Chapter 33

They are now on the sixth level, one below Gamora and Star Lord. Rocket wonders what the hell they are doing.

Red had told him that this level had the armaments testing and shield-testing facilities, and was the largest level in this sector on the nearly-planet-sized ship.

Also on the level were some workstations and labs, one of which the red panda had holed herself up in. There had been nothing special about the room (at least to him) but she had told him how there were pieces and materials in there that had made her bow and she wanted to salvage everything she could, along with schematics for similar gear and weaponry.

Okay, so it was a bit amazing and totally cool – but Red basically kicked his ass out after he broke some arrow or something in half – apparently they were 'super delicate'. He had little-to-no idea how something so breakable could do so much damage.

Instead of sticking around to fuel her wrath (*cough* bitching *cough*), Rocket offered to take some of the selected supplies and materials back to the ship (they were definitely going to run out of room, soon – good thing he had his dimensional storage unit).

So that was what he was currently doing – leading Drax, who was carrying the box of stuff his female companion picked out, back to the ship. He had insisted on Groot staying behind with Rene (despite her protests), but he was almost positive that she will kick his large, wooden ass out soon, anyways. While she loved Groot to pieces, he wasn't very graceful.

It'll take him about an hour to get to the ship, unload the stuff, and then make it back to Rene and Groot – so that should be enough 'private time' for her. He did promise to give her space.

Rocket just didn't know why it would be so freaking hard.

Honestly, he can't wait until they would be able to get that stupid collar off of her. But with her current focus, it's almost like she doesn't want it off – and that worries Rocket.

A lot.

His communicator buzzes just as him and Drax get off on the third level and start making their way towards the ship.

"Rocket… you there?" Peter's voice sounds over the communicator.

"Yea, Star Princess. Whatcha want?"

He can hear the human roll his eyes. No, really – he could. Rocket barely suppresses a snicker.

"Is Lil' Red with you?"

"Nope! It's just Drax and I. Groot's with her on level six – she's screwing around in some mini engineering-weapon lab-room… whatever."

"Aaaannnd where are you?"

Now he's rolling his eyes.

"Almost at the ship. Dropping off some cool shit Ren wanted to take. Why? Need help opening a door?" Rocket says the last part teasingly, and tries not to laugh at Drax muttering something about 'why do doorways have to be so complicated in space'.

"Well, on your way back, drop by our level – five."

Rocket holds out his communicator and looks at it suspiciously, as if giving it 'the look' will help Peter see it.

"Any particular reason, Star-Dork? It's a door, isn't it?" The raccoon snickers.

"No. It's… just something Gam and I want you to see."

Rocket slows his walk, and at Drax's questioning look he just waves the tribal man up ahead. Quill's tone was semi-serious, and he wasn't reacting to Rocket's taunting… so whatever it was…

"Me? Not –"

"Stop by before you head back to Rene."

Rocket narrows his eyes and crinkles his nose. "Why…" His voice is low. He had a swooping feeling in his gut. The one you get when you're about to do something you might just regret later.

The human makes an irritated sound before there's slight static coming from the end, and then he hears Gamora's sharp voice.

"We don't think she wants to visit this room. She had previously told us to stay away from it but…"

Rocket feels his lips curl a little, "And you didn't." He intones sharply.

There is a brief silence on the other end.

"No. I didn't."

He hesitates a little before he answers, and Gamora's polite enough to give him some time.

"Yea…" Rocket sighs, rubbing his face. He might just regret this later. "Okay, I'll be there A-Sap."

"Okay."

The com-link shuts off and Rocket puts the little device away.

He tries valiantly to ignore the little worms in his gut. If Rene didn't want any of them to go into that room, and didn't plan on visiting it herself…

Should he really…?

It would be breaking what fragile trust that was already between them… but…

He wants to know…

Rocket clenches his fist and swallows the lump in his tight throat as he marches after Drax.

It's a chance he will take – Gamora wouldn't involve him unless she thought it was something important. Ren may never find out, and it may even help him to help her. Or, help him learn more about his current female-interest.

It still didn't settle the uneasy feeling in his chest, though.

Rocket prays she'll forgive his furry ass if she ever finds out about his involvement in whatever this is.

Rene looks up from the workstation to see Groot starting to fall asleep in the corner, and smiles gently at the large, living tree. He's gotten much bigger since the first time she saw him – he was nearly a giant now (about the size he's supposed to be, according to the Guardians).

The red panda suddenly feels her heart start to race as she looks at the clock on the tablet.

It has been approximately fifteen minutes since Rocket and Drax left to take her allocated equipment back to the ship. Obtaining the equipment was a major plus – the materials made for her bow were expensive and rare, and also very hard to mold and meld.

She's just glad that she was able to get to the already-crafted pieces – she'll use them sometime in the future to upgrade or repair her bow. The last repair she had to make on it, she had to use sub-par materials because Jack was a cheapskate as well as an asshole.

Wrinkling her nose, she steels herself for what she needs to do next. If she was right, she had about forty minutes at most before Rocket was back.

She needed to come up with a plan.

