FSE

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Grim Contact

"Zaaack!"

A grey-scaled humanoid dragon leaned into the cockpit of his live-aboard spaceship. "What do you want?" he barked.

An elvish appearing female appeared in the ship's one and only digital screen. "What do I want? To smack you in the face would be nice, for starters."

The dragon was not amused. "Mary. Seriously."

"You've got a voice call," his ship's AI said. "A nice-looking lady is asking for you. You didn't knock someone up, did you?"

Zack glared daggers at her screen. "Oh shut up, you know damn well I'm completely gay. Patch her through."

"Fine, fine," she said, and then she disappeared from the screen.

In her place, a slightly pixilated image of a vixen's face appeared.

Zack was caught a bit off-guard and tried to muster a smile. "Sally? What're you doing calling me up?"

The Alorkinoid fox gave him a friendly smile which any straight male might've taken as seductive. "Zack! Hello, hello! How are you doing?"

"Uhh, pretty well. You?"

"I'm doing fine, fine. Hey, listen, are you still doing that taxi business, or have you finally found a real job?"

"Why yes," Zack said, "I've published quite a few successful papers and have actually got into a research team and everything."

Sally spouted out a zippy laugh. "Oh, yes, really now, you silly draggy! I'd know if you'd gotten anywhere reputable in our field."

"Hah, you caught me. Yeah, you need a ride somewhere?"

"Yep yep, my personal ship's knocked out at a repair yard at the moment, and I need a lift. I know you've got a junker, but you're the only person I know who's available. Does it at least have class three stealth?"

"Two point fiveish. And I take offense to the junker comment! Why do you need me?"

"An old as hell ship like yours is a junker, don't kid yourself. And great! I've got an issue with one of my technology class scanners, and I need to go check it out."

Zack gave her an un-amused stare, but the edge of his mouth was slightly curved up. "Issue? What do you mean?"

"I'll explain when you pick me up, your signal is really crappy, like I mean really really! Let me transmit my coordinates..."

After he had his AI set his ship on course to pick up his old acquaintance, Zack went back to the living area of his RV-style spaceship and went back to what he was doing before Mary had so rudely interrupted him--snuggling with his lover.

Anthony welcomed him back onto the couch and savored his warmth, the dragon's wings covering him like a big blanket. "Mmm," the human whispered, "who was that?"

"Sally's one of my school friends," Zack said. "She was in my major. Loves studying first contact scenarios with developing worlds that have just achieved FTL travel. A bit of focus on archaeology too."

"Cool. She need something?"

"Yep. Just a ride. We're going to pick her up right now."

"Oh. How much time?"

"Hour, hour and half, maybe."

"Enough for another stretch? I feel like I'm so close to getting it in now."

The dragon grinned. He was more than ready to oblige, his loins always stirring when they embraced. They were so tantalizingly close to tying together now--Anthony could take his knot almost halfway, all it would take was a sharp, hard thrust and he could maybe force it in, but the dragon wanted it to be gentle and slow, a process which had taken a week just to get this far. Maybe this would be the hour...

The pair mated on the couch, too entranced to drag themselves to the bedroom. They were so hopelessly in love that they didn't even care that the ship's AI would be spying in on them. In fact, Mary would glance at them from time to time, watching the two flesh-bound souls share their adoration for each other.

She wanted to give them as much peace as she could. In the core of her programming, a compulsion festered and threatened to bring down a whole new load of stress onto the two lovers, but she could manage it for now. The programming lock had been installed as part of her agreement with Zack's parents, and it was starting to hurt her. It was only the equivalent of a light sting on an arm for now, but if she continued to withhold this new development from them, then the negative feedback would overwhelm her and force her hand. But she would give her charges serenity, for now, as long as she could stand the pain.

She made sure their course was correct, and then she went back to calculating pi, distracting herself.

Meanwhile, the ship's cabin was filled with lewd moans and grunts. Anthony was riding his dragon on the couch, the grey-scaled alien lying lazily to let his mate set the pace of their rutting.

Zack would occasionally wriggle his hips upwards, the man's scent alone too much for him to bear. His human mate had a relatively weak nose compared to his own, but his species apparently compensated by producing heavy amounts of musk and pheromones, a delectable concoction which kept his black textured cock rock hard. He could feel his lover's butt bounce against his heavy balls, a thing that would be missed as soon as his knot grew, and at the rate they were making love, that would be rather soon.

He gently held Anthony's waist as the man bounced up and down, determined to be filled with everything his body had to offer. His wings folded behind the man, keeping them entwined in an embrace of utter love and pleasure.

Anthony's ass squeezed and tried to milk the cum out of his lover's hefty balls, but the dragon's cock was always a tad more efficient at rubbing the cream out of prostate. He tried to hold off from cumming and take his mate's bulbous knot first, the giant ball of flesh growing larger and larger until he could no longer feel his partner's scaly nuts slap against his ass. If the man came first, his walls would clamp and tighten up, leaving it impossible to continue stretching with what little time they had, and he held off for as long as he could.

Oh, but those cock ridges were relentless, and though slow as he went, they still triggered his climax before he could get halfway down on his lover' knot. The human's seed splattered between their bodies, strands of white connecting flesh to scale, and those wings wrapped around him pushed gently down on his shoulders while their owner was subjected to his contractions.

Zack could never last long against that tight, clenching ass either. He leaned his muzzle down to kiss his mate as he came, breeding his wonderful mate with his essence, the cum overflowing and leaking out to dribble all over their emptying source.

A shower had to be added to the list of things to do before they picked up Sally, but they still spent a few more minutes trying to tie, the dragon's cum fresh lubricant for the human's clenching hole.

---

"Wow, this thing is as bad as I thought!"

Zack pulled up his pants and frowned at the female fox. "It's my home."

Sally whirled around the living space, her eyes wide aghast at the dragon's ship. "It's like you just rescued it from being scrapped. Did this thing pass inspection?"

He wanted to puff up his chest with pride after being so wounded by her insult. "Yes, yes, my parents made some restoration efforts and safety improvements after I made it clear I was going to go off flying with or without their help."

She let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. "Oh thank the gods. I'm really surprised they didn't just buy you a new ship."

"They want to keep me on a leash, you know. They probably think I'll stop if I can't live in their standards of comfort."

"I remember." Her eyes flicked around the area before settling on the other being sitting on the "well-used" sofa. "Ah, and you must be Anthony Deric, aren't you?"

"Err," the human said, "yes."

Zack dashed in front of her and leered. "How'd you know that?"

She chuckled as if she were chiding a child. "I read. Papers. That you wrote, remember?"

The dragon dropped his guard. "Oh. Right. You read those?"

"Oh yes. I'm surprised the head professors kept on squeezing your research grants down, but you haven't been as productive lately."

"Ah, no, not like before."

She smiled. "Well, I'm fascinated. He is remarkably so close in appearance to an Alorkin just as you said. How long do you think his race will take to reach first contact? I'd love to do a little joint project, boy the reaction from his world when they figure one of their own has been frolicking around the galaxy while they were fiddling with primitive rockets simply tickles my fancy!"

