Yuuta tenses. His eyes widen as they both turn to face the door to their left. He thinks he hears Xander gulp, but he isn’t sure, for it could be his imagination at this point. “Xander,” Yuuta says, his voice low.

“Yeah…” Xander whispers, his pulse racing beneath the hand Yuuta has yet to remove from his shoulder. “You take the left, I take the right.”

Yuuta lets out a sigh of relief. “Exactly,” he says, as he turns with the intention of walking deeper into the corridor, into a different room where nothing is apparently waiting for them on the other side of the door. “Let’s try another—” Yuuta pauses. He blinks twice. “Wait, what?” His voice breaks as he looks at Xander once more. “Are you insane? What happened to playing it safe? We can’t just go in there. What if it’s another one of those things we encountered in front of the control room?”

“I am playing it safe.” Xander’s voice is raised now. His hands ball into fists as Yuuta finally pulls his own palm away from his shoulder. “We don’t know who’s in there,” he says. “They could be an ally.”

“It could also be something deadly,” Yuuta chimes in. The glare Xander shoots him is an irritated one, causing Yuuta to add the words, “Hey, just saying,” with a shrug soon after.

Xander clears his throat. “Anyway, get ready.” He motions to part of the flashlight’s dim glow between them with his index finger. “If it’s another—well, I’m not sure what to call them,” he clears his throat. “But if it’s another one of those… lively creatures, we’ll run to the waste dispenser over there.”

Dubious about his plan, Yuuta raises a brow. “You want to use an electric waste dispenser on something twice the height of this corridor when we don’t even have a guarantee that the electricity will work?”

Xander’s brows are knitted together. “Do you have another suggestion?” he asks.

Yuuta steps back and plunges his hand into the pouch that lies lazily around his waist. He takes out a tiny, white rectangular cover that soon stretches out into an arc, its string a light blue beam that travels across its edges in a horizontal line once he releases its lock. “Here’s my suggestion,” he says, as he repeats the process with one of his arrows this time, and gets into position to shoot whatever is behind the door down. “You open the door. And if it’s friendly, I won’t have to kill it.” Another blunt bang resonates throughout the corridor from within the bunker. “Also, hurry up, will you?” Yuuta adds. “I don’t think I need to tell you, but just in case—if worst comes to pass, it would suck real hard if this thing was trying to call its friends.”

Xander sighs. His hand hovers over the handle. “All right,” he says as he begins to twist the handle. “But if all else fails, my plan is plan B. Though… hopefully it won’t come to that, and it’ll only be one of the passengers that were on board before we arrived.”

Yuuta swallows down the lump in this throat. He calms his trembling hands and takes aim. “Okay,” he says. “Deal.”