AT THE LAST SECOND, a large metal door slid open.
The skycraft passed through the doorway, then scraped against a metal surface.
Once inside, the metal door slid shut.
The door abruptly disappeared from view as though it had never been there.
The railing, having been diverted away from the council building, bent back into its original state. Yellow lights flashed all around the skycraft as it entered head-on, then skidded sideways until coming to a stop against a thick white net.
Power had gone out inside the craft. Savannah found herself on the floor. Kenneth's breath touched her cheeks. He lay on top of her, his weight more than she expected. She lay underneath him, not sure what to do. His eyes remained closed, even after the craft stopped. He still breathed, yet Savannah couldn't tell if he was conscious. A shifting of his legs answered that question. Savannah pushed at his chest. Kenneth rolled over to one side.
"What happened?" Savannah asked, sitting up.
Unquill stood in front of a blank window. He had brought metal plates over the windows prior to the crash. A lone blinking light illuminated the vehicle's interior.
All else had gone dark.
Unquill passed his hand over the light.
"Hmm," Unquill said. "We crashed into something that wasn't there. It's-well- I don't know."
Kenneth groaned next to Savannah. He put both his hands against his forehead. "Ugh. How 'bout some warning next time, huh? Geez."
Someone knocked on the craft's outer door three times.
Savannah extended her arm, grabbing for anything she could find.
She pulled on Kenneth's shirt.
A thud from outside.
The door opened slowly, then was forced open manually.
Savannah had grown used to hearing the mechanical hums from automated doors.
Now, she heard people grunting, struggling to lift the door up.
Patches of light suddenly streamed in as the hatch was slowly, steadily raised.
Two people suddenly stood before her.
While in the station, she had become accustomed to seeing numerous giants roaming about. These two people were not giants.
In fact, Savannah thought they looked a bit on the short side.
The two strangers were undeniably female in form and proportion. Both carried the same type of weapon that she'd seen the Black Brigade carry. One of them motioned with a weapon.
Savannah hadn't seen any weapons in the supply box.
She stood up and walked towards them.
"Hey, hey," Unquill said. "Wait just a moment, you can't do what you've done. Everything, it's all been-"
"You will be silent," one of the women intoned.
From the sound of its voice, Savannah understood at once that this wasn't a woman at all, but a robot.
The voice was mechanical, emotionless, with emphasis on the wrong syllables as it spoke. The word silent came through in a higher pitch than it should have.
"No," Unquill said. "Can you at least explain-"
"Explanations are not needed," the robot interrupted him. "You will be silent. Obey all commands given to you. Do not resist or deviate from your instructions. If you attempt to escape, you will be terminated. Is that understood?"
Savannah nodded even though the robot hadn't spoken to her.
She didn't want to think about going outside, not with hundreds of miles of air between her and the ground.
Unquill opened his mouth as if to speak again. He closed it when the robot raised a weapon at him.
"Walk in front of me. Obey all commands," intoned Robot Number Two.
Exiting the craft into the hangar, Savannah took a step back when she saw one of their captors in full. Where she might have expected a mouth, she saw a black speaker. A wide luminescent visor covered the portion of the robot's face where its eyes might have been. A single green dot moved back and forth across the visor. Its skull, composed entirely of white metal, stood on its shoulders at a slight angle. The robot's creator had seen fit to make it anatomically similar to humans, though if Savannah had to guess, these robots resembled humans from before the 73rd century.
The robot wore no clothes to speak of, save for a pair of brown leggings whose function Savannah could not discern. The robot possessed three fingers on each hand. Instead of feet, small tripods served to balance the robot's body. Its legs bent just below the hip. When it walked, the robot produced long strides Savannah could not match. Each step produced a thud that echoed throughout the hangar.
She took her place walking in front of one robot, while keeping pace behind another. Kenneth and Unquill had joined her. Kenneth rubbed at his temples. Unquill muttered to himself about how impossible all of this was.
They left the hangar, entering a wide metal corridor. Markings on the walls gave directions in a language Savannah had never seen before.
A second language that made use of pictographs, however, was located directly below the first set of unintelligible markings. They reminded her of the hieroglyphics she'd seen in an educational video about ancient Egyptian civilization.
Instead of birds and jackal-headed gods, this language displayed machine tools. A drill bit had been paired with the half-moon shape of a buzz-saw blade. A series of instruments directly below these rebuses declared something else. Savannah put a hand against the wall where the symbols appeared.
"Do not touch the-"
"Do not touch the walls."
"-walls."
The robots spoke in near-unison.
Savannah withdrew her hand.
The corridor stretched on.
After a short while they came to a door marked with large key. The robot in front pressed its hand against the key symbol.
The door slid open.
"Enter."
Savannah entered the room.
She recognized a prison cell when she saw one.
Two cots on each side of the room hung in place by chains extending diagonally from one corner of the room to its opposite. A rank odor assaulted her nostrils. She held her nose, looking around for the source. Once she saw it, she wished she hadn't. A hole dug into the floor against the back wall served as a bathroom.
From what she could tell, the robots didn't bother cleaning it out regularly.
A single bare bulb flickered overhead, providing barely enough light to illuminate the cell.
Only Unquill hadn't entered the cell when Savannah turned around.
He stood there, dejected.
Savannah wanted to give him a hug just then, even if her arms wouldn't reach all the way around his body. A short time ago, he'd been a happy worker at the Temporal Constabulary, living his life without complaint. Three days had been all it took to put him at the threshold of a room that stunk of rotting feces, surrounded on either side by a robot pointing a weapon at him.
"Enter," one robot said. "Obey all commands."
Unquill didn't make a move.
He looked down at the floor.
The robot on his right placed a hand on Unquill's back and shoved him inside.
Once inside, the door closed behind him. He choked back a sob.
"You will wait here for a period of one point two hours," one of the robots said. "Then you will meet with Hensen Var. Do not attempt to escape. If you attempt escape, you will be thrown outside."
Unquill sat down on a cot and buried his head in his hands.
Savannah sat down next to him, putting an arm around his back. He began to cry, then stifled his tears. He shook his head once, then shook it again.
"I can't believe this is happening. It's not real. It's not. I'm still dreaming. It's not real. Oh my dear universe, what have you done to me?"
The robots moved away from the door, fading from view. Savannah ran her fingers through her hair, trying to work out the tangles that had developed there. She winced, then gave up the project when it hurt too much.
She didn't know what she could say to console Unquill.
She didn't even know if he could be consoled.
Then, thinking on what he had said, her mind stuck on a particular word.
Savannah said, "What do you mean, you're still dreaming?"
Unquill blinked. He himself didn't seem to know what he had said.
"Dreaming," he said.
"Still dreaming," Savannah said.
"Yes, that's right, I forgot, so I did. Forgetfulness, one thing that happens when you get over 150," Unquill said. "Before I met you. Well, should I tell you this? It might not be revelant."
Kenneth spoke up for the first time in awhile. "You might as well. We're just going to be sitting here, wherever this is."
Unquill sighed. "Okay, I'll tell you what I know, then."