Hello, everyone! It is almost Christmas at the time I am posting this, so I wish everyone reading this a Happy Holidays! I don't have anything else big to say, so let's get into this chapter.

DISCLAIMER: The 'Amulet' series is created and illustrated by Kazu Kibuishi, and published by 'Scholastic'. The author owns any original characters and custom elements included into the story.

Onward!

Caleb did not immediately panic when he realized he was stuck in a locked room without any light. He certainly felt worried as he tried to figure out a reason for this happening, but he was too mature to immediately break down crying. The fact he did not have much of a plan anyway was not something he wanted to think about.

Caleb first thought of using his cell phone to call for aid, and he thrust his hand into the pocket he remembered putting that device into. He pulled his hand right back out when he felt cracks along the phone's surface; it was still broken. Thankfully, the service remote was not broken, and Caleb pressed that same button on it like rapidly changing channels on a television. After any immediate relief or support did not come, he figured calling out for help through the door would get things fixed faster. There had to be someone nearby who could come to help him, even if he had to yell at the top of his voice. And he was near the door anyway, so he didn't have to search for it again.

"Miskit?" Caleb called through the door after he made sure he was standing in front of it by feeling for its edges on the wall. "Miskit, the door's locked." He pulled and twisted at the knob a few more times in the hopes the rattling and shaking would get that robot's attention. "Hello? Miskit? Hello!"

As each attempt to get help ended in failure, Caleb's stress increased to match. "Miskit?" he shouted. "Miskit! Open this door!" Caleb pounded the door with a fist even as he felt his wrists flare up with fresh pain. "Hey!" he finally yelled at the door in the hopes his voice really could travel through metal. "Can anyone hear me?!"

Caleb could hear nothing outside the door when he put his ear up to it; no sound, no voice, just silence. 'No, no,' he told himself, 'this can't be happening!' He wrenched and tugged at the knob with one hand, pounding on the door with his other fist. He opened his mouth to shout another call for help, and at that moment light flashed from behind him.

Caleb froze, breathing hard; slowly he turned around and saw the bedside lamp was shining again. Some unseen hand had flipped the switch on when he wasn't looking. Either that, or the power had come back as mysteriously as it had shut off. Caleb thought about the possibilities for a long period of five seconds before he turned to other concerns.

Caleb pressed his ear against the door and listened hard for any movement outside. No sounds came through the metal surface. Caleb eventually pulled back from the door and wondered what to do next. He looked at the walls and ceiling with a new, careful eye. Was there some secret door or hatch he had missed? Something to answer, or at least address, the burning questions in his head?

With the door locked, no way to open it, and no other visible way to get out, Caleb had very few choices with what to do. The one he eventually chose was to wait for someone to come to him; it had to happen at some point. Silas had not said he didn't want Caleb around again, at least not until his discussion with Emily and Navin about their 'inheritance' had finished. Was that discussion over?

Caleb sat on the bed again, leaning slightly back and keeping his eyes on the door. As he had expected would happen, the doorknob clicked open after a short amount of time. Caleb had enough time to sit up straight before the door was pushed open. Miskit, the first suspect Caleb had thought of who could have locked him in to begin with, came into the room, and the first thing he saw was Caleb sitting on the bed with a single question on his face:

"What is going on here?"

"I know you're confused, Mister Caleb." Miskit's single eyebrow drooped as his metal face reflected a human sadness. "So am I. I just did what I was programmed to do."

Caleb's angry look intensified. "You were programmed to lock guests Silas doesn't like in bedrooms and leave them in total darkness?" he asked venomously.

Miskit winced, his face screwing up into an expression that told Caleb, "I did not want you to ask that question." What Miskit spoke with his lips was, "I'm sorry, really," as his ears dropped down close to his head. "If I had known why Silas wanted this done, I… I…"

Miskit turned his eyes to the floor as he stopped talking. He didn't cry, and tears didn't come from his eyes, but the expression told Caleb he was clearly upset. That set Caleb on edge because it was unexpected; the robots he knew in stories and movies did not show human emotions. Was this some part of Silas's programming, or a separate element entirely?

"Where are Emily and Navin now?" Caleb asked when Miskit did not resume speaking.

Miskit sniffled through his small nose. "They're waiting outside Silas's bedroom," he answered as he raised his head back up and resumed a stately posture. "Master Navin was insistent you come with us, and Miss Emily soon agreed with him."

