His ears still ringing, Spongebob slowly looked up at from Larry's convulsing crustacean corpse. His life had been going so crazy recently that he couldn't even bring himself to act surprised when he saw that Sandy Cheeks was holding the gun.
"Oh, pleasure seeing you, Sandy," Spongebob said sarcastically. "So, tell me, are you here to take me to a 'safe place'? But before you do, I have to know, are you planning on using me or murdering me? Or maybe both? Or maybe you're – "
"Can it, Spongebob," Sandy said as she grabbed his arm. "We don't have time for this." Spongebob tried to pull away, but Sandy wasn't having it. "I'm sorry, Spongebob, but I need you to just trust me. Things are too important right now."
Spongebob snorted. That was a new one. "Trust." Not like anybody had told him that he needed to trust them before. No-siree. Now that Sandy had used the word trust, well, that changes everything. Now he would follow her to the surface, if necessary, because he trusted her.
"Spongebob, your sarcasm isn't helping the situation."
"Erm, sorry, Sandy." Spongebob thought he had been doing an internal monologue, but apparently such was not the case. "Where are we going, exactly?"
"The Treedome. Our agreement with the Larideans marks that as a safe place, so you don't have to worry. We'll be there in a minute, Spongebob."
Sure enough, they were there before they knew it. Sandy took Spongebob inside, and opened up some sort of underground tunnel. She led him down through it, and into a small room with two chairs. The chairs were facing a window that looked into another room. "This is a one-way mirror. I'm going to have a few fish walk through there, and I'd like you to tell me what colour they are."
Spongebob wasn't thrilled about taking any more tests, but he did what she asked. Every time he told Sandy a colour, she would tell it to a handheld radio, and a voice would come back saying, "Roger." After a few dozen fish, Sandy picked up the radio again. "All clear," she said. "Can we get the results right away?"
"Of course," said the voice. "He seems to only be seeing the top layer."
Sandy started rubbing her temples. "I was afraid of that," she muttered, and she grabbed something out of her pocket. "Here's my card, Spongebob."
Spongebob looked at the card. There were some black stones in the lower-right corner that were in the shape of a squirrel. A series of meaningless letters, numbers, and symbols were written all over the card. "Sandy," Spongebob said tentatively, "this, uh…this doesn't look like a phone number."
Sandy looked up. "What does it look like," she asked hopefully.
"Just a bunch of gibberish." Sandy looked back down again. "Look, Spongebob, you can go now, if you'd like. Patrick probably has a search party looking for you, and – "
Just then, the radio picked up a signal. "Ms. Cheeks? There's somebody here to see you. It's him."
Sandy sighed exasperatedly. "What does he want this time?"
"I don't know. He was being all cute about it. Probably intelligence on the Larideans or something."
"Alright, send him in. Tell him I'm in the testing chamber." Sandy didn't sound excited. "Sorry, Spongebob, but this guy can be a bit of a handful. Just try not to – "
At that moment, the door swung open. "Oh, sweety, you're with the Sciurideans now? Well, isn't that just super!" Standing in the doorway was Arthur Bottomfeeder.
