Sven looked around. He stood in a closed shop with the blinking eye of an alarm on the wall. He saw one camera in a corner. He groaned. A record of his appearing out thin air would just cause more questions to be asked if he was caught inside the store.

The intersections shouldn't be accessing the inside of structures. Walls formed barriers to the flow from the Tree. How did he get out of this before security forces answered the alarm?

Going out the front didn't seem like a good idea. He wondered what the back looked like. He checked the aisles as he moved to the back of the store.

He couldn't do anything about the camera, or the alarm. Clearing out, or finding a place to hide to escape detection from Security, offered him a chance at freedom. He didn't want to desert and wind up in a brig while the locals tried to figure out who he was and how he got into the shop without opening the doors.

He paused when he opened the door leading to the back of the shop. Boxes of books were stacked along one wall. An outer door blocked him from fleeing out the back. A desk and a monitor pushed against the opposite wall from the books.

He discerned a camera. It pointed at the back door. Once he opened the door, it would have a clear picture of him for Security to track down. The other camera taking his picture was bad enough.

Sven gestured with his weapon. A sword appeared in his hand. He used that to pull the plug from the camera. He went to the back door and unlocked it. He went back to the desk and looked around. He saw a hatch in the ceiling over the desk. It looked painted over in the dark.

He climbed up on the desk. He jumped up and knocked the hatch out of the way. He landed lightly on the desk. He checked to make sure he wasn't knocking things askew before jumping and catching the edge of the opening. He pulled himself through the opening. He slid the hatch back in place.

Sven put his pack behind a box of supplies that felt like they had thirty years worth of dust on them. He didn't want to be discovered, and have his guitar and belongings confiscated. Hiding them meant he had a chance to collect them after escaping the local authorities.

He thought about his next move. He could hide in the storage space until Security gave up. Then he could escape out the back if he wanted. Then he had to find a place to hide out until he could start making a living for himself.

He couldn't hide from the employees while they went about their work for an extended amount of time. Eventually he would have to get food and take care of his bodily functions.

The first thing he needed to do was wait for the situation to change. He stood in the dark, waiting to be discovered. He decided to lay down and poke a couple of peepholes in the floor/ceiling so he could see what was happening on the main floor. If the Security response found him, he would take his chances fighting to get free. Once he had lost them, he could come back and get his belongings.

Sven called for his blade again. He drove it into the floor in several spots. He was confident that the new holes couldn't be seen from below as long as he didn't turn on a light.

He lay down so he wouldn't give himself away with footsteps overhead. He waited and watched for the alarm to be answered.

Finally a light shone inside the shop from outside. He waited, but nothing happened. Security didn't seem that concerned about a thief in the store. Blue lights flashed. They remained in place as he listened.

He heard a rattling on the front door. He nodded to himself. They were checking on the door before they tried to enter. He saw light moving in a cursory manner over the shelves.

Would they try the back door? What would they do if they did? Would they search the place top to bottom? He needed to be ready if they moved the hatch to check the attic space he had taken over.

He didn't want to hurt the locals, but he also didn't want to go to a brig. As long as he didn't do lasting harm, he felt all right with putting any watchman asleep before they could ready their own weapons to attack him.

He heard the noise of a door handle rattling. He heard the door opening. He pretended to be a rock. He counted silently in his head as he shifted to look through the other peephole.

Two men in dark brown uniforms shone lights across the room. They moved through the door to the front of the store. Beeping told them the alarm worked as intended.

Sven tried not to move. The last thing he wanted was to attract their attention upward. He felt their weapons were deadly enough to punch through the material he rested on.

“Call it in,” said the senior officer. “Have the alarm company call the manager to reset the alarm. It looks like whatever triggered the alarm has taken off.”

“There's cameras,” said the junior man. He pointed his light at the camera Sven had noticed. “Maybe they caught something.”

“We'll get the manager to let us see what happened,” said the senior officer. “If we're lucky, it will be someone we know.”

“I hear you,” said the junior man. He shone his light on the register. “It looks like they didn't try to pop the register. Maybe something other than a burglar triggered the alarm.”

“We'll see what the cameras show us when the manager gets here,” said the senior. “I don't see any signs of forced entry. Maybe they just left the back door open, and that set the alarm off.”

The two men retreated out the back door. Sven heard the younger Security man talk on his radio as they left. He waited in place.

Minutes later, a fussy man who looked like had dressed in a hurry cut the lights on in the shop. He went to the alarm box and punched in the numbers to cut it off. Sven gently scratched the code in the floorboard next to his weapon hand. The stranger walked back to the store room.

Sven shifted just enough to keep an eye on the man without being too obtrusive. This must be the manager the Security people were talking about earlier.

The manager went to the desk the deserter had used to gain access to the attic. He called up images from the cameras and rewound the images back for the uniformed peacekeepers. The cameras didn't give a clear picture other than movement from the front of the store to the back, and then out the door. The back camera went black when the shape turned from the door.

“Someone was here, but it looks like he left,” said the manager. “I didn't see how he got in.”

“Can you copy this for us?,” said the senior man. “Maybe the lab can clean it up so we can get a better look at whomever that was.”

“Let me see if I have a thumb drive,” said the manager. He searched the desk until he found a cube of black plastic. He plugged that into his machine. He pressed a command from the menu bar that Sven couldn't see. He pulled the black cube from the machine and handed it over.

“All right,” said the Security officer. “It didn't look like he touched anything. We'll turn this over to our lab. Just make sure you have everything locked down a little better. If we turn up anything, we'll need you to press charges.”

“I'll be glad to do that,” said the manager. He checked the back door. He escorted the uniforms to the front of the shop where he put in the alarm code to turn the device on.

Sven wrote the activation code down next to disarm code. Now he could turn the alarm on and off at will. He still needed a way around the camera in the front of the shop.

He had temporary lodgings now. All he had to do was find food and a way to earn a living other than waiting to kill an enemy. How hard could that be?

Sven knew he might have to kill his own food and cook it outside the shop. He could worry about that when the shop was dark and empty again.

He watched as the blue lights cut off. He waited for an hour before he decided he could move again. The authority might still be outside, but he wanted to take a look around his nest to make it more secure.

The last thing he wanted was to be discovered before he was ready to leave.

Sven moved to the hatch. He pulled it out of the way. He dropped down to the desk. He moved to the front of the shop. He typed in the disarm code and ducked behind a strip of wall between the counter and front door. The all clear sounded.

He waited behind his cover for a few minutes. Nothing happened. He could look around as long as he didn't turn on the lights and attract attention.

A few minutes of looking turned up the restrooms. He smiled. All he had to do now was worry about food. He looked for a way to get from the bathroom to his lair. He didn't see one. He frowned at having to cut an entrance from the attic to the bathroom.

He would think of something to make things easier for himself. The fact that he had to climb the desk in the back and put in the security code that might change at any minute of his hiding out didn't really appeal to him.

He decided he would worry about that when he had found another place to live.

Sven used the restroom, washed his face, and decided he could hunt food in the morning when he wasn't so sure he was going to land in trouble.

He still needed to devise a way to get past the manager and his helpers in daylight.

He couldn't stay cooped up in the attic while people moved in and out of the store under him. And if he had to move in the daytime, he didn't want people to realize he was using the attic as his place to live.

He needed another door to get in and out of the shop without being seen by the people underneath him. He needed to think about it.

He wondered how safe he was from searchers from Asgar. Would they be able to find him in the shop after what he had done to get to the human held territories? Two intersections might not have been enough to throw off a tracker good enough to trail him to Earth.

He was amassing problems that he couldn't solve at the moment. The best thing he could do was get some rest, and then hunt for food and another place to live tomorrow night.

Sven noted picture books on one shelf. He grabbed one and carried it back to his refuge.

Maybe some light reading would calm his nerves.