FSE

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"Eww!" Dylan stood in front of his newly-opened stasis pod and stared down at the goop covering his body. "Eww! What is this shit?"

"Not sure." Cora glanced over the nearby pods. "Could be some sort of protective agent, or maybe it keeps the captives immobile while they're being sedated."

He shivered and turned slowly to meet everyone's gazes. Cora had released the rest of the females on the way to his stasis pod, his being the farthest away. All of them were naked; if their clothes had been stored anywhere, they weren't in this section. The corridor appeared to be filled with nothing but other stasis pods.

Most likely, whoever had abducted them had simply disposed of their clothing.

Well, it's not like we've never seen each other naked before. Still...

"I don't suppose you've found anything that looks like a shower?"

"Sorry, no." Grishnag flicked her eyes over the nearby pods and sighed. "Nothing but these tanks. Most of them are occupied, but we've passed by a few that contain lifeless bodies."

"They were trapped here for the rest of their lives." Syala spoke hesitantly, her brain translating her comment into English before she stumbled over the words. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and shivered. Ayastal leaned over to put an arm around her shoulders.

"Some are so old that they have only a few months or weeks left, at most." Cora shook her head slowly. "They've been in the simulations so long, their minds are so far gone, they probably wouldn't even know the difference if we extracted them."

Zilaka shuddered and braced a hand on the rail running the length of the corridor. "Horrible."

Dylan raked his fingers through his hair and flicked a handful of goop onto the floor. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"I still have access to the simulation controls." Cora walked over to a pod and stared at the old woman inside it. "For those who are too far gone, I've rewritten their simulations. I took away all the weapons, deleted all the simulation-generated enemy combatants, and changed their environments to something peaceful and happy. Sunrises, sunsets, an afternoon on the beach, a moonlight walk, a stroll through a flower garden, things like that. If we can't save them, maybe we can at least give them some peace before they die."

Syala nodded and wiped at the tears trickling down her cheeks. "And the ones who can be saved?"

"There are thousands here. Most of them have been plugged in for a long time--months, years, decades. There have been relatively few people plugged in as recently as we were." Cora waved a hand at one end of the corridor and all of them began walking. "Those who have been in the pods for a long time will have atrophied muscles and other health problems. Proper facilities for taking care of them may not exist here, as this appears to be nothing more than a storage area. We'll need to explore this place and learn more about it before we try to release anyone else."

"There's no information about it in the system you've accessed?" Dylan glanced into a few of the pods as they continued walking, but had to stop after spotting several corpses that had begun to decay.

"The simulation control system is separate from everything else. I'm hoping we can find a control room out here that'll let us access everything else. Maybe then we'll be able to find some answers and figure out where to go from here. If there are any medical facilities here, and the equipment functions, we can start bringing people out of stasis. Or better yet, if we find any ships capable of leaving this star system."

"That'd be good," Dylan said. "If you were on your ship when you were abducted, there's a chance it's still here, somewhere."

"If it hasn't been discarded or cannibalized for parts." Cora smiled. "It's possible the ship is just stored somewhere. You guys could at least have a shower, then."

Dylan glanced at the sweat running down his body. "Won't do much good if this place stays as hot as it is now. But on the up side, if I keep sweating like this, the goop all over me will eventually slush off."

"You're lucky you can sweat, then." Zilaka panted and let her tongue hang out. "I wonder how we got here. I don't remember being taken."

"Must've happened while we were asleep," Grishnag said. "Or maybe something knocked us out to make us easier to abduct."

"If that's how it happened, I wonder if any of us have friends or family here?" Dylan shivered. "I was in my room when it happened. Or, at least, that's the last thing I remember before waking up here. My parents could've been captured, too."

"That's another reason we need to find a control room." Cora stopped at another corner up ahead, peeked around, and continued. "There could be info on us, or at least records of each abduction. From that, we might be able to determine whether any of your family were taken at the same time."

Dylan nodded and kept his eyes pointed straight ahead. "I hope they're okay."

Everyone fell silent for the next few minutes. After traversing what felt like miles of pod-lined corridors, they reached a huge door. Cora stared at the panel beside it for a moment.

"Hmm. It doesn't appear to be locked." She pressed the button on the right. The door began to open, splitting in the middle and grinding and groaning as the two halves slid apart slowly. A blast of even hotter air puffed into their faces.

Dylan winced. "Why is this place so hot?"

"Could be deep underground, near the magma layer, assuming this planet has one. Or maybe the planet just has a naturally scorching climate. Or it's what our abductors consider room temperature." Cora shrugged.

After several seconds, the doors stopped, leaving a gap not quite wide enough for any of them to squeeze through sideways.

Cora grasped the edge of one of the doors. Ayastal shoved her hands into the gap, one on each side. Dylan and the rest of the females picked a door and all began pulling. Ayastal snarled, gritted her teeth, and in a few moments the gap widened just enough for her to fit through.