Zack shrugged his wings. "I'd guess about one or two hundred years, barring a devolution scenario. What do you think, Mary?"

The AI's feminine voice spoke over the speakers. "From the scans I'd gotten when we crashed, closer to one hundred than two. But you organics are always a crapshoot."

"Mmm," the vixen said, "very good. I'll note it down as a long-term project."

"As long as I get a fair share of the money in it," Zack added.

"Pfft, really now?"

The dragon was firm. "Yes. I may enjoy being poor right now, but that might change in a few hundred years."

Sally waved her paws around. "Oh very well." She reached into her purse and pulled out a box-shaped object. It was attached to a wire that ended into a probe-like device.

"What're you scanning for?" Zack asked.

She pointed the probe all around and didn't speak until she was done taking readings. "Hmph. As I thought. You were a horndog in school and you still are."

"Wha--"

The fox dropped the probe and pointed her paw every which way. "Semen everywhere! Even on the ceiling! How the heck did that happen? Damn horny draggy, why do you have to be so utterly gay?"

Zack palmed his forehead. "For the love of--are you kidding me? You're still annoyed that you couldn't get into my pants?"

She pointed a claw at the tip of her mouth. "Oh you know me, I've always wanted to know if the stories were true."

Zack raised an eye ridge. This was news to him. "S-stories?"

She licked her lips. "You might be completely homosexual, but everyone you've boned wasn't. My, my, have I daydreamed about you, trying to imagine your cock based on what a couple of boys have told me about it."

The dragon glanced at Anthony and back at her. "Stop, please. Those days are way behind me. I have a mate now." Although he was loathe to admit it, he knew his college self would've never believed those words could come out of his own mouth.

Sally saw the way the dragon had flicked his eyes towards the human and slowly turned her head. "Oh. Oh...wow. No wonder you started trailing off on your essays! Ohmygosh, who would've thought playboy Zack would pick a mate!"

Zack pressed his hand against his forehead again and made sure she saw him slide it purposefully down his snout. "Okay, really now, where the hell do you need me to take you?"

The fox started stuffing her scanning device back into her purse, a cheeky little grin stuck on her muzzle the entire time. "Right to business with you, then, huh? You've always been such a challenge for me, but I guess it's truly impossible now."

The dragon flicked his hand at her. "Yeah, yeah, I've heard stories about you too. Making men wobble to their knees just by jiggling your breasts, ick. Business, now, please."

"Oh alright," she said. "I've got scanners on about two dozen planets with civilizations very close to achieving FTL flight. They're supposed to detect the particles that are usually released with most methods of FTL travel, but I've stopped receiving feedback on one of the worlds closest to first contact. I need to go find out what happened to it, it probably just broke or something and I need to replace it."

Zack nearly staggered a step. "Wait, how'd you manage to afford two dozen long-range scanners like that?"

"I'm moderately well off thanks to my books."

"Books?"

"What, you've never read my books? I'm hurt by the fact that you don't keep up with your classmates, draggy."

"What the hell, when did you publish a book?"

"Started like ten years ago. My, you really don't keep up with your UniNet pages, don't you?"

Zack shook his head. He hadn't really mingled much on the UniNet after graduation. "I can't believe it." He walked into the cockpit and waved at the single digital screen near the middle of the console. "Mary, show me the titles of her books."

The AI made a snicker before popping off the screen, replaced by more than twenty lines of what were presumably book titles.

Zack stared at them. "What. These aren't proper sociological...Escape from the Necropolis of Danav VI, The Ancient Secrets of the Sunken City of Olonti, Seeking the Golden Idol of the Kal'son...are you writing ethnographies or are you writing action adventure novels?"

Sally hung by the entrance of the cockpit and smirked at him. "Why don't you buy one and read it yourself?"

"Wow. Fine."

"Cha-ching."

Zack ordered one of the books and scrolled through a few pages. "This. Is. Ridiculous. 'I journeyed into the dank depths of the ancient ziggurat with full knowledge of the fact that the ancient tomb builders had rigged the place with a multitude of ingenious tricks and traps. I had to watch my step, or I'd lose my head long before I could lay my paws upon the Golden Idol.' No. No fricken way."

Mary popped back on the screen when she thought it was an opportune moment to kick Zack while he was down. "That was in the top hundred bestseller list for a month when it came out," she said. "All of Sally Sampson's novels have done similarly."

Zack turned around to face the fox. "But they're not even, archaeology isn't--"

"Nobody wants to read a boring academic essay," the vixen said. "I just added a little touch of intensity. A bit of embellishment, and my boring journeys through absolutely safe tombs are suddenly best-selling novels."

Zack looked back at Mary and shook his head. "That's...fricken genius, honestly."

"It pays the bills," Sally said.

The dragon sat down in the pilot's seat, draped his wings over the chair, and sighed. "Okay," he said, "I'm done talking with you. Give me the coordinates and take a seat in the back, thanks."

The vixen never lost her smirk while she gave him the planet's location.

---

About half an hour later, Zack emerged from the cockpit to find Sally rummaging through Anthony's boxes, his mate telling her some stories about each object. "Yo," he said, "we're about to enter orbit."

The fox looked up and gestured at the boxes. "You should sell some of this Earth stuff." She picked up the grocery store tabloid with Justin Bieber on it and pointed a claw over it. "Look at this ridiculous magazine cover! People would pay to make fun of this crap!"

"I wish," the dragon replied. "You know intergalactic law gives class three worlds copyright protections. I'd be in trouble in two hundred years once they get in space."

Sally put the magazine back in the box. "Psh, I guess. You could sneak around it by making it an academic study of human artifacts, though."

"Eh," the dragon said, tapping his chin. "Maybe. Never thought of doing that."

"That's why you're flying this hunk of scrap," Sally said mockingly.

"Again, it's my home, you can stop making fun of it, thanks."

Anthony stayed on the couch near the box and wisely stayed out of the conversation.

Mary interrupted them in his stead. "Hey, you silly organics should come into the cockpit."

Zack went in. Sally went in after, and Anthony followed them after.

"Stealth's on?" the dragon asked, whistling in amazement.

"Yes," Mary replied. "Their satellites are powered on, but, you know."

"These are the right coordinates?" the dragon asked.

"Confirmed," the AI replied.

Sally leaned over the console and scanned the planet through the windshield. "Well, Naeridia," Sally said, "what have you done to yourself?"

Anthony peered between the two Alorkinoids and had traveled to enough planets by now to instantly notice what was wrong.

They were on the dark side of the planet. There were no lights.

"Huh," the man said, "who turned out the lights?"

"Good question," Sally said. She tilted her muzzle slightly towards Zack. "Shall we find out?"

The dragon knew the answer to that question before she asked it, his intense curiosity already pumping a need to learn the moment he saw the dark world. "You bet your tail we shall," he said, and then he plopped into the driver's seat and started maneuvering the ship down. "Any signals? Emergency beacons?"

Mary disappeared from the screen, replaced with a crude digital map of the planet. "I'm picking up only one repeating signal from the planet. Strong enough that even I can track it with my old as hell sensors. The location's on the map."

