Chapter 3: Steel Trap Part 3

Alix stared in wide-eyed wonder as they were pulled through the cerulean streets of Ratlantis. 

Well, the Aexons no doubt had their own name for the city, but until Alix learned it, she’d stick with ‘Ratlantis’. It certainly reminded her of the fabled lost city in human myth, brimming with strange and beautiful architecture, populated by a civilization hidden just out of view. Alix would have given anything to have her smart tablet back at that moment to photograph and document the wonders she was witnessing. This was going to make the most incredible entry into the Compendium yet.

“Goddamn.” Figaro whistled low. He scurried up to the top of Alix’s head and extended his eye lenses for a better view. “I had these little guys pegged as operating in a hunter-gatherer, tribal society. Our rat buddies are two shakes away from being industrial!”

“Bit early to pin down a precise category, but you’re right. They’re more advanced than I thought,” said Alix. 

“So why were they running around scrounging for nuts up top in their birthday suits?” Figaro asked. 

“Well, my optimistic guess is that that they still need to supplement their diets by foraging on the surface, maybe. All those ornamental beads and gems threaded through their fur would make enough noise to attract predators, and wearing garments would slow them down in a chase,” Alix ventured. “So the only way to peaceably enjoy the fresh air and sun is to leave it all down in the caves.”

“Makes sense.” Figaro paused. “You called that your ‘optimistic’ guess. What’s your un-optimistic guess?”

“That they’ve known about us for a while, and known we were observing them for a while,” said Alix, her own words sending a chill through her. “That they purposely put up a primitive front to trick us, and have been planning something like this from the start.”

“Oh, dear.” 

“Exactly.” 

As their captors continued up the road, they gained more and more spectators. Aexons stopped in the middle of the street to watch them pass, erupting into a chorus of amazed shrieks and squeals. Several stuck their heads out windows and doors. Crowds began to coalesce in the street as more Aexons rushed from every direction to gawk at the giant aliens captive in the cart. The guards had to shoo bystanders away, and the civilian Aexons seemed particularly intimidated by the raygun and tranq gun. The guard carrying it noticed one tiny, presumably young Aexon staring at the weapon in wide-eyed wonder. He paused to ruffle the tuft of fur on the little one’s head and spun the raygun in his paw with a flourish, eliciting high-pitched cheers from both the little one and other nearby onlookers.

“Hey, careful with that thing!” Alix snapped without thinking, cringing at how closely his claw brushed past the trigger. “One slip and the kid’s a scorch mark!”

The guard returned to his post beside the cart and glared at her. He snapped something back and waved the raygun in her direction. 

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Alix rolled her eyes and put her hands up to show compliance. 

Figaro retracted his eyes and crawled back down to her shoulder. “I wouldn’t piss that one off, Boss. He’s got a hair trigger.”

One of the Aexons walking ahead of the cart tipped his head back and took a swig from what Alix realized to be her flask. 

“Oh, that’s the last straw,” Alix snapped. “You don’t steal a lady’s work booze. That’s just crossing the line!”

“Crossing the line will be whatever they plan to do to us next,” Figaro whispered back. “Look at all these rubberneckers. What if they stick us in a zoo? Or kill us and taxidermy us and put us on display in a carny show?”

“You can’t taxidermy a robot, Figaro. They’d just turn you off and stick you on a shelf or something.”

“Oh my god, what if they take me apart and smelt me down? What if they slice out my CPU?” Figaro’s forelimbs shot up in horror and fury. “THEY’LL HAVE TO RIP THESE GOLD-PLATED PINS FROM MY COLD, DEAD MOTHERBOARD!”

Alix shushed him and bopped him lightly. “Shh! Keep it together! None of that’s going to happen, alright? We’re going to get out of here.”

“How?” Figaro rasped. “How are we supposed to get out? We don’t know jack about these caves!”

“No, but I’ll bet they do,” said Alix, pointing toward the group of Aexons ahead that had led them through the tunnels to the city. “I’ll bet they’ve got every inch of these caves mapped out. If we can just get our hands on one such map and then quietly escape in a moment of distraction, we’re out Scott-free! All without the messiness of any direct confrontations.”

“Okay . . . I’m on board. So how are we going to steal a map from them?”

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“Correction.” Alix took Figaro off her shoulder into her palm and held him up eye-level, grinning at him. “How are you going to steal a map from them?”

Figaro’s eyes flashed red. “Oh, you bitch.”

“Come on, buddy, we’ve got no choice! I’m a goliath next to these guys. I can’t so much as scratch my nose without them pointing a gun at me,” said Alix. She scratched Figaro affectionately, and the red dimmed in his eyes. “You’re my itty bitty little fella! You can slip through these bars and sneak up to the Aexons with them none the wiser, easy! Only you have the grace, the sharp sense, and the sheer acrobatic dexterity necessary to pull this mission off.”

“Hmmm,” said Figaro, practically purring at the influx of praise. “I suppose your ponderous, lumbering human frame would just make a mess of things. And I do have some damn good pick-pocketing skills.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Alix. She turned him toward their target. “See that one up front, with the big satchel-like thing slung over his shoulder? No one else has a pack like it. If a map is anywhere, it’ll be in that satchel. Sneak in when they’re distracted, and sneak back out with the map.”

