"What are those for?" I asked, staring at the quantum keys in her hand.

  "You'll see," she said, and proceeded to inspect her snakeskin outfit, I presume to find a place to store the keys.

  I'm very patient. But my futurecasting was all over the place, and my mental timer was telling me we had to hurry. That said, I wasn't going to hurry into the unknown. My unsatisfied curiosity was getting the better of me, and I felt like I was going to snap if I didn't find out what was going on.

  "You need to tell me what's going on. I'm getting super frustricated, and you won't like what happens next. I bite. I scratch." I pointed at her and scowled. "What are those keys for? Who are you?" I demanded.

  She raised an eyebrow at me, then stared.

  Silence.

  She continued to stare. I watched her violet eyes, the tint of green at the core. The beaming light highlighted the streaks of violet in her hair.

  So I stared back at her, matching her violet for what I assumed were my vibrant blue eyes. Take that! I thought to myself. I'm pretty good at staring contests.

  She winked at me.

  I shivered. She was cheating.

  And she continued to stare at me.

  "You have beautiful blue eyes," she said. She licked her lips.

  Fuck me! I thought, all too human thoughts flooding my brain, my heart rate noticeably accelerating.

  "Fuck you, demon!" I cursed at her.

  She staggered toward me, holding my gaze. In my peripheral vision I spotted the keys.

  "What? No pockets in that suit of yours," I joked.

  "You like my suit," she whispered, limping closer, eyes transfixed.

  "You shall not hypnotize me," I proclaimed. "Your womanly wiles are wasted on me."

  She was in touching distance. I could sense her breath before I felt it.

  "Womanly wiles," she laughed venomously, breathing on me. Her eyes were so close and mesmerizing, but her breath smelled foul, like she hadn't had a chance to clean her teeth in months - because she probably hadn't.

  "Ha ha," I said, pointing at her. "Your breath smells."

  I caught a slight shift in her face and posture, barely noticeable being unplugged. She actually looked like I had hurt her feelings, and I immediately regretted it. She had been locked up for who knows how long. But as soon as it had come, it had gone and she was back to her seductive staring.

  I stared harder. I held my hand out to keep her at bay.

  She retaliated by taking my outstretched hand and placing it on her hip.

  "Cheater!" I screamed.

  The snakeskin suit felt exactly like that, smooth but with reptilian scales that seemed hard and soft at the same time. I tried to ignore the curve of her hip as she came close again.

  "So, you don't want to kiss me?" she said, another foul breath finding my nose.

  "No! But ... but ..." I stuttered, making an ucky face at her. I tried to think of something to say back other than your breath is disgusting and I'm going to vomit. Instead, I just kept stuttering like a fool at her.

  She moved my hand around to the back. "What about my butt?" she said.

  I walked right into that one, butt it was worth it (Hahahaha! Get it? "But?"). She was winning this battle. Stupid human body! I wanted my tech back to distract myself from human chemistry.

  "But," I said, and then my brain shut off. I had no idea what to say.

  "That's my butt," she said, matter of factly. She was trying not to snicker uncontrollably at me.

  "But," I said again. Her stupid eyes were magnificent.

  Then I finally managed to say something logical, trying to tap into my survival instinct instead of my self-destruct instinct. "We should get out of here. You're limping. You can lean on me."

  "Lean?" she asked. "Like this?" She moved up close.

  Oh, this is going to be bad for me, I thought.

  She had just brushed up against me the slightest, before she kneed me harshly in the groin and shoved me to the ground.

  The fuck. I had seen it coming, and I didn't care.

  I was doubled over, but I held onto my glen10 this time. I looked up at her, planting a hand on the ground and tried to rise.

  She punched me in the face.

  I hit the floor again. I was not happy anymore. Playful game of staring contest? Yeah right. But I suppose that's what I deserved for putting a small bit of trust in an Introvert. My nose was bleeding. My eyes were tearing up. In the bright light, my tears made what little I could see take on rainbow highlights. I could make out her shape slightly as I felt my way along the floor to find something to help me get to my feet.

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  That's when she hit me again, not with her fist this time.

  When I woke up, I screamed. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed. It's instinct really. But I quickly realized that I was not in the reanimation chamber.

  I was happy about that actually because it meant I still had my memories. Frustrated? Yes, because I remembered snake woman beating me up. I checked for my gun. It was gone. And taking my gun.

  I also remembered that I was in a creepy blindingly bright lab with zombies, this time with no weapon, and I was offline, and I was alone with no idea what happened to the rest of the #firesquad.

  On the positive side, the starlab was empty still in this part of the facility. I sat up and listened for aberrations between the repeated noises the starlab was blasting to overwhelm our senses. Nothing. Snake woman probably didn't go back the way we came, which meant she went the other direction. Her injury would slow her down, so I had a good chance of catching up.

  The sensation of being injured while offline was not new to me, but it had been a long time. Not since the fractal burn on asteroid 1356b. Catching fire isn't fun. Or it might have been that time I suffocated in the ion cloud outside of Ceres. That also sucked. And those were just the times I remembered.

  I couldn't run a diagnostic, but I didn't need one to realize my head hurt. I probably had a concussion. Regardless, I could walk. I could see. I could think. And I could run from zombies. Most importantly, I could run off to catch up with my snakeskin frenemy and get my gun back.

  I turned left and skipped, because I prefer skipping and can cover a lot of ground quickly and joyfully, off toward where my offline human intuition told me she would go. Not as great as my futurecasting, but still pretty great. Sometimes I really love how my brain works. I maybe don't have as great a human memory as other people, but when it comes to thinking about the future, assembling bits of information, pure thought, I'm all over it.