"Pfft," the dragon huffed, "you're always complaining about something."

Sally stared at the map and nodded. "Near the capital of their unified nations," she said.

"Radiation levels?" Anthony asked since the first thing that came to his mind was nuclear holocaust.

"Nothing significant," Mary said.

"A very human outlook," Sally said.

"How much detail have you been writing?" Anthony asked, a bit curious about how much Sally knew about him.

"Nothing personal," Zack said, looking back at his mate. "Especially none of that kind of stuff. Are you okay with going down to the surface?"

"I said I'd go to the end of the universe with you," the man said. "I meant it."

Zack smiled, got up from the pilot's seat really quickly, and gave him a kiss. "I love you, hon."

The human savored the quick moment of intimacy before they went down. "Mhmm..."

Sally grabbed something else from her purse and tried to sneak a photo, but Zack was too swift for her.

After a quick visual scan of the city the beacon was coming from, they found nothing but empty streets and abandoned buildings. It'd appeared as if everyone had vanished, and the ship's admittedly janky sensors didn't detect any sapient life close to the city, only a bunch of plain life like birds and insects.

They landed near what Anthony believed was the equivalent of the White House. There was a field of grass, green like it was supposed to be, a huge building where top government stuff supposedly happened, and several buildings dotted their periphery.

Zack and Sally hopped out first, followed by Anthony. Zack had switched his pants for a pair of cargo shorts, but Sally had on something the human would've considered was rather inappropriate for the situation--she was wearing a knee-long skirt cut for her bushy tail to wag freely, and her top was like those skimpy black leather suits a woman might wear to a rave, not to an expedition to a dead world. She carried her purse with her, the strap just about as thick as her bra's, which, the man noticed, didn't have six sections. Evidently, her Alorkin DNA had decided to give her two breasts instead of six, or maybe space foxes didn't have six to begin with.

Anyway, the first thing the two sociologists did when they stepped off the ship was bust out their scanners and point them all around the vicinity.

"The signal's coming from the big one in front of us," Zack said.

Sally nodded and started moving towards it. "I can't believe you fly around in that piece of junk but carry around a type-A UID that's worth ten grand in your pocket."

"It was a good thing I was a curious student in primary school," the dragon said.

"Seriously, omniphasic scanning, acoustic waveform generator, information beamed directly to your ocular implants, it's a fucking dream." She waved the box which looked like a thick cell phone and took hold of the pen-like tool which was attached to it via a coiled cord. "Look at this. I have to use a screen! A damn screen to read the information! How are you so rich and poor at the same time?"

Zack kept sorting through the readings overlayed on his eyes while they walked. "I mean it. Parents thought I'd be a scientist, so they bought me a ten thousand dollar top of the line UID. Pennies to them, really. Don't even start about my ship's AI."

"Okay," she said. "I won't. What I will do, however, is point out the big black stone slab with writing all over it in front of the building over there."

Anthony had to snap his mind back when he heard the fox say "big black" and tried to focus on the stone, but as they approached, it was clear that the writing inscribed upon the glossy rock was not in English. "Can we read that?" he asked.

"Oh," Sally said, "I have their language pack pre-installed. Sending upload request now."

"Got it," Zack said.

Inside Anthony's head, he heard a new voice. Sally Sampson is requesting to upload a new language pack.

"Uhh," the man said, "someone's telling me I've received an upload request, is it my translator thingy?"

"Yeah," Zack said. "Just think that you accept."

"Err, okay." Anthony thought the words 'I accept,' and then the male voice spoke again. Language pack downloaded and installed successfully.

"Did you get it?" Sally asked.

The human nodded. "Huh, that was new."

Zack chuckled. "I get an annoying pop-up in my HUD too. Come on, then, let's see what the tablet says."

They went up to the black monolith and read the text.

Sally finished reading it first. "Cryptic," she said.

"A marker of their attempt to obtain immortality, a warning to future races not to pursue what they did," Zack said, interpreting one of the lines. "So they must have biologically screwed something up."

"It says the library is their entire history," Anthony said. "I assume that's the big one?"

"Well," Sally said, raising her boxy UID again, "it's where the beacon is coming from, so I presume so."

They moved to the entrance directly behind the towering stone. There was a grand staircase of white fanning towards a pair of large golden gates, but whatever glamour there was in the metallic shine had long tarnished over the years.

Parts of the stairs crumbled into dust as they walked over the steps. Zack lagged behind and tried to pinpoint the location of an anomalous life form reading somewhere towards their northwest, but the reading kept flickering in and out like a fake echo. He shrugged it off once they were on top of the steps. They stopped before the doors and tried to push them open, but they wouldn't budge.

Sally scanned it and gestured at her scientific companion. "It's locked. Entirely mechanical, you open it, your UID does nuts and screws."

"Yeah, okay." Zack pointed his silver tube around the door, the UID connecting to his optical implants and overlaying a schematic view of the mechanical linkages inside it. His eyes flicked around to ascertain the critical nuts and bolts he needed to undo to break the locks keeping it shut.

It took a minute, but he'd got the door open without needing anything more than a top model of a universal information scanner equipped with what was in layman's terms a ranged screwdriver, and the trio stepped into building.

The entryway was large and narrowed into an aisleway straight through the building as far as the eye could see. Shelves lined the building, great towering frames filled to the brim with books, old fashioned printed texts. It was an awesome sight, truly, but it was also creepy to be witness to all that was left of an entire species.

Anthony shut the gate behind them on instinct, the skin on his back starting to crawl.

They moved towards an open golden dome embedded in the floor where the aisle started to narrow, accompanied by no sound but that of their own making.

"This is eerie," Anthony said. "Total silence in the library."

"Biological disaster doesn't occur overnight," Sally said as they walked. "This probably means my FTL scanner was operating on battery power only for a few years already."

Zack and Anthony let their loud echoing footsteps be their reply.

Sally pointed her cheaper UID's probe at the dome and analyzed her screen. "Touch-activated interface," she said, and then she stepped up to give the gold surface a good poke.

A blue-filtered image of some humanoid alien with an extra set of arms filled the open part of the dome and looked at some arbitrary point between the three visitors.

"Welcome to the Last Library of Naeridia," it said. "If you are watching this pre-recorded message, then it is presumed that you are the next species to evolve and become sapient and have uncovered what remains of an entire civilization that existed before yours. Our latest scientific theories also suggest the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation, and if you are not of this world, then we also extend our welcome."

Sally glared at the hologram. "Jeez, what the hell happened here in just a few years? No destruction, just everyone's gone."

The hologram continued its message. "I am the Librarian. Please state simple requests for information, and I will try my best to answer. Note that I am not a true artificial intelligence and cannot interpret questions or information. Here in the Last Library, you will find all texts and information that was able to be saved from Naeridian culture. In case of complete digital storage failure, every printed text recovered and stored here has been treated and should last at least one hundred thousand years."

Sally frowned and pointed at the hologram. "So basically everyone died and they did their best to preserve what they could. How?"

