This was the messiest place she'd seen in this small city thus far. Scraps of metal, large and small, were littered all over the floor. There were bolts and hammers, tools strewn about in a way that she was certain wasn't smart to store that way.
But she could also see there was a moon pool in this room. Hopefully, this wouldn't wake anyone up.
Ellie walked over to the button and hit it, wincing as the grinding sound of metal filled the room. No one shouted, and no one came running in, so she assumed that meant the bedrooms were far away from this area. Which made sense, considering how much noise was likely generated in this room.
Pilot came in from the bottom, shaking himself off and letting out a disgruntled noise. "Do you know how long it took me to get here?"
"Really not that long. Considering I've only been here for a day." She leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest and looking him over. "Why are you here?"
"Because you've been kidnapped!" He flicked a leg at her. "You are ungrateful to be saved."
"How did you even know I'd be here?"
She wouldn't put it past the droid to know what everyone in the sea was doing. He conferred with the drones that had been all over the ocean floor, throughout the waves, and even the ones that had ventured out onto the land. Still, his arrival was rather perfect.
"The humans were all talking about it as soon as you left," Pilot replied. He clambered over one of the metal pieces near her, seemingly to get enough height to look her over. "They must have believed I was a droid that could only follow orders. They packed up almost as soon as you were gone. Took everything they could in the facility, and quite a few pieces of equipment they had been fixing. Thieves."
She tried very hard not to laugh at that. "Well, they did fix them."
"That doesn't give them the right to raid Sanctuary for anything useful! It all needs to stay there, so we have a centralized location to control the land inhabitants. That was always the plan, and Proteus is always right." Grumbling underhis breath, Pilot reached out a single leg and gently moved a strand of her hair to the side.
He was looking at her neck, she realized. The droid even let out a little beam of light to scan her from head to toe, making sure that she wasn’t injured. "They haven't harmed you, I see."
"I'm fine, Pilot."
"You never know what humans are going to do. They experiment on everything they can get their hands on. And you are a very interesting specimen, Miss Ellie."
Tears burned in her eyes. "I think that might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Pilot."
"Don't get emotional. Come on now. I can breathe for you, and there's probably enough oxygen to get us on land. From there, I can guide you back to the facility."
"Land?" Ellie repeated. "I can't travel on land."
"Sure, you can. It won't be entirely safe, but I can keep breathing for you, and there are plenty of caves. If we can keep to those, then we should be able to survive. You might not get back in one piece, but you'll get back. No time to waste."
Droids. They didn't understand that her parts weren't as replaceable as his. Although she supposed she'd already replaced an arm. The experience might have confused him a little.
She took a step back from Pilot, readying herself to prepare him for the fact that she couldn't leave, but another voice interrupted before she could.
"Droid," Alexia said, her tall shadow entering the room long before she did. "She'll be staying here. Just what kind of protocol did they install in you to be able to travel this far?"
"Uh..." A gear whirred in Pilot's body. "I'll be taking the girl."
"No, you will both stay here, and you will submit to a full inspection." Alexia's arms were crossed as she paused in the doorway. "What kind of droid even are you?"
Something popped out of Pilot. A string, Ellie realized, until it crackled in the air with a sound of electricity so loud that it made her cover her ears. Not a string, then. A weapon. Had Pilot had that all along?
It almost reached Alexia, but the big woman stepped aside before it could latch onto her and likely kill her with the amount of power surging through that thing. In one smooth movement, the old guard stooped down, grabbed a metal scrap that looked about the size of a plate, and flung it at Pilot.
The droid wasn't meant for battle. It slammed into him and pinned him to the wall. His legs gave one more angry twitch before it looked like all his electronics turned off.
"Pilot!" she gasped, running to the wall and trying to yank the metal out of it. But she couldn't. She wasn't strong enough to pull it out of him, and he was just hanging there. Limp.
"He's fine," Alexia said. "It takes a lot more than that to kill a droid. I'll have Mira take a look at him, or Ace, I suppose. She's off in Beta right now, but I'm sure Maketes would take any excuse to go get her and bring her back here. He hates it when she's gone for too long."
Ellie whirled around, balling her hands into fists. "You killed him."
"I told you, he's going to be fine."
