Kara leads the group across the sand. She keeps a watchful eye on their path to ensure they don't come across anything that can hurt them, and if they do, she has to try and keep the group away from whatever it is. She knows her family and knows that common sense isn't particularly common in their group.
"So, what's the plan?" Alex asks, her arms folding over her chest for a whole three seconds before she realizes that it's far too hot and it'll make her arms get all sweaty, so she drops them back to her sides.
"Have some patience. Enjoy today because tomorrow is probably going to be pretty stressful."
Lena nudges Kara's arm. "Darling, we've been patient. We can't wait any longer. You understand that, don't you?"
Kara sighs. "Yeah, I know. I'm just sad because I want you guys to enjoy all of this." She gestures broadly around her. "I know you're going to be sceptical of my plan, and I'm trying to find a good way to explain it that means you're not going to tear it to shreds."
"That doesn't bode well." Nia's shoulders slump as she squints out over the desert in search of the ducks, almost tripping over the sand they are practically sinking in since it's so fine. "Maybe we should come up with a plan together. Maybe something that is a little more foolproof than whatever it is that Kara's got up her sleeve."
Kara shakes her head. "I need you guys to go along with it because I've already started the plan, and if we don't follow through, we'll lose the progress I've already made. I really need you guys to be on my side for this." She wrings her hands in front of her before catching herself. However, it only lasts mere moments before she's picking at her cuticles nervously.
Lena catches the movement out of the corner of her eye. She reaches out to snatch one of Kara's hands up in hers, cringing at the sweat pooling between their palms almost immediately but deeming it a necessary evil. "Kara, just tell us what you need us to do."
Taking a deep breath, Kara gives them the rundown. "Alright. So, I plan on contacting my parents and asking them to have lunch with us tomorrow at the accommodation."
"Ok..." Alex drawls, already uneasy.
"And I'm going to be gone in the morning at the lab, and when I'm there, with Esme so she's not there either, I'm going to make an excuse for us to stay there. I need you guys to do something for me while hosting them."
Nia holds her hands up. "Wait…nope. Kara, I think you're swell and all, but your parents creep me out."
"Nia!" Kelly jams her elbow into the half-Naltorian's ribs. "Don't be rude."
"It's ok," Kara says, but her tone is filled with so much sadness that everyone is immediately even more on edge. As much as they trust Kara, she hasn't been the most emotionally stable throughout the entirety of their mission and relying on her now, while it's their best chance, is still risky. "I know they're not good people. They're not who I remember them being."
Kelly takes a few quick shuffling steps forward to fall into step with the blonde before giving her a warm squeeze on her shoulder, reassuring her that she's on her side.
"Anyway, I need you to be there so I will have a very brief moment to get to their apartment. I need to get there so I can steal the information crystal in the safe, or rather, the entire safe. I think I can do it, but there's no way I can get it if they're there. I won't have long to do it and we'll only have a little while after they leave for us to be able to contact Brainy and get out of there, but it's doable."
"Huh?" Alex's eyebrows furrow. "I don't understand why you don't want Esme at the accommodation with your parents."
"If they get so much as an inkling that something is going on, it can get messy, and I don't want her there with them."
"And why did you think that we'd have a problem with this plan? It actually seems pretty solid to me." Alex follows up.
Kara shrugs. "Well, for one, I don't know the code to get the key out of the box that will allow me to get the safe out of the wall, and I'll only have a certain amount of time to try and get it, and also, I think that it'll be hard for you to cover for me with my parents. I think they'll know pretty quickly that something is amiss. They're already on edge and having me stay behind at the lab isn't going to sit easy with them."
Lena squeezes Kara's hand. "We get it. It's nerve-wracking, but you know what? We believe in you and we're down for the plan. So what if there are a few downsides? There are plenty of decent ones too. I can already see some positives."
"Like what?" Alex raises her eyebrow at Lena, who promptly raises hers back, fully aware that nobody can outdo her in that department.