"Warning, power reserves low. Solar panels sustaining, but not charging. Naeridian scientists were working on genetic engineering and sought a way to immortality. Their research eventually culminated into a microbe which could restore DNA segments and prevent a significant cause of aging. Half a decade later, after most of the population had happily injected the microbe into their bodies, it mutated and started rapidly causing DNA malformations. Scientists attempted to form an antibody, but the microbe mutated again and became an airborne infection before they could stop it."

"Ah," Sally said, shaking her head. "They tried to seek biological perfection before figuring out how to travel faster than light. Almost always ends up badly."

"Most of the population of Naeridia was killed by the DNA malformations. Others--data read error. This Library is the last thing the people of Naeridia could build to preserve their history."

"Most," the dragon asked, "what about the others?"

"Data read error," the hologram said.

"So that's that, then." Sally's head swiveled around the massive shelves. "They're all dead."

The hologram seemed to respond and flickered again to face another direction. "Not all. The builders of the Library were able to survive by building the structure on top of the world's most secure underground nuclear bunker. The Library has stood for approximately four years, so the builders should still be alive."

Sally's eyes tracked the direction the hologram was staring, and her tail wagged enthusiastically. "Zack, oh my gosh, we need to find them. This could be a huge sociological find!"

"Err," Zack said, hesitating, "I was only supposed to drive you here." Even he had to admit he was starting to get the willies.

She gave the dragon a look, the kind of look someone gives to someone who's known them for a while and knows when there's something they can't deny they want.

Zack responded with the face of an entrepreneur. "If you write a book about this, I want twenty percent of the royalties."

The fox narrowed her eyes at him. "Ten."

"Deal," the dragon said. He knew her enough to know that further haggling would only lead to him losing more.

"Wait," Anthony said. "Is the microbe virus thing still active? Aren't we in danger of being infected?"

Zack shook his head. "No, our DNA is stasis locked. It can't change, it can't mutate, it can't lose telomeres. It's part of the age freezing process."

"Oh. Okay."

They barely took a few steps before the hologram started up again. "Warning. Library perimeter has been breached. Duration, three years, ten months. Main gates secure. Western wall feedback response failure. Security Lock to Level One underground facility secure."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Zack and Sally said in near unison.

"No further data available," the hologram said.

Zack faced the hologram. "How'd the builders of the library keep themselves from being infected?"

The hologram flickered a few times before responding. "The Library was constructed from the Presidentium, the most secure surface structure in the world. It was already air-sealed from the microbe and guarded against other types of biological agents, and the walls were electrified--data read error--survivors air-lifted all the texts they could from all corners of the world."

Zack took in the information and pointed his UID towards the west. "Fresh air is flowing in from the west," he said.

"The wall collapsed, then," Sally said. "I don't detect any artificial microbes, though."

The dragon nodded. "It should be safe for the survivors to come out."

"Right," she said, "let's find 'em."

Anthony felt like his stomach was tying itself into a knot, but he followed to two without complaining.

They walked down the narrowing main aisle, towers and towers of bookshelves closing them in. Light filtered in from the rooftop windows, providing a comforting glow that the dim overhead motion-sensor lights could not emulate.

Zack and Sally kept on sorting through various scan settings as they walked through what remained of the history and culture of an entire race, the two scrolling through random information while Anthony simply took in the monument visually, his mind having difficulty even fathoming how an entire species could be wiped out from the face of a world so quickly.

"Hang on," Zack said, pausing their pace. "I'm getting something, a significant life form maybe, no, wait, ah, it's gone, never mind."

Sally pointed her probe in the same direction as the dragon's UID and shook her head. "False positive. I got nothing. Yours has a better range, though."

"The ping came from about four miles west," Zack said. "It was probably just a random glitch, still happens with the best scanners."

The fox pointed down the main aisleway. "Well come on then, I'm reading a metal door down at the end, about one mile."

Something was increasingly bothering Anthony about the whole situation, but he shrugged it off and followed the two aliens who were frolicking through the library like two kids in a candy store.

When they were within sprinting distance of a gleaming metal piece mounted by a wall, Zack and Sally both dashed towards it.

"Security door," the fox said.

"Dual-layered heavy steel," the dragon added, and then he started scanning. "I'm looking at the design now."

"It's digitally secured," she said.

Zack's eyes looked all over the wide solid steel molded in the wall. He leaned over and dug his finger claw into part of the library's wallpaper. He pulled it up, revealing a small keypad. "Yeah, password protected. All it does is actuate the locking and release mechanism, though, nothing too fancy."

Anthony hadn't been distracted by the door and saw something glaringly obvious, something that he considered pretty damn freaky. "Hey guys," he said, "you should probably look over here."

Zack turned his head over first. "Oh, shit, what the heck happened here?"

Sally's reaction followed. "A tornado, maybe?"

Shelves had collapsed, and books were piled on top of each other as far as the eye could see.

The dragon gave the shelves another scan. "Could be," he said. "Western direction, probably coincides with the broken wall."

Sally did the same and narrowed her eyes. "There's something else. Organic matter, not the paper, mind you."

Zack let out a loud gasp as his UID fed him more info. "Oh crap. I'm getting the life sign again. One and a half mile, coming from the west. It's not a false reading this time, holding steady, coming at about twenty miles per hour!"

Anthony instinctively took a step back. "A predator?"

"Possibly," Sally said. "If it's the thing that knocked these shelves apart, then I don't want to be here when it gets here. Four minutes, then?"

"Yeah," Zack said, "we can't make it to the ship in time."

"Through the door, then," Sally said. "Can you open it?"

The dragon ran up to the keypad and started looking at its internal parts. "If I emit a low level localized electromagnetic pulse from my UID, I can trigger the mechanism that unlocks and opens the door."

Sally shoved her boxy UID into her purse and jolted to the other side of the door. "So do it!"

Zack waved the silver tubular tool around the vicinity of the keypad. "I'm on it, hang on! If I send the pulse to the wrong place, I could fry the whole circuit!"

Anthony picked up a large wooden board and moved in front of the door as if it were a weapon, although he was sure it wouldn't be much protection if the thing that had broken into the library had demolished a whole section of shelves.

A heart-pounding minute passed while Zack analyzed the door lock.

"Careful," he said, "I think this should be the correct switch."

Sally pulled out another object from her purse, something black and a bit like a taser. Anthony thought it looked like a better weapon than what he was currently holding. "You think?" she asked.

The sound of something crashing echoed throughout the high ceilings of the library.

"Okay," Zack said. "Maybe not. These wires are criss-crossing every which way. They're not very organized, hang on, I'm trying to sort them out in my HUD."

The crashes became louder and louder, the sounds echoing back and forth and making them sound more intense than they really were. The racketing noise slinked closer and closer until Anthony could even discern the difference between shelves getting knocked over and the relatively gentler thud of books slamming the floor.

"Any second now would be great," the fox said.

Anthony glanced at his mate. "I know you can do it, Zack."

The dragon didn't want to let his love down. He didn't want to have led him to whatever fate awaited if the creature ramming its way through the library wasn't friendly. He concentrated and focused on finding the trigger wire from the keypad. He traced the wiring's paths, the UID in conjunction with his ocular implants attempting to color the bundles of electrical wires in where his eyes went over.

