8 THE FALL
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Having successfully led the group of survivors to the safety of Deck 12, Douglas found himself once again waiting in the conference room for orders from Salazar. He stood unnoticed in the doorway while she and several others pored over sheets of data. Scattered around the room were many faces that he hadn't seen the last time he was on deck.
"Ma'am," he said, announcing his presence.
Salazar turned to Douglas, looking around him to see if anyone else was there, but it was just him. "Douglas," she said, turning back to her papers, "I don't see Alexis with you."
"No, ma'am. She stayed behind to locate her brother and help him with some more of the crew on another de—"
"Someone please get Alexis on the com," she said, cutting him off. She moved to the table in the center of the room. "Douglas, I need your help with something. The explosions this morning were caused by several decks trying to fire their thrusters while still attached."
Douglas broke free from his formal stance in the doorway and moved to the table. "How is that possible?"
"I was hoping you could tell me." Salazar called up security footage on the main screen. "As you are about to see, all four of these decks start shaking at the exact same moment." She swiped the screen, bringing a diagnostic grid to the front. "At the same time, our computers registered a massive power spike in each of their independent flight controls."
"Do we have video from the flight pods?" Douglas asked.
"Yes, and they are clean. Whoever or whatever did this did it remotely."
"What about the guy on the comms earlier? Has he contacted anyone directly?"
"It's been completely silent. For now, all we know is that the ship is malfunctioning, the entire flight crew is gone, and there may or may not be a saboteur on board." She swiped at the papers on the table. "Oh, and we currently have no way to separate the decks for landing."
“But what—”
She turned to Douglas. Desperate and frustrated, she interrupted him. "As far as I know, the entire engineering crew is dead, save you. That means you and Alexis are the only assets we currently have to save our asses."
"Understood."
"I hope so." She paused, looking around the room. "Tell me someone has Alexis on the comms, damn it!" Salazar stepped closer to Douglas, toe-to-toe, her voice grave. "If you and Alexis don't find a way to get this ship safely through the planet's atmosphere, it is going to get very uncomfortable in here very quickly. And that, young man, is assuming we don't crash into its moon first."
"I'm on it, ma'am."
"And stop calling me ma'am." She turned away and yelled louder, "Alexis? Anyone?"
Assuming that something must have gone wrong, either with the rescue efforts or the communications system, Douglas rushed out of the control room and back into the service crawl, hightailing it to where he had left Alexis and David.
* * * *
In the service crawl, Alexis and David, a few feet away from the exit, were trying to work out a plan to rescue Levi.
"I only saw two," David whispered, "but at least one of them has some sort of blade." He turned to look at Alexis, motioning with his eyes. “And that grate is too heavy. They would get us before we even got it open."
"We're not just leaving him up there," Alexis insisted.
"Of course not." David stood and paced back and forth, thinking. "Do you know of another way onto that floor?"
"The elevator shaft, but I have no idea how we could make that work." Then she remembered. David had the answer in his hands. "That tablet isn't just a map. Douglas had the entire floor schematic loaded on it." She jumped up and grabbed the tablet.
Looking over the various schematics, she was able to pinpoint several service entrances near their position and another stairway leading to Observation and Stasis.
"If we enter here," she said, pointing to the next closest entry, "it will get us there. But it’ll take us at least twenty minutes to get back." She sighed, the disappointment dripping from her words.
"That may be our only option, Lexi. I don't want to leave them up there that long either, but it's that or do nothing."
A new voice filled the air above them. It was loud, yet sounded very far away. Someone was shouting, and it had caught the attention of the two kidnappers. David rushed back up the stepladder to listen and get a better look.
"What is it?" Alexis asked, concerned about the increasingly uneven odds. She grabbed David's pant leg and demanded, "What's going on?"
"I don't know. They're laughing." As he said it, the two kidnappers walked off down one of the side corridors. "They’re leaving. This might be my only chance. I'm going up."
As quietly but quickly as he could, David shoved his back and shoulders into the grate and muscled it open. Levi looked up excitedly and began to squirm, trying in vain to wriggle free from his bonds. The other crew member appeared to be passed out. David crept slowly over to Levi and removed the tape from his face.
Alexis, following close behind, crawled up from the grate as David was untying Levi's hands. As soon as she got to her feet, the two kidnappers rounded the corner, one of them holding a bloodied Douglas by the back of the collar. Before the second man could reach for his blade, David, fueled by fear and instinct, rushed up and grabbed him by the neck.
Recognizing the opportunity, Douglas turned and took action. He wrapped his arm around his captor's and pulled his weight back, breaking the man’s arm at the elbow. The sound of the tendons tearing apart between the bones was nearly as deafening as the howl the man let loose after it happened. As the man stumbled back, still screaming and now cradling his limp arm, Douglas advanced and landed a solid jab to the side of his head, knocking him out cold and sending them both to the floor.
While Douglas was making short work of his captor, David had wrestled the other one to the ground. Not having any real fighting experience, it didn’t take long for him to lose the upper hand. The man was now on top of David and, having finally retrieved his blade, was poised to thrust it into David’s chest, stopped only by sheer will and the strength of David's arms, both waning quickly.
“No!” he grunted as he struggled to keep the man from succeeding where the earlier explosions had failed.
Alexis was scrambling to finish untying Levi's restraints when she heard David’s plea. She looked over and saw from the strain in David’s face that he was about to lose. She screamed, and the man looked up and shot her a sinister grin before turning back to focus on David. She knew if she didn't intervene, she would lose the man she loved for the second time today.
She looked around, frantically searching for something to help him. She and Douglas rose from the floor at the same moment, but before he could act, Alexis made her move. She had remembered and retrieved the small pry bar from her back pocket and something inside her snapped. Her fear and anxiety turned to rage, and the man in front of her became the reason for all the horrible things that had happened that day. She lunged, flinging her body at the man with so much force that he was thrown back several feet, with Alexis on top of him the entire way. Before his head could hit the ground, she had clutched his hair with one hand and slammed the pry bar into his neck with the other.
Without some sort of handle to protect her hands, the force of thrusting the bar through the man’s throat tore a large gash in her palm. She noticed, but didn’t react. She let go of the man, and his head slammed down onto the metal floor, blood spraying from his wound.
With her uninjured hand, she yanked the pry bar from the man's neck and jammed it into his chest, screaming the entire time, and again tore an inch of flesh from her palm. Douglas, realizing the frenzy she had been sucked into, leapt up, and grabbed her arm to pull her back. As she was pulled off the man, she fought to be allowed to finish what she had started, flailing and growling as she did.
Scooting back against the wall, David sat himself up, staring at the bleeding corpse of the man who had just tried to murder him. He looked over at Alexis and she looked to him. Her eyes were wide and wild and she was breathing fast and heavy, hyperventilating. As she struggled to control her breath, she took a look at the man’s body.
With a few final heightened breaths, she passed out.