Caleb held back a smile. Score one for the children trusting him. Sure, they didn't need him, but they wanted him around. That proved they cared, despite their earlier hostilities.

"Okay, then. Let's go." Caleb pushed himself off the bed and rubbed the wrappings to dispel twinges of pain as he moved to the door.

"Shouldn't you rest some more?" Miskit questioned as he blocked Caleb's path outside with some quick steps. "You were unable to walk a short time ago!"

Caleb gripped the remote still in his hand as he looked down at the robot. Even now, Miskit was trying to hold him back from helping his friends? Too much time had been wasted already! He shoved the remote against the robot's chest, pushing Miskit back a step towards the door as he grabbed the remote with his four fingers. It took him seconds to recover and regain his posture. In those seconds Caleb gave Miskit a firm statement:

"I'll rest when I see the Hayes family back together again. I made a promise to them, and I am not going to stop doing it if your creator, and his robot servants, are suspicious of me."

Miskit held Caleb's eyes and said right back, "I was never suspicious of you, Mister Caleb," The rabbit's small eyes inside that larger-than-life face appeared alive with emotion or energy. Caleb looked into those eyes and saw complete honesty, a trait Caleb did not believe existed in a machine. A feeling of respect blossomed for this little servant of Silas Charnon, which increased even more as Miskit stepped aside for him to walk out undeterred.

Miskit closed the door once Caleb was out in the hallway, and then led him back towards Silas's bedroom. Emily and Navin were adjacent to that room's door and quietly whispering to themselves. Reading the children's faces, Caleb suspected their conversation was about something serious. He did not get to figure out why that was before Emily noticed she was being watched and nudged Navin slightly as he was wrapping up his point.

Navin displayed a youthful energy in how quickly he changed from frowning to smiling. "You're looking better, Caleb," he commented as the high schooler and robot got close enough to speak to.

"Morrie's treatments work fast," Caleb answered, and he rose his wrists up to show the wrappings were still on tight. There were no red stains, not even the hint of blood leaking through the material. "They should last until we get your mother back from that… uh…" He turned to Miskit and asked, "What was that creature called, again?"

"Arachnopod, Mister Caleb. And don't worry," the rabbit promised to Emily and Navin, "we'll save your mother, whatever it takes. But first, we need a plan." He turned back towards the stairs leading to the flower-tree and told the humans, "Follow me, please."

"Woah…"

Caleb's reaction to the sight of a new room in the bowels of the house was shared in silence by Emily and Navin. Silver coated the space's curved walls, a short staircase leading down to a machine shaped like half of a giant metal ball. A silver robot taller and more heavily built than any other Caleb had seen in the house stood by the even larger machine, watching an open space in that device's center. Small wisps of pink and white fire flashed into existence and then faded away over a few seconds' time. It was the most futuristic room Caleb had seen in the house so far, a big sign that this place was not like any he had seen at home.

"This is the control room for the house," Miskit explained as the larger robot pressed a few buttons and typed on a curved keyboard on top of the gear's surface. "We plan our missions here and monitor the progress of anyone that leaves the house using our holographic map."

When everyone had walked down the stairs and was standing by the dome-shaped machine, Miskit moved to one of several gray panels sporting buttons on them, or gray keyboards below them. "We can access any specific location in Alledia using Silas's extensive notes and charts with the touch of a button," he explained before he pressed one of the buttons on the console. The machine made a whirring sound that grew in pitch but stayed very quiet. The strands of digitized pink fire spun around, and then changed into a topographical display of a pointed mountain.

Navin's mouth fell open as the mountain was cut in half and zoomed into, the other half vanishing from sight. Caverns, caves and underground pools that made up the mountain's interior were highlighted in darker shades from the surrounding earth and stone. The complete image reminded Caleb of his biology courses and studying the human body's anatomy.

"This is our current location," Miskit said as several boxes of text appeared around the mountain and arrows connected boxes to different landmarks on the map. "We are inside Gondoa Mountain, one of several mountains in the Northern regions of Windsor. As you can see, there is a lot of life here outside what we are looking for."

"You can say that again," Caleb bluntly stated as he stared at all the boxes and all the words in those boxes. "Did Silas map all this out with you guys?"

"Yes, over the course of several months. The Exo-Suit was necessary in driving the predators away from us. Arachnopods are not the only scary things here."

Emily's shoulders tensed as she considered what Miskit's words meant. "Can you go any faster, Miskit?" she asked.

