Somi stumbled, a little stunned, when the grenade bounced off her head. To her great annoyance, she saw that the silly slig had, instead of running away, curled up on the ground. Sturg had pushed away the paramites, but then dived to knock away the grenade. The paramites were quickly recovering when another slig ran in and fired his gun, making the whole thing much worse: now they thought they were threatened themselves, those paramites would battle to defend themselves; unlike her, they didn't understand what the slig said. Acting as fast as she could, she lunged at the paramites, ramming into their leader and yelled in the mudokons language, "Run, you idiots!" She hoped they'd get the message. As she looked away, she heard the grenade explode.
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Jim shivered. "I know the sligs here aren't all bad, but I can't help being terrified of them! It's not my fault; I' got a phobia and you can't control that! If I could stop myself panicking when I see them, I would! I just want to get out of this kitchen before more come back."
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Dionysia barged out of the production lines. Krik barged out of the labs. They looked at each other down a long corridor. "Where in Odd's name have you been?" Asked Krik.
"Almost getting myself killed by the hoardes of animals Arnie's storing in the basement. This place is a mess!"
Krik rolled his eyes, disbelieving. "Right, well if you remember, I'm not here to chase after you all day." Dionysia sniffed; as far as she was concerned, Krik hadn't been chasing after her nearly enough. "I'm a busy vykker, and there are a number of tests I need to run, if you remember. So if you'll wait for me in the-"
"No thanks, Krik. We can do 'em now, or you can start chaing me."
The vykker growled. He was looking forward to getting rid of this prototype. "Fine, lets get on with it. I imagine there are plenty of empty rooms around here-"
"There's a largish cupboard upstairs."
"Excellent, come on then!" Together they headed up the executive lifts to the top floor and Dionysia led the vykker to the cupboard where she and Dionysia had hidden a native intruder the night before.
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