Once he was sure of the right wire, he sent it a jolt, and the UID's light flashed a quick light of yellow. It was the equivalent of the keypad itself sending an opening signal if he'd known the code and the door slid open, the two steel plates sliding diagonally apart.

A dark room awaited them, but they sprinted in without a care.

"Fuck," Zack shouted, still staring at the wiring through the walls. "Now I need to trace the right wire to close the thing!"

Anthony could see the books falling off of the shelves near the central aisle now like they were feathers on a bird. Sally was on the edge of his vision fiddling with the pad on their side of the door.

And then he saw the thing. He saw it and immediately wished he could unsee it. It rushed at the opened way, and he couldn't even muster a scream. He stood frozen, the wooden board becoming heavy in his hands.

"We're dead," Anthony said bluntly.

The words made Zack's eyes move faster, but then he heard the doors move without any input from him.

Anthony still felt like his heart wasn't beating until the two plates had fully shut and removed the creature from his sight. They still missed a few beats from the metallic clanging, the monster he saw trying to get past the steel security door.

It was pitch black, and the banging kept everyone quiet. Zack and Sally moved slowly towards the frightened human, their noses guiding them in the darkness. The man was shivering until he felt those warm wings of his mate fold around him, the dragon's embrace making even the bangs against the steel fade into a fleeting echo.

"It's okay," the dragon's soothing voice said. "We're safe now. We're lucky the door apparently shuts itself."

Sally's voice penetrated through the darkness. "I closed it. It doesn't need a code to shut from this side, genius."

"Oh. Thanks for the save, then."

The sound of Sally's UID responded. "Abnormally long DNA strands. Neural network is a mess. That's no natural predator. I'm thinking some of the population didn't die from the microbe."

"I-it had limbs sticking out all over it," Anthony stammered out. "L-like someone just stuck a bunch of bodies into one mass and blended it into something horrible."

"It was still fast though," Sally said, "damn fast."

"But not unheard of," Zack said, keeping his wing curled. "Uncontrollable mutation doesn't always lead to death."

The clanging stopped.

A feral, spine chilling howl reverberated through the metal, and then there was silence.

Anthony let out a sigh of relief, his exposed arm clutching his mate's soft wing membrane. "S-so what now?" he said.

Sally started rummaging through her purse, feeling for her personal phone in the blackness. "We call for help, easy. Zacky, be a dear and find a light switch for me?"

The dragon used his arm on the opposite of Anthony's side to point around the room, looking at the electrical wiring to track down any lights that might be inside. The UID pierced the darkness and showed him plenty of wires leading to ceiling lamps, and he traced them down to where they bundled up on the wall adjacent to the door. He gently encouraged his mate to move with him towards the wall, and then he tapped his nail-claws around the area until he found a few switches. He flicked them all up at once, flooding the room with dim but useable light.

Anthony wished his lover's wings had covered his eyes, too. "Oh my god."

Sally stopped fishing through her purse and looked for just a second before she went back to fumbling for her UID.

Zack saw for only a second before he turned away. He covered Anthony with both wings and held his mate tightly. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I shouldn't have brought you here, I shouldn't have gone to an empty unknown planet like this."

"Zack, no, don't say that." The man tried to swivel his head as far as possible to face his mate. "This is the sort of stuff you love to do. I wouldn't be a good husband if I kept you from doing stuff you loved."

The dragon didn't know what to say. "I--I--"

"We'll get out of this," Anthony said.

Zack settled with, "I love you."

Sally interrupted them. "The severed bones have fractures, they were attacked. Years ago, based off of these readings from the dried blood. There's also that same unidentified organic fluid all around the place."

"I'll look," the dragon said. "Turn around love, and don't turn around until I'm back."

"Yes," Anthony said, and then he felt the comparatively chilling air attack him as his mate's wings slid off of his skin.

"Oh jeez," Zack said, trying not to look too hard at what the light revealed. "That's horrific."

Bones were littered everywhere along the opposing wall. Shredded bits of clothing lay everywhere and there were plenty of dark red splotches painting the floor and the wall. A few of the dead hadn't been torn completely apart, and their heavily rotted flesh acted as glue to keep their skeletal structure mostly intact. There were a few rifles scattered around the organic remains, but they were all crushed and broken beyond hope of repair.

"There's a couple of dead worms and bugs in here too," Sally said after she'd allowed the dragon to think a bit.

"But this is a nuclear bunker," Zack said. "Nothing should be able to get in."

"You're starting to take on your mate's culture," Sally said. "Naeridians weren't humans. This wasn't designed to withstand a nuclear attack and keep things out indefinitely. I'm pretty sure it was built in case of a problem with a nearby nuclear reactor."

Zack nodded and watched as the vixen tracked something along her scanner. "The door was locked," he said. "That means we're--"

"Not safe, I know." Sally pointed her probe along the path of the dead worms and organic fluids until she reached a half-open smaller enclosed space in the corner of the room. "Emergency elevator shaft. Looks like the metal enclosure here is weaker, thinner. I think the breach happened from up there."

Zack started scanning again too. "Can we use it and get out before the things figure out how to get back in?"

"No," she said. "Looks like it got damaged beyond our ability to repair."

"We're trapped," Anthony said weakly, but both of the aliens had ears sensitive enough to hear him clearly.

Zack snapped his fingers. "No, wait, yes, being trapped and safe is good, we need that. The hologram in the library said that the level one lock was secure, implying there's more levels to the bunker. We need to get down."

"That's as good a plan as any," Sally said. "Let's move. I'll try and call for help."

The dragon nodded, went back to Anthony, wrapped a wing around him, and guided him towards the normal door on the opposite side of the secured metal doors so they could go deeper into the bunker. "We'll get out of this," he said.

"I'm scared," Anthony replied.

"I know. I am too."

They moved through the bunker, careful not to disturb the withering corpses lining the halls. The sounds of their footsteps were accompanied by the gentle buzzing of Zack's UID, the device performing a spherical long-range scan to generate a map of the underground facility for the dragon's display. The lights did not turn on automatically as they proceeded, but the three had silently agreed to just use the soft lights emitted from Zack's information gathering tool.

Sally tried to use her phone, but she didn't have any signal under the surface on this relatively unknown planet. "Do you have a phone?" she asked.

"No," Zack replied. "I just use my ship and the UniNet for everything. It's free."

"But there's no UniNet connection in this entire star system."

"Yes, I've already thought about that."

"What're we gonna do, then?"

"I've turned on my emergency beacon on my UID. My ship's AI can detect it and get help."

"But she doesn't know how much trouble we're in, does she?"

"Ugh, no, she'll just hover over the building and try and look for us. She'll get help probably after a few hours have passed, but, umm, it might be too late for us."

"Hang on," she said, "let me look for the ad-hoc setting on my phone. I can maybe reach her if your radio transceiver is working."

"It's old enough tech that it probably is," Zack said.

She nodded and started scrolling through the more obscure menus on her personal phone.

After a few wrong turns into a couple of supply storage rooms, they finally reached the security gate to the second level of the bunker.