"Well, for one, Kara has been laying clues for her parents for a while about us staying here for the full length of time and going sightseeing. I know she spoke to your father about the Firefalls just yesterday. That will mean they think that even if she is planning on doing something, it's probably not tomorrow. It would be the day after, our supposed last day here."
Alex hums, giving in to that logic. "I guess that's true. I can see why that would be a plus."
"Yeah, and they might still be under the impression that we'll just wait and hope they'll keep their word and give us the crystal anyway."
Kara shakes her head. "No, I think they know me well enough to know that's a route that even a version of me from the future they've never seen would never take."
Lena huffs. "Kara, I'm trying to make the most out of this situation here."
"Sorry, baby." Kara ducks her head. "My main thing is the code. I know the box takes six clicks to open, but that's it. I don't know how it's going to work."
"Well, is it a code of a slide lock?" Nia asks.
Kara turns to her, confused. "Um, a slide lock."
"Oh, easy. Most of them are pretty simple to get into. Most people go for their second instinct with those. They think their first instinct would be too obvious, so they go for their second without thinking about how obvious that would be too."
Kelly pokes her in her side, making Nia trip away from her to escape the jabbing finger. "How do you know that?"
"I have a sister, and she used to store her wallet in one of those puzzle box things. She used to get a new one every time she realized that I figured it out after all of her dollar bills kept going missing because I was taking them to go and get ice cream." Nia shrugs.
A smile slowly slides across Kara's face. "New plan. Nia's with Esme and I."
"Really?" Nia grins, more excited to be getting out of the awkward lunch than having the opportunity to be thieving from some people that she should definitely be scared of because of the amount of power they hold over them.
"Yep," Kara says before her smile drops slightly, but not completely. "Besides. It's probably a good job you'll be with us. You're the only one with even the barest hint of powers left. I know you can't conjure up any dream energy now, but maybe if we were in a dire situation, you could get a spike with your adrenaline."
Nia scoffs. "I haven't had anything at all in all of our time here, and we've faced some serious shit. You're delusional."
Kara opens her mouth to argue, her finger raising halfway before she snaps her jaw closed with a click. "Fair, that was a weird assumption."
"Yep. Anyway, I'll go with you guys, and the rest of you losers get to entertain the house of El, minus the best one."
"Hell yeah." Kara chuckles.
"Is that your whole plan?" Alex asks. "Why wouldn't you tell us that?"
Kara sighs, raising her free hand to cover her eyes as Rao's light burns into her pupils. "Well, I know for a fact that if I'd told you before now, you would end up focusing solely on the plan and not enjoy yourselves the way I wanted you to. I mean, even I'm a little sad we won't be staying the full time my parents requested. I would have loved to take you around Kandor and to see your eyes light up as you take in the beauty of the Firefalls."
"We felt the damn heat of that fucker while we were hiking. No view can take away my hatred towards that thing. Sorry, darling." Lena jumps in, her voice low as she recalls the blistering heat that overtook their trek that feels like a lifetime ago.
"Fair enough, but I still wanted you to see Kandor."
"We got to fly over it." Kelly offers. "And we all loved seeing the city that way; it gave us all a good chance to take in what we were seeing."
Worrying at her lip momentarily, Kara breathes heavily through her nose, a crinkle forming between her eyebrows. "I get what you're saying. I really do. It's just not the same. It's the kind of place that you don't see. You feel it."
Lena pulls her closer. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault and I'm being ungrateful. I never could have imagined that I could take you to the Jewel Mountains or out here to the Plane of Wanan. That's enough. I thought that there might have been a tiny chance of this happening, but I gave up on that pretty much as soon as we got here. The fact that we've been able to have this time as a family is more than I could have ever asked for. Thank you for coming on this journey with me. I'm never going to forget any of this. Not a second."
Lena finds herself engulfed in a hug, Kara's arms wrapped firmly around her. It's comforting even with the heat that is radiating off her and making her overheat. That's a death she'll welcome. She'll happily die in Kara's warm arms any day.
