''Alright. I'll see if there's a maintenance door we can slip into. It should give us a passage to the other entrance."
Nero took out his teledex and started using the scanner function to go over the water park. But the path they needed to take would require them to get past the biohazard sprinkler. The pathways around it were partially littered with debris and old structures left crooked from the disrepair that came with no caregivers for the place. Though being a cruise liner, there were good odds the resultant mess would have happened anyway by the end of the ship's journey. Cruises looked nice and fun at the start but they ran out of supplies and enthusiastic energy eventually, only the promise of landing at planetary or orbital ports offering much in the way of relief.
Antares would probably be fine between his mask and regenerative capabilities. Nero on the other hand had to go gut some inner tubes and make a rubbery protective poncho. He took a deep breath before putting a pair of old swim goggles over his eyes to help keep the makeshift hood in place while he frantically tried to get to the other side-- throwing off the improvised PPE and watching it start to disintegrate after taking on too much of the material the sprinkler was spouting off.
Nearby, the Lifeguard MalAug had suffered a similar fate. The rancid suntan lotion had bored its way into the creature's multiple-brains, like a cranial bio-server room. It was dead and the other creatures would probably dine on its flesh once they caught wind of its putrid death-scent. Antares wouldn't have to worry about defenses. Yet.
Nero opened a door leading into a side maintenance passage. It was brightly lit with more reinforced walls. They could use this to get across the remainder of the water park section of the stellar cruise liner unharmed.
"We're practically home free!"
Nero looked like his lungs had been torn out of place and dropped through to his stomach acid. Behind them, an uncomfortably closeby service android: Unlike the Wishbone's, which were smoother, more obviously metallic endoskeletal robotic-units despite also resembling crash dummies, these ones were coated in a latex composite designed to emulate human skin, with semi-molded facial features that gave them an incomplete, uncanny valley look.
"EVERYTHING HAS A PRICE HERE! ALLOW ME TO BE YOUR PERSONAL CASHIER."
Nero kept walking, waving Antares along-- perturbed by the profiteering subroutines on this unit. But the android seemed to stand in place and watch the two of them go. It'd probably watch them sleep if it could. Waiting to calculate a bill for the air they breathed and how many square inches they took up, with multipliers if they tossed or turned overnight.
"Walk faster. Don't look back. There might be more of those dollardroids lurking around. We can't afford to get them mad at us too-- the MalAugs ignore the bots unless the bots directly pose a threat. It's like they don't register otherwise."
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
