Once Upon a Pet Show (A Redpoint One Romance) (26 page)

Tish rubbed the back of her hand across a
sweaty forehead. "We can't give up."

"It's not a matter of giving up," Zane said,
walking back from the spot he'd tried working on a short distance
away. "This looks like the same material that protects the private
areas of the space station. If the people before us couldn't get
through with military-grade blunt force, it's doubtful we
can."

Vasiliy handed his torch to his bot which
zipped it over to a cart to put away. As if it couldn't wait to get
the torch away from the crazy humans. "Or try a ceiling or floor to
get in? Hope the coating over the area hasn't spread
everywhere?"

Maybe they were crazy. The last thing they
needed was to anger the station at the people who worked to
maintain it. Arthur gestured his bot forward and set the bulky
torch to the floor. Two of Tish's bots came over to help wrestle it
away. To the others along the corridor, he called out, "Stop the
torches!"

With the work stopped, the station moved in to
do what it tried before. The solid walls behind started to
disappear under the utility infrastructure of the station. Arthur
could do nothing to stop it, and he knew it. They all knew it. With
grim, and sometimes teary faces, the crew watched the last small
part get swallowed up.

"Isn't there any way you can simply ask the
station?" Izabela asked. No bot following the woman yet, but she'd
set to moving pipes as if she'd been at it for years, with
miscellaneous bots helping to move freed pipes and fittings out of
her way. A good sign. Hopefully a bot would soon start looking
towards her. Sometimes an attachment was delayed.

But, would she want to stick around after
seeing this?

No, he wasn't giving up. Their connection to
the station had to mean something, or they needed to start asking
why were they even here.

Arthur turned away from the wall. "This is one
of the best crews this station has ever had working with
infrastructure. The strongest connections." A good crew, even
though they were small. One he was proud of. "And now we have you
here. I say we ask again. I will not lose one of our
people."

Zane frowned, stepping back with one foot
before standing firm again. "What are you asking of me?"

"Something you haven't given us since you
arrived here," Arthur said, even while internally cringing at his
bluntness. Also wishing he was the one who could provide it
himself. "Your full connection to this station. Complete and
unfettered, with no reservations. Asking for help."

"What else can he do?" Simon asked. "What can
any of us do that we haven't already done."

Zane shook his head at Arthur, lips pressed
together.

"I would do it myself if I had the reach you
did," Arthur said, not shifting his stare a bit. "Right now I'm
still boss, and I'm giving an order. Call the station."

Voice strained, Zane muttered, "Damn
you."

He might be. They all might be if they failed
at this.

In the quiet of the corridor, Zane stepped
away from the wall and turned towards the small group of waiting
bots. All of them stared at only Zane, and not even to those they
belonged.

Envy sliced through Arthur at the sight of it.
How he'd wished he would eventually grow to be able to do this.
Seeing it in action only fed the growing realization he may need to
change the structure of the maintenance department.

Zane's eyes closed as he took a deep breath
in. His head tilted back as he exhaled.

A curious chirp arose from a bot in the back
of the group. Another echoed the question, only for another bot to
answer it with a matter-of-fact beep.

Silence. One not broke by either human or bot.
Zane remained frozen in place, eyes still closed.

Another questioning chirp echoed through the
silence, but this one coming from the other end of the corridor.
Another, and then another. Noises from bots of all shapes, sizes,
and colors erupted in the air as they appeared from the corridors,
all converging on Zane, filling every surface. The floor, the
walls, the ceilings.

All of it filled with waiting bots.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

VALLORY REMEMBERED THE
suffocating feeling of the air, only to be offset by being held in
Damien's arms. Did Vallory dream what he whispered back at her? Did
he really say he loved her?

And where was that stink coming
from?

A stink that wouldn't go away. Instead, it
built in strength, filling her nose with its putridness. Someone
change a filter or open a window somewhere!

If she didn't still feel so weak, with the air
pressing down on her chest as it became unbreathable, she would be
doing everything she could to get away from it.

Heavy? Wait…

Vallory coughed, forcing open her
eyes.

Penny looked straight back, cocking her head
and yipping from her sitting position on top of Vallory's
chest.

"Where have you been?" Vallory demanded. And
then coughed violently. She clapped a hand over her mouth and nose
as more of the vile smell hit her senses, sitting up
fast.

Penny hopped down to her lap, yipping before
settling again. Vallory would pick her up and hug her if she dared
move her hand. Not that it helped any. The smell easily moved
around her hand to fill her nose and lungs.

Light? The gray wall in front of her reflected
a soft light. A wall with only a few conduits running along
it.

A pair of dark-clad legs bent into the air.
She put a hand on Damien's knee as she partially turned towards the
room. He groaned at her touch. She managed to turn with Penny still
on her lap, refusing to let a hand rise from Damien's leg. As
Penny's weight reassured her, so did the feel of him.

His eyes cracked open. "What
happened."

"We're not in the corridor anymore," she said,
unable to take her eyes off the vista in front of her.

She'd known the hidden part of the station
must have been large, considering how long they walked alongside it
in an effort to get to Penny, but this? The room faded into the
distance, and even further from side to side, the far ends of it
disappearing as the room curved away from them.