"Thank you the most," Kara whispers in her ear. "I'm so grateful to have found our relationship here."
"I'm grateful we found it too. It was long overdue, let's be honest."
"Turns out, it only takes a few life or death situations on another planet to get us to recognize our feelings. I would have taken you with me to Mars that time I had to fight the White Martians if I'd known this would happen." Kara snickers in her ear.
Lena shakes her head against her shoulder. "Absolutely not. Those things are terrifying and you can keep them to yourself. I'm glad it happened this way."
"Me too."
"Are you guys done being all sappy now?" Alex taps her foot. "We're all here waiting for you and Nia is practically vibrating with the desire to see a damn duck."
"True." Nia agrees, pushing her way through the pair to separate them, Esme running after her. "Now, where are they?"
Kara refocuses, sharing one last loving look with Lena before moving on. It's time to focus on their last bit of time together now. After today, they will be in for a messy ride that will hopefully end with them being back on the ship home tomorrow night and putting Krypton behind them for good.
"They should be around here somewhere. Just keep your eyes peeled. You'll have to look carefully."
Nia lifts Esme up onto her shoulders. "You have to be my lookout. It's your job to make sure we don't miss any of these ducks we've heard so much yet so little about."
Esme kicks her legs against Nia excitedly, unaware of the grimace she's causing, while Alex giggles to herself evilly at the sight. That's her girl.
"I see one," Kara says not five minutes later, all of them most definitely sweating as they walk, one eye on the sand and one eye on the haboob that almost rivals the raw beauty of the Jewel Mountains, this one slightly scarier though. They know it's not going to escape the confines of its prison, but there's always a little voice in the back of their minds reminding them that if it does, they're done for. It would be really anticlimactic if they die like that now after how far they've come.
"Where?" Esme asks excitedly.
"Look down there on your left." Kara points to a random patch of sand and waits patiently for everyone to spot it.
Lena gasps as her eyes fall onto the tiny creature, barely the size of an average frog. It doesn't have feathers but rather really fine, coarse hair in a pale yellow-brown colour, similar to that of a meerkat back on Earth.
The shape of its body is very similar to that of a regular duck though, the main difference being that it has four legs, all much smaller than what would be proportionate for an Earth duck. With its four webbed feet working away, it's basically swimming through the top layer of sand, its legs batting away and helping it glide alongside the group for a long minute before it spots them and moves away with a cute little half-quack escaping its beak.
Nia lets Esme down and the little girl goes to run after it, but Kara dives to stop her, causing both of them to fall in the sand. "Don't chase it, Esme. It's cute, but it has some pretty sharp teeth you don't want to be on the other side of. I got bit doing that as a kid and it hurt a lot. Aunt Astra laughed pretty damn hard until she realized I was bleeding, and then she did what any good aunt would do."
"Kiss it better?" Esme asks, her eyes wide and fearful.
"No, silly. She sent a guard to go and capture it and then put it in a tank so I could take it home and keep it as a pet. She didn't want me to be afraid of them and thought that if I kept it, I would get over my fear of them."
Kelly lifts Esme up before Nia reaches her arm out to offer to Kara. "Did it work?"
"For about a month before my mom found an excuse to give it to a lab instead because she hated having it in the house. They're pretty cute though, and I'm not afraid of them."
Kara is on her feet and steadying herself when Nia lets go and keeps walking, having spotted a few plants up ahead that loosely resemble cacti, all leggy green branches of thick round-edged leaves. "Hey, look at these. These are cool. They don't even have spikes. I like these better than those devilish red plants from the forest."
"Nia, wait!" Kara shouts, scrambling after her and tripping in the sand almost immediately, getting a mouthful of it just as Nia gets too close.
"Ahh, fuck!" Nia yells, and Kelly rushes to her side just as Alex rushes to cover Esme's ears.
"You didn't hear a thing, ok?"
"You swear a lot," Esme says in response, trying to look around her mom to see what happened with Nia.
