I’ve been here for two hours, and there’s no sign of Felia or the aliens. It didn’t take me long to figure that I’d been set up.

Who knows where they took Felia. Maybe to a place like this. Maybe somewhere else. And who knows what sinister purpose their plans will serve.

I blame myself. I beat myself up mentally for the first hour, knowing that I should have known that they were lying, that they were full of shit.

That’s why I can’t call myself fully human. After all, intuition is a human thing, not a machine thing, and not a cyborg thing. It’s an attribute that I seem to be lacking, at least some of the time, or when it’s most important.

I need her, and she’s all I can think about while staring at these blank walls. I need to protect her and I failed—completely.

It isn't for another half hour that I remember that I’m supposed to be kidnapping her, not just protecting her from aliens.

Well, I’ve failed at that too, however you look at it. These aliens have taken my hostage, and my mission has failed.

But honestly, I’m starting to wonder how much the mission is important to me, compared to just protecting her.

Sure, the fate of us cyborgs depends on the mission.

But she’s… incredible. She makes me… feel. Which is certainly something for a cyborg. We’re not supposed to feel anything.

Finally, I get to work. I don’t forgive myself for leading Felia and myself right into a trap, but at least I realize that I need to start thinking practically about the situation.

I examine the walls, the floor, and the ceiling as best I can.

My eyesight is better than a human’s. I can see things that they can’t. But there isn’t much to see here. The walls are the same material as that strange white tube that brought us here, and there seem to be no doorways at all.

But I know that things aren't always as they appear. There has to be a door. I don’t care what kind of technology they’re using, or what they call it—if I got in here, there’s a way for me to get out.

Another half hour goes by, and I don’t give up. I pore over every inch of the wall with a fine toothed comb, keeping my eye no more than a few centimeters from what I’m examining.

Finally, I find it.

It’s not much, and it’s well hidden. And even then, it doesn’t seem to be of any importance.

But the important thing is that it’s something different—something that’s not just these bland white walls.

It’s hard to describe what it is. Really, it looks more like a small stain than anything else, just a few millimeters wide.

My first instinct is to press it like a button. Nothing happens, of course.

I continue examining it, wondering how to proceed.

I’m not getting anywhere with my hands or my eyes, so it’s time to move up the ladder in terms of tools. Those aliens perceive things about me that they shouldn’t be able to. For instance, they knew right away I was different than a regular human being. But what they weren't able to detect, apparently, is the small set of servo drivers hidden in a mechanical cavity in my right calf muscle, a secret compartment used to house tools that I can use to do some minor self repairs. Every miner on Mina Dos is equipped with the same tool set of servo drivers. After all, if you’re in a mine, working a few thousand meters below the surface of the moon, you don’t want to head back to engineering for a minor adjustment. Not that it happens that often—but it’s good to be prepared.

Using my hand to hit my calf muscle in just the right way allows the compartment to pop open. It’s still a strange sight, even for me, to see part of my body opening up like this.

I grab the smallest of the servo drivers and set to work, probing the small stain with the servo driver’s electromagnetic rays.

It works. Or at least it does something.

I manage to tear the patch off the wall surface. Holding it in my hand, it seems like nothing.

But I know it’s something. It’s here for a reason, whatever that is. I figure it must be some sort of control system. These aliens are strange, and their technology is stranger. All I have to do is figure out the strangest thing I can do with this little wisp of a stain, this thing that seems to have no materiality or substance to it at all, and then I’ll be able to get out of here.

Another half hour is spent just trying to figure what the hell to do with this thing. All the while, I’m starting to grow very worried about what could be happening to Felia.

Finally, I give up. I’ve pressed it, I’ve pushed it against the wall. I’ve used all the servo driver’s functions on it. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens.

Slumping down against the wall in despair, I realize… I’ve just been using my head in this. I’ve been trying to examine the project logically.

But something inside me calls out to me. It feels like intuition. Some little voice inside me telling me that I should… eat it. Yes, that’s what my body is telling me, that I should eat this little stain.

But that sounds crazy? At least that’s what the logical part of me says.

“Well,” I mutter to myself. “If this crazy little voice inside of me is right, then I suppose that means I’m a human, and have intuition after all. If I’m wrong, then I’m a full on cyborg, and a dumb cyborg at that, who can’t even figure out how to escape from this room.”

So I do it. I throw it into my mouth and swallow it whole. There's no taste to it.

And nothing happens.

Fuck. Now I’ve just swallowed what could have been my escape.

I guess I’m just a malfunctioning machine. What crazy part of my curiosity came up with the idea to eat that?

It was a bottle between my human side and my cyborg side, between my intuition and my logic. And I wanted to be human so much that I chose the human side, and it turned out to be dead wrong.

I mean, swallowing the only key I have, the only piece of the puzzle? What was I thinking?

It must be my desire not only to be human, but my desire to be with her, to be like her enough to be really with her.

I stew in my thoughts for a few minutes, before wondering if the little thing I swallowed has done something after all.

But what would it do, if it were to do anything?

Would it open a door right here in the wall, or it would it act in some different way?

Perhaps it would allow me to go where I please.

There's nothing to lose. I might as well try it.

I walk towards the blank white wall, and to my absolute surprise, it opens right in front of me, a gaping hole where there once was a solid wall.

Outside my prison cell, there's nothing but white hallways. I'm at an intersection, and there are four of these white tubular passageways that lead in opposite directions, all of them seeming to go nowhere.

All I've got to do is find Felia. But she could be anywhere.

