’t mean its right,” Lilly responded. “So take my advice and use this opportunity while you still have it. The corporate world will chew you up and spit you out if you make one wrong move. If you wish to still participate it, you better take any help you can get.”

Sandi and Sue looked at each other, then, in unison, removed their translator devices and marched to a remote place of the cave for another round of negotiations. Every cave-dweller watched them carefully until they turned around, also in unison, returned to the tiny table with the cat still sitting on it, and gave Lilly a single defeated nod.

“Splendid,” she beamed, “finally some sense and reason. Please, follow me into the ship. You also,” she added, pointing broadly at the Slavic Mafia. “You can come too Roger, if you want. I’ll make some slurm, we’ll all sit down and discuss this calmly like adults. And you,” she pointed at Erwin, who mewed back at her cheerfully, “don’t break any more things! I don’t have time to fix them.”

*

Ken spent his last few hours as the Black Wing Supervisor on the move. In a normal Black Wing situation, an array of vehicles would have been at his disposal on a snap of his fingers… but this was far from a normal situation. He wasn’t actually sure what it is that had happened back in the base. He just knew that it was serious, and that he needed to be there ASAP. So her threw all of his resources, knowledge and ingenuity into hitchhiking his way to a high security CIA base via car, bus, cornfield plane, subway, horseback, and a disgustingly overpriced taxi drive.

He had to cover the last five miles or so by foot, as the taxi driver could not go any closer to the base without the possible side-effect of being shot at from heavy-duty experimental weapons. Ken made sure that his identification tag was active and detectable, zipped his jacket to the very top and set out on a journey across barren marshes and grassy wastelands. As if to spite him, a drizzling cold rain erupted from the sky and blocked the already weak sunlight.

That was one of the reasons he saw the fire from quite far away, and almost broke into a run.

By the time he had gotten to the base, soldiers were already busy trying to contain the fire. He saw plenty of familiar faces around, but no one dared to approach him to explain the situation. Ken wasn’t sure whether he would be able to understand an explanation.

He caught himself breathing heavily, heart accelerating, palms becoming slippery as his fingers tried to grab his gun for comfort. The base was gone; it was beyond any possible repairs. And he had no idea what had happened to the prisoners.

He was standing motionless quite a distance from the still brightly blazing fire, his brain scrambling to process how something like this could have ever happened, when one of the soldiers decided to approach him after all.

“Mr Adams, sir?” he began, and Ken flinched, spooking both himself and the soldier. “Just wanted to let you know that there are no casualties. From either personnel or subjects.”

“No bodies?” Ken asked.

“No bodies,” the soldier confirmed. “We believe this was all engineered for the escape. I’m afraid we’ve lost a lot of valuable equipment, as well as all the information that was stored on the facility server.”

Ken nodded, letting the words sink in slowly. The servers… he kept the most secret, the most precious information on a handful of computers and drives, some even in their original form of floppy disks or magnetic tapes. He thought it more secure to keep a single copy without uploading it anywhere else. Better to lose it all than have it leaked, he reasoned. Well, now the moment had come. He had lost it all.

“Do you have any clue where the subjects have gone?” Ken was not even looking at the soldier; one of his hands was stroking the gun idly, the other tugging the zipper of his jacket up and down by a single inch.

“Not as such, sir. Not yet,” the soldier responded. “Now, sir… colonel Wilson is looking for you. Should I invite her here or accompany you to a better location?”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Ken replied, waving for the soldier to go away. “Why are you looking at me like that, private?” he scoffed. “I am your supervisor and I said I’ll be there! I am capable of finding colonel Wilson myself, thank you very much. What do you expect me to do, run away or something?”

“Sir, of course not, sir!” the soldier saluted him immediately. “I will be off then.”

“Yes, please,” Ken shook his head in frustration. “I’m sure you have better things to attend to, like that fire over there, or the dozen or so of missing research subjects. Amateurs,” Ken said to himself when the soldier disappeared from view - then turned around and began to run.

He ran without a single break till he reached the edge of a nearby forest in which he knew every path and hiding place, including some that no soldier would have the imagination to check. He made sure to discard his identification tag, tracking chip and the gun as well back at the base. Ken wasn’t stupid, or naive for that matter. He had always known that Black Wing tended to be highly unpredictable and volatile, and he had prepared for such a moment since day one. Somewhere far from here, out in the highway, he had a dedicated roadside KFC in which he could hide and activate the next steps in his escape plan.

He just needed to get out of this forest.

The first half was silent, and peaceful and almost pleasant, and he could almost trick himself into experiencing it as a lovely walk in a park.

“Nature is beautiful,” he thought to himself, “and a fast-paced walk is wonderful for your health. Breathe in the air. Enjoy how clean it is. It won’t be this pleasant in the basement of a roadside KFC.”

The banter of his mental monologue cheered him up, and he began to step with even more confidence, feet splashing across puddles and zigzagging between leaf piles and moss patches.

He realized that he was being followed less than five minutes later.

At first, he ignored it, operating on the childhood monster logic of “if I can’t see them, they can’t hurt me.” He tried very hard to persuade himself that just this once his intuition really was off, and he was about to reach the other edge of the forest alone, and pass over to the highway safely. Then a branch snapped well behind him; a branch he did not step on.

He froze on the spot… there were steps behind him - soft, careful steps. Steps he recognized. He took a deep breath in and turned around.

“Hi Ken,” said Bart, and put a gun directly to his temple.

“Hi Bart,” he replied, perfectly calm. “Nice escape. I am impressed.”

“It was a long time in the planning,” she responded without a shadow of a smile on her face. “More or less since the first day you locked me up.”

“That makes sense, sure,” he raised an eyebrow at her. “You came to me by choice, remember? We did not catch you. I was never planning to contain you anyway.”

“That was by choice,” she nodded, “I needed to know.”

“Know what?”

“Needed to know whether there was still any you inside of you.”

“O…kay?” Ken wanted to tilt his head to the side in confusion, but the gun pressed to his face made that maneuver rather difficult. “Not sure I understand but I appreciate the thought.”

“I wanted to be sure,” Bart continued, “that my friend Ken was completely gone from you. That I killed you for good.”

“And…” he said, rather sad all of a sudden. “Was I, still…”

“There is something,” Bart said softly, “but I’m not sure it’s enough. And I can’t go on anymore. The universe is very loud, in my head. It won’t shut up until I let it choose.”

“You don’t have to do this, Bart,” Ken muttered, “you really don’t. My life in Black Wing is over. They will shoot me themselves if they will find me. Hey,” he suddenly remembered something, “do you still want to run away and live in Miami? We can do that now! We can have a simple normal life Bart, I promise.”

“I’m sorry,” she shook her head, a hint of tears gleaming in her eyes, “too late. Every day. Every day you woke up and chose to be the supervisor. It’s a bit too late to choose not to be supervisor when that choice was made for you already.”

“Fair enough,” Ken said, and closed his eyes. “Goodbye, Bart. I am really glad I met you.”

“Goodbye, Ken,” she said coldly, and pressed the trigger.

The gun did not fire.

“Huh,” she put the gun away from his head and fired into the sky.

The blast roared across the silent forest, raising a flock of birds into the air. She put the gun back to Ken’s head and fired again… still nothing happened.

“Well,” Bart shrugged, pocketing the gun and turning in the opposite direction, “guess the universe decided to give you one last chance. See you around, maybe,” she added and disappeared into the forest canopy as if she was never there.