All four of the humans managed to squeeze in at the back of the room but none of them could see much. Iona found a storage crate in the corner that looked like it would take her weight, stepped on it, and peered over the figures’ heads.

The creature in the bed looked a lot like the decider up in the glass sphere on the plain. Its clothes were different but it was evidently the same species. Iona was about to relate this information to the others when the decider’s eyes opened.

Every figure in the room kneeled and inclined their heads toward the new arrival. This supplicant pose rippled through the crowd, leaving just Iona, Saori, Victor, and Steve standing.

The decider stared back at the humans blankly.

Iona stepped down off the crate.

* * *

When the figures had finished bowing down to the decider they noticed the humans were there. One of the figures—Iona thought it was the one who’d released them from their cage—suggested they return to the medical facility’s communal area. It suggested this quite matter-of-factly, without a hint of threat, but when the humans asked it where the decider had come from and what was going on, it did not answer the questions. This was the first time it had ever declined to answer their questions. Instead it repeated its suggestion.

Saori, Victor, and Steve returned to the communal area. Iona said she was going to use the toilet, but instead she slipped out of the medical facility, walked up the steps out of the canyon and onto the plain. She just wanted to check something.

At the top of the steps she saw the transparent sphere. The dead decider was still inside, its position unchanged from the last time she’d been here. It hadn’t returned to life. So the one at the facility was new.

Iona walked up to the sphere and rapped her knuckle against it. Instead of a satisfying ring it made an odd, dull glob. It wasn’t glass or anything like it. She wasn’t sure what it was made of.

She walked back down the steps to the facility.

* * *

The humans discussed the newcomer in low voices, ensuring the figures in the other room couldn’t hear, even though the figures didn’t seem to be paying them any attention.

“Bloody hell, they’re alive,” said Steve.

“Well,” said Victor, “one of them is.”

“This changes everything,” said Iona.

“Yes, for the worse,” grumbled Saori.

“I disagree.”

“Oh, sorry, I hadn’t realized that the arrival of the people who’re responsible for locking us up was a cause for celebration.”

“Don’t go all sour grapes just because you were convinced they were extinct.”

“That’s not it at all—with the figures we were dealing with people less intelligent than ourselves who worked on strictly rational terms. Given time we’d have found a loophole in their protocols and convinced them—”

“I’m not sure we had time and I’m not sure there is a loophole.”