"Almost done, Miss Emily." Miskit pressed two more buttons on the console and quickly typed something on the adjacent keyboard, his fingers moving quite fast for their size and appearance. As he did so, Caleb noticed a reddish-pink blip inside one of the larger caverns containing a lake. The text box connected to that spot had the words, "Home Base: Charnon House". The high schooler idly rubbed his wrists as he turned his focus on the paths leading away from that lake in the hopes of finding the path he had taken with the children into this mountain's belly.

"Miskit!" a familiar accented voice yelled from the room's entrance. "Say it ain't so!" Everyone not occupied with an immediate task turned to look at Cogsley standing angrily on top of the stairs from the floor above. "I will not work under these pipsqueaks!" he declared. "It's one of the worst leadership changes in Alledia's history!"

Miskit stopped typing to glare at Cogsley. "Silas entrusted us to them, Cogsley," he sharply remarked. "Are you going to break his commands?" Cogsley held eye contact for a few seconds, then harrumphed and walked down the stairs without another comment. Miskit resumed his typing and, after a few more seconds, pressed another button on the console. A white line began slowly trailing down the map as Miskit told everyone, "I've modified the search engine on the map to highlight the movement of all Arachnopods in the mountain."

When the line finished its course and vanished off the map entirely, only one group of four Arachnopods could be seen traversing through a winding path through the caverns. The monstrous insects were colored grey against the cavern's darker green, clearly identifying them as the beasts Caleb knew them to be.

"There." Miskit pointed to the group on the map, "One of them has your mother inside it, see?" Emily leaned forward and looked for herself, and sure enough, Karen's silhouette was visible inside the grey insect as a white image. Her eyes widened in amazement at the image's detail; it was like she could touch her mother's tiny form from so far away.

"Morrie," Caleb asked the yellow robot as Emily turned to ask Miskit something else, "Miskit and Cogsley have been saying the names of places I don't know, but I think the kids do. What are they talking about?"

Morrie let out a quick breath, hesitating. "I think Miskit forgot you were not in the room with Silas when he explained this," he then blurted out before composing himself and continuing at a slower pace. "Alledia is the name of this world; Windsor is one of its continents, but the borders have been changing recently. Silas called Alledia an alternate version of your home, Earth."

"We're on another world?" Caleb felt his insides turn cold at this discovery. "Oh, man…" He looked back to the others with even more concern for their and his safety than before. Being in a new world meant things were very, very bad indeed.

"What if we take this tunnel towards Morley's Cave?" Emily asked while pointing to what looked like a large passage that traveled close by the moving insectoid monsters. "It'll get us to the Arachnopods quicker."

Cogsley gave a disapproving grunt from the other side of the giant map-projecting machine. "That's no old 'tunnel', kid. That's the 'Gauntlet'! Full of Rakers, it is; way too dangerous to cross!"

"What are Rakers, then?"

Morrie came forward and pointed at one of several large worm-like bodies nestled into the walls of the holographic passage Emily had indicated. "Those are Rakers," the sweating robot said. "Worm-like bodies with lots of eyes and teeth, and long tentacles to grab things. They are, by far, the most dangerous creatures in the mountain; one of Alledia's most fearsome predators. We can be thankful they don't move around or wake up very often. Even so, crossing through that passage on foot is a death wish."

"Then we're out of good options," Miskit said as he watched the Arachnopods slowly skitter along their path. "There's no other way we can get to Miss Hayes before she is brought to Morley's Cave, and then the outer forests."

Navin gulped. "And what happens when they reach the forests?" he slowly asked.

Miskit turned to Navin with a heavy frown. "They'll be out of our scanner's range, and almost impossible to find. We have to get to them now, despite the Rakers."

'Easier said than done,' Caleb thought. As he looked over the path the Arachnopods were taking, winding through the mountain and not slowing down for anything, he could not think up of a way to quickly get Karen free. One of those creatures had shown it was quite dangers; this was four of them travelling in a pack. Caleb's hopes of success did not stand very tall against the common sense of knowing when you are going in over your head.

Navin echoed Caleb's feelings of doubt as he looked down at the floor and his dirty shoes. Emily instead stared hard at the map with narrowed eyes, looking for a clue in the mountain's topographical structure they hadn't noticed yet. Miskit's ears rose and fell as he also observed the map and considered options that only he seemed to know.

"I've got it." Cogsley broke the general silence in the control room with his own suggestion: "Ye can take the "Albatross" through the Gauntlet instead of walking. That'll be faster for ye."