Hopping down from the station, she looks behind her at Groot to make sure he's still sleeping, before hurrying over to a small, locked file cabinet in the opposite corner of the room where a small workstation was set up.

She allows herself a moment of nostalgia when she pulls herself up onto the chair and pulls herself to the top drawer. Pressing a hidden button reveals a keypad, where she enters in a twelve-digit code. The mechanism beeps twice before there's a loud click, signaling that it was unlocked.

Standing on the chair she peers inside and shuffles stuff around, picking up some small, specialty tools that she quickly stuffs into the ammo pouch on her back – eventually she finds what she was looking for at the back of the drawer and pulls out a tablet, nearly identical to the one she left at the other workstation.

Rene sets this tablet on the table carefully, almost reverently, before taking another quick glance at the contents in the drawer. She sees two small hard drives and only hesitates for a second before snatches them up, sticking them into one of the pockets in her cargos to review later.

If they were in that drawer, they could be useful – though she can't quite remember what was on them.

Hopping back down from the chair after carefully shutting the drawer, she takes the newly acquired tablet back to the other workstation near Groot. After pulling herself back up, she turns on the newly acquired tablet, logs in, and in five minutes she has all the security data, schematics and other information she needs from the borrowed tablet.

She hesitates and thinks about what to do next for a moment, before she decides to check in on Gamora and Quill Rene pulls out her communicator and turns it on – she's about to speak when voices come over the line, echoing in the near-empty room. The archer hurries to turn down the volume to its lowest setting in hopes of not awakening the tree dozing in the corner.

As the red panda listens, she starts to frown, and her brow furrows as the conversation between her other teammates continues. Once the conversation is over, she waits for the others' coms to click off before she shuts hers off as well.

Okay… so that just happened.

There's an ugly feeling bubbling up in her chest and her eyes burn a little and she takes a deep breath to settle herself.

She doesn't know why she feels like this. Ren already knew that Gamora was going to investigate that room the second she said her and Quill would take the fifth level. She knew it…

So why does she feel betrayed that Rocket is going to be joining them? If Gamora (and most of all, Quill) extract all the information from that room, and realize what it was for… Rocket would have found out eventually anyways (Gam can keep a secret, but Peter can't for the life of him).

Shaking herself, she scratches harshly at her ear as she glares at the wall. The tears are quickly blinked away from sapphire eyes, and after a brief moment, she springs into action.

Part of her was indecisive, and was considering waiting for Rocket to come back – but this new development made her decision easier.

Anger was always a good motivator for doing something either stupid or brave.

This was a bit stupid, but right now she couldn't give two shits.

Taking the old tablet, she clicks into the map with the live feed. On it she sees Drax and Rocket at the check in area, Quill and Gamora just outside of the lab on the fifth floor – there's a warning icon, very small, in the bottom corner that she clicks on and it details damage done to Lab 384 – X. Rene huffs and quickly closes the window and looks to see – yup. There were dots that showed her and Groot in Specialist Weapon's Lab #8. There's an icon flashing beside the room label on the tablet, that indicating further details that she ignores.

She already knows what it says. No need to waste time.

Knowing that now is her chance, she has to take it. Rocket and Drax will no doubt be with Quill and Gamora for at least an hour – she knows the systems, and she knows what's in that room. It will take them that long to snoop around and then to read and review what Rocket will inevitably find, should he hack the server there.

Rene quickly hacks the security schematic application, replacing a snap-shot in real-time with the live 'feed', that will make it appear that she and Groot are in the room, should the others want to click on the level to check.

Hopefully she'll be back before they come looking for her, and before Groot wakes up, though she kinda doubts it.

Ren has a bit of a bad feeling in her gut, but she's too revved up to heed her instinct's advice.

She kinda wants to shoot something. Or blow something up. A fight would be nice, right about now – but there's no need for ass-kicking.

Hopefully. Should they be here…

In five minutes she's heading out the door and racing to the elevator. She checks on the tablet to see that Rocket and

Drax are just now using the elevator. She will wait until they are at the lab, and then she will take the lift to the eighth level.

She's made it down the hallway, shoving the small tablet into her pocket and reaches over her head to finger the folded bow after jumping to hit the button to the lift.

The elevator is quick to get to her level and she hurries through. Rene turns around to hit the down button and nearly jumps out of her fur.

"Shit!"

Groot was standing in the doorway, looking down at her with a smug smile.

"I am Groot!"

She's not mad. It's near impossible to be mad at the adorable, giant tree.

Even when he's being difficult.

But this does put a kink in her hastily-made plan…

The anxious archer sighs with a dark, brown paw dragging down her face as she adds a groan.

"Common in, Big Guy. I guess you're commin' with me."

They are on the last (secret and most secure) level in the ship, which isn't really a 'level', more than a room. But this is where she has access to any and all parts of the ship's security and information technology.

Also located in this room, is the secluded server and console that will have the top-level clearance information she's looking for.

Ren knows, because she helped to gather it before the crazy Shi'ar doc came here to install and store it.

