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I left my father's room, and walked downstairs quickly. I called my pets with a quick whistle that my father taught me, and that they all knew. Without a word, I opened the cellar door and descended. Halfway down, the pets, except Niko and Olay! (who I suspect kept conversation with my father in the past) seemed surprised to see a door in the cellar wall between the wine racks, where no seams had been previously.
Not surprised, more relieved, I turned the knob. Locked, as I had suspected, it did not move. However, I had my father's keys. I always thought that ancient-looking key was more of a keychain; my father did keep a collection of old keys on display in the parlor. But now I had other suspicions. I turned the old key in the lock, and heard it release. I opened the door, and stepped onto the stairwell. My pets followed me closely, except for Olay!, who skittered up ahead. Obviously, she'd been in here before.
The staircase was spiral, and went down for at least two, maybe three stories. 'Well, at least I'm not clausterphobic or anything.' I thought absently. Niko smiled at me comfortingly. I raised my eyebrows at her - did she hear that thought?
I saw light ahead and dismissed thoughts of Niko for the moment. I rounded one last bend and stepped down onto a cold cement floor in the middle of a large complex area. My jaw dropped. I was in a huge room, with glass-doored bookcases part of one wall, about five lab tables with odd scientific equipment scattered around on them in one corner of the room, a large L-shaped computer desk in the opposite corner with about eight monitors including a large big-screen tv sized one on the wall above and many different computers, scanners, touch-pads, and other technical equipment arranged perfectly in that area. And near the bookcases was a frosted case. And between the stairs and the wall were two heavy-duty doors, with a small window in each, showing only empty black rooms, with a yellow grid on the walls, floor, and ceiling.
I walked around, looking but not touching the lab experiments, skimming book titles, and trying to see through the frosted glass, before finally sitting down in front of that massive display screen at the computer area. I noticed that Niko had a cat bed nearby which she settled down into (not surprising, now that I remembered that Dragon had given Niko to me for my birthday) and Olay! scrambled up onto the eighth tier on the pet tree and curled up inside the log-shaped form. Kipper laid on the floor of the pet tree, and Tuft swung himslef up to the third tier platform and sat with his arms dangling down. They all looked pretty cozy down here.
I pulled a keyboard up to myself, since I heard the tell-tale hum (pleasantly quiet, but it's more that I can feel the emi's involved) and hit the spacebar. Of course, a login screen appeared before me on the small monitor, and was also displayed on the huge one two feet above it. Shrugging, I tried the login Dad had given me for the computer upstairs, and the password he had originally given me. "Password invalid. Please try again" displayed in red on the monitor for about three seconds, then brought me to the login screen again. Racking my brain, I remembered I had changed the password the last time I was on the home computer. I laughed. Home computer? That thing upstairs was teeny! It was nothing compared to this!
"Welcome, Rose." said a loud female voice.
I jumped, rolling my seat backwards a few feet, and almost ran before I realized the voice came from the huge computer speakers, and the same message was displayed on the huge screen above.
"Oh my goodness!" I said, pulling my chair up to the keyboard again. "That scared me!"
"I am sorry, Rose. I will try not to scare you again. Would a volume adjustment help solve this problem?" The voice said, softer this time.
I blinked at the display monitor. 'It thinks. Holy crap, this thing is AI, or something.' I thought.
"Um, sure. I mean, no. The volume was fine. I just... was not expecting a response."
"I see." the computer responded, and then the display pixelated and changed into a woman's face. "Let me introduce myself. I am an Artificial Nano-Technology Intellegence Element." The woman's face smiled.
I looked at it for a while, and two things occurred to me.
"You look a lot like pictures of my mother, ANTIE." I said, and it smiled, as if waiting for me to say exactly that.
"I should. My face was modeled after a DNA sequencing model your mother made over thirty years ago of a possible mixing of her DNA and Arxus' DNA."
I paused. "They made your face like what they thought a child of theirs would look like?"
"Yes."
"You look more like mom." I stated. The face - ANTIE - nodded.
"Your mother had very many dominant traits. And they very much wanted Lilah's DNA to remain dominant in any such mixing."
My eyes nearly popped out of my face. "They... didn't... genetically..."
"No." ANTIE replied. "Your genetics were not tampered with. Lilah and Arxus simply were looking at the possibilities."
I let out an audible sigh, and began to chat a bit with ANTIE.
Turns out, ANTIE knew more about my parents than anyone else could even suppose. Except, apprarently, Dragon. ANTIE had a lot to say about her, too.

I spent the next few days talking with ANTIE and exploring the compound.