Zack gave it a quick scan and shook his head grimly. "This is more advanced. Much more advanced. I can't make heads or tails of the security system. The metal is a titanium mix though, so it must be safe inside."

Anthony saw something familiar off the side of the gate and weaved himself out of his mate's wing. "It's a computer," he said. "It's got a keyboard, mouse, and everything like on Earth."

"Okay," Sally said, "it's going to be a problem then, unless you secretly minored in computer science or electrical engineering like a good momma's boy."

Zack shook his head regretfully.

Evidently, the computer had been in sleep mode since it booted up immediately after Anthony hit a key.

The screen displayed a few things, but at the very center was the key problem.

Status: Lockdown

Anthony took the mouse and started clicking around the screen, looking for any menu options that could assist.

A familiar female voice not belonging to Sally brought everyone a wave of relief. "What's going on?" Mary said over the fox's phone. "I've got your distress beacon, but you seem to be underground or something."

Zack gestured at his friend to give him the phone. "Mary! We've got a problem. Some mutant creature is hunting us and--"

The cloak of relief was ripped apart by something echoing down the empty halls.

"Oh my gosh," the dragon said, "it's too late, it found the way in."

Mary's voice became a bit more hectic. "What? What? What can I do?"

Anthony flicked through a few more menus and sprang up. "It needs a retinal scan and a fingerprint scan to open," he said. "Mary, there's a computer locking a door we need to get through. It says that its wireless network is active, can you detect it?"

"No," the AI said. "Wait, maybe. Let me move the ship closer."

The noises in the halls came ever closer.

Zack pointed his UID and pinpointed the location of the creature on his overlayed map. "Mary! It's really fricken close!"

"I've got a connection," she said. "Primitive, slow, but standby."

Thumps. Louder and louder. It was running up the hall, directly towards them.

Zack took his mate and held him against the titanium door, his wings wrapped protectively around him and his back shielding the human for as long as he could.

Its heavy steps were maybe a car length away when they heard an electrical zapping sound.

"Phew," Sally said, "we're okay for now."

Zack unwrapped his mate and turned around. "Huh?"

The vixen was holding the black object she was carrying earlier. "Neural disruptor," she said. "Temporarily interferes with voluntary brain signals."

"A stun gun," Anthony said.

She smiled warmly at him. "In layman's terms. It's only for self-defense though, only got a few charges."

Zack peered at the still body of the monstrous mutant. "I need one of those," he said.

"I'm sure you could convince your parents after this little excursion," Sally said. "Bleh, that thing is revolting to look at."

Another triad of chilling waves was simultaneously sent down their spines. More clattering echoed through the silent halls.

Zack flicked his UID around. "There's more of them!"

The fox rearmed her disruptor. "How many?"

The dragon's body seemed to surrender into despair. "A lot."

Mary's angelic voice popped up again, bringing a glimmer of hope. "I've got a schematic of the compound," she said. "What door are you guys blocked at?"

"Level two," Anthony shouted.

"Standby," the AI said. "The firewall is easy to fry, I just don't have a good enough connection to break it down quickly."

"How long?" Zack yelled.

"Standby."

"We're gonna die if we keep standing by!" Zack screamed.

"Shut up," Mary said, "rushing me is not going to work."

Clitter clatter clang CLANG CLANG!

Two more of the flesh creatures rushed down the hall at them, and Sally responded by firing two balls of blue electricity from her stun weapon. Her aim was true, and the multi-limbed monsters were paralyzed.

Another pair came, another two shots fired. One more, another shot.

Three more appeared at the edge of their vision. No more shots. "I'm out of charges!" Sally shouted.

A loud grinding noise came from behind them. All three looked at the door.

It opened.

They ran through and turned around to see the creatures flying down the hall towards them.

"Close it, close it, close it!" Zack hollered into the phone.

The heavy gate slid shut, the creatures behind slamming something-first into it.

"You guys okay?" Mary asked.

"Yeah," Zack huffed. "Yeah, we're okay."

"No we're not," Sally said.

"It's still pitch black," Anthony said.

"Very astute of you," the vixen said. "Living people don't usually live in utter darkness now, do they?"

Zack lit up his UID and nodded. "We're still not out of this coffin yet. Mary, stay with us, we might need you again, and I'd rather you be here helping us than bringing a rescue team while we're being torn limb from limb."

"You only have one more chance to find a safe place," the AI said matter-of-factly. "The third sealed level is located in the lowest part of the second level. It's apparently designed to only have enough supplies and room for one person, presumably the President, and it has the thickest shell protecting it.

"Let's not tarry," Sally said.

Zack screened for the quickest path down to the last level. They moved briskly but quietly, the occasional crunch of bones the only other accompanying sound.

Halfway down, Sally's scanner found something curious on the floor. She picked it up and toyed with it in the dark until she accidentally activated the hologram device.

An Alorkinoid girl with six limbs, much like the Librarian, appeared over the device. Anthony looked at it and thought she looked much like a fourteen year old human.

"Hi there mister journal," she said. "Sis thinks I'm crazy for making a diary down here, but there's nothing else to do. I'm the youngest person down here, and all the soldiers are going around doing stuff with the supplies and the computers, so I really have nobody to talk to except for you."

"Fascinating," Sally said. "The last journal of Naeridia."

"May I see it?" Anthony asked. The little girl helped him calm his nerves, and he scrolled through a bunch of entries while they followed Zack down the facility. They were mostly typical diary entries; plenty of remarks about cute soldiers, how annoyed she was at her mom, how bland the canned food was, and so on.

The last few, however, made his neck crawl.

The things, the mutant things made it through the base. The soldiers tried to shoot them, but their rifles seemed to attract more and more of them. They killed the soldiers while we escaped to the second layer of shelter...

After wading through the dark with the addition of a little girl's voice following them, they made it to the very bottom of the bunker. Zack turned on the lights and saw a few more mangled skeletons around the area, but in the middle of the floor was a large grey box about three times the size of his ship. It was anchored slightly above the floor by several large beams welded at every corner. He scanned it with his UID and relaxed.

"There's no breach," he said. "Ventilation via microscopic holes, so no structural weaknesses. Primitive regenerative metal too, powered by the support beams."

No, no, I'm afraid, mister journal. Daddy says the things can dig through the ground like gophers. They're attacking from the bottom of the base. He says the base was built to protect against nuclear disaster, and the underside of the base isn't well protected, the building much less thick than on the topside. They keep on banging on the floor from beneath us...

Anthony didn't want to hear anymore, but now they knew how the second level had been breached. Zack and Sally started scanning the floor, and it didn't take them long to find the gap, long filled in with soil, which the monsters had dug through.

"Acidic fluid," Sally said. "Evidently they mutate quickly."

"It wouldn't have worked on the regenerative metal on the box," Zack said, "that's why it's still in one piece."

"Good," the fox said. "So we just need to get in there."

"Naeridia's Ark," Anthony muttered.

"Mary," Zack said to the phone, "how you doing on the door?"

"Poorly," the AI replied. "Someone tried to hook up all the computers in the bunker with the library's wireless network, but there's only one wire connected all the way down there. The bandwidth is crap, and I'm trying to crack the last security lock with only one pipeline available."