"That old jalopy hasn't flown in years!" Miskit quickly and vehemently objected. "It'll never get past the Rakers!"

"Keep yer focus on the Arachnopods," the stoic robot insisted as his altered speech gave him a Scottish accent. "I'll get that 'old jalopy' running again. It's the best option ye've got, and ye know it." Cogsley instantly turned and went to a stairway at the opposite section of room from the entrance, walking down it with steady motions. If he was scared, he didn't show it to anyone else.

A moment's silence passed, and then Navin asked, "Uh, Miskit, what's a 'jalopy'?"

"It's a type of aircraft." Miskit did not share Cogsley's determination as he answered Navin's question. "The Albatross was built by Silas when he first came here from your world, and he worked hard to preserve it before he fell ill. But that doesn't mean it will work properly now. If it can fly at all, that'll be a miracle."

"But Cogsley can make the plane fly, right?"

Miskit's ears twitched in what Caleb thought was irritation. "Cogsley is a stubborn crewmate, but he's also the most hardworking robot I know. If anyone can fix the Albatross, he can."

"Then you trust him?" Caleb asked, worried the answer would be "No". If the robots couldn't work with each other, then how would they ever help get Karen back? Miskit seemed to sense the hidden question behind Caleb's question when he replied:

"I trust everyone in this house until they prove me wrong, Mister Caleb."

Miskit yet again took the lead in bringing Emily, Navin, and Caleb to a new location. The retractable stairs Cogsley had taken led to what Miskit called the "hanger"; when they all had a look at the place, they understood the reason for that name. Gears of various sizes were linking each other in the place of walls, with metal plates providing an impromptu ceiling and a place to hang large electrical lights that shone down on the wooden floor. Crates and boxes lay stacked at the corner where the stairs came down, while the other side had a massive steel plate curling up into the ceiling and attached to rails. But these features were appetizers to the Albatross itself.

It was clearly an airplane, but Caleb had not seen a plane like it except in textbooks at school. The airplanes that flew far above his suburb homes had jet engines and sleek frames. The Albatross had the same number of wings as those airliners, but the similarities ended there. Its front was a curved like a whale's belly; the engines had propellers larger than Caleb was tall attached to them. The pilot's seat was joined by three other identical leather seats in a large cockpit, open to the outside air. The yellow paint job, with blue stripes along the engines, wings, and cockpit, was faded and starting to chip near the curving tail. The whole thing sat on four large wheels that connected to poles reaching inside the plane's lower body, like a jet aircraft's landing gear.

Caleb openly stared at the Albatross when he got to the bottom of the stairs. He couldn't help it; the machine was so different than what he was used to. Everyone else quickly began to work on various tasks in the room, and Caleb glanced at each different thing being accomplished before returning to the great plane before him. Cogsley and the nameless blue robot from earlier were by an open panel at the plane's front: Navin had started to climb up a small ladder by the right-side wing to look at the cockpit: Miskit and Emily had opened a large chest by one of the walls and thrown up a small cloud of dust that sent the young girl and the robot into short coughing fits.

Caleb decided to help Emily and Miskit first after he shook his hands a bit to get them ready for some lifting. They had picked up a box from inside the chest and were looking over its contents when Caleb got next to them. He arrived in time to hear Miskit state, "Only two tranquilizer darts left," as he held a plastic vial with a sharp needle sticking out of one end and filled with green liquid. "We'll have to make every shot count."

"What do we do after it's sedated?" Emily asked, and Caleb assumed she meant the Arachnopod as the dart's target.

"We harpoon it–" Miskit grabbed a long wooden shaft with a barbed metal end from inside the chest and held it up with two hands, "–and we use the winch on the Albatross to drag it to us. Once that's done, we will have a limited time to reach in and pull your mother out before it wakes up."

The harpoon's tip glinted in the light, the stains on its surface not diminishing its potential lethality. Caleb could not deny that Miskit's plan to get Karen to safety was an effective one. It was simple, brutal, and certainly capable of messing up, but still quite effective.

"Miskit!" Cogsley called from the front end of the plane as he patted the panel he had removed before. "She's all patched up, good as new. I told ye I could do it, didn't I?"

Miskit cracked a smile. "You did, Cogsley, I remember. We just need a few more minutes to get organized."

"Roger! Miss Emily, come over here when ye're done. I'll get yer brother down from the cockpit, he shouldn't be playing around up there yet."

"Navin's going on this trip?" Caleb asked. "Are we all going on this mission, Miskit?"

