The next morning, Milo, Kayla, and Kaitlyn were watching a passerby flock of blue, flying creatures that sort of reminded him of egrets, while Cubork was working with the cylinder and rod. Milo knew that this was as good a chance as ever.

"Cubork, do you have a moment?" Milo asked?

"What is it?" he said in a soft but sort of brusque way.

"I communed with Nadarska last night again in my sleep." The gray just stared at him, and Milo forgot that Cubork probably didn't know about his ability.

"You spoke with a metaphysical organism in your sleep? If grays had facial muscles like you humans do, I'd give you my skeptical face" Cubork remarked.

"Yes, that's how I do it. He puts me in some sort of dream-like state in the night. Anyways, when I was with Kaitlyn yesterday he was apparently able to detect that something felt very odd with her. He said her skin isn't really skin."

For a moment Cubork just stood, apparently not sure of what to say and Milo thought he wasn't going to do anything. "I think I know what is going on here. I hope that you are being honest with me about being able to talk to Nadarska." Cubork stood on the pilots seat and opened up an overhead compartment and dug through the things in their to take a couple of shiny, metal, egg-shaped objects.

"Come with me" he said. "We need to act quickly." They exited the craft and walked around to the rear towards the lake where the other three of their group were around the lake. When they got within 20 feet of the group, Cubork pushed a button on the egg-shaped object and hurled it just a few feet behind Kaitlyn.

A few seconds later, Kaitlyn became immediately limp and fell straight to the ground stomach-down, completely motionless. Cubork walked over to where she was standing, and lifted her shirt up.

"What did you do!?" Kayla shrieked running over to where she was.

"She is not who you think she is, or she would still be standing" Cubork replied. He took what looked like a sharp metal pin from his box of tools, and pierced her on the lower back. A small amount of blood came from the hole. He stuck the metal, icepick-like object and made a gash all the way up her back, and to the surprise of everyone, he opened up an entire fissure on her back. Kayla gasped as he opened up the fissure. There was a layer of skin and flesh about an inch thick, but beyond that she had a crowd of various machine parts. Milo did not recognize much of what was under her skin.

Kayla and Clyde both seemed to be in shock, unable to believe what they were seeing. Cubork looked over the crowded jumble of parts carefully. "There's something unusual on the lower abdomen. Something I haven't seen in one of these androids. That blue thing." he said. He detached a small, round container from flexible, rubbery tubes on both sides and placed on the ground.

"This" Cubork said holding up the object "is a faux gut. This is so these things can eat when it's convenient so that no one will suspect them." He put the round container down and detached the light-blue box that was fastened under it.

"It's a microfreezer" Cubork said starting to pry the box open with a narrow, metal rod. Inside the box was a group of sixteen clear, plastic vials, with some containing a thick, white fluid in it." It took Milo a few seconds to figure out what that substance was and immediately felt a sense of disgust and embarrassment.

"She's collecting human semen" Milo said feeling foolish on the inside. "I guess we should have seen that one coming."

"A seductress bot" Cubork said. "I bet that biosynthesizer in her is making pheromones to attract whatever males she wants to get a donation from" Cubork said.

"Wait a minute" Kayla said. "I recognize the marking on those vials!" Kayla took an empty vial from the microfreezer's compartment and took a close look at it. "There it is!" she exclaimed. "Look at the cover of the vial! R-H-I!" Sure enough, the vials were marked with the initials of the Royal Humanology Institute.

"Well now…" Cubork said seeming to have had a big epiphany. "I think I now have a new theory how Drake got the talisman."

"What do you mean, Cubork?" Clyde inquired.

"Drake said he got the goddess talisman as a gift from the queen for services he performed for the Humanology Institute. I always assumed that he just allowed them to use him as a guinea pig or gave them else something they wanted. He must've let them use this android."

"We should probably destroy those samples" Milo said.

"No!" Cubork quickly interjected. "We can't let her know that someone opened her up. We're going to be the first and only suspects if that happens."

"What are you going to do with her?" Clyde asked. Cubork took what looked like a simple multimeter from his bag of tools.

"I'm going to drain the battery and let the backup power take over" Cubork said sticking a long, odd-looking metal device into the positive electrode of the battery. "She'll think she had a battery malfunction and that she was only out for a moment." Cubork worked for what seemed like about sixty seconds, with everyone still watching, seeming stunned and fascinated at the same time. Then, Cubork took a bottle of some kind of paste sealed the fissure on her back and wiped the blood (or presumably fake blood) off of her back. Amazingly, after about 15 seconds, there was no trace that her back had even opened up, like a perfect stitching of an incision after surgery.

"All right" Cubork said picking up the grenade and his tools. "Milo and I will head back to the ship. Remember you two, she was only out for a very brief amount of time. That's very important." Milo felt sort of annoyed with the mild condescension that Cubork sometimes gave. Cubork picked up his grenade and he and Milo rushed back to the carrier. They both watched from the window. They could see Kaitlyn getting up, and everything seemed normal with the three of them talking.

"So you really are a human conduit…amazing" Cubork gushed after they had watched for just a moment.

"For better or worse" Milo said.

"You've got that right" Cubork said. "You're basically a human version of one of the most important metaphysical devices known. Your life could get really complicated. To be frank, I don't really envy you."

Milo looked out the window and noticed Kaitlyn was walking back towards Drake's starship and Kayla was coming back to the ship. Kayla walked back into the door of the ship, not saying anything, digging in her luggage. Milo opened up his tablet to do some reading when he was startled by Kayla's voice.

"Look!" she said. "Someone is coming! " Milo walked over to the window and sure enough he could see the figure getting closer. As the man got within 50 feet of the ship, Milo could see the familiar-looking face of the man. It was the very man whose picture he had looked at in Alan Torick's office seemingly an eternity ago, walking from Drake's ship to theirs.