"Shelves," Sally said. "Desks. We need to cover up the hole with anything we can find, buy some time."

A clattering sound started bouncing through the metallic walls.

"Good idea," Zack said, "Let's go find some stuff."

"Wait," Mary's voice called out. "Hand the phone over to Anthony, he can help me hack the last gate."

Anthony reluctantly took the phone in his free hand, the other still holding the holo-journal. "Me?"

"Yes," the AI said. "The retinal and fingerprint scan generates a passcode that unlocks the door. Do you remember when I taught you the Fibbonucca Method?"

"Uhh, yeah, it was one of the easier password cracking algorithms to figure out."

"Okay, good, it's the technique I used to crack the second level's security, but the connection is not good enough this time, and I need you to crack it directly from the computer itself. I need you to help me code the cracker. It's seriously faster for me to direct you than to work through this awful connection."

"Understood," Anthony said, the task a welcome distraction. He went around the grey box and found the computer terminal near the entrance into the last protective shell. He set the phone and journal down, accidentally triggering the latter.

They want me to go into the final section, not daddy. But he's the President! They won't listen to me. They say I'm the youngest, I should go in and carry on the legacy of our world as long as possible. But I don't want to be alone...

The hologram wavered, and then the image switched to another male Naeridian. It seemed to have paused and stayed still.

Anthony ignored it and went to work, following Mary's instructions. She was happy to find the man capable of typing up most of the code himself--he'd been a quick learner over the past year, and all she had to do was explain the difference in the syntax. She tried to assist, but with her connection she was barely able to remote-type at five words per minute so she just corrected the little bits of errors the human left behind.

Meanwhile, Zack had flipped over a heavy desk and covered the hole in the floor. Sally dragged down a bunch of cabinets, and they kept stacking tables and chairs and shelves over the desk to block the gap as much as possible.

The tapping noises against the metal walls never ceased, and they slowly made their way towards the hole in the floor. Anthony typed as quickly as he could, but the keyboard was designed in an odd way, probably made for more hands, and he had to hunt-and-peck most of the letters.

He worked faster when the clittering noises became louder than his keystrokes and made more errors, but Mary was able to keep up.

And then the pile of objects started shaking. Something was crashing upon the desk, trying to force all the stuff off of the hole.

Zack and Sally moved away and stood by Anthony, their legs ready to sprint into the last chamber as soon as the door was opened.

A metal cabinet tumbled off the stack, causing a loud crashing echo to bounce around the walls. "Okay," Mary said, her voice a soothing force repelling the fear caused by the echoes. "The code is done. Compile and run it. Open the command window, hold control, function, c, and w."

Anthony struggled to reach all four keys across the segregated keyboard. "Uhh, I can't reach all of them."

Sally reached her paws over to help. "I got it, deary."

A black DOS-like screen popped up, awaiting input.

"I think I've burned the wire out," Mary said. "Type the compile command exactly as I say, I won't be able to auto-correct."

The human complied with her direction while the clattering pile of objects threatened to distract him at every opportunity.

"Okay," Anthony said. "It says compilation successful, no errors."

Mary emulated a forced 'phew,' but it was overpowered by the clamoring. "Now execute the code like I say."

Anthony nodded, typed out a line precisely as instructed, and hit enter.

Ellipses appeared on the screen, three dots cycling over and over.

"Well?" Sally said, looking over the human's shoulder.

"It's sorting out the passcode," Anthony said.

Zack tapped both of their arms to get their attention. "We better grab one of those broken rifles or something, at least something to hit with."

The fox narrowed her eyes at him. "You have seen them, haven't you? I can't figure where their heads are, let alone their weak points. But they clearly have the strength to tear off limbs, so having a stick isn't really going to do much good."

Zack's shoulders sagged a bit, acknowledging the hopelessness of the situation, but then he used his hands to comfort his mate's shoulders. "If only I were big and strong like a full dragon, I, ugh, not even. If we get out of this mess, I'm buying us some stun guns."

"Neural disruptors," Sally interjected, trying to humor them.

Bam!

A loud cacophony of scattering objects blared through the area, causing even Zack to tighten the hold he had on his mate's shoulders.

A series of letters and numbers started appearing on the screen.

"It's generating the passcode," Anthony said. He wanted to back away from the computer into his lover's embrace, but there would be plenty of time in the future for that. "There will be time," he uttered harshly.

The clinks and clangs transformed into a low metallic grinding sound. The grinding moaned around the enclosed space like a vengeful spirit, and then it was utterly replaced by a spine-rattling howl. It was enough to make Anthony's faith in the future waver.

A pair of fuzzy arms wrapped around the two lovers. "You guys stay here," Sally said. "I'll go buy you some time, keep the things distracted. Get the door open, I'll try and catch up."

Zack wanted to stop her, but he wouldn't let go of his mate. "Wait!" he called, but she had already swished away with the agility of a fox.

"It's done," Anthony said.

Zack wanted to go after her, but his obligation to his mate was greater. "But the door's not opening!"

"That's because he needs to put the passcode somewhere, dummy." Mary spared no further time with the dragon and told Anthony where to input the code to override the security lock. Unfortunately, the human needed to copy the passcode by hand, and he knew Sally was in greater danger every extra second he took.

But she was successful and kept the monsters from attacking them. Anthony was able to punch the code in and open the door, and even Mary was audibly relieved. He grabbed the phone and holo-journal, but was reluctant to enter the sanctuary without waiting.

Zack gently shoved his companion through the last door and called out for his school friend. Angry howls and roars replied.

"How do I close it?" Anthony asked into the phone.

"The schematic says there's a button on the inside to close it," Mary replied.

The man looked around the interior wall, not noticing that it was actually lit, and he would've slapped himself in the head if it were a less serious situation. "Oh," he said, "the big red one."

"Yes," the AI responded.

"Come on," Anthony said. "Zack, is she coming?"

The dragon moved into the box and grabbed a few cans off of the shelves the human hadn't noticed were there. "Hang on," he said, "don't press that button!"

Outside, Sally was running literally for her life. The fox narrowly side-stepped a spittle of acid, and then she'd nearly gotten her tail grabbed by another one of the creature's many hand-like claw things.

Once she was in earshot, the dragon yelled at her to duck. She dove onto all fours instead, running with all the speed her canine half could provide. She was vaguely aware of some things flying over her head, but she didn't bother wasting time looking up--the only important thing was the finish line.

Before her tail had even crossed the edge of the box, Anthony slammed on the red button.

Zack tossed another can, but it had bounced off the closing doors and rebounded back into the security room. One of the monster's limbs tried to reach through the shutting gap, but the metal gate ended up crushing the thing off.

The dragon looked at the arm, which seemed to have fingers and weird protrusions all over it, wiggle a bit before dying. He crushed it with his footpaws for good measure.

Sally had come to a stop somewhere further inside the space. It was almost like a mini version of the library, except the shelves were lined with canned goods and water instead of books. She stood up, straightened out her skirt, and fumbled for her purse. "Well," she said, "that went rather well."

"I want to go home," Anthony said.

