They walked down the stairs into the cellar, their feet immediately stirring up a small dust cloud from the dusty floor. 

There were three wooden boxes—crates—placed in the middle of the small cellar. The three boxes were arranged in a stack with one placed on top of the other. The largest box had been placed on the floor, the medium-sized one placed on top of it, and the smallest box placed at the top of the stack.

The three wooden boxes were the only things inside the cellar with exception of the many broken wood pieces littering the cellar floor and a lone bookshelf at the back of the cellar.

Serena walked up to the stack of boxes and slowly caressed the topmost box. She took back her hand and her fingers came away with a thick layer of dust, a result of all the dust that had accumulated all through the years on the surfaces of the boxes, the walls, the floors: everything in the cellar.

“It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?” Serena muttered with a sigh.

She then turned to Kayden and said, “There are weapons, ammunition, food rations, a few changes of clothes—but you should ignore those; it’s all women’s clothing meant for me to wear—and other supplies stored in these boxes.

“I kept anything I thought I might need to use during my missions in the field. You can come check them. Take whatever you want from the boxes. Consider this my way of repaying you for all the help you gave me during our escape from Skynet’s core facility, and also for agreeing to drive me here to my hideout.”

“Weapons and ammo you say? Great! Don’t mind if I dig in.” Kayden said.

He was excited at the unexpected opportunity to finally replace his currently exhausted phased-plasma-rifle ammunition. Besides, he might even be able to add a couple more weapons to his current arsenal. So, he rushed to the box stack and quickly began to lift up and then place each box separately on the floor.

Having completed this task, Kayden rubbed his hands together excitedly as he thoughtfully considered which box to open and check first, but Serena’s voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

“While you help yourself to the supplies you need, I need to check my hidden safe to make sure the sensitive documents inside are still intact.” Serena said before Kayden heard her mutter, “Though, I think the intel contained in those documents must have become irrelevant after so many years.”

She then walked towards the single large wooden shelf, which held a couple of random oddities, and pushed to the back wall of the cellar. She pushed the shelf aside to reveal the door of a small hidden safe built into the cellar wall.

Kayden nodded absentmindedly to Serena’s words; his full attention was occupied with the boxes. He soon opened the first box, having decided to start with the smallest box.

Inside the smallest box, he found many army rations packs, protein bars and several plastic water bottles which Kayden found to still be filled with water.

‘The water in the bottles and the protein bars should have gone bad already after so many years of storage. Mm…I don’t think I really need anything in this box; I have already received enough food supplies from the Resistance camp. But I should take some dry rations for contingencies.’ Kayden thought before moving on to the next box.

Inside the second box, he found an assortment of random tools of all kinds which include: a hammer and nails, climbing ropes, several handcuffs and even a pair of binoculars which seemed to have night vision capability—which found out when he took it out to test it.

‘Nice! Although I doubt it, let’s see if she will allow me to keep the binoculars. Anyways, I don’t think I actually need this; my eyes are capable enough. I suppose it might be useful for hiding my enhanced abilities.’ Kayden thought as he returned the binoculars to the box.

‘This is the last box and the one with the weapons.’ Kayden thought as he raised the lid of the last and also the largest box.

Kayden was most excited to see what he would find in this particular box. And he was not disappointed by what he found inside the box.

Mostly.

The large size of the box was mostly needed to hold the long sniper rifle with all its accessories attached. There were also several assault rifles and handguns, a shotgun and five hand grenades. The rest of the box space was packed full with ammunition boxes and magazines. But Kayden noticed one problem.

All of the weapons and ammunitions were gunpowder-based weapons and ammunitions.

“There’s not a single plasma weapon here.” Kayden muttered, shaking his head in disappointment.

“Hey, there are no plasma weapons here. I can’t find any plasma ammo packs either.” Kayden called out.

“That’s because I have them here with me.” Serena’s voice suddenly came from behind Kayden and the coldness of the voice slightly startled him.

He had been so laser-focused on the boxes that he had not heard her return.

Kayden was just about to turn around to face Serena when she spoke again, and this time, her voice had turned ice cold. 

“Don’t move! I will shoot you if you do a single thing without my say so!”

Kayden froze in step as he heard the familiar sound of plasma gunfire, and almost immediately, he felt something extremely hot fly past him just a few centimeters beside his head with the heat even singeing his right ear. The plasma shot then burnt a hole into the cellar wall in front of Kayden.

“Now raise your hands, and then turn around slowly.” Serena ordered.

Still a little shocked and confused at this sudden turn of events, Kayden complied with her instructions, and making sure he was moving slowly, he turned to face her. And so, Kayden soon came face-to-face with a cold-looking and expressionless Serena.

She stood about three meters away from him, and she was holding two guns—one in each hand.

Kayden’s HUD—which had, as it had always done, turned on automatically as soon as he had felt threatened—immediately identified the gun held in her left hand to be a gunpowder-based handgun—a Steyr M9-A2 pistol—and the gun held in her right hand to be a phased plasma pistol.

And the two guns were currently aimed straight at Kayden’s head.

‘What the hell?!’ Kayden thought with shock.

Serena did not wait for Kayden to open his mouth, say anything or ask any questions. 

She immediately declared, “I know you are not human.” 

Kayden’s pupils shrank.

Serena quickly continued. “What are you? And think carefully before you answer my question. Your answer will determine whether you live or die.”

‘Fuck!’ Kayden thought.

*****

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