The rabbit coughed. "Well, actually…" He stopped at the sight of something coming up from behind Caleb. "Ah, Morrie can explain it better than me." Confused, Caleb turned around to face the medical robot, who was now sweating more profusely and sporting a look of obvious worry.

"Mister Caleb," Morrie quickly stated, "I must insist you do not go on this mission. I am still very concerned about your recovery from the Arachnopod's venom."

"You want me to stay here while Emily and Navin risk their lives?" Caleb cut one of his hands through the air in a swift chopping motion, causing a stinging sensation in that hands' wrist. "No way, Morrie."

"Please, you must stay here! The immunity shot is not a cure-all, it's just a temporary aid. Rest, good nutrition and time are what you need most of all. You won't get any of them hunting monsters. The physical stress of pulling someone out from inside an Arachnopod's body could strain your muscles to dangerous—"

"They need help, Morrie!" The yellow robot gave a tiny squeak of surprise as Caleb defiantly refused to listen to medical facts. "Someone has to watch their backs in case the plan goes wrong!"

"That's why I'm going with them." It was Miskit who said that, getting the attention of Caleb, Morrie and Emily. "Master Silas programmed me to protect his family, Mister Caleb, and I will not disobey my programming."

Caleb remained unconvinced of his uselessness. "I can still help as well, Miskit," he insisted.

"The Albatross can seat four people, but one of the rear seats will be taken up by the tranquilizer darts and harpoon. We need easy access to them. We also have our combined weight to consider; if the plane is too heavy, it won't get off the ground."

"Is that an insult about my weight?" Caleb growled back. "I am not fat for a seventeen-year-old, thank you very much."

"No, Caleb." Emily came to Miskit's defense with quick and calm words. "He means the plane won't fly well enough with all of us on it. You don't look fat at all. And Morrie's right about your wrists, they need time to heal. It took Mom several days to fully recover from breaking her nose in the car crash."

"That's not… relevant." Caleb's rebuttal lost a lot of its power at the full implication of what Emily had just told him. She had done it without showing any remorse for that deadly night, too. Had she really gotten over it like that?

"I know you want to help, Mister Caleb," Miskit finished, "but we can't risk you getting hurt, or worse, in the caverns."

Just like at the snow-spewing door on Earth, with Emily demanding Caleb to let her pass, the boy's stress rose to a boiling point. Unlike that previous time, he kept his anger in check before anything bad happened. Emily, Miskit and Morrie saw his lips tighten, his eyes narrow, and then he breathed out in a display of defeat. "Okay," he finally accepted, "I'll stay here."

"Thanks, Caleb," Emily said. She gave him a short pat on his shoulder before he went over to Cogsley and Navin by the front of the Albatross. The gesture didn't make Caleb feel better as he scratched his itching wrists beneath the wrappings for a few seconds.

"Alright, ye runts!" Cogsley's voice rang out across the hanger from near the airplane's front. "Listen up! One of ye will have to be copilot for Miskit if he's going to fire the harpoon. Me and Bottle here–" He paused to point at the large blue robot behind him, "–can't come because we weigh too much. So, which of ye will take the copilot's chair?"

Navin's eyes shone at the thought of flying a plane, but Emily spoke up first. "Navin's too young to fly a plane," she stated. "I'll be the copilot."

"What?!" Navin's opposition was instant and strong towards his sister. "Emily, you know I'm better at piloting than you. Give me a chance!"

Emily turned to face her younger brother with a sister's anger. "You piloted planes in video games, it's not the same. This is like with Caleb's truck, games aren't the same as real life!"

Navin took on a wheedling expression that reminded Caleb of a dog begging for scraps from its owner's table. "Please, Em?" he asked Emily, going so far as clasping his hands together. "Please let me do this! I'll give it all I've got for Mom, I promise!"

Emily groaned and covered her face with one hand like she had heard this argument a thousand times before. "Okay, fine," she grumbled with a muffled voice, "you can be the copilot."

"R-Really?" Navin couldn't believe he had been given what he wanted so quickly. Caleb smirked at the starstruck expression Navin was making, halfway between joy and shock.

"Are ye jokers finished yet?" Cogsley grunted. Emily nodded, her face still covered up, and that got her and Navin moving again. Navin went up the ladder first and sat on the right side of the front two seats. Caleb couldn't see how the cockpit looked from the hanger floor, the Albatross being far taller than he was, but he figured Miskit could help him figure out the more complicated instruments or controls. Emily got into one of the rear seats as Miskit brought up the boxes and harpoon that he and Emily had gotten out of the chest.

