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But without the ability to ed with the a co to be hard

Great We’ll kick off with cave paintings and evolve through the developet myself into this? Why didn’t I follow orders?

And Dante, Williaain--I’ineer returned in tiain He’d only been gone for aher helmet like a footbal and reached out to run his tentacle across one of the screens on the wal

Letters faded up, black script seeping out of a lass

LUCY-B091 RECLAIMER WELCOME TO SHIELD WORLD SARCOPHAGUS BUT LIFE GOES ON

The font was identical to the one in her underpants She sucked in a breath and found herself nodding Life … had to go on

She hadn’t realized her emotional state was so visible to an alien life-form

So now she could write She reached up to the screen and struggled to frame a response in her mind But it wasn’t just her ability to forled to express herself even in a written form The conversations she had with herself in her own mind weren’t the saet them out of her head and

She dragged her finger down the white glass, expecting to see a line forned to respond to whatever input the Engineers used, not huineer and did a frustrated shrug

Daet the idea He’ll watch and then he’ll work out what I need I knoill

The Engineer placed a tentacle on the screen next to her hand and more letters formed

WHERE IS THE PLAGUE? NOTHING IS DEAD WHY ARE YOU HERE?

His fluency was ier Daenius, and he couldn’t see that she couldn’t use the screen? Don’t disappoint rabbed his tentacle, like folding her fingers around a little kid’s hand to guide his crayon He flinched and tried to pul away

The "hand" felt delicate and smooth, like silicone, and cooler than human skin Maybe she’d squeezed too hard and scared hi on and patted the arlass didn’t produce any text She let hio, out of ideas and lost for what to try next

But he stroked the glass again and more letters for microscopic touch-keys

ALL LIFE LIVES TALK TO PRONE TO DRIFT

Okay, ibberish to her She shook her head and frowned theatrical y I don’t understand

PRONE TO DRIFT

Lucy frowned again, this tie that would get through to hi out of nonwords

He touched the screen again

PRONE TO DRIFT IS ME

Is ? It was his na to how they floated when their gas sacs were first adjusted for buoyancy His name was Prone to Drift She wanted to say it, and strained to led by the effort again and she gave up

WHY ARE YOU SILENT? he tapped

Lucy shrugged She wasn’t the only Spartan who’d been through traumas, just the only one who’d been driven to silence by it SheProne to Drift perked up and cocked his head as if listening harder, but then appeared to realize it was the only sound he was going to get out of her

He didn’t seeh Al the frustration was co from her side of this ame of charades, it wasn’t fun She suddenly wanted to burst into tears

The other Engineers drifted back into the rooestures with Prone to Drift before vanishing again He took her ungloved hand and exaers like a fortune-tel er

Prone turned her hand as if he was showing it to her, then let go and touched the display

YOU HAVE BLUNT APPENDAGES WE MAKE ADJUSTMENTS

Lucy felt a warm flood of revelation in her chest He understands He really understands He was going to fix the screen so that she could write on it And that ain She could do it She had to She had to let him know that she needed to find her squad

She also had to find out what this place actual y was, and how they were going to survive here If she could get Dr Halsey or Chief Mendez together with Prone and his friends, that discussion would be a lot easier

She’d reached the point of seriously considering using her own blood as ink and scrawling on the wal s when the surface of the glass in front of her changed At first it see in it like a tutti-frutti dessert, and then the colors coalesced and she was looking at a vertical line of capital letters and a few dots

Her reflex was to try to read it as a word, but then she counted and realized the line enty-six characters long and none of them repeated

The dots looked like symbols--a question mark, a comma, a dash, and a ful stop

It was a keyboard

Ah That information must be stored in my HUD The text display Of course

It wasn’t in any kind of alphabetical or keyboard order she’d ever seen, but she knehat she had to do with it She hunted for the letters and prodded the to type Few people did that these days, but then very few could stil use Morse, either She could

Prone see excited WE CAN TALK NOW WE CAN DISCOVER MORE THE SHIELD HAS ACTIVATED BUT WHERE IS THE FLOOD?

Lucy ay behind hi to fra for ree of subvocalization She didn’t have that option