Mark hesitated to step into the room. He couldn't take his eyes off the robot as he said cautiously. "Nobody told me there would be an android up here..." Wanda crossed her arms under her chest, stating out coolly. "Would it have made a difference?" Mark turned worried eyes on her, answering seriously. "It might have. Yes." Miles looked him over closely, asking curiously. "Why is that?" Mark clenched his jaw, backing up a bit to put his back to the wall by the hatch door. Miles read him like a book, following his eyes to the android and back before saying softly. "Oh... Automatonophobia?" Wanda blinked, completely perplexed as she asked Miles. "Auto-what?" Miles waved a hand dismissively as Hiro turned to them, saying in a light commanding voice. "Guys, hush." Hiro looked back to Robonaut, asking bluntly. "Robonaut? Where did the crew go?" Robonaut tilted his head, stating out simply. "I'm sorry. I don't understand the question. You came from outside." Hiro shook his head, rephrasing slowly. "Where was the crew BEFORE we arrived?"

Robonaut turned his head to look out the large window that looked out at space. They waited patiently, until it looked back to answer coolly. "Unknown. I'm sorry. Some of my data seems to be corrupted." Mark shook his head, telling the others seriously. "We should go." The military pilot chuckled, nudging the other military personnel as he teased out. "Aww... The engineer is scared." Mark pointed to the robot, snapping out. "Yes, because I'm not stupid! For all we know, he killed the crew and lured us up here!" The military pilot laughed, until Hiro snapped out at all of them. "Hey! Calm yourselves! It's probably just a computer glitch." Mark shook his head. The hairs on his arms were standing up. Something about the place felt wrong and his sights were set on the Android. The android was always to blame. He didn't trust it. Hiro pointed to the two military personnel and Miles, snapping out. "You three get back to the ship. The rest of us will have a look around to learn what we can."

The Military pilot scoffed, gesturing for the others to follow him. Mark locked eyes with the man. He didn't like him either. He was too smug. The pilot moved to the open hatch, when it suddenly closed and locked on its own. Mark jumped away from the door, his heart fleeing from his chest. Hiro whirled around to confront the robot, yelling out. "What are you doing? Open the docking bay door!" Robonaut stood very still as he told them in a nice voice. "My apologies, Captain. That was not my doing." Hiro tensed as he asked a little uneasily. "Why did the door close?" Robonaut responded promptly. "The door was closed manually from the control room. The system is undergoing an update and needs to reset. I'm afraid that all Docking Bay doors will be offline until the update is complete. Sorry for the inconvenience." Wanda moved closer to Mark, discreetly uttering out over his shoulder. "We need to get to the control room and see what's going on. If we can't get that door open... We won't be able to go back home. And worse yet... If the coms are dead in the control room... We just lost our only way to contact Ground Control, if you turn out to be right."

Mark swallowed nervously, mumbling out. "Then let's hope that I'm wrong." Robonaut turned waving a hand toward a hatch door across the way as it said warmly. "Shall I escort you all somewhere in Space Station 01?" The military pilot hit the closed hatch door, walking over as he said aloud. "I don't know about the rest of you. But I need a drink." Hiro narrowed his eyes on the man, growling out. "We are on a mission. As Captain-" The pilot straightened up defiantly retorting as he pointed to Mark and Wanda. "No. THEY are on a mission to fix all this. And YOU watch them. I'm off-duty until you need to fly again." The pilot looked to the robot, smugly asking. "Now. Which way to a stiff drink?" Robonaut nodded its head, then began to walk as it told them over its shoulder. "The lounge is this way. Please follow me." Hiro didn't follow, he stood shaking his head in disbelief. Miles moved closer, saying in a low voice as the two military people left. "I'll write a report on their behavior if you'll sign off on it." Hiro nodded, but muttered out darkly. "Nothing we can do about it for now though. Let's just get this over with."

Hiro tapped Miles's arm, ordering him seriously. "Tail them. Keep me informed. I can't have them fucking around too much." Miles nodded, then moved out of the door at a brisk pace to catch up. Hiro then looked at his engineers, saying more coolly. "Come on. The faster we do this, the faster we can go home." Mark picked up his tools, following Wanda and the Captain into the next room. Stepping through, Mark marveled at how bright it was. The next room was large and rounded with more large windows and hatch doors spaced out evenly. In the center of the room was a beautiful Zen pond with fresh green flowers. Surrounding the Zen pond were heated massage tables with a gel looking top that had protruding bumps. Wanda ran a hand over one, purring out hopefully. "Oh, I wanna try one of these before we leave! Lucky bastards! They get their own spa!" Hiro chuckled to himself, telling her a bit seriously. "They aren't as lucky as you think. It gets very stressful up here." Hiro spotted a map by a hatch door and went over to it to read it. Wanda went with him, but Mark lingered by a heated message table.