Down this hallway, for instance, there could be a thousand holding cell rooms exactly like the one I was in. I would never know, because there would be no marking where I'd expect a door to be.

I guess the only thing to do is to try to walk into each piece of the wall, to see what's inside.

I try it tentatively, walking towards the wall slowly and cautiously. There's no door here. Nothing happens. How do the aliens know where the doors are?

I walk towards another piece of wall, a little farther down the passageway, and this time it works. The wall opens, a hole appearing. It's a room identical to the one I was in—nothing but white walls, a white ceiling, and a white floor. But there's no one in here.

I continue doing this, moving down the passageway, checking each room. But I find nothing. There's no one at all. No aliens, and no Felia.

Half an hour goes by, and I'm starting to wonder if I’ll ever find her. I'm getting desperate for her. After all, if the aliens were telling the truth about this part, I'm deep beneath this planet's surface, and it's not going to be easy to escape even if I do find her. And she could be anywhere in this massive creepy blank city of theirs, which apparently, at least in this sector, is nothing at all but hallways and empty rooms.

“Vex,” cries out someone, far enough down the hall that I can't see them.

But I know that voice. I'd know it anywhere.

It's her!

“Felia?” I shout, my voice echoing creepily down the impossibly long hallway. “Felia! It's me.”

For a moment, there's nothing, but then she calls out to me again.

I run towards her voice as fast as I can, my augmented legs rushing, my hardened feet smashing into the floor with great force, propelling my body along at a speed that no normal human could reach, let alone maintain.

Finally, I see her.

At first, she's nothing more than a small speck. These odd hallways must have carried her voice much farther than even my cyborg eyes could have seen.

She's sprinting towards me, and now I can see them—two aliens follow her, running behind her, their cloaks flowing behind them. It's very strange to see them run. They seem too complacent, peaceful, and docile. But they can run almost as fast as she can, their antennae bobbing along with their swooping stride.

I don't slow down at all, even as I rush past her.

She's panting, completely exhausted and out of breath.

She stops behind me.

“Keep running!” I shout, waving my arm to try to get her to move farther behind me. After all, there's no telling what kind of weapons these seemingly peaceful aliens have.

Without slowing at all, I slam into the first alien.

It shrieks, letting out a horrible string of sounds in its own language. Apparently, its translator machine isn't activated in times of stress or chaos.

Despite its peaceful appearance, I know there's more to these aliens than they let on. After all, they were capable liars back in the jungle, luring us into a trap.

Just as I expected, the alien is stronger than it looks.

And not just that, but it has an entire extra set of arms that I didn't know about. They were hidden all along beneath its strange cloak.

But the cloak goes flying up as I knock it backwards. It seizes me with this extra set of hands that I wasn't aware of, and pulls me along with it. The hands are vice like in strength.

It tries to pull me down, its other hands seizing my throat and squeezing, trying to strangle me to death.

The other alien is moving towards Felia, ignoring its companion's struggle.

The alien might be strong, but it's no match for me.

I get my right arm free from the tangle of unexpected limbs and bring it around in a huge arc until my closed fist collides with the alien’s face, right above its eyes. Its head feels as hard as steel, and for a moment I worry I won't be able to hurt it. But my fist also hits one of its antennae, and the alien lets out a shriek of pain as its antenna is flattened.

That's it, that's the answer.

I seize another antenna and pull it as hard as I can, thinking that if I have to, for Felia, I'll pull this alien bastard's antenna right out of its skull.

I smash the alien's other antenna with my fist, and it writhes in pain.

“Vex!” shouts Felia, from behind me. “Help!”

I turn around, and the alien is upon her, grasping her with its second set of hands that come out quite creepily from underneath its robe.

I rush towards it. I'm too fast for it, tackling it from behind. The three of us hit the ground hard. Felia manages to roll out from under the alien, and I seize its antennae, twisting them viciously until it shrieks.

“Come on,” I say, getting up. “We need to get out of here. Are you OK? Can you run?”

There's no time to ask how she escaped or what she knows about these aliens or this city.

The only thing we need to do right this instant is run, as fast and far as we can. We'll have to figure out the other details later.

“Come on,” I say again, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her up off the ground.

We start running down the hallway, but Felia is hurt. She's limping. “I can't…” she says, panting with exertion. She must have run very far already before I found her. After all, she's in excellent shape, with incredibly toned muscles. One has to keep in form when you're the senator's daughter, after all. But hell, I'm not going to complain about her fantastic body.

I pick Felia up, slinging her over my shoulder easily, and start running again. It's a little harder with her weight, but I can still do it, just not as fast as before.

After a minute, her panting is dying down, and she's regaining some of her strength.

“Now that you’re more rested,” I say, my own voice coming out in bursts, since I'm going as hard as I can, “tell me everything you know. We need to find a way out of here. And I don't know where the hell we are.”

She tells me what the alien told me, that the general is coming for us. “And he's going to kill me,” she says. “I just know it.”

“That's good,” I say. “We can use his ship. We need to get off this planet, after all. We just need a plan.”

“We need to find one of those white tubes again. That's what they use for transport.”

“We need some gear, too,” I say. “It's going to be hard to pull off what I have in mind unless we have the proper equipment.”

The hallway yawns before me, white and blank. There's no sign of the aliens again, but I know they’re here, watching for us, out there somewhere.

I run as hard as I can, my footsteps and breathing the only sounds I can hear. Felia's body against mine, her breasts pressed into the back of my shoulder, is comforting, reminding me that I have to save her, no matter what.