Still managing to sound calm despite everything, Thiago said, “There’s no need for any of this. We’re researchers, we’re not doing anything to hurt anyone here.” Potential Target Leader said something that our FacilitySystem translated through our feed as, “I showed you I’m serious. We’ll take what we want, then leave you in peace. Tell the others to come out.” “We’ll give you supplies, but not people,” Thiago said. “If you have nice supplies, I’ll leave the people.” “You didn’t have to shoot anyone.” Heat crept into Thiago’s voice. “If you needed supplies, we would have given them to you.” Don’t worry, the “anyone” who got shot was me. (Thiago, while violating the security protocol everyone agreed to IN ADVANCE, had walked out to the observation deck to greet the strangers on their stupid boat. I followed and pulled him back from the edge, and so Potential Target Leader shot me instead of him. Got me right in the shoulder. I managed to fall off the observation deck and miss the water intake. Yes, I was pissed off. “SecUnit, SecUnit, are you there—” Overse, in the facility’s command center, had shouted at me over the comm interface. Yes, I’m fine, I’d sent her over the feed. It’s a good thing I don’t bleed like a human because hostile marine fauna was about all this situation needed. I’ve got everything under fucking control, okay. “No, it says it’s fine,” I heard her relaying to the others on our comm. “Well, yes, it’s furious.”) I swung over the railing and dropped to the deck. I’d tuned my pain sensors down but I could feel the projectile wedged in next to my support framework and it was annoying. Staying low, I crawled down the steps into the first cabin structure. The human inside was monitoring a primitive scanner system. (I’d jammed it even before I got shot, feeding it artistic static and random reports of anomalous energy signatures to keep it busy.) I choked her until she was unconscious and then broke her arm to give her something else to worry about if she revived too soon. I didn’t take her projectile weapon but I did pause to break a couple of its key components. The room was stuffed with bags and containers and other human crap. There were neat storage racks https://vk.com/huutruongespritdu