"I've told you time and time again, I don't know where they went." Ro massaged her temples. "Questioning me over and over isn't going to change that."
The Galida Lii made a noncommittal noise and scribbled on her clipboard.
After a minute of the Lii scribbling noisily, Ro snapped, "Unless you're planning on asking me anything new, I'd like to go back to the secure room."
No response.
"Elniae!" she barked in Scrixs. Listen.
The Lii looked up, startled. While they all knew that Ro could usher a few words of their language, it never seemed to stop surprising them.
"I want to go back to the secure room."
The Lii placed her pen-thing on the table and gave Ro a tight-lipped look of disapproval. She opened her mouth, about to say something in her incredibly thick faux-French accent. A Lii guard burst into the interrogation room and spoke rapidly in Scrixs.
The Lii woman glanced at Ro, then replied to the guard, who grabbed Ro's arm and pulled her back to the secure room (a 20x20 foot, windowless, white-walled room that served as Laura and Ro's prison).
"Ro," Laura greeted from her bed. The woman looked ready to pop, and Ro was still a tad nervous that the Lii doctors, untrained in delivering human babies, would mess something up.
"Hey Laur," Ro replied. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the other person in the room. "Losker."
He gave her a stiff nod. "Roseanne."
The lack of nickname — a sign of trust and friendship back at the laboratory — stung. She had not seen him in eight days, since she was brought here and questioned. She supposed she understood though; she wouldn't like her either if she were him.
"What...." She cleared her throat. "Why are you here?"
Losker said nothing. He walked past her, careful to stay a distance away. He typed in an intricate password, opened the door, and called to someone out of Ro's line of vision. A moment later, a large, thin box was dragged into the room by two other Lii. Ro stepped aside and backtracked to her bed, where she sat and watched. The two Lii opened the box and lifted a sheet of thick, cloudy glass out of it. Losker brought a round black disc from his pocket and attached it to an open section on the wall. The Lii mounted the glass on the disk and exited the room. Losker brought another object out of his pocket — a cellphone-sided piece of the same glass. He pressed something, and the piece lit up.
"Ro, what's going on?" Laura asked. She tried to lean forward to see what Losker was doing, but her stomach restrained her.
Ro shook her head, watching Losker type on the glass piece. The big screen lit up and showed a picture. It was a Lii sitting behind a desk, with a logo on the top right corner. The Lii reminded Ro of an Earth anchorman.
"Watch," Losker commanded. He pressed something on the glass and the picture moved. The Galida Lii on screen began to talk, and Ro read the English subtitles.
"Good evening, Galida. Just hours earlier, Liivat suffered a terrible loss. The band of humans that escaped from the English floor of the North America Laboratory ruthlessly pillaged and killed the people of the town Juelea. They managed to hack into our televisions and send out a video of the executions, as you have no doubt seen. The government is preparing scouts to track down these killers —"
Losker paused the video and pulled up another video.
The camera moved around in jerky motions as the designated cameraman got a good view. He slowly panned across what looked to be a plaza. It was filled with terrified Galida who were herded into the back of the plaza and were brocaded in by humans holding broken furniture and makeshift blades. The cameraman then turned around. Banner's calm face appeared on screen.