She uses the buttons on the sides of the table to lower the platform with the station down to her height (thank the spirits for the alien-inclusion act), so that she's able to comfortably hack into the server. Crinkling her nose at the difficult inscription software, she wonders if she'll actually be able to –

Oh. Look.

Not so hard.

Now, she just has to wait for…

There.

Taking out her tablet, she pulls out a cord from the server and attaches it to the device, before setting standing on her tip-toes to try and set it down on top of the server – she's no-where close, but Groot steps over and gently takes the delicate tablet from her paws and does it for her.

"I am Groot." He says, as close to a whispered tone as the giant tree-man will ever get.

"Thanks, buddy." She murmurs and forces a smile before turning back to look at the console as the inscription software and keys on the tablet does its' thing.

"Let's hope that works. It's what I remember, anyways."

Ren wouldn't have said anything out loud, but she already feels that she's being rude to Groot, and that just won't do.

When the timer for the decryption appears she groans.

A half-hour.

Suddenly, there's a large bang that echoes from above them, making her hold her breath and strain her small, fuzzy white ears.

Alien voices that sound angry and biting echo after the noise, and it makes her look up at Groot with worry.

She has an idea already of who it is… but…

"Okay Big Guy," She whispers, "I need to see what that is, please be quiet – I have a feeling we don't want them to know we are here."

He moves to open his 'mouth' in reply but is quickly shushed by the small female.

Instead, he just nods his head and she does the same.

"Stay here, I promise I'll be right back. Don't do anything."

"Groot." Pausing in where she was climbing into a duct, she turns to look pleadingly at her friend over her shoulder.

"Please, Groot. I need you to trust me. I don't want anything to happen to our friends, and I'll be careful."

"Am Groot." The tree sighs quietly and reluctantly moves to sit down in the cramped space.

"Thank you." She whispers back, but then she freezes and thinks. Quickly, she's backing out of the shaft, and she's jogging the short distance to Groot, who's looking down at her, bewildered.

Ren, thinking quickly, takes out her com and sets a timer, before patting Groot's large knee from where she climbed up on his leg until he holds out a large hand.

"This is the communicator. When the numbers are all at zero, and I'm not back, use it to find the others. Okay? I don't want you sitting here alone if something happens."

"Groot." He rumbles at her, making her smile softly and pat his leg again.

"Just a precaution. I'm the last one out of our friends you need to worry about, Groot. You'll just have to trust me."

With that, she's making her way after the voices, which leads her to another sector of the ship, because as she already knew before coming here, that this was the only room in which someone might access any of the many sectors of the ship.

Only someone her size or smaller would be able to climb and crawl through the ducts – It was designed this way for security reasons. Anyone else would have to go out of the ship and re-dock in another sector.

Or blow a hole through the wall.

Her approach is definitely much more subtle.

Rene tries not to huff out a sound of exertion as she pushes against the sides of the now-vertical metalloid duct, using the pressure to shimmy up the twenty or so feet it'll take her to get to the top.

Her paws were slipping, and even with her leather gloves pulled over the metal in her hand was not offering enough friction. She will either risk slipping down and falling, therefore making noise and possibly drawing attention, or she will risk being noticed by what light will shine, should she remove her gloves and activate –

"Fuck." She hisses to herself, biting her lip to avoid cursing aloud. Her muscles were starting to shake, and her right paw slipped a little, causing her heart to start pounding harder and faster.

This was taking too long.

The longer she takes, the sooner her nosey new friends will come looking for her – inevitably putting themselves in danger, and risk blowing her position.

Falling, or failing right now, will also lead to her friends possibly being in danger.

Rene can start to make out some of what they are saying. She's pretty sure she knows who these beings are, and what they want.

She should definitely not be attempting to spy on them…

But she knows she needs to.

It's too good of an opportunity to pass up.

It gets darker and darker, to the point it's nearly pitch black inside the vent shaft, sans the blinking red light on her collar.

Great.

She slips again and barely catches herself; but when she starts having trouble getting her grip back, she swallows a growl and stops climbing to stretch out as much as she can to brace herself briefly, about halfway up the shaft, so she can rip off her gloves.

A sigh of resignation, she concentrates. Focuses the energy in the palms of her hands.

Her palms are now fitted securely against the metalloid siding, and her quivering muscles can take a bit of a break. She breathes a sigh of relief, because the light from her palms isn't as bad as she feared.

She just can't lift them off the siding.

Rene takes a fortifying breath and then moves to slide her left paw up, only to freeze when it makes a sound.

Of course.

Her palm is mostly metal, and it looks like sliding isn't going to be an option. So she cups her paws against the siding, and starts quickly moving up the wall. Rene is shaking with adrenaline and she quickly pulls back on her gloves, because the light from her palms can take awhile to go out (unfortunately).

She allows herself a moment to rest and reassess. From the way the sound is bouncing off the interior of the ducts, she's estimating that the left is the path to take.

Ren freezes when a large form moves past the opening, just as she turns the corner.

Five feet away.

Closing her eyes, she mentally pulls up the schematics and the map from her memory, to get a good idea of where on the ship she is.

Climbing through the vents had taken about fifteen minutes – longer than she anticipated.

Ren will have to make this quick.