Cogsley came up the ladder after Miskit, helped him tie the harpoon onto the winch on the Albatross's front, and then handed him the gun that Miskit had used on that gray-skinned stranger back in the caverns. The two robots had a quiet exchange which Caleb did not pay attention to; he was more focused on getting out of the way of the plane once it took off.

"Hey, Caleb!" Navin called to the teenager when he noticed Caleb was not seated in the plane, "What are you going to do while we're gone?"

"I'll watch you from the control room with the other robots," Caleb called back, having to cup his hands around his mouth to project his voice far enough. "We should be able to track the plane from there on the map."

"Ye're right about that," Cogsley commented as he came down the ladder with quick movements of his hands and legs. "I put a tracking chip inside the Albatross while I was repairing it. The signal range covers all of Gondoa Mountain, but not too far beyond that." He got to the floor and turned up to face Navin. "That means ye don't leave the mountain if ye can help it, got that?"

"Yep!" Navin gave Cogsley a thumbs-up and a big smile, to which Cogsley grumbled something undefinable and stepped back to where Caleb was. The blue robot, 'Bottle', walked next to Cogsley, and Morrie came over last after he walked around the plane for a final look-over.

"Yer all clear!" Cogsley yelled up to Miskit. "Start 'er up! Morrie, get the door open for them!"

Morrie ran towards the back of the hanger as a chugging sound came from the Albatross. Like an old car's engine trying to start in intense cold, the plane resisted Miskit's attempts to get it going after years of sitting idle. Caleb could barely see the rabbit's face by standing on the tips of his toes and peering over the rim of the cockpit. After several tries, the two propellers began to spin with a repetitive fwipping noise. Caleb's hair and clothes rustled as the large spinning objects went faster and faster and the engine got louder and louder, until the propellers were moving too fast to see and the fwipping became a steady whirring as the motorized engine finally came back to life.

Caleb barely heard the large metal wall at the front of the hanger start to open, and he had to keep his arms close to his face to block out the dust and small bits of debris that were scooped up by the engine's pushing of the adjacent air. Fresh air flowed into the hanger from the outside cavern, the hanger's electric glow brighter than the outside space's natural radiance. Morrie came back to the other robots with a hand on his forehead, able to maintain his balance as the Albatross slowly began to rise off the floor. Hanging aloft through lift and incredible horsepower, the plane's landing gear was drawn into the main body with barely a sound.

The old plane tilted down, the engines rotating along with the body so that they pushed more air in the right direction. Dust flew out from beneath the engines as Miskit pushed what Caleb figured was a steering wheel forward, but he couldn't clearly see what the rabbit had in the cockpit. Regardless, the plane suddenly shot towards the hanger's end and soared out into the caverns beyond with a final rush of air. Caleb had to look away at that point on account of dust getting in his eyes and open mouth. Coughing, he wiped his face with his torn sleeves and listened to the whirring engines fade away into the distance.

As the hanger doors began to slide closed again, Caleb's chest singed with a sudden regret. 'I should have told them "Good luck".' But it was too late to do that as the hanger doors shut with a loud clang. Metal feet began walking along the wooden floor as Caleb blinked the last of the dust out of his eyes.

"Let's move it, lads!" Cogsley ordered. "To the control room! Morrie, handle the radio while Bottle monitors the console. I'll watch the map; the old bird will show up fine with that tracking chip."

"Hey," Caleb called out as his lungs got fresh air into them while his legs pumped up the ladder's rungs back to the control room, "what role do I have here?"

"Ye can be another pair of eyes on the map, lad," Cogsley said. "Arachnopod venom doesn't take away yer eyesight, doesn't it?"

"Don't think so!" Caleb commented with an appreciative smile as he stepped back into the well-lit room. A muffled slam from behind told him the retractable stairs had been pulled up to close the hanger off. Caleb joined Cogsley by one side of the room's massive computer, and it did not take him long to find the yellow-tinted icon of an airplane on the holographic map as it approached the passage filled with Rakers and the very real possibility of death.

Alright, that's all for now. What do you think of Caleb being put in an observing role for this part of the story? What about Miskit's actions towards him, or the children? Or Caleb's regard towards Silas and his creations? Or maybe you have some other things you find concerning/interesting.

Once again, any feedback you choose to provide will be appreciated. Have a Happy Holidays, everyone.

Draconos is taking off!