9

9

One of the guards opened the large door they had entered through.

Well, thought Spencer, Maybe these aren’t big doors.  Maybe, these are normal doors to them but not to us! Maybe, this is what cats think when they see a human open a door!

Spencer was so lost in thought about cats and doors that he hardly noticed when he walked straight into Jensen’s back.

“Ow!” Jensen shouted as Spencer accidentally rammed his foot into the back of Jensen’s  calf.  “What the heck Spencer, pay attention.”

“Sorry” Spencer muttered his ears turning red as people turned around to see what was going on.

“Your fine” Jensen replied as he turned around and kept walking forward towards god knows where to get a record scan which is god knows what.

76.3 years later by Spencers standards they arrived at another large building.

Oh great! Spencer thought. Guess what I found everyone?  Another big stupid building made of the same goddamn yellow stone every other friggin’ building in this planet is made of.  I mean come on thousands of  years more advanced than us and all they can come up with are two colors?  I mean seriously they don’t even try to combine them!  Everything is either 100% black or 100% yellow, good god!

One of the guards shoved Spencer through another large set of doors where he joined Colby and Grace.

“What do you think this is?” Colby whispered to Spencer.

“No idea” said Spencer “but it can’t be good, If another person is killed I’m gonna have to rip one of these weird snake guys heads off.”

“Cool it” Colby whispered “If they hear you say that it’ll be the last thing that comes out of your mouth before they vaporise you!”

One of the guards took several pieces of paper the size of business cards into his long metallic fingers and began to hand them out to each person.

Each card contained the words sol followed by a dash and then a number.  Spencer looked down at his card to read SOL-23.  He tucked the card into his back pocket.

The guard who accompanied them from the ship stood on a step in front of a door at the back of the relatively small room.

“Do not lose your card!” The guard shouted “We will call you into this room one at a time!” he motioned to the door behind him.  “If you do anything stupid, well you don’t wanna know what pain it’ll cost you!”

He clicked a button near the door behind him, entered a passcode and then retreated into the room.

One of the guards stood near the door and shouted “SOL-1 you may enter.”

Spencer watched as Lily entered the room and the door shut behind her.  Everyone was standing on end waiting for her to come out.  However, after several minutes the door opened once again but Lily didn’t come out.

“SOL-2 you may enter.”  The guard at the door said.

A boy with short blond hair walked into the room.

Spencer and Colby sat against one of the walls of the room waiting in silence.  Once SOL-19 was called Colby gave Spencer a firm handshake and walked into the room.

After what felt like hours the guards called SOL-35 and Spencer walked towards the room in silence.  He was both relieved, to find out what was going on, but also fearful of what lay inside.

He walked into the room and saw the Adican who had beat him standing in the room's corner.  There was a chair for the Adican as well as what looked like a restraining chair with many wires leading out of it.

“Sit!” The Adican ordered pointing to the restraining chair.

Spencer silently sat down on the chair and allowed the Adican to strap down his head, wrists, and ankles.

The Adican then activated the machine and all the wires glowed green.  The chair began to buzz like an electric chair.  Spencer started screaming, struggling to escape the chair.  He thought he was dead.  In a final attempt to escape he leaned as far back as he could and managed to remove his head from the strap.  He tore off the strap on his right wrist with his teeth and then undid all the buckles with his hand.

Spencer jumped off the chair although the machine still buzzed.  He grabbed some sort of metal tool about the size of a yard stick that was lying on the ground.

The Adican had his back turned operating the machine but turned around when he heard, or didn’t hear, Spencer no longer screaming.  He turned around and Spencer could see the surprise on his face as Spencer swung the pole upward, connecting with the Adican’s chin, and dropped him to the floor unconscious.

Spencer heard a knock from the door at the back of the room “Hurry up in there!  We need to move!”

Spencer didn’t reply.  He walked over the Adican’s body to his desk.  He saw some sort of thumbdrive with ‘classified’ written on the front.  Spencer stuck it in his pocket and was about to walk out but first he noticed one of the blue screwdrivers he had seen Rilfor use the first time they met.  He decided to take that too.

He was about to leave but ran back and hid the unconscious guard in a closet and locked it.

He walked out the back door into the sunlight and was relieved to find everyone else alive.

He walked over to his friends and Jensen gave him a quick friendly hug.

“What took you so long?” Jensen asked

“Nothing” Said Spencer “Tell you later.”

Jensen shrugged and turned back to Lily and started talking to her.  Spencer couldn’t stop thinking about what was going to happen to him though once the Adican woke up.

Before Spencer could ponder however one of the guards stood up on a rock “You will sleep here tonight!” the guard shouted pointing towards several large tents.  “There are five sleeping bags per tent and one day's ration on each!”

The guard walked away with the other guard towards a much nicer tent on the far side of the yard.

Spencer and his friends walked over to the tent farthest from the tent and all chose a sleeping bed, then ate a meager dinner of some kind of soup.  Once everyone was finished Spencer shared what had happened in the testing lab.

“You took him down!”  Colby whisper-shouted.  “Nice!”

“That’s not all” Spencer said, “I found this” he showed his friends the data chip he found.  “We won’t be able to use it though unless we get access to a computer.  And they don’t seem too friendly.”  Spencer then pulled out the other device he took from the table.  “Look at this!  I think it’s a gun like the one Rilfor used once we first met him.”

“Really?” Colby asked “Does it work?”

“I think so,” Spencer replied “But we can’t test it without alerting the guards so we’ll need to just keep it hidden and use it in emergencies.”

“All right,”  Grace said “As cool as that may be I think getting to a computer to see why this is all happening is more important don’t you agree.”

Everyone shrugged in agreement and then turned off the light and crawled into their sleeping bags thinking about what the data chip could hold.