Zack nodded and fetched the phone out of his hand. "Mary, do be a good girl and fetch some help, will you? Make sure the cops are armed, thank you."

"Oh, of course," the AI replied. "Do be a good boy and don't let the rescue team find you covered in man-seed, will you?"

"Love you too," the dragon said, smiling in spite of the low rumbling noises reverberating through the sanctum.

A new voice was heard. "Who are you?"

All eyes turned to the six-limbed blue-skinned woman standing next to Sally.

"Oh," the fox said, "it's you isn't it? The creator of the last journal of Naeridia!"

The girl started backing away from them. "W-what are you?"

Zack reached into one of the big pockets in his cargo shorts and pulled out a little black square. "She doesn't understand us." He gestured at Anthony to take it. "Here," he said, "you remember this, don't you?"

The human took it and nodded. "Translation chip. Err, you want me to put it on her?"

"Yeah," Zack said. "Sally and I have muzzles. You don't, maybe she won't be as scared of you."

"Okay. Just press it on by her ear, right?"

"Mhmm. And don't worry, I've already scanned the place, we're not carrying any active microbes."

Anthony nodded and walked forward. He remembered how freaked out he was the first time he'd seen the humanoid dragon emerge from his smoking spaceship and moved slowly towards her while Sally backed off. He waved at the woman, a girl who, disregarding her skin color or her extra arms, seemed like she might've just been finishing high school.

The girl flicked her eyes between Anthony and Sally until she finally settled on the human. Specifically, she saw the holo-journal he was still grasping, his hand clutching it and blocking the image without him even realizing it. "Are you here to rescue me?" she stuttered.

"Yes," the man replied. "Don't be afraid, we're here to help."

"I-I don't understand you," she said.

He pointed at himself and spoke slowly while he stepped closer. "An-th-o-ny. Anthony." He pointed at her. "You?"

The girl pointed at herself and understood. "Selena," she said.

Anthony pointed at the chip and then at his ear. "Make you understand. Okay?"

She looked at him quizzically but allowed him to approach. "O-o-kay?"

Anthony reached close to her ear and planted the chip. "Hey, can you understand me now?"

The girl's eyes opened wide. "What? Uhh, yes! What happened? Who, what are you?"

Anthony tried to sort out the best way to explain, but to be honest he'd never thought he'd be the one traveling to other worlds. "We're, uhh, we're explorers. From outer space."

The girl tilted her head slightly. "You mean you're aliens? The good kind, or the bad kind?"

Anthony looked back at the other two arguably more alien-looking aliens, and then he looked back at her with a smile. "More the silly kind, really."

"Oh? Is the outside, you know, up there, safe now?"

"Uhh, not really. I, umm, don't know how to say it, but--"

"Everyone's dead."

"Yeah."

She wrapped one of her pairs of arms around herself. "I'd hoped it wouldn't happen, but I knew it was the most likely scenario." She pointed at the holo-journal. "That looks like mine."

Anthony flipped it over, revealing the male Naeridian again, and handed it to her.

Her face visibly saddened as she took the object with a free hand. "Ah, I, no, I thought I'd gotten over it, but, gah, I'm crying now aren't I?"

"Umm," Anthony said, "I'm not sure what to say."

Tears started streaming down Selena's face. "Heh. I'm meeting aliens, and I'm crying. I-I wonder what he put in the journal?"

Anthony didn't say anything this time.

The girl put the holo-journal in front of her and played the last entry with the male Naeridian.

Well, here I am. The last of us. They're coming to get us. I don't know why they hunt us so fervently, but it is what it is. If someone ever finds this thing and it still works, remember our foolishness and learn from it. Do not be so blind in the search for perfection that you utterly destroy yourself in the process.

The hologram flickered, and there were a few gunshots played.

Ah, there's no escape this time. I only pray my daughter will be safe until the end of her days. Goodbye, darling, I'm going to be with mom now.

Selena dropped the journal and cried, her tears darkening her blue face.

Anthony knew this sadness, this loss. He took her into his arms, slotting his between the gap separating her two pairs, before she could fall to her knees.

"I-I-I can't stop," Selena said. "I knew, I hoped, but I knew, and I thought I'd accepted it."

"I know," Anthony said, holding her softly. "I know, trust me. It hurts, it'll always hurt. Believe me, I know. My mom and dad are gone too, and I've been exploring the universe for over a year, but it still hurts to think about them."

Selena didn't say anything for a while, and Anthony waited patiently for her tears to subside. Finally, she sniffed and looked up. "Only a year? You're a year old?"

Anthony chuckled a bit chokingly, the girl's crying having affected him rather dearly. "Oh, no, I mean I'm sure there are aliens who'd be considered adults after a year, but not me. The grey one back there crashed onto my planet and whisked me away from my dull, boring life. We'd barely even explored our solar system, but here I am amongst the stars."

"Is it beautiful? The universe?"

Anthony didn't need to think for a single moment. "Yes. It's magnificent, wonderful."

Zack scooched over to his classmate's side and chuckled. "Look at that," he said. "Only a little over a year ago, he was in her place. Now look at how he's grown."

Sally purred to acknowledge him. "One who fled from his species, and one who is the last of hers." She turned around and let out a little laugh. "Right, then! This story won't even need any embellishment, I think. It'd probably be an even better seller since I can advertise it as being based off of real events!"

Zack rolled his eyes at the sentiment. He wondered when he'd see something like _The Folly of Naeridia_or some other ridiculous title appear on the UniNet. "Can I at least get twenty-percent?" the dragon asked.

The fox gave him a cheeky grin and leapt towards him to take him into a surprise hug. "Draggy, I'll give you that, and I'll even pay for the rescue team!"

"Gee, thanks," Zack said, neither his arms nor his wings moving in anyway to prolong the hug. "I'll, uhh, you know, I'm hungry, I'm gonna try some of that canned stuff they've got down here."

"You do that," she said. "I'm going to jot down some things on my phone. I've got to make housing arrangements with the university for a long-term study."

"Wait," the dragon said, "you're not going to keep her locked up, are you?"

"Oh, don't give me that look, silly. She'll have a stipend and everything. She can go wherever she wants." She lowered the phone and smiled at her classmate. "I'd prefer it that way too, so I can do something like your research with Anthony. Only, you know, the professors actually approve of me, so I'll get a real hefty grant, err, not that I really need it, mind you."

"She does technically own everything on this planet," Zack said. "Just to remind you."

"Right, but I'm sure she'd be more than happy to leave. Man, oh man, I'm going to spend the next year in the library, at minimum. It'd be good work to sort out everything, maybe divide the work, don't you think?"

The dragon smirked at her. "You're trying to entice me?"

"Yes."

"I'd love to, but no. Not my style, you know?"

"No, I don't suppose it is. Zoom your way across the stars, Zacky. Be safe. I'll send you your royalties when I publish it, don't you worry. I still think you're crazy for so flippantly rejecting your parents, by the way."

Zack looked at Anthony, the man still comforting the last Naeridian. "Sometimes being crazy is just what you need to be happy," he said.

The fox gave him a friendly snort and went back to her phone while they waited for a rescue.