"We do not," Alex argues petulantly as Lena makes her way to Nia, Kara scrambling through the sand behind her.
Lena takes one look at her hand and turns to shout over her shoulder. "Alex, come on. You can argue later. You have to look at this!"
Kara stops everyone from reaching towards Nia's hand, instead ushering the group to move further away from the cacti-like plants. "I swear to Rao, you people never listen to me. I thought you would have learned by now that it's not a good idea to go wandering off where you can get stabbed by Rao knows what. You're all idiots, not you, Esme, but the rest of you."
"Me?" Lena asks.
"Only sometimes."
Lena's about to argue but doesn't bother as Nia crawls across the floor, her hand held out with something jabbing into it, trapped in her skin. "What the fuck is that?" She asks instead, aiming her question at Kara.
"That's a lizard. One nobody should have gotten stabbed by today, but you're all stupid and don't listen."
"What's with you adding insult to injury?" Nia gasps, trying not to look at the lizard.
Kara rolls her eyes, picking Nia up by her underarms. "Go towards the pod. There's only one way to get this thing off you."
"I don't even know where it came from." Nia winces, dreading the walk back to the pod and shaking slightly with the pain and shock, this whole scenario giving her flashbacks to the time she got her hand split open by one of those red palm trees that were spread from the Scarlet Jungle.
"The cacti don't have spikes because they don't need them. The lizards live on them. They're cold-blooded and are drawn to body heat. They have curved claws to shove into the skin of their prey and they release a very painful toxin. You're lucky you only got one on you. If you got more, which could have happened since there are usually at least two dozen on every plant, you probably would die from the toxin. You'll be fine once we get it out." Kara explains, wrapping an arm around Nia's waist to steady her.
Lena takes her other side, her feet slipping in the sand and her eyes tracing their path to ensure they don't pass any ducks. They don't need any bites from them to add to this whole mess of a situation.
"Why is it always you?" Kara grumbles.
"Because the universe is victimizing me." Nia sobs, the pain no longer tolerable and tears openly streaming down her cheeks. "This planet sucks."
"I appreciate that greatly." Kara sighs. "Now, let's hurry up and get this out of your hand."
Lena looks down at it, taking in the green little fellow with needle-like claws stabbing into Nia's flesh in multiple places. "How do we do that exactly?"
"It's attracted to heat; we just use the cooler in the pod. If she sticks her hand in it for long enough. It'll unstick itself. The ice might make it hurt more for a while, but you know, it's either be in some pain with it attached to you or be in more pain but have it go elsewhere."
"Both sound awful."
Kara shrugs. "Yeah, they are. Want me to run ahead and get the pod?"
"Please," Nia begs.
"Kara, it's almost time for lunch. Are you ready to go?" Zor-El asks, already packing up his things.
"I will be in just a minute, father. I just want to look into something really quickly. I think it's worth a few more minutes of my time. I don't want to lose my train of thought." Kara mumbles, barely looking up from one of the information crystals they've been filling up with all of their data so far.
"Kara, we can look at it tomorrow, can you not?" Zor-El insists while Nia shuffles nervously beside Kara while Esme sits on the ground, her teddy propped against a cabinet opposite her and Zor-El's mug between them with a few other knick-knacks from his desk litter the floor around her. She's very much oblivious to the world around her, her focus long gone after the first couple of hours of science facts being thrown at her.
Nia doesn't blame her. She's actually half convinced that this is a worse pain than the damn lizard that took the better part of an hour in the cooler to remove itself from her hand, all while she was crying somewhat hysterically because of the pain.
In all seriousness though, she loves seeing Kara in her element like this. She's seen Lena and Alex release their nerd sides a bunch of times, but this is only the second time she's really seeing this, the first time being when she saw Kara planning this mission back in the Tower. That feels like decades ago at this point though, and this is right here before her.
Kara has always been a bit of a strange phenomenon to her, not because she's an alien. This goes beyond that. She has so many layers to herself that she rarely lets anyone see and she's half convinced that Kara doesn't even know that she's doing it. It's all instinctual and that makes it so much worse.
