I shouldn't have let her lead. She was leading me where she wanted to go, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized she was probably Solar Union, a Burner stationed on the lab or visiting the facility. Her very presence here was suspicious enough. Who else would know the lab was here? Our Alliance Starmada search party certainly didn't.

  I had just pulled off a fantastic and daring escape, taking down dozens of overtaken, but now I felt stupid and helpless. I had to assume she was the enemy, that our only grounds for teaming up together was a mutual desire not to be zombified.

  The alternative was that she was a test subject, like the one I had seen in the video. That was plausible, but it seemed more likely that she had been attacked, especially with that fancy armor. My mind was screaming Burner attacked by zombies.

  But what had happened? Not only were the circuits in her brain exposed, but it looked like she had bits missing and pulled out. I hoped she had been unplugged whenever that happened. The thought of it made me shiver, remembering the sight of my dead body hanging in the air with all the wires connected to it.

  She was limping and holding her left side as she set off down the hallway, and that couldn't have been from my frantically thrown elbow. I didn't think she was faking. She had to be injured under that shiny snakeskin suit.

  "Does this trick them into ignoring us?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood. I started walking the same way, with a doofus smile on my face and my tongue hanging out, making zombie noises.

  Sometimes I hate my sense of humor and lack of a filter.

  She just had to glare at me for my brain to catch up with my tongue. You don't know what she might have been through, you idiot.

  "Got it," I said. "Sorry."

  We continued stumbling up the stairway in silence, under the bright white lights, eerily alone. Where were the zombies on this side of the door? If this really was a trap, they wouldn't just let us walk out of here.

  "I visited Mercury one time," I said, conversationally.

  She stumbled up the final stair and made her way around the corner, holding the wall with her left hand and my gun extended out in her right.

  "It was bright like this on the sunny side, and the sun looks huge. It looks like three times bigger than it does from Earth, if you've ever been to Earth, that is. I visited a few times, but that was hundreds of years ago, before the war really kicked in. But anyway, big sun! That's my point. It's so cool! I want to go back there sometime just for the sunrise and sunset."

  She glanced back at me. "Why are you telling me this?"

  "I dunno."

  "You're chatty," she groaned.

  I shrugged. "I don't interact with people much."

  "I can tell."

  "You should give me my gun back," I said. "Easier for you, and I'm an excellent shot. Sometimes."

  She thought about that for a moment and looked me over. I smiled and posed, sticking my arms out in a bring it on, I'm ready to fight kind of way. I nodded my head to a fake rhythm, ghost punching the air with my fists.

  "I think not," she answered, shaking her head in disappointment. "I like the gun where it is, and my aim is exceptional. You can punch like that, whatever that was, if the zombies show up."

  My feelings were not hurt. The lights were just too bright for her to properly appreciate my speed and agility. I considered forcibly taking my gun back. She was injured enough that I would likely be successful, but that didn't change the fact that we were stuck together in a zombie-infested starlab.

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  For sake of survival, I decided to go along with the current situation. She did, also, kind of have a point. I wasn't injured. I could grapple with a zombie. She would need a gun.

  We reached an intersection and headed left down another empty hallway. I vaguely remembered running this way.

  She paused when we reached the end of the hall, checking the path to our left and right. Satisfied, she examined her side where she was injured, pressing gently against the snakeskin material over her left lower abdomen. "Do you always sing?" she asked me.

  I hadn't realized I was singing, but … thinking about it … was not surprised. I had the song Keep on the Sunny Side stuck in my head.

  "I talk to myself a lot too," I reflected aloud.

  "I know. You practically narrated the entire staircase."

  Had I?

  She started limping down the hall toward where I remembered there being a number of rooms.

  "I don't want to go that way," I said. I pointed up. "We need to go up."

  She looked back at me again, those violet eyes unbearably vibrant. Oh yeah, and she was pointing my gun at me.

  "Are you going to shoot me?" I asked.

