I yawned and stretched my arms out in front of me, feeling rested and alert for the first time in... well, in the last two or three days I could remember. I tried to think back to anything beyond waking up here, but aside from a few random memories and a headache that got even worse, I came up empty. I still had no idea what I had been doing even a week before I had been brought here.

Whatever 'here' was.

I glanced around the room once again. The generator was still on, so the heat lamp was glowing and providing a pleasant warmth, and the rest of the machines in the room were making their own various noises. I wasn't sure how long the generator would keep them running this time, but I didn't think soaking up more heat would be that helpful - what I really needed were answers.

I dug up all the information the 'encyclopedia' in my head had on how to land, and once I was sure I had a good idea of how to do it, I hopped off the counter and glided over to the chair.

I felt a happy pride when I landed right where I had planned. It had only been a slow glide, but I had only had wings for what amounted to a few hours of consciousness. It felt like a big accomplishment and I took a moment to appreciate it.

Once I finished patting myself on the back I took a closer look at the equipment around me.

The machines didn't offer me any more clues as to what was going on, so I unplugged the ones I could get to. They weren't in use anyways, and turning them off would give the generator more time to run the heat lamp. I looked at the trays beside the bed, but being close to the instruments on the various trays was... uncomfortable. It had been impossible to make out the details before, in the dim light with the electricity out, but with the light from the heat lamp I could see stains on most of the tools here. The light turned everything a reddish color, but I still got the nasty suspicion that some of those stains were of blood.

Maybe even my blood. There was still so much I couldn't remember... but with the memories I did have, of being human... I could have been in that chair at some point. Those blades could have been cutting into me.

I tried not to think too much about that as I skimmed over the instruments, then fanned my wings in excitement as I caught sight of something half hidden by a cloth. A tape recorder! Hopefully that would have some answers.

I grabbed the recorder and turned it over in my hands. It was a simple dictation recorder, the kind doctors would use to take notes while their hands were messy, which... made sense, given that this room was for... the type of activities that would leave behind blood-splattered instruments.

I eyed the instruments once more and wondered why they hadn't been cleaned. Whatever had left the building deserted must have happened before they had gotten a chance to clean up.

The recorder was digital, but it looked like it still had plenty of charge to it. It didn't seem the type of thing to use much battery power when it was off, so that didn't really give me a clue as to how long ago it had been abandoned, but maybe something in the playback would. I hit the rewind button on it and took another look around the room.

Nothing else in the room looked interesting. I clutched the recorder to my side and spread out my wings, then launched into the air to flitter down the hallway, passing by the can of peaches I had left at the door.

With sources of food and warmth now much less of a concern I decided to focus on answering some of the questions that were bugging me. My earlier exploration of the building had been focused on finding food, so I had ignored a lot of areas that didn't seem helpful in that search, and I hadn't tried to actually open any of the doors that had been closed... but now that I could easily get up to the door handles I was a little curious what I might find behind them. And more practice at flying certainly wouldn't hurt.

I was also curious what I would hear on the recording, so I performed the death defying act of searching for the play button while hurtling through the air down the hallway. And I most certainly did not almost fly into a half-open door while doing so.

It wasn't like there was anyone there who could claim otherwise.

A man's voice started speaking as I continued concentrating on the motions of my wings, filling the silent hallways with the sounds of panicked flapping and boring medical jargon. I quickly tuned out the voice - it was mostly big words I didn't understand, and I needed to put more of my concentration into flying than I had expected.

My explorations only turned up more signs of sudden disaster. A lot of the rooms I had given only casual glances at turned out to be offices. Furniture was mostly a desk, chairs, and some shelves, though some of the offices were decorated with pictures or calendars on the walls. A few of the desks had computers on them, but none of them had power. I gave a brief thought about dragging one of the computers back to the room I had woken up in to use the power outlets there... but the computers were heavier than I suspected I could move, and I didn't think the generator would be able to handle running the computer for very long anyways. I filed that idea as one to come back to later if I didn't come across any better options for answering my questions.