"Kara, we don't want to be late." Zor-El tries to hurry her along.
"Just five more minutes?" Kara pouts at him and suddenly, Nia sees a little Kryptonian girl wrapping her daddy around her little finger, not a full-grown woman she's seen kick some serious ass on a multitude of occasions.
He gives in just like that. "Just a few more minutes."
Kara looks slightly panicked when her father puts his bag down, waiting for her. She was hoping he'd leave but she schools her features quickly. She can't tell him to go, that would be too obvious. She's going to have to change the plan.
"Why don't you take Esme back to the accommodation, Nia?"
Nia freezes. This isn't the plan. "I can't fly a pod."
"It has autopilot, and if that tea party is telling me anything, it's that Miss Esme is hungry." Kara insists. "I really want to look at this before I go. This could be really important, but I have to read through it all to know for certain."
Zor-El looks unsure as he fiddles with the strap of his bag, which resembles a satchel somewhat. "Perhaps…perhaps I could take them back with me, and you could join us when you're done."
"Are you sure?" Kara throws a look of apprehension on her face. "I know you're not really comfortable with me here, and I don't want you to spend the entire time worrying." She purposefully ducks her head and skims the sole of her shoe against the floor in an awkward rhythm, hoping she can force some sincerity into her words so he doesn't see right through her.
He takes a moment to let his eyes trail over her face, his blue eyes searching hers for a hint of deception, something she's not letting roam free in her sapphire irises.
"I'm sure. Just make sure you're not here for a long time. I'll program a Kelex to remind you to leave in a while if you're still here. I know how you get when you let yourself fall into a project. Don't forget to lock up behind you and store all the crystals away when you're done. They're too important to be left lying around." He pauses for a moment, an indecipherable look in his eyes.
"I'll be sure to do that. I won't stay for much longer. I just want to finish this and jot down any ideas I have. This might actually be something."
Zor-El hesitates before leaning in to press his lips to her forehead, his stubble scratching at her skin and making her wince. "See you soon?"
"Yep, see you soon."
Zor-El heads for the door first, and Nia lifts Esme onto her hip before turning to Kara. "Can you clean this up too?"
"Yeah, I got it all, and I'll make sure we haven't accidentally left anything here too. I won't be long. I'll figure it all out, don't worry."
Nia reads between the lines. She knows Kara wouldn't have done this if she didn't think it was necessary, but it does make her nervous that she's doing it alone. Kara is definitely one of the strongest people she's ever met. She just wishes she could be there to hold her up a little so she doesn't have to be quite so strong all the time.
Kara sighs as they leave and she does precisely what she was planning all along, including the things she didn't tell the others. It's time for her other plan. The real plan.
She's still going to go and try and get the safe, but that's not her only plan. If it works, that'll be great, but that's not what she's here for today.
Kara gets right to work cleaning up and rushes to one specific part of the tidying process: the crystals.
Opening up the cupboard where they're storing the crystals for this project, she throws them into the box they're keeping them in before eyeing another box, a locked one. It's large and transparent, made of a reinforced glass that she already knows is unbreakable. It's a good job she doesn't have to break it.
Lifting it out of the cupboard and setting it on the floor, she eyes the lock and sees that it needs a key. Her father always has been a sap and he's always been very forgetful, so he'd never leave it anywhere other than in here somewhere.
She scans the area and lands on the pile of objects Esme was playing with before heading right on over to pick up a little sculpture she once made him. She made him a few over the years, but this one is particularly awful, barely even shaped like anything. She's sure it was meant to be an animal of some sort, the kind lost in time and definitely lost in the appearance of the sculpture. It looks like a blob of clay that's been poorly painted yellow. She can't even guess what it's meant to be.
She flips it in her hands a few times before taking a closer look. There's a crack born of poor workmanship in the clay, and she very carefully shakes it, holding it to her ear.