"That'll do." Grishnag peered into the area beyond. "Looks clear." She stepped through and the others followed her.

#

"Well, it looks like it might be a control center." Grishnag turned slowly and flicked her gaze over the dust-covered panels and monitor screens lining the walls of the hexagonal room. "Or something."

"We can't exactly ask these guys what it is." Cora motioned at something off to the left.

Grishnag glanced over to the far side of the room and spotted four skeletons similar to a few she and the others had found while working their way toward Dylan's stasis pod. One was slumped over in a chair at one of the consoles, and the others were sprawled on the floor.

"I wonder what killed them?" Syala shivered and took a step back.

"Could be they were trapped in here and starved. Could've been a life support malfunction. Could've been a lot of things." Cora walked over to one of the consoles, brushed the dust off its surface, and pondered it. "I've become familiar enough with the software here, so I should be able to figure this thing out."

"As long as it can still be powered on, we've got a chance." Dylan moved his hands as if trying to stick them into his pockets, seemed to remember that he was naked, and put his hands on his hips.

Cora nodded, stared at the controls for a few more seconds, and pressed one of the buttons.

The monitors came to life and the console's flat surface lit up.

"Ah, looks like a touchscreen," Grishnag said.

"Yeah. Let's see if we can find some answers." Cora prodded at the controls for a few minutes. "Okay, I'm starting to find my way around. Let's see if I can find a layout of this place."

After some more tapping and poking at the glowing buttons, a schematic appeared on one of the larger screens, showing a labyrinthine underground structure with tiny rectangles representing the stasis pods.

_Thousands_of them.

Grishnag shook her head slowly.

"Hmm. Look at that." Cora pointed at batches of pods whose symbols glowed faintly while others were brighter. "A lot of them are grayed out. Probably pods whose occupants have already died."

Syala shivered and rubbed her arms despite the excessive heat in the chamber.

Cora kept tapping at the controls.

The schematic expanded to show a larger structure, with seven blips grouped together in one spot.

"That is us?" Ayastal pointed at the blips.

Cora nodded. "The only life signs in this entire structure, not counting those in the pods."

"I guess that explains why the software hadn't been updated in a long time." Grishnag motioned at the skeletons. "The people in charge of this place are long dead."

"That, combined with the heat, definitely took a toll." Cora continued exploring the system, and grinned a moment later. "Hey, I've found the external camera archives. I'm loading up the most recent file."

The screen changed to an image of a rocky surface with an enormous, bloated star rising from beyond the horizon. The angry-red star dominated the sky, and the lumpy yet smooth surface looked as if it had been melted, solidified, and melted over and over again. The ground farther in the distance had begun to glow as it heated up and approached the melting point.

"Shit," she whispered.

"What is that?" Zilaka covered her mouth and whimpered. "Is that the sun? It doesn't look like--"

"It's a red giant," Dylan muttered. He glanced over his shoulder at her. "When a star gets near the end of its life, it expands and swallows up the inner planets, then it collapses rapidly and explodes."

"The explosion is called a supernova," Cora added. "It releases enough energy to destroy most of the planets in the solar system."

Syala gasped. "So we escaped our prison only to be trapped here? We're going to die here?"

"Take it easy." Grishnag put her arms around Syala. "Cora is still gathering information about this place. There may yet be a way off this planet."

"I hope so." Cora returned to work on the console. "The red giant would explain the heat in here, though. The simulation's hardware--and all the other computer equipment--probably couldn't handle the heat and started to break down. That must be why the simulation had started to malfunction; probably started before we were even brought here. I'll see if I can get a live view on this."

She manipulated more controls, and finally the image on the screen changed.

The dying sun now filled the entire sky, dim compared to a normal star but bright enough to drown out all the stars in the sky. The rocky surface was molten; once it cooled enough to solidify overnight, it would be much smoother than what they'd seen in the previous image.

"I hope this isn't Earth," Dylan mumbled. "If we've been pulled five billion years into the future--"

Cora brought up another image, this one a view of the night sky. She, Dylan, and Grishnag gaped at it.

The image showed a galaxy above the planet's surface, dominating most of the screen.

"Whoa," Grishnag blurted. "Well, if we're this far above or below the main body of the galaxy, then we're definitely not on Earth."

"Well, there's that, at least." Dylan sighed.

"Actually," Cora said, "if I'm not mistaken, that's Andromeda."

"Isn't Andromeda on a collision course with our galaxy?"

"Yes. From its distance here, I'm estimating we're two and a half to three billion years in the future."

"Oh,fuck!"