“Got it.” Figaro gave Alix a tiny salute and leaped off her palm. He quietly scuttled over to the very edge of the cart. After a few minutes, they were rolled through a public square, amassing a new crowd of onlookers, rowdier than those from the streets they’d just traveled through. The square filled with noise as the civilian Aexons surrounded the cart and Alix’s captors. Dozens of paws reached out to touch the new, strange beast trapped behind the spikes. As the guards and leaders became increasingly preoccupied with holding the crowd at bay, Figaro took his chance. He slipped out between the bars and disappeared into the frenzy without any of the guards even noticing. Alix aided in providing a distraction, hoping to keep the attention of the crowd on her rather than on wherever Figaro was. 

“Thank you, thank you, you’re too kind!” She smiled at the Aexons and waved like a pageant queen. She reached through the bars to give one of them a high-five. The Aexon in question looked down at his paw in wonderment. 

One of the guards snarled something at Alix, making his point known with the tranq gun until she stopped waving. By then she didn’t mind. A brief flash of silver near the lead Aexon told her that Figaro had made it to the satchel.  

At that moment, one of the Aexons at the lead barked something so loud that it echoed throughout the square. Whatever it was, it must have been threatening enough to strike a chord with the civilians, and they all scattered to the edges of the square, giving Alix’s escort party a wide berth. Which also left Figaro without cover to sneak back out of the satchel. 

Goddammit. Alix tried not to let her panic show on her face, lest she tip off the guards. Her mind raced for solutions. Even if she could bust through her cage somehow, any attempts to grab the satchel would either be met with another dart in her neck or a ray blast right in the face. Still, the Aexons now lacked the element of surprise they’d first used to trap him. Figaro could roll pretty fast. The smartest thing at that point would be for him to simply leap out of the satchel, make a run for it, and come get Alix later, preferably with a rescue team and an Alien Relations officer in tow. 

Alix kept her eyes on the satchel, waiting for Figaro to come to the same conclusion. After a good several minutes, it became clear that he had not. 

Alix frowned. Every second Figaro spent in that satchel, his chances of being discovered and captured again shot higher. Yet the robot made no move to leave the satchel that she could see as they continued their trek through Ratlantis.

Before long, they came to the front of a massive white tower, its design reminiscent of a ziggurat, with five increasingly smaller tiers of floors. The top tier nearly scraped the cavern ceiling. A staircase stretched from the ground to a set of doors on the first tier. The Aexons who’d been pulling the cart paused at the bottom. They stretched and rolled their shoulders, then took the cart handles back over their shoulders and began pulling the cart up the staircase. 

“Holy crap, you guys are strong,” Alix blurted as they ascended step by arduous step. One of the drivers, apparently sensing that she was addressing him, looked at her over his shoulder. Alix lifted her arm and flexed, then pointed back at him. “You. Strong. Very.”

The driver squeaked nonchalantly and turned his gaze forward again. Alix might have been imagining it, but she thought she sensed an air of pride from him. 

It occurred to Alix that now presented an excellent opportunity for Figaro’s escape. The drivers were busy, the guards were less attentive now without the civilians to deal with. The leader Aexons were talking to each other animatedly, paying no attention to the satchel. Yet Figaro still didn’t leave the satchel.

Alix glanced down at the steps themselves as they climbed. Each step had a series of symbols engraved on it, some manner of hieroglyphs. She spotted rudimentary depictions of Aexons, their reptilian steeds, stalactites, and most interesting, what appeared to be stars and planets. Why would a subterranean civilization be concerned enough with the cosmos to engrave it on a building of such apparent age and importance? 

Of course, there was no one there who could answer her questions or interpret the engraved sequences for her. 

Eventually, they arrived at the doors of the first tier, and Alix was brought into the ziggurat. 

The inside was even grander than the outside. It was a vast hall, so large that the space even dwarfed Alix. The ceiling was entirely plastered in the blue organic material she had seen throughout the tunnel and city, infusing the whole of the interior with a blue glow. Its walls were covered in dozens of intricate mosaics depicting a rich history. There were bloody battles between rival Aexon clans, coronations, the lives of important Aexons from birth to death, Aexon holidays and festivals, and the construction of the very city they were in. What caught Alix’s eye above all, however, was an enormous, silver sphere that hovered above the crimson forests of Deimos X. 

Alix stared at the mosaics, breathless. She longed to dart down one of the many adjacent hallways, stairwells, or rooms they passed, to see what marvels they held. The Aexons continued to roll her cart through the hall. Alix again kept glancing toward the satchel, waiting for Figaro to scurry out and run for the still-open doors they’d entered. Nothing.

 Finally, they reached a door at the end of the hall. It was taller than Alix, with a heavy lock in the center, just low enough for an Aexon to reach. The lead Aexon with the satchel snapped what sounded like a command. The guards opened the heavy door. Inside was a dark, featureless cell. The sole source of light was a small window at the top of the far wall. There was no furniture, no mosaics, no water, no anything other than the four, blank stone walls.

The cart drivers scurried to the back of the cart and tipped it over with all their might so that Alix fell out the other end, directly through the room’s entrance. She barely had time to rise from the fall before the door shut behind her. There was the sound of the lock clicking shut, and she was trapped inside.

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