It rattles and then the key hits her in the side of the head as it falls out the bottom of it. "Well, at least I found it." She mutters darkly to herself as she picks it up from the floor where it landed after it bounced off her now tender cheekbone.
It's small but it holds the power to make her plan work, and she's very much aware of that. She takes it over to the locked box and slides the key into the lock, sighing in relief when it snaps open and allows her to lift the lid.
Inside it are all of the crystals that were previously strewn across the table in this very room when she first saw them. The crystals that her parents set aside because they thought they were the ones most likely to be helpful. They aren't the most specialized ones for what she wants, but if all else fails, she needs this.
She grabs a few of them and starts sliding them into her pockets, jamming in as many as she can reasonably fit into her outfit without making it too obvious she's packing some serious crystal.
"Ok, come on, Kara. Make it quick, you've got shit to do." She whispers to herself, trying her best to stay on track and not lose focus of her plan.
Locking the box back up, she's quick to slide it back into place before she rushes to tidy the room back up, putting away the knickknacks and grabbing Esme's jacket and teddy bear, both of which she forgot earlier. She swears that she spends more time carrying Esme's stuff than she does these days.
She takes one last look around the room and sighs as she knows this is the last time she'll ever see this place before turning off the lights with a definitive flick of her wrist. She closes the door behind her, striding away with a blank expression, not at all eager to give away her true feelings to every person she might happen to pass on her way to the pod.
The first half of her plan is complete now, so she's got to get to her parent's apartment for the second part. Her backup plan is stuffed into her clothes, so now it's time for her other plan—the heist.
When she parks the pod, she takes the time to take her jacket off, roll it up, and then wrap it in Esme's jacket, or as much of it as she can, zipping the tiny outer layer around hers to keep it coiled up tightly. She throws it into the footwell before shoving the teddy down beside it. She's got to figure out how to get this safe in the pod, and it's not going to be easy to do, so she's got to make as much space as she possibly can.
"Come on, Kara."
"How can I help you?" A Kelex flies up to her as she steps into the apartment, scaring her shitless and making her jump what feels like six feet in the air. "Kelex, you scared me." Kara pants, her hand held tight against her chest to calm her rapidly beating heart.
"My apologies. How can I assist you today, Kara Zor-El?"
"I don't require any assistance. Please head into the kitchen and remain there for the duration of my stay," Kara instructs, not wanting a nosy robot floating over her shoulder while she's here.
The Kelex remains silent for a moment, and in her nervous, panicking state, Kara thinks that it could be judging her somehow, but as it speaks, she realizes it's all in her head. "Right away. Please don't hesitate to call if you require any assistance."
"I will, thank you, Kelex," Kara says, a wobble to her voice she wishes weren't there. She really wishes that Nia were here to keep her company at least. She hates that she had to send them away, especially when she wanted Esme with her to keep her safe, but she couldn't see a way to keep them with her that wouldn't have tipped her father off that something was wrong.
Hell, she's pretty sure she already tipped him off by staying late. She's sure of it, actually. That's why she's got to be quick about this.
Rushing to her parent's bedroom, she goes right for her mother's nightstand and shakes her head as she opens it and sees that it's empty. Her mother is one step ahead. Of course she is. This couldn't go smoothly because, of course it couldn't. That would be too easy. She can still salvage this though.
Kara sinks to her knees in front of the empty drawer and takes a few deep breaths, hoping to calm herself down somewhat with each one. "I've got this. I know her just as well as she knows me." She says out loud, the rasp to her voice giving away her barely contained fear that maybe she doesn't know her as well as she thinks she does.
First, she checks beneath the bed. Nothing. Then, in all of the other drawers and cabinets. Nothing. Then, in the living room. Nothing. Kitchen. Nothing but a talkative Kelex asking to help. Bathroom. Bingo. She shoves her hand onto the top of the cabinet, right to the back where it's dusty and gross. It's there.