Touching it, he smirked as the gel molded to his hand. It did look like fun to try. His smile faded a bit as he noticed something in the seam of the gel. Peeling it off, Mark stared at it. His mind rushing to think of any possibilities to go with what he was looking at and how it got there. The only sure thing he knew was that the small thin piece of skin in his hand appeared to have been shed from a lizard. While looking it over, Mark asked a distracted Hiro curiously. "Hiro...? Did the astronauts here bring any pets with them?" Hiro pointed to a spot on the map for Wanda, then answered him still distracted. "No. Not to my knowledge. It would be a bitch to transport and NASA would never..." Hiro suddenly turned to look at him, asking almost timidly. "Why do you ask...?" Mark held up the skin, saying hopefully. "Any chance someone managed to sneak one up here?" Hiro rushed over to look at it more closely, answering gruffly. "I wouldn't put it past someone to try... Hard to tell from this small piece what it came from. Maybe a snake?"

Hiro suddenly looked up from the skin to stare at the Zen pond, prompting Mark into asking with worry. "What is it?" Hiro's eyes moved back to him, answering casually. "Whatever shed this, did it not too long ago. Be careful. Until we know what someone brought up here... Assume it's poisonous and possibly aggressive." Mark huffed, mumbling out to himself. "Oh... that's great... Glad I have to worry about killer snakes in space." Wanda snickered to herself, joking out. "Sounds like a bad idea for a movie. Snakes in space..." Mark chuckled, getting Hiro to laugh nervously before telling them both as he rolled his eyes. "Don't joke about that... I'm scared of snakes." Wanda tapped a wrench against her shoulder, retorting with a grin. "Seriously? All of them? Or just the ones with a hissy fit?" She gestured fangs striking with her fingers, getting a dark look from Hiro as he told her dryly. "All of them. So, if you try to pull something... I'll eject you from the airlock." Wanda laughed loudly and then saluted Hiro as she told him nicely. "Noted, Captain."

Hiro pointed to a hatch door, changing the subject quickly to inform them. "That should be the door that leads us to the spiraling stairs, which will take us to the other levels. Let's open it and go to the control level." Wanda jogged to the computer terminal beside the hatch door, announcing giddily. "I got it! This one is mine!" Hiro groaned, rushing out as she reached it. "Please don't beat on it!" Mark ventured cautiously to the Zen pond. The rock styled pond was big enough to fit at least ten men inside. The trickling water feature was calming to listen to, and it smelled just as relaxing. Kneeling to look into the clear water, he couldn't help thinking about how much Sean would love this. The bottom of the pond had bright blue rocks and some were glowing in the dark parts of the pond. He had expected to see some real fish. Instead, he saw toy fish that were swimming in the water. Smirking to himself, he noticed a small kid's fishing rod laying by the side. Examining the rod, he saw the end had a magnet. Someone's idea of relaxing was pretending to fish. He liked that. It was a clever way of bringing a piece of home to space.

Setting the rod down, he glanced at the realistic looking fish and noticed the magnets in their mouths now. A weird shape in the water caught Mark's eyes and he stripped off his astronaut suit in order to reach in to grab it. The water was strangely warm. Almost all the water taken or used in space was as cold as ice because of the heatless void of space. They had to of had something heating the pond. Grabbing a plastic fish that looked like a brown trout, he looked it over to see why it had been swimming in a circle. Turning it over, Mark froze. There was a bite taken out of the side of it. Mark lowered the fish, staring into the water more intently. It was hard to see anything in the water with the fountain running. The rippling water making most things in the pond seen through a haze blur. Mark thought he saw fish drifting apart from one section of the pond, when Hiro called out to him. "Mark? What are you doing? The doors open. Let's go." Mark set the fish down, climbing to his feet. Removing the bulky astronaut suit, he draped it over a heated message table and stretched. The skintight thermosuit Space Force uniform allowed him more free movement and he preferred that to how on edge he was feeling.