As I got closer to the room with the cages I found more styles of rooms. One room had rows of metal cabinets that I had walked by, but now that I could get into the air I could reach the handles halfway up the door. A bit of pushing and pulling on the heavy lever caused the door to slowly swing open, with the inside revealing them to be refrigerators. Vials of various colored liquids with tiny labels filled the shelves of the refrigerator, but the air inside felt just as warm as the air outside, so I suspected the contents were all ruined.

None of the labels on the vials told me anything meaningful - they were just combinations of numbers followed by a letter - and there wasn't any food inside, so I left the room and continued onwards.

I explored a few other equally uninteresting rooms - a common breakroom with a fridge whose contents had also gone bad with the power outage, what looked like an exercise area designed for small flying creatures, a room filled with file cabinets - while the voice rambled through extremely detailed explanations of the condition of some subject he was studying, but I didn't find (or hear) anything useful. I came across a bathroom and discovered two fairly important facts - one, that the dragonet body I now had was capable of using a toilet designed for humans, and two, that the building no longer had any running water.

Two doors away from the room of cages I found a small closet. It didn't have anything I could use - any shelves it might have once had were gone now, giving space for the machines that lined the walls. Wires ran from the ceiling to the machines, likely carrying power or other important things to other parts of the building. All of the machines were off...

...except for one.

I followed the gentle hum of electricity to a square metal box near the top of the closet. It didn't have any buttons or displays that I could make out, but there was a faded sticker on the front. I rose in the air and hovered beside the box, feeling a bit of pride at managing to float in one place, and squinted at the writing. "GEN... FR... AC..." Chirps and whistles emerged from my mouth as I tried to make anything out in the dim light, but I didn't care. Maybe it wasn't human speech now, but I still knew what I was saying. It wasn't like there was anybody else to communicate with here anyways.

"Genfrac..." I tried to make sense of the word, but I couldn't place it... then I squinted harder. Oh - that was an 'e', not an 'f'. "Generac."

That word sounded familiar. It sounded like something related to a generator - which would probably explain why it had electricity humming through it.

I saw more letters beneath the word, even smaller ones, because apparently somebody had discovered a microscopic font and had been possessed of a cruel streak, and I spent a few more minutes squinting in the dark while the voice on the recorder droned on.

"S... O... I... no, L... A..." I put the letters together and grinned. Solar. Generac Solar.

I had a sudden recollection of an argument. Two people arguing about whether there was any point to a solar powered backup generator. The older, grumpy seeming man was adamant that anything important enough to demand emergency power would require far too much power to run off of what a few solar panels could provide for more than just an hour or two at best, while the younger man was just as equally certain that the ability to run for long periods without needing to be filled back up with gas was an important point to consider.

I felt my wings grow tired from all the hovering I was doing, so I dropped back down to the ground and stared up at the box. I thought back to the cold eggs I had seen in the room with the cages, finally understanding what had happened. The power had gone out in the building when all the people had left... and the heat lamps had all died in the larger room.

But the backup generator had kicked in and supplied power to the room I was in, at least partially. While the sun was up, and maybe for a few hours after it had set, the heat lamp above the egg I was inside of got enough power to keep me warm. When the sun set and the battery died, the heat lamp went out and my egg got gradually cooler... until the sun rose again, and supplied power to the source of warmth above me. It might not have been the healthiest thing for me, but it had been enough. I had survived.

The sun had been all that had kept me alive.

That was a sobering thought. I didn't know why I had been in that room instead of in the main room, but... whatever had led to that, it had saved my life.

I walked out of the closet and stared at the room with the cages. I wondered just how many lifeless eggs were inside it, or inside the room beyond it that I had ignored. I took a step towards it, preparing to walk through the forlorn rows...

...my stomach rumbled.

I realized just how hungry I had become - I hadn't been hungry enough to eat when I had first woken up, but the flying had taken a lot out of me. Especially the hovering - that had turned out to be much more difficult than just gliding through the air. I glanced further down the hall towards the storage room with the canned foods. Food first, then I could take another look at the room with the cages.

I dragged the recorder after me and walked back to the pantry for breakfast.