  She sighed. "I probably should."

  I gulped. The fact that she hadn't immediately killed me spoke volumes, but I had no clue what her true motivations were.

  "But I think the noise would attract them," she continued. "This is where I'm going." She pointed my glen10 back down the hall. "You're free to leave, but I might have to kill you the next time I see you."

  "Can I have my gun?"

  She rolled her eyes at me. "What do you think?"

  I think you're being frustratingly logical, given the position you're in.

  "I think I'm going with you."

  She smiled in acknowledgement, and I followed instinctually, keeping a healthy distance. As we got closer to the rows of laboratory rooms, I noticed her clutching my glen10 at the ready. I felt some relief at her showing signs of the same nervousness that was giving me anxiety. Dying by zombie was not on my bucket list.

  "You hypnotized me, didn't you?" I said.

  She laughed at that. Good. She could appreciate humor.

  "You did!" I exclaimed. "I knew it. You see, there's usually your run-of-the-mill zombie, slow but relentless. Then there's fast zombies, smart zombies, big bruiser tank zombies, and maybe sirens that lure you in. That's you. You're some kind of hypnotizing zombie experiment gone wrong, aren't you? They were going to make you into a siren."

  I paused. Her blank look told me enough. Maybe she'd shoot me and my loose tongue after all.

  "Sorry," I said. Do better, @kittyboy, I told myself. "I'm sorry for whatever happened."

  "Yeah, you should have stopped talking a while ago," she muttered.

  We walked in silence for a bit, her stumbling, me skulking, upset with myself. I offered to let her lean on me, but she refused, and I respected that.

  I really needed answers. I was in no mood to die here. I had precious memories that needed to get out there into the world, that I needed to save, and each step made me feel worse about our situation. I might have been unplugged, but my futurecasting is a fundamental part of how my human brain sees the world. The connections and thoughts running through my mind were giving me uh oh vibes.

  "Why are we going this way?" I finally asked. "Who are you?"

  She ignored me and rounded another corner.

  "I could just leave, you know," I said, trailing after her. "You said it yourself."

  Another puzzling look from those violet eyes of hers. "You won't."

  "Goddamnit!" I exclaimed.

  This woman was infuriating, but she wasn't wrong. I knew I'd stick with her until we were safe - not because of some sense of duty, although I'd like to believe that - but because two is better than one, especially when zombies are concerned. Besides, the evil part of me knew I could outrun her if needed, so she'd be a distraction if nothing else.

  Horrified by that thought, I told myself to try not to abandon her. I felt icky, and that didn't sit well with me.

  "It's just over here," she yelled, pointing to one of three rooms down a side corridor.

  "And you're not worried that it's just us, that there are no zombies around?"

  "They'll be here soon enough," she replied. She continued hugging the wall, approaching her room of choice. "I'll worry then. Whoever was around here must have ran off. I assume you had company. The zombies would have chased after them."

  My Firesquad. I really hoped they were okay. We'd seen no sign of them.

  She opened the door, and thankfully, like the rest of this part of the starlab, it was empty. The deafening noises were quieter here as well, so we didn't have to talk so loudly.

  "What are we looking for?" I asked.

  She didn't respond. Typical.

  I closed the door, peering around the room. I heard her pound on a metal desk. Probably just catching her weight. Then I heard a drawer open.

  Okay, so we were indeed looking for something. I joined in the search, running my eyes around the room and then moving from table to table. Most of it was just random lab equipment, objects that made sense to other people, but not me. I opened cabinets and drawers, scanning as I went.

  That's when I found an object I recognized, something that seemed out of place.

  "Is this it, by chance?" I asked, holding up a set of chrome quantum keys.

  She was on the opposite side of the room, picking through an assortment of items on one of the tables. Her eyes narrowed, fixated on the keys.

  "I need those," her lovely voice growled.

  "Hmm," I said casually. "Seems we both have something the other person wants now."

  She raised the glen10 in a flash, targeting my head.