"Kayla!" Milo said "That's Matt Snedecor!"

"You're right!" Kayla said as they got even closer. "That is him!"

"Well, it might be a completely moot point now" Milo mused. "But we've finally found him." There was a knock at the door. Cubork walked over to the door and pulled the lever to open it.

"Come in" Cubork said. Sure enough, there stood the skinny young man with curly, tan-colored hair in the doorway.

"Hello" he said with an air of nervousness around his voice. For a short amount of time, no one said anything.

"Hello, Matt. I'm Milo Greene and this is my partner Kayla Rall. We are with the CIA and we want to ask you a few questions" Milo informed him. "What exactly happened with the frigate?" Milo asked him. Matt nodded his head.

"The guild found some special alien artifact that can burn most anything in an oxygen atmosphere" he said. "Then we were on the way back the cargo bay and much of the cabin burned up in a matter of seconds. I stayed in the escape pod for at least a day before I was rescued by Drake."

"And you agreed to help him out?" Kayla asked.

"Drake told me I was in big trouble, and I really thought I was, too. He told me he could make me important and wealthy and make history rather than an outlaw. I didn't really know what kind of things his group was involved in, but I didn't know who else to turn to. Take me to jail if you must but just please get me away from here."

"You aren't in trouble" Milo said. "We are going to get ready to leave right now to take you back to Earth."

"Look at that!" Kayla said pointing out the window. Outside of the window were what appeared to be several dozen reptilian hoplites headed right towards Drake's starship.

"Looks like Nal'Larak forces by their color" Cubork said.

"They must be after the talisman!" Milo exclaimed.

"Indeed" Cubork said lugubriously.

"We need to get out of here!" Cubork said. "Everyone strap in!" All of them – including clyde who saw the hoplites and ran to the ship - hurriedly took a seat and Cubork quickly turned on the engine and gravity well of the ship. Cubork deftly got the ship off very quickly, but it was still too slow. The ship was hit with a clear jolt that could have easily knocked them from their seats. Several alarm horns and whistles went off at once.

"Cubork!" Clyde shouted over the sound of the different alarm noises. "You might want to go ahead and land now before we lose too much stability!"

"No, we need to get as far away from there as possible!" Cubork answered hitting several different buttons on the control panel.

Sure enough, the carrier began to sink lower and rock a little bit. Milo held on to his seat as tightly as he could, as if that would somehow make him safer in a crash. Cubork hit the button to release the parachute, but it didn't seem to slow it down much. The spacecraft made one last lurch before it hit the ground with a loud crash. Milo looked around the cockpit. Everyone seemed to be conscious and not majorly hurt.

"Well" Kayla said with a sigh. "Now what are we going to do?"

"Milo" Cubork said. "Do you still have Michelle's computer cartridge that Drake gave you?" Milo reached into his baggage and and pulled the stick out. Cubork took the stick and walked out of the cockpit into the door to the cargo hold. Everyone else followed him. Cubork punched a few numbers on the combination lock of what looked like a large drawer on one of the walls. Inside was what looked like the body of a young woman with dark brown hair.

"Someone help me hold her up into a seating position" Cubork said. Clyde grabbed the upper part of the woman's body and held it in place. Cubork pryed open the scalp on the head, revealing what was clearly machine parts of another android.

"Cubork, don't you think we should be running now?" Clyde asked in a frightened manner.

"You can if you want to, but I think that's pointless. We need to at least hope my android I've been repairing for Drake will know what the key does and that it might help get out of trouble here." No one left Cubork's side.

"You're going to let Michelle control that thing?" Milo inquired.

"Not if this works like I think it does" Cubork said. "More than likely the reptiles are going to shut Michelle down, anyways." Cubork said loosening up a small, empty compartment in the head.

"This thing" Cubork said holding up the small, blue cartridge Milo got from Cubork "is an intellichine mind, the metaphysical component of any intellichine cognition. It's the only part missing from this android that I have been rebuilding for Drake. The brain and software is already in place. If I'm right, she will have some of Michelle's memories but will be loyal to me." Cubork put the stick into the open compartment and closed it, then pushed the button inside of the head.

"Cross your fingers" he said. The eyes of the android opened up slowly, her movements looking fully organic and indistinguishable from a woman waking up from sleep.

"Trissie" Cubork said with his face about eight inches from hers as if she might have trouble hearing him, "I need you to focus and try and dig into the memory of your mind. I need to know what the key is and what it does." The android just looked at him, blinking once, and for a brief moment did not seem all there.

"The rod" she said in a soft, feminine voice, "is a device used to activate warp gates to get to the other side."

"And what is the other side?" Cubork asked her still in her face, almost as if he was trying to intimidate her.

"A place very far from here where most of the members of the church of Saint Vernon fled to escape the prosecution of Queen Tarissa after the great Human-Elf war" she replied.

"Are there any of those warp gates here?" Cubork asked. "Is that why Drake and the cult came here?"

"There is a warp gate at the abandoned gray device research facility. It's only about a mile and a half from here." The android put her legs on the floor of the ship outside the drawer and pulled herself up. She stood about five feet and eight inches and had somewhat thick legs, much like Kaitlyn did.

"Trissie" Cubork said. "We need you to take us to this research facility and show us how to activate the gate."

"You want to go through the gate?" Clyde asked. "We don't even know what will be on the other side."

"It's either that or get caught and risk the lizards getting the key" Cubork said. "We can't cover up our scent and we can neither run nor hide from them here. It's the only way." Nobody could really disagree with that. They all gathered up what few things they really needed and began moving quite briskly behind Trissie."