“Rick!” Max shouted before he skidded to his husband’s side. Xander retrieved the tool hat and Rick slapped it on his own head with enough force to make Max wince in sympathy.
“Okay, we need to take a deep breath. If the basement is on fire and the rest of the family is in the middle of a disaster, we need to go in there calmly. No panicking.” Max wasn't sure whether he was ordering the others not to panic or trying to get his own stomach to settle, but he picked his way over Rick's sprawling tentacles towards the basement stairs.
And again, they were uneven and sloped and justweird. He hated this damn planet. No, he hated Einstein. This was a private, secured area, so it wasn't like his guests would see how beautifully asymmetrical and stupid his stairs were. Max kept a tight grip on the railing as he hurried as fast as he dare without risking breaking his own neck. Rick would never let him live it down if he killed himself after making that speech about the others not panicking.
At the bottom of the stairs, Max was faced with a long hallway to either direction. This was not a space designed for company because the walls were a mottled gray. In fact, the hallway was so straight it felt more human-built than any space Max had been in since leaving Earth.
Rick tumbled off the stairs and stood next to Max, spinning wildly. He was probably expecting, like Max had, smoke billowing out of a door or flickers of flame or perhaps thesounds of their children cursing loudly in the distance. But other than the echoing alarm that was giving him a sharp headache, nothing moved and there was no sound. Max walked, yanking on doors as he went. Behind him, he heard a crash as a door slammed into a wall, and he whirled around to see that Rick had ripped a door off the hinges. Before Max could ask whether their children were there, Rick said with an unhappy belch, “Storage closet.”
Max returned to jerking on the door handles in his part of the hallway, pulling harder and resenting his lack of strength and destructive capabilities. Right now he wanted to rip through walls like he was the Kool-Aid man delivering drinks to kids in summer.
“James!” Xander's voice was a cacophonous and shrill song, and Max whirled around again, terrified of seeing his son mangled and bleeding. Instead James was hurrying down the stairs behind Xander–the stairs the rest of them had come down.
For a moment Max's brain shorted out. Was James not at the center of the chaos? Kohei came after his two brothers.
“Query. Alarm?!” James bellowed.
“Unknown,” Rick bellowed even louder, his limbs graying with fear.
“Query. Location.” Kohei demanded.
“Unknown,” James bellowed back even louder than him. Since his family was determined to scream one another into submission, Max returned to his search for an unlocked door. None of the half-dozen doors on either side of the corridor opened, but then he reached the end. A heavy door with a violently radiation green handle guarded the end of the hallway. Max yanked on it and was surprised when it flew open.
Banks of lights and dials and displays lined the walls, and the center had a reinforced metal door with a porthole window sothick that it distorted the eye peering out at Max. For a second, he thought Kohei had managed to lock himself in an alien walk-in refrigerator. But then a truncated tentacle waved as though trying to catch Max's attention.
Einstein.
“Query! Alarm?” Kohei shouted loud enough for his voice to rise over the rest of the family. They were circling one another at the bottom of the stairs in a Hidden one version of debate, which included a lot of bugling, circling and tightly curled tentacle tips when they were losing the argument, and everyone in the family was losing right now.
“Hey!” Max shouted over the din. Or he tried to shout over it. In reality his voice didn’t even reach the middle. And no one paid him any attention.
“Hey,” Max channeled his inner drill sergeant, the stereotypical version from movies, because real ones understood that screaming would lead to laryngitis. Again, he was fairly sure his family didn't even hear him. The only voice Rick could make out was Xander's shouting something about foolishness. Everything else had become an unbearable cacophony.
Max took the green door and slammed it as hard as he could into the wall. He slammed it over and over and over until his family one after another turned to look at him with their largest eyes. Only when he had their full attention did Max stop. “Einstein is in here in some sort of equipment,” he said loudly.
For a second, the family was frozen in place, then Rick practically bowled James and Xander over as he rushed past them. Kohei had been the only one to retreat fast enough to avoid his father's flaily limbs. Taking a page from his oldest son's book of common sense, Max retreated into the room clearing the doorways so that he didn't get tackled.
Rick sped past and collided with the control panel next to the heavy door with the little porthole through which Einstein was visible. A few seconds later, the alarm went silent.
Max almost sank to the floor in relief. “Thank God,” he whispered.
“I am not a God. I am a husband,” Rick said.
Max stared at Rick, not sure whether that was a translation confusion or a poorly timed joke. He suspected the second. The children tumbled in, their tentacles tangled as they all tried to get through the door first, but Max focused on Rick, whose tentacles were skimming over the controls.
“What is going on?” Max asked now that there was enough silence in the room to allow for a coherent question.
“Unknown,” Rick said, but then Einstein's magnified voice came over the speaker.
“Destruction of legacy is not to be allowed.”
“Clarify reason for alarm,” Rick demanded.
Perhaps Rick had lowered the volume on the speaker because when Einstein spoke again it was almost at a normal level, at least a Hidden one normal level. While that was still too loud, at least Max’s headache had settled into a dull throbbing pain instead of a serrated knife through the eye. “Alarm is revealing of coming individuals,” Einstein said. “Damage of legacy is not allowed.”
“What individuals are coming?” Max asked.
“Unwanted individuals,” Einstein said louder. Xander slid close to Max, touching him with tentacle tips. “Max father, request clarification for machine.”