She pulls it down and smiles before realizing that she's got to figure out how to get this thing open. "Six clicks, Kara, six clicks." She reminds herself.
Trying a few combinations, she very quickly comes to the conclusion that she might've just got her hand filthy on the top of that cabinet for nothing because it's not working. How Nia can break into these things, she'll never know. The puzzle lock on top doesn't seem to move in any helpful way at all, and at no point is it unlocking for her.
"What would Alex do?" Kara bangs the wooden box against her forehead in dismay. "Oh, I know."
Tossing it on the floor, Kara takes an approach she's sure her sister would approve of.
"This is for you, sis." Her foot slams down into the top of it. It doesn't do anything but a second stomp does. A tiny crack. Her parent's neighbours aren't going to be happy with the noise but she's not going to be around to have to deal with that so she's happy to leave that up to them. A third stomp followed by a fourth breaks the side enough that she can push two fingers into the gap and completely pry off the side panel.
This time, she tilts the box into her hand; her face has suffered enough. It falls into her palm with a satisfying thunk.
"Gotcha."
She drops the box in the trash. It's not like her mom can use it again now. Who needs brains when she has a perfectly good foot, one that is a little sore now but good nonetheless.
There's not a single thought in her head as she runs as fast as possible across the apartment to the hallway where the safe is locked into the wall. Not for much longer though. She stabs the lock and pulls the safe out in one smooth motion only for her ears to be assaulted by an alarm blasting through the apartment that has Kelex flying over to her.
"Stop where you are and hold your hands up where they are visible!" Its robotic voice rings out over the alarm, shrill and grating.
"Oh, fuck." Kara gasps, doing as she's told as the weapons in Kelex's arms spring free as its claw hands retract. They point right at her face and her heart just about stops as they light up as though she's about to get shot in the face with some kind of energy blast.
More Kelex drones come swooping in to surround her. "You are not permitted to remove this safe from the premises."
"I wasn't going to remove it from the premises. I was simply checking that it was in place properly. It looked like it wasn't sitting flush against the wall, so I was going to take it out and ensure nothing was trapped behind it."
"You may explain to peace officers upon their arrival. You must stay here until they arrive." One Kelex informs her, leading to her looking at the safe with scorn.
Not a moment later though, before peace officers so much as get into their pods to head on over to them, a hologram appears from the chest of one of the Kelex's body—a hologram of her mother.
"I have to say, Kara. I am disappointed. Both in the fact that you went behind our backs and the fact that you didn't think far enough ahead to assume that we had contingencies in place."
Kara slumps against the safe, pushing it back into place. "Yeah, I know."
Alura addresses the Kelex she's using to communicate. "Please escort my daughter to her pod and program it to come right to me. Don't allow her to bring anything from the apartment back with her either. "She switches back to speaking generally. "Caretakers, stand down and return to your previous posts."
Kara bites her lip nervously, even as Kelex's hands switch back to claws because those claws wrap around her forearm as she's dragged back to the pod with shuffling feet. This isn't good, but at least she still has her backup plan. That's helpful.
She's directed to sit in the back of the pod, away from the controls, and she grumbles to herself. She wasn't expecting to be forced to sit like a convinced criminal, a pod that is hers, for all intents and purposes, even if it is just temporarily."
"So, how long will it take to get there."
Kelex ignores her and she sags into her seat with a frown. Her mother must have removed her access through the Kelex at the accommodation. That's petty. It's also fair, but it's still petty.
"Good chat." She says, sarcasm dripping from the words. She definitely prefers their Kelex; they're just so much nicer without a head. She could actually argue that they're much more useful that way too.
Looking out of the window and resting her head against the glass, she crosses her fingers against her thigh. She really hopes the others are alright and her parents aren't being assholes to her family. Who is she kidding? They're definitely being assholes to them. At least she did what she planned and only told the others part of her plan. They'll have to come clean about the part of the plan she just got caught doing, but they don't know about her other backup plan. That's just for her, and she's going to hold onto that knowledge until they're safely off this damn planet.