Max stepped out into the recently cleared room and breathed a sigh of relief. None of the security systems targeted him, and it didn’t try to bring the security barrier back up to begin its purge protocol. Nico followed a step behind him, and they moved quickly across the now-empty floor.

Not even the racking had survived the purge. The entire floor was just bare walls and a pristine metallic floor. Even the dust that had been left had been purged out of the room. Whether to a storage facility or to the surface, Max didn’t know, but for sure, it wasn’t there on the biomatter floor.

As before, the stairwell down was on the far side of the floor, identical to the ones that they had encountered before, with no signs of the carnage that the Klem had inflicted above them.

“Alright, when we reach the landing, we will both do our best to gather data and send it above. Don’t worry about analyzing it or duplications. We can have the Alliance sort it out for us and then just read their report on anything that isn’t relevant to our work.

No, scratch that. They might have something in here that implies that they have made the Klem fully sentient by hybridizing with their own workers, and we don’t want the Alliance catching wind of that right away. Instead, send it all to our ship, and we will curate what we send to them once we are finished here.”

Nico chuckled at Max’s pragmatism. From what she knew of Alliance laws, it wouldn’t count as the Klem becoming sentient if they were hybridized but as more of a bestiality fetish on the part of the hybrid workers who combined with a non-sentient species. But they were still sentient, and that would mean an inquiry would have to take place, and she had no intentions of dealing with that nonsense if she could avoid it.

They would have to do enough reports and paperwork on the facility, to begin with, since it was housing an illegally obtained hazardous species, and that had been confirmed by the Alliance ships already. Adding more to it was just masochistic.

Max sensed the instant that she detected the computers on the floor below them as they passed whatever barrier layer was in between floors, and they both got to work gathering and transferring data while they stood on a landing halfway between floors.

It would give them more time to react if something came for them from the next floor, and it didn’t feel like there were any blind spots in the search.

Even better, after only a few minutes, Nico found a disabled router linking the research floors that was separate from the hard link, which had been severed. With just a few seconds of work, it was up and running, and they had three research floors worth of data to transfer.

As he searched the data, Max realized that these floors weren’t really separate. They had obtained a very large “Research Sample” that was three stories tall and took up the center of the research floors, so once they entered this floor, there would be three floors worth of workers present without anything to stop their movements.

That meant it would be possible to herd them, but it would also be possible for them to rush him and Nico, which could be an issue, even with their firepower.

There was no record of weapons on these floors, but the Hybrids had claws and spiked limbs, so they couldn’t be underestimated. Nothing that was derived from the Klem was unlikely to be dangerous.

Once they finished with the storage drives, Max and Nico searched the system one more time and decided that they had found all that they could.

“I think there is an AI of some sort watching over the lab. I sensed something else monitoring and accessing data, then changing the access dates back, but I wasn’t fast enough to catch it in the act. Be careful as we move forward. It is definitely going to notice that we don’t belong here.” Max notified Nico.

“Oh, I’ve got an idea. Program your suit identification with a lab access pass from someone inside. Either one of the researchers here or one that we killed on the upper floors.” Nico suggested.

That was easy enough and a basic break-in tactic in the downside slums, so Max had it done with a thought, but as soon as they brought them online, Max sensed that they had made a mistake. The camera in the hallway swivelled to face them directly, and the solid red light began to flash.

[Relax, I programmed us into the system. We should match the user data.] Nico thought while looking at Max.

She didn’t want to say it out loud since the AI was clearly listening in now, but after the camera scanned them with a wave of infrared light, it went back to normal.

They moved from the landing and then suddenly found themselves suspended in the air by a gravity beam more powerful than the systems on their suits.

[Duplicate users found. Error not within operational guidelines. Moving errors to the observation area for monitoring.] The speaker on the wall announced, and Max found himself being raced through the floors and down a tunnel with multiple blast doors and energy barriers before being unceremoniously dropped in a small cell along with Nico and two very confused-looking hybrids in lab coats.

Those must be the people whose credentials they stole.

[I erased them from the logs. They shouldn’t have had any permissions left. Did we miss a backup drive somewhere?] Nico was contemplating right before the hybrids’ instincts kicked in, and they lunged for the non-Klem life signs.

Her twin swords flashed, and Nico dispatched the two researchers in an instant, but that didn’t seem to change anything in their situation.

“Well, the duplication error should be cleared now. I would burn them to ash, but you know how that ended last time, and we’re still in the cell at the moment. If the computer data is correct, this should be the practical testing area, and there is a lot of good stuff here.” Nico informed him, with her thoughts overflowing with eagerness to see how they tested their experiments.