Cora reached over to brush at his hair. "The good news is, we've got a couple billion more years before Sol goes supernova, which means the planet we're on now isn't Earth, and we've got at least a billion years before the galaxies collide. Well, they'd merge gradually over millions of years, but the stars are so far apart, there wouldn't be any actual collisions. Lots of orbits would be changed by gravitational pull and some star systems would probably be ejected from the galaxy. But we'll all be long gone before any of that happens."

"Well." Dylan shuddered. "Like I said, there's that, at least."

"Yeah." Cora switched the view back to the daytime image, and Dylan's face paled a bit more.

"How close do you figure it is to blowing?"

"From its current condition, I'd say within the next few years. Maybe a couple of decades."

"_Shit._If we'd all been brought here a few years later, we'd be in serious trouble."

"We'll still die if we can't find a way to get off this world." Ayastal scowled at the screen and growled softly. "Whether from thirst or the sun burning us up...."

"Right. Back to work on that." Cora returned her attention to the controls and poked at more buttons.

Dylan kept his eyes locked onto the monitor and trembled. Nishara eased up behind him, placed her upper hands on his shoulders, slipped her lower arms around his waist, and rested her chin on his shoulder. He managed a shaky smile, put his hands over hers, and rubbed his cheek against hers.

The next few minutes passed slowly. Grishnag stepped forward to put her arms around Dylan and Nishara, and the other females held hands or put an arm around each other. All of them kept their hands off Cora and just let her continue working without distraction.

Finally, Cora grinned and pointed at the screen. "I've found what appears to be an underground hangar. It's a hell of a distance away, though, and the tunnels leading to it have collapsed at various points between us and the hangar. However, I've also found a garage containing a variety of wheeled vehicles. If we can get to that, we should be able to traverse the surface--if we can stay ahead of the local star."

And if we can't, we get incinerated. Grish kept her mouth shut. Everyone else had enough to worry about, assuming the same thought hadn't already crossed their minds.

Cora's hands moved faster as she entered more commands. "I'm setting up a wireless connection so I can keep poking around while we make our way to the garage."

"How far away is it?" Grishnag glanced around and found no exits aside from the door they'd squeezed through.

"Back the way we came, up a ladder to the level above us, take the corridor to the right, and then about an hour of walking."

Zilaka sighed. "It could be worse, I suppose."

Cora nodded and stepped away from the console. "I've finished setting up the link. I'll keep searching for answers while we head for the garage."

"I hope we can find a vehicle that still works," Grishnag said.

Dylan raked more of the goop from his hair and flicked it onto the floor as he and the others turned to follow her through the door.

"I hope we can find one with a shower."

#

The hour passed so slowly, Dylan swore the journey had taken all day. And it wasn't helped by the information Cora found roughly halfway to the garage.

"I know how we were captured and brought here." She grimaced. "They sent pods containing the gel filling your tanks through nearby space-time rifts. The gel was kept in capsules which launched when the pods came out the other side of the rifts. The capsules landed, the gel oozed around on its own until it found someone, then it stunned them, enveloped them, and carried them back to the capsules. The capsules returned to the pods, which came back through the rifts and landed here. Then the gel carried us to empty stasis pods, slid in, and the pods sealed us inside."

"That's fucking creepy." Dylan shuddered and tried to wipe the goop off his chest and arms.

"Yeah. Luckily, the gel appears to be dormant now. Maybe it was designed for a single use, after which its purpose was simply to keep the victim immobilized." They reached a junction and Cora took the branch to the left before she resumed speaking. "The system was running on automatic, like everything else here, and kept doing its thing after the aliens behind it all died. I've deactivated the whole system. There won't be any more abductions."

"Good." Dylan stared at the goop covering his arms and curled his lips. The more I hear about this, the more I want to wash this shit off.

"Another small bit of good news," Cora said. "I haven't found any records of anyone near any of you being abducted. So your family and friends weren't taken along with you."

"Well, that's a relief." Dylan sighed.

"Fortunately, I was alone when I was taken," Cora said. "There's an entire section here filled with synthetics, so I'm not the first machine life they've encountered. They've figured out how to knock us offline long enough to stick us into the simulation. I'd docked at the space station orbiting Epsilon Reticuli b and was just wandering around, checking the place out before looking for a new gig. Last thing I remember before coming back online in the simulation is stepping out of an elevator into an empty corridor."

Grishnag shuddered. "What makes that even creepier is, there were probably dozens or hundreds of other people and synthetics on the station, and you're the one that goo chose. The idea of it happening by chance is unsettling enough, but what if it was sent after you specifically?"

Oh, fuck me. I wish I could unhear that. Dylan tried to ignore the chill rippling up and down his spine.

"I've wondered about that, myself. Haven't found any info one way or another, yet. Not sure I want to know."

"Why were they doing this?" Syala rubbed her arms again and shook her head. "What's the point of it all?"

