6 THE SEARCH
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Back inside the service crawl, Alexis was toiling away on one of the communication junctions. After splicing the final sets of wires together and heating a tube of shrink wrap with what looked like an overpowered hair dryer, she closed the front cover and pushed up the large switch on the side of the panel. Several LED lights on the outside began to glow yellow, but most were still red.
She pulled a communicator from her pack and punched a few numbers on the front of the device. "Well, that's about as good as it's going to get."
"I read you," Salazar's tinny voice echoed out from the small device. "Nice work."
"It won't reach every deck, but it should work for what we need. We can patch in the remaining decks as we move around the ship," Alexis replied. "I’m on my way back now."
* * * *
With the communications system mostly repaired, Deck 12 was now able to