After seeing him lose the bulky space suit, both Hiro and Wanda quickly did the same. Tossing the suits down, Hiro told Mark. "Good idea. They'll just get in the way." Mark just nodded in agreement. There was no point in arguing why he had done it. Hearing a tiny splash behind him, Mark glanced back and hoped that it had just been a toy fish breeching the surface. Shaking his head, he forced himself to move on, mumbling to himself. "Everything is fine. It's all those games... It's making me crazy. Focus. I can do this." Unraveling his tool belt, he put it around his waist and moved out into the spiral stairway. The spiral stairway looked like another smaller tube with small rounded windows down the side, while stripes of LED lights lined the ceiling and steps of the stairs. Walking up the stairs, he followed Hiro and Wanda's voices ahead of him. They were chatting softly about what the update might be trying to fix in the system and how that might be why Robonaut was having trouble remembering things. He caught up to them, keeping quiet to continue listening to their rational theories.

Hiro nodded, slipping in after Wanda. "That would make some sense. If the main computer is stuck in a loop of trying to fix a problem that it can't solve, it would shut down only those functions that effect it. Which would be the doors... but these other doors are still working?" Mark couldn't stop himself from interjecting coolly. "True, but these doors might be running off of a separate network. Doors like the Docking Bay require more power to run. More locks and safety precautions are installed in them." Wanda stopped on the stairway to smile at him as she said. "I'm impressed. You were paying attention in school that day." Mark smirked, stating back a bit sarcastically. "Of course. Something happens to those doors and we'll be sucked out into space... So, ya. I took it seriously." They all chuckled, before Wanda collected herself enough to say dryly. "He's right. But that brings us to a bigger problem. The Commander here put this place into a lockdown... We unlocked it without knowing why it was put into a lockdown in the first place." Hiro shrugged, telling her honestly. "We had to. The only way to know what happened was to get inside..."

Wanda agreed, but started to tell him sadly. "Yes. But understand this... The lockdown might have been helping this station continue running as it has." Hiro looked confused, while Mark understood and stated aloud for himself. "Oh shit... So, if the crew managed to close a hole and locked this place down to protect everything else..." Wanda nodded and finished off a bit uneasily. "By unlocking it, we may have opened a hole to a much bigger problem." Hiro exhaled putting his hands on his hips as he told them seriously. "We stick to the plan. Find the control deck and figure out what went wrong. There has to be logs we can access or something there." Mark and Wanda nodded in agreement, starting to continue up, when a loud feminine scream echoed throughout the station. They froze, listening to Miles yell in the distance. "Get her back! Just stay back!" Hiro glanced at them, before they all ran back down to the room they'd left. Mark wasn't in the biggest hurry to go TOWARD the danger. So, he let Hiro and Wanda take the lead.

They ran across the Zen area, glancing at the now two open hatches before going to the one that they saw the military pilot coming from. He was holding the hysterical military woman as he pulled her from the hatch and back into the Zen area. Hiro ran up to him, yelling out in a panicked voice. "What happened?!" The pilot pointed back into the hatch with a horrified look on his face. Hiro rushed on to see and Mark groaned a little before following. He didn't want to know how bad it was... but curiosity got the better of him. He needed to know what was on this ship. The hatch opened into a smaller stairway that led down into a rounded floor of just bedrooms with hatch doors. Each room looked to be its own escape pod. Mark would have admired the design, except his attention was drawn to something else. The lights on the floor and ceiling reflected off the open center of the place, highlighting the dried blood on the white walls. Mark's breath caught in his throat. Carefully moving around the splatters of blood on the floor, he moved in enough to see what Miles and Robonaut were looking at.

All of the rooms they could see had their hatches dented in... like something big had smashed its way inside. Wanda's eyes widened and she moved toward one of the hatch doors to look it over as she said scarcely. "What the fuck did this? These hatches are made from Tungsten metal! The hardest metal on earth! You'd have to have skin of diamond just to scratch it!" Miles swallowed, pointing to a set of deep claw marks on the hatch he was next too, telling them in a grim voice. "I have a feeling that whatever did this... It's not human." Hiro moved into one of the broken into rooms, while Miles uttered out. "I'll find their names and... file a report." Mark moved into a hatch with Wanda to see the stripped-down bits of a human skeleton inside. What remained of the skeleton was resting in a pool of dried blood. Mark turned his head away, holding his breath. The smell of blood and death was overwhelming in this area. It was making him sick to his stomach. Turning to leave, he stopped short and hit Wanda's arm. She turned to look at him and he pointed to a set of perfect bloody footprints.

The footprints were only in this room. As if the thing had cleaned off its feet before leaving... and it chilled him to the bone to think that they looked like the tracks of a human sized three toed dinosaur. To Be Continued...