"Sport." Cora sneered. "The simulation program started long ago as a prison where convicted criminals could experience entire sentences in minutes or hours, depending on the crime. Then, as the civilization advanced and became more technologically powerful, they started capturing people from less advanced species and putting them in the simulations to fight each other. They viewed species with lower tech as inferior--and, eventually, mere playthings."

"Bunch of assholes," Dylan muttered. "Why are they extinct now? Did they just die off, or did someone finally come along and kick their asses?"

"Don't know yet. There are gaps in the records caused by hardware breakdown." Cora shrugged. "It's possible some of the damage was caused by an attack."

"I hope so," Ayastal growled. "If they all died before we could have our revenge, then I hope someone wiped them out."

"So do I." Syala sighed again and shrugged. "But then, if their machines hadn't taken us, we wouldn't have met. What we went through was horrible, but I'm glad to be with you all."

"That's a good point." Grishnag gave her a quick hug. "At least we've found something good in all this."

Everyone smiled and continued walking in silence. The warm fuzziness wore off as they continued through corridors and around corners and through hatches. The silence let Dylan's mind stay focused on thoughts of his family and friends. Who were long, long dead.

He didn't want to think about that.

"Here we are," Cora said when they finally reached a set of huge double doors. "The garage is sealed, so we don't have to worry about the atmosphere venting."

"Right, I hadn't thought of that." Grishnag arched a brow at the door. "The atmosphere on the surface probably isn't breathable, if there's an atmosphere at all."

"True. Luckily for us, the vehicles are airtight and have their own atmospheric systems." Cora waved a hand at the panel beside the doors and they parted slowly. "Which indicates the air might not have been breathable even before the sun started melting the surface, or the aliens here had to adapt after the sun started expanding."

Light panels on the high ceiling glowed to life slowly as Dylan and the females stepped from the hot metal floor of the corridor to the hot metal floor of the garage. Lining the cavernous chamber on either side was an assortment of dust-covered vehicles. Some had wheels, others had ducted fans, and still others rested flat on the floor. Dylan guessed those were some sort of hovercraft.

"That one looks promising." Cora pointed at a huge vehicle on the right. It was the size of a house and each of its eight wheels was more than twice Ayastal's height. "Looks like some sort of cargo hauler. We can all fit inside and have room to spare."

She found a ladder near the front, climbed it, and opened the door. Lights in the compartment flickered on and she moved on inside to make room for everyone else.

Dylan waited for the rest of the women to climb in before following them. He slid the door shut and took a slow look around. The cabin had a single seat for the driver and a smooth touch-panel on the console. Behind the seat was a compartment big enough for Ayastal to stand up straight without bumping her head, and a doorway at the rear that led to an even large compartment with shelves and cupboards lining the walls. Through another door was a room filled with consoles, monitors, and wall-mounted devices whose function he could only guess at.

Two doors were set into the rear wall. Zilaka opened the one on the left and peeked through it.

"I have no idea what this is."

Dylan walked up behind her and stared over her shoulder. The room contained what appeared to be a large bathroom. He grinned, but then a realization sank in.

"Shit. I started thinking we'd be able to clean this stuff off, but what if the water--or whatever this thing uses--has been sitting here for thousands of years? Or even longer?"

"I'll check the central computer's records. Maybe there's a way to recycle the water or tap into a source in the facility itself, if it all hasn't evaporated by now." Cora opened the other door and grinned. "Ah, this one has big racks on the walls that might work as beds. At least, you'll have a place to sit after all that walking. Go ahead and get some rest while I check into the water situation, fuel, and whatnot."

Dylan grinned, hugged her, and stepped into the next room. There was nothing covering the metal surfaces, but it would have to do for now. He sank onto the nearest one with a long sigh.

"How soon can we be on our way?" Grishnag sat beside him and let out a long breath of her own.

"The sun is directly overhead, so we'll not only have to wait until night, we'll also have to wait for the ground to cool back into a solid surface. By my calculations, we'll have a narrow window before the sun rises again and melts everything. I'll have to check this thing's top speed--if it's not fast enough, we'll have to find one that is."

And hope there actually is_one that can stay ahead of the sun._ Dylan took a few slow breaths to try to keep his heart from racing.

"I'll get on that right away." Cora smiled and headed back up front. "Meanwhile, just get some rest."

Zilaka sat on Dylan's other side and put her arm around him. "If we can ever clean this slime off, then you, Ayastal, and I have something to finish before anything else gets in the way."

He grinned and his heart raced for an entirely different reason. He nuzzled her and slipped his hand into hers.

"I'll make getting the shower working a priority, then." He reached out to Ayastal and she sat on the floor in front of him. She held her huge hand out and gripped his gently but firmly. He drew in another long breath, let it out slowly, and smiled.

Almost there. One way or another, this is almost over.