What? The old man *isn’t* the man you’re looking for? Well, I guess we’re looking for droids, then. Or maybe not.

Word Count: 10,108

With the conveyor belt moving fast along its tracks, I frantically searched for a maintenance ladder. The old man, moving along with us, did not seemed frightened in the least. Maiya approached to the old man and stood him up, then led him over to me. The automatons in the wall began waking up; I could hear Slate from the beginning of the conveyor belt already being crushed, melted, and transported down the line. Just what had that old man done to fix the belt? And why did he do that if he knew it would probably kill us all?

There was little time to think; we were up against a machine in the wall before we were able to find a suitable means of escape. It blasted flames at us, burning us all. More robot arms extended from the walls, assuming we were heaping chunks of metal. As one was about to cut us all in two, Maiya grabbed from my hand the device that The Embassy had given to me and pushed the button. A bright blue light extended from its nozzle and formed a protective shell around all three of us, stopping any flames, lasers, or robots from piercing through.

I was in shock. “How… how did you know to do that?”

“You’re welcome, Vince.” She continued holding up the device, protecting us all, while we moved through the barrage of digestive Slate-working processes. By the time the sequence was over, we had gone far along enough in the tunnel that there was a maintenance shaft in sight. I rejoiced, and Maiya lowered the protective shield produced by the device. “What the heck is that thing?” I asked her once again.

“It’s called a Mu Gun. It temporarily turns your thoughts into materials, if you know how to use it.”

Just a little while ago, she had no idea what the device was called, much less what it did. How was she suddenly able to use it – just what was Maiya hiding from me? I decided that while my life was on the line was no time to question Maiya or her abilities, and that the most important directive was to get to the ladder up ahead and enter the maintenance shaft.

I made it up the ladder as fast as I could, but Maiya took her time. “Hurry up!” I shouted, hoping she would run back to the ladder and climb up. She was talking to the old man about something – I didn’t know what. “We can deal with him after we’re all safe,” I told her. “Just climb up!”

She walked away from the man, approached the ladder, and made it to the shaft. The man turned and looked at us, hopeful. He was headed towards another barrage of machines, and I asked Maiya why she had left him there. That he was going to die if he didn’t climb the ladder.

She said that she knew. She took up the Mu Gun once more and pointed it at the man. Not sure what she was doing, but too frightened to interfere, I watched as she made a botched attempt to rescue him. As precisely as she could aim, she shot a new beam of blue light. The light encapsulated not the man, but a chunk of Slate next to him. Maiya brought up the Slate, and sat it down next to us. The man remained inches away from death. His hopeful smile turned to a terrifying frown.

Maiya looked at him, nonchalantly. She put down the Mu Gun, and we both watched as the old man turned around and had his face burned off by an incinerator in the wall. His body, lifeless, thumped over and was processed by the rest of the machines as if he were just another chunk of metal.

I turned to Maiya. I didn’t want to look at her, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. She bent down and picked up the Mu Gun, then handed it to me. “Here, this is yours, right? You should take good care of it.” Her face didn’t show any expression – she wasn’t bothered in the least by what she’d just seen.

The shaft led back into the complex. It was growing hotter inside of the tunnel. I decided, before I would speak with Maiya, to walk through the shaft and into the main building. Along the way, I tried to reconcile with myself whether she’d missed the man by accident or on purpose. I’d get my answer soon enough.

“It was an accident. I’m a terrible shot.”

She didn’t sound very regretful of her terrible shot, though. I pulled her aside and pinned her up against the wall in frustration. “Why did you let him die, then? Why did you put the gun down? You could have saved him if you knew how to use the gun!”

She pushed my body away from hers. “I’m just doing my job,” she said. “I’m working with you.”

I didn’t like what I was hearing; we didn’t even know if that man was the right man to deal with, and even so, we didn’t know how to “deal” with him either way. Surely murder was not what The Embassy had in mind, though I couldn’t tell anything from Maiya’s blank expression. I felt the Mu Gun in my pocket. I was tempted to take it out, not sure how to handle Maiya or this job.

She started walking away from me, down the hallway. Waving goodbye to me without turning around, she said, “I know what you’re thinking. But that wasn’t him, so c’mon.”

I sucked in my gut, ignored the sinking feeling, and got moving. What was done was done, but I couldn’t help but fear for Derek’s safety in that regard. If we’d so nonchalantly killed that old man in the tunnel, who was to say that somebody else hadn’t killed Derek? That there weren’t others also in danger – and possibly danger because of my actions?

“Come on! Stop thinking and start walking,” Maiya shouted back to me.

We soon came to the entrance to the complex. The door was open, but nobody was inside the building. The hustle and bustle I’d always recalled from the atrium, it was always outside of the purification plant. I’d never been inside before. From within, the building appeared to have been abandoned some time ago. More cobwebs floated around, some literally through the air such that I choked on them as I walked through the corridors of the building.

I looked up; almost every pathway was a scaffolding sidewalk. If we were to go up, it would be very easy for one of us to fall back down. But even if we went up to the highest floor, I couldn’t have thought of where to look for a man whose appearance I did not know and whose occupation I’d never been told of. Maiya, presumably, knew all of the details. She just wasn’t sharing with me.

“He’s around here. We’re looking for a skinny man, brown hair, down to his shoulders. He’s needed somewhere, and fast,” Maiya told me as she tilted her head to look around the building.

“Where?”

“That’s not very important. He’s a mechanical engineer; he came into this building to perform maintenance on the machines, and decided it would be better if he locked himself in.”

So, she’d known that the doors would be locked. Why’d we try all the doors, then?

“I didn’t think he would be smart enough to lock all six of them,” she responded. “At any rate, that was all about a week ago. If he’s still holding up in here, I’m sure it would be nearby a food and water source. There should be one up a few stories from here.” She looked up at a door to another section of the building, two floors up. “That door, there.”

I began to walk towards a flight of stairs, but she grabbed my shoulder and told me to take out my Mu Gun. She told me to point it in front of us, at the ground, so I did. When I pushed the button on the Mu Gun’s surface, I felt a slight recoil from the blue light’s pulse – but otherwise, it felt natural and calming. The light, as if a liquid, hit the ground and spread out. When it reached a certain radius, it simply stopped spreading, forming a solid object.

Maiya stepped onto the blue disk, and motioned for me to do the same. When we were both on the disk, I handed the Mu Gun to her and she led the disk up, through the air, to the third floor – right where the door was situated. We stepped off, and the disk instantly vanished, retracted into the depths of the Mu Gun.