  I skipped up to her as she was pushing open a door to another wing of the starlab and slowed so as to not draw her attention. I jammed my fingers just slightly through the door to prevent it from closing. The booming noises and blinding lights from the starlab's sensory overload would make me harder to see and hear. I had the advantage this time.

  Or so I thought. I paused, waiting for my moment to open the door and tackle her, when the door opened and slammed down on my fingers.

  "Motherfucker!" I shouted, wincing and grabbing at my hand. Thank @3Beak it was my left hand.

  Angry kitty mode activated.

  I was pissed. I rage flung the door open. She was standing ready to hit me again, but thankfully didn't seem to want to shoot me with my gun. I was ready and enraged. She was ready but hurt.

  She moved to punch me, and I slapped her arm away with my left wrist. Wax off! I screamed to myself, doing a perfect Karate Kid defense move. I'm not subtle or agile when I'm mad. I headbutted her. She winced and fell back against the wall. I didn't let her gain any distance.

  "Lean close???" I screamed, and I punched her in the gut before she could recover. That was mean. I felt horrible about it. She was injured in the side, and I hit her close to the injury. Her yelp was palpable and all too real in my human ears.

  But she started it. I'll just keep telling myself that to feel okay with it.

  I stared at her angrily. "I need exposition!" I shouted, stepping forward to grab her wrists while she recovered. I noticed she had dropped my gun, but I wasn't about to let that distract me. She was too quick.

  She punched me in the face again. Okay, so maybe I was distracted.

  "Motherfucker!" I yelled again, holding a hand to my left eye, staggering backwards.

  She braced herself against the wall, panting, still clearly in pain, but she was a tough snake all right. "You first!" she spat, gritting her teeth in pain, fists still raised, the wall supporting her weight while her eyes studied me.

  We needed to stop fighting and get the hell out of here. I knew that. She knew that. At this point, I think she realized that it was going to be we or she'd have to shoot me. I got the sense that she was leaning toward the side of shooting me. But luckily, neither of us had the gun.

  I made a snap decision to trust her. Because I'm an idiot.

  "@kittyboy. Extrovert. Wavepilot," I shouted in rapid fire succession. "Investigating creepy lab in our part of space. Trying not to die because zombies. Zombies!"

  She nodded, catching her breath, the half of her head with hair bobbing along. She brushed a mess of curls away from her face. "@auroraloon. Introvert. They were using me for tests."

  She crossed her arms at me, like that was that. Then made off down the hallway, leaning against the wall. She shouted over her shoulder. "I know a way out."

  This was progress. I reached down to pick up the glen10, and stepped in alongside her.

  "Okay, @auroraloon. What about the suit and the keys? That looks high tech. Doubt they'd play test dummy with you wearing whatever that is."

  She paused. My punch hadn't helped her injury at all. We were stupid for fighting, but that's Introverts and Extroverts for you.

  "Tell me as we walk," I demanded. "Which way?"

  "Left," she said. "Then two rights, a left, and up a stairway half a level. There's an emergency exit."

  I gestured for her to follow, and we got moving.

  "I remember being in one of the rooms," @auroraloon reflected. "I don't know how I got there. They must have removed the virus from me. I don't know. I have flashes of fighting, of different people's faces, of body parts, of blood. I remember waking up in a different room. I don't know how much time passed."

  "I could probably figure it out by looking at how much the roots of my hair have grown out, before the color starts," she added. "But all I know is that when I woke up they had me strapped to a table. Then suddenly everyone started packing up. Emergency evacuation. Protocol 6, they said."

  She shook her head at me. I continued on down the hall.

  "No," she said, shaking her head again and waving at me. "Right here."

  "What's right here?" I asked.

  "Right. Right here." She grunted in frustration. "To your right. We go to the right. The opposite of left."

  "Oh," I said. "Right. Thought you were shaking your head because, you know, trauma and horribleness."

  "No, you're just bad at directions. But yes, horribleness."

  I was offended.

  "I'm offended," I said. "I have an excellent sense of direction. The best in fact. The sun is that way." I pointed down and to my right. "But I suck at following directions."

  "The sun is that way, you idiot." @auroraloon pointed up and to her left, with her middle finger wagging at me.

  I shook my head with rigor. "Whatever," I spat. "It works when I'm outside. I'm all turned around in here."

  "R i g h t ..." she said, nodding her mocking head at me.

  Urgh! This was frustrating! I really do have great sense of direction, I swear.

  "The suit? The keys?" I prompted.

  "I'm getting there," she replied. Down the blindingly lit hall we continued, @auroraloon in her mini-sun outfit blazing the way. "I heard them talk about escaping. Two of them were arguing about spacecycles. One wanted to take them. The other said no. They didn't have the range to get them out of Extrovert space."

  Spacecycles! That was awesome! Yeah, the range wasn't too great. You could hop around a few moons or asteroids and have a blast doing it. They had solar power backup, but it was very low power, emergency only type of thing, unless you were really close to the sun.

  "So the keys? Spacecycles," I said. "And the suit?"

  "I found it in one of the labs," she said offhandedly. "They just left me here. I got free and was looking for the keys."

  I wanted to believe her, but there was still a lot that didn't make sense to me. The suit fit too well. She knew where the keys to the spacecycles were. But my terror-o-meter was telling me we needed to keep moving, so I dropped it.

  "Left here," she said.

  "What was left here?" I said, looking around. "I don't see anything."

  "Noooo," @auroraloon groaned. "We go left."

  I laughed. "I know. I'm just tormenting you."

  Sometimes my sense of timing is bad because as I giggled at her, her eyes widened, full of violet fear. The noise behind me told me the zombies were coming. Shuffle shuffle. Groan groan.

  "Well, we should hurry," she said. "That way."

  She pointed to the right.

  "But you said, Noooo, we go left," I repeated.

  "I was tormenting you," she chuckled, and hobbled quickly down the right corridor.