Seeing any distance was difficult because of
the twisted and winding shapes rising like trees from the floor,
only to meet up at the top in another tangle of roots as if from a
tree growing out from the ceiling. The trees ranged from mottled
browns to dark grays, with a few sporting sections of neon blue and
frosted ivory. Light glowed from the few places spotted with the
neon blue.

Branches and twigs arced away from the trees,
drooping and lifeless, without a leaf on them. A few of the trees
had detached from the ceiling and had curled over themselves as the
top slumped to the floor. A bizarre forest unlike any she'd ever
seen before.

"What is this place?" Damien whispered as he
struggled to sit up.

"If you don't know, then we're in
trouble."

"Next question, how did we get in
here?"

From the ceiling a dark liquid containing
heavy blobs poured over a tree. The tree quivered even as the smell
in the air grew worse.

Penny shook herself, chittering her annoyance.
Damien's eyes narrowed at the sight of the daubpup, demanding, "Do
they by any chance glow in the dark?"

Penny jumped out of Vallory's lap, bounced off
Damien's legs, and took off into the stinky strange
forest.

"Penny, get back here!" Vallory took off after
her, with Damien close behind.

Hard to run with any speed with the trees so
close together, not to mention because she didn't want to breath.
Fortunately, Penny wasn't traveling at full speed. She moved slow,
sometimes stopping to look back at them, as she wanted them to
follow.

Damien grabbed her arm and pulled her to the
side just before blobs and thick liquid showered a tree. Vallory
stumbled and nearly fell into the thin layer of goop on the
floor.

"I think we were lucky we came out where we
did," Damien said, lifting a shoe. The gunk clung to the sole,
releasing with an audible slurping noise. The goo also meant no
more running. It may be sticky, but with her luck, she would skid
and go face-first into the stuff.

Somehow, they'd entered the room at one of the
few clean areas of floor. It made her miss her little room at the
Bed and Breakfast even more.

Penny chittered at them from the top of a tree
root, completely unbothered by anything around her.

"She's clean," Damien said as he guided her
forward at a slower pace. More goo. Some of the neon blue and
frosted trees looked clean, but some of the darker ones even had
piles of stuff at their base.

"Do you mean Penny? I'm not surprised. I've
seen them go through a mud bog and come out the other side clean."
Something she wished she could do. How could she enjoy holding
Damien's hand with this smell in the air and waiting for something
to drop on them from above?

Less light in the area, as almost none of the
trees around them sported the neon blue that provided the only
light source in the forest. Her nose went from affronted to growing
accustomed to the sewer and sulfur smell, to back again at regular
intervals.

"The wall behind us was solid." Damien stopped
to look down at her. "I saw a glowing just before I lost
consciousness, and it was the shape of a daubpup."

"Yes, they can glow, when they want to. They
aren't like Mr. Milby's cats that way. It something they control
consciously." Penny chittered at them, clearly informing them to
keep following. Vallory bit at her lower lip as they continued
after her. "I've seen them take objects bigger than themselves
through a tree before, but we're a lot larger than
that."

Damien fingered the back of his shirt. "I
think she did. It's the only thing I can think of."

Penny's chittering grew more imperious, making
Vallory laugh. "She probably left the baby behind to come after us.
We shouldn't keep her waiting."

Damien wrinkled his nose. "Not that I want to
wait around here. I think the bad smell is coming from the darker
trees."

"And not the goop stuff?" They circled around
a tree that had a pile of the blobs and shapes piled up at its base
so high they couldn't see the gnarled roots."That, too, but mostly
the trees. Or, whatever they are."

She didn't like the fact that he didn't know.
Shouldn't he know about things like this with that instinct he
mentioned before? Did that mean he didn't know something
else?

"Do you know how to get out of here?" she
finally asked, not sure she wanted the answer.

She hated seeing him shake his head. Great,
now what would they do? Being trapped in here in the long-run
wouldn't be any better of being trapped in the small bit of
corridor.

"Maybe Penny can drag us through another
wall?" Vallory offered. "Maybe?"

He squeezed her hand. "Maybe we can talk her
into it."

They'd shown amazing intelligence in the past.
Penny found them and somehow wrestled them through a solid wall and
then waited for them to wake up. She was now leading them
somewhere. Maybe to somewhere they could get out?

A glow of light increased from behind a stand
of stinky dark gray and brown trees. The glimpse of a gray wall to
the right reminded her of their entrapment in a way she didn't
like. From ahead, Penny yipped and chittered, accompanied by a
younger and higher-pitched voice, one that she instantly
recognized.

"Yep, she's bringing us to where she left her
baby," Vallory said as they circled around a clump of the
trees.

The floor at their feet ran smooth despite a
texture of curving lines and tendrils marking the floor. The sticky
remnants of the smelly goo disappeared from the bottom of her
shoe.

Before them rose another tree, but this one of
pure blues and ivory frost all the way from the roots to the
thickly-textured bark of the trunk. It extended strong and solid
from floor to ceiling. Branches grew from the main body, thick and
robust, angling out strongly, unlike the branches of the dark trees
around them. On top of one them, Penny nuzzled her baby.