“In-coming!”

I didn’t even look over at Nora. Why had she started up with that nonsense? Those arrival tubes had been fairly busy for the last two days, with another batch from Chaos Squad, as well as arrivals from at least a dozen other shows with names like Don’t Spin Wrong!, The Rejected and the Accepted, Pay the Piper, and something called Wham, Shazam, and Fiddlefaddle! That last show which sent us sixteen contestants, each holding a birthday cake with candles still burning.

It was madness out there. I couldn’t watch any more of the brutality over those video monitors. For awhile, the members of the original Chaos Squad confronted every contestant who came through, demanding that they join them in their struggle against their nebulous and unnamed enemy. Not everyone was so easily conscripted, and violent skirmishes broke out all up and down the tiers. When the Chaos Squad got bored with that, they began squabbling with and pummeling upon each other.

At some point, we discovered a second control room, down on the bottom level. In fact, Nora activated a camera so that we could see half a dozen robots who had apparently locked themselves in, much like we had. Nora tried to talk to them on the intercom, but the robots chose to ignore us. Well, worse than ignored us—they switched off the audio. I guess they weren’t able to turn off the camera. We could still see them, just not hear them, nor, it seemed, could they hear us.

I did notice three robots that didn’t look too healthy. One was wearing soggy overalls, the other two, naked. Our victims, no doubt, fished out of the pool at the bottom.

If those robots had a plan, they had no intention in sharing it with us. At least they didn’t need to eat. Well, so I assumed. And even though we had discovered a little pantry with what resembled military rations and a few bottles of water (did robots have human guests on occasion?), those meager provisions wouldn’t last us long.

I had tried to feed Sy and August, but, well, they didn’t have any mouths. Or any openings I could see. Whenever I checked, they seemed the same. Quivering under the white robot uniforms that covered them.

“Did you hear me?” Nora asked.

“In-coming,” I said. “I heard you.”

“Right. But this time it’s different.”

I sighed and got out of my chair and walked over to the console station where she stood, staring into a screen.

“So, what am I looking at?”

I couldn’t make sense of the geometric designs on the display. It sort of looked like a very rudimentary map.

“I finally figured this one out,” Nora said. “It’s us. Well, this whole place.” She put her finger at a point low on the screen. “See here? It’s this facility. We’re in a big cylinder, right? Count them. All 47 tiers.” She moved her finer to the top of the display. “This, way up here. See? It’s the surface. Has to be. Where we want to be. And this long line running all the way down to us? That’s that elevator we saw. The one that needs the key.”

“Okay. But we still have the Chaos Squad out there.” I pointed to an adjacent video monitor which cycled through camera views of all the tiers. They showed an ever-changing montage of the skulking and glowering Chaos Squad, as well as the moaning wounded of their perceived enemies. I did not let my eyes linger, as some of the figures were on the ground, unmoving.

Things were getting grim out there.

“And the in-coming,” Nora said, looking at me with a smile, “is this flashing light.” She placed a finger on a pulsing yellow dot that slowly made its way down what Nora insisted was an elevator shaft.

She turned around to glance at the video monitor for the bottom level control room, where the robots were.

“Ha! It’s got their attention, too.”

The robots, who for hours now had been seated passively in chairs—I guess it takes extra energy for robots to remain on their feet?—were now standing, clustered around a console screen.

“See,” Nora said. “They’re looking at the same diagram we are.”

Right when the pulsing light came to a stop at the bottom of the shaft, Nora pressed a few buttons and the Tier 1 camera panned a bit to the left and showed us the elevator door.

That elevator that, were it not for the security bulkhead, was just a short flight of stairs away from us.

It opened.

It was hardly who I was expecting.

“Hallelujah!” Nora shouted. “Our favorite intrepid drifter accompanied by the famous psychic game show host!”

Nora looked at me with a puzzled expression.

Lately I’d learned to measure my optimism.

“We’re rescued,” she said. “Right? Unless you think they’re robots in disguise.”

“I’m afraid for them,” I said. I hadn’t seen any of the Chaos Squad on the upper levels for a while, but there were nooks and crannies the security cameras couldn’t see.

“They look confident to me,” Nora said with a triumphant grin.

And then I saw something new in our space.

“What is that?” I asked.

Nora looked over at the bulkhead which had sealed the staircase. That bulkhead we hadn’t been able to open. Directly above it an oval panel I had not even noticed before came to life. It flashed the number 60. No, 59. 58.

“It’s a countdown,” Nora said.

“I got that. But what is it counting down?”

“We’re going to know in under a minute,” she said, with breathless excitement. “Do you think it’s a bomb?”

How I wish I could see life the way Nora does. A series of breathless wonders.

I watched as Saligia and Morris stepped out of the elevator. They seemed unconcerned when the doors slide shut behind them (I hope they brought the elevator key). Their attention was focused on a bruised and bloodied contestant from Wham, Shazam, and Fiddlefaddle! who sat moaning on the floor. Morris hunkered down and said something to the contestant, but he did not respond. Saligia poked with her boot a somewhat squashed birthday cake on the floor beside one of the arrival tubes.

Nora and I both were having trouble concentrating on what our newly arrived friends were up to because of those numbers flashing on the oval panel.

When the countdown clock finally reached zero, there was a horrendous noise, like an airhorn. It sounded just once. By Morris and Saligia’s reactions, it was just as loud for them.

Their expressions, however, showed simple puzzlement. Nora’s face scrunched up, prepared for the worse. I noticed my hands were gripping the edge of the console desk so tight my knuckles turned white. We exchanged glances on the far side of panic.

Then we heard that familiar sound from two days ago of the bulkhead in motion. A low scraping groan. We watched the large portion of metal slide back into the wall, revealing the stairs.

As I moved to leave the control room, Nora called out for me to stay put.

“We hold our position,” she said. Then she pointed to the two covered lumps in the wheelbarrow. “And stay with our wounded.”

Had she learned those lines from a movie?

“But we need to let them know where we are,” I said.

“I don’t know much about Saligia. But Morris, he’s a quick study. He’ll find us.”

She was right. Morris walked straight to the door that led up to us. Of course. The sign said Control Room.

They opened the door and disappeared from camera range.

“You see!” Nora rushed to the top of the stairs to welcome them up.

As Morris stepped up into the control room, Nora threw herself in his arms.

“This is like in a movie,” she said, looking from Morris to me. “Sometimes the rescue party needs rescuing themselves.”

Morris disentangled himself from Nora.

“What’s up with that guy down there?” Morris nodded to me as his eyes moved curiously about the room. “Looks like he was in a fight. Should we be concerned?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “It’s the Chaos Squad. They’re still lurking around the facility. We need to get out of here.”

“Where’s Sy?” Saligia asked me as she stepped around Morris.

“The Chaos Squad?” Morris asked. “Who calls themselves that?”

I was more concerned with getting out of this place, so I asked if they had a key to the elevator. But no one was paying attention to me.

“He’s over here,” Nora said softly, holding a hand to her chest. She nodded down at the covered forms in the wheelbarrow.

Saligia’s eyes began welling up. When Nora pulled back the white jumpsuits, revealing the creatures Sy and August had become, Saligia sighed with relief.

“Thank god,” she said. “I was afraid he might be dead.”

“So, this is good?” Nora asked, hopefully. She glanced around the room. In her mind—no doubt—this was the role of the rescue-party rescuers. They fixed everything.

“Might our most pressing concern be that Chaos Squad?” Morris asked, looking over at me.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why we need to get out of here. It’s not just the Chaos Squad. When your elevator arrived, it automatically unlocked this control room. Probably the same thing happened to the room holding all those robots.”

“I see,” Morris said. He had joined Saligia beside the wheelbarrow. He looked down, seemingly not comprehending what he was looking at.

“Do you?” I looked around. We needed to get out of here. “We have robots and we have maniacs in spandex. They’re all out there. And they’ll be coming for us soon enough.”

“So, he’s okay?” Nora asked Saligia, looking down at the creatures. “Sy, I mean. I don’t care about August.”

“So,” Morris said, bending closer to the wheelbarrow. “One of these things is Sy and the other’s August?” He certainly didn’t sound convinced.

“I’ve only seen it once,” Saligia said. “It happened to Sy before. On his first day back.” She paused and looked to Morris. “You know, back from the dead. Anyway, he decided to go exploring. We found him in the lobby just like this. Lydia told me to touch him. She said my proximity would get him back. And it worked.” She turned to me. “You should be able to do it as well. You’re a Reader. Did you touch him?”

“Kind of,” I said. It hadn’t been pleasant. The both of them all slippery and rubbery. “Nothing happened. But, look, we have to leave.” I gripped one the handles to the wheelbarrow, hoping someone would get the message. The thing had wheels. We could all get out of here. Deal with Sy when we were in a safer place.

“Maybe it’s because that robot shot him with that green light,” Nora suggested.

“A robot shot him with a green light?” Morris said. “I see.”

I spun around on him.

“Would you stop saying that!”

“A Tau Field Dampener,” Nora explained to Saligia. “What the robots call the green light.”

“Let’s separate them,” Saligia said.

She reached down, her hands hovering over the creatures. Reading their minds, I guessed. Satisfied she’d located Sy, she picked that one up and carried it cradled like an infant to the far side of the room.

I hurried over to the monitor that displayed the bottom control room.

The Chaos Squad had gotten in there with the robots! They were facing off—a line of white-suited robots, and a line of muscular men and women in skin-tight outfits who crouched low with hands out like professional wrestlers. I glanced over to see Saligia kneeling beside Sy. I wondered if I should tell the others about the robot situation, but they didn’t seem to be paying attention to me. Morris and Nora stood over Saligia, watching. Waiting. When I looked back at the screen, I noticed that the robots had aimed their ray guns at the Chaos Squad. With bright flashes of green, it was over.

The robots stepped over the little tentacled blobs and out of camera range.

I didn’t know what to make of this development.

From my limited experience, the robots were much more polite that those Chaos Squad folks. So there was that.

“Rose?” Saligia called over to me. “We’re going to need you here.”

Fine.

I went over and sat on the floor beside her. The two of us joined hands. Then we placed our free hands on Sy. He was clammy and trembled like Jello. It was beginning to look like some sort of seance or faith healing. I almost expected Saligia to start chanting.

Suddenly I felt a jolt of electricity from the creature. I almost pulled back, but Saligia shook her head.

“Don’t break contact.”

The transformation moved slowly at first. There was an unsettling slurping noise, which made me think of Jello again. The thing elongated, looked more like a squid than before. When it had increased to roughly the size of an adult human, the tentacles fused together and formed arms and legs, and the slimy, rubbery surface began to resemble human skin. As Sy’s facial features emerged and took shape, the slurping sound continued until his skin had absorbed all of the glistening slime.

He lay there, blinking on the floor, naked.

My disgust, I realized, had vanished. Replaced, now, by an overwhelming feeling of tenderness. The face on the floor had no expression. The eyes focused on the shadowy ceiling above me. As innocent and untroubled as a baby.

But when he finally smiled at us, it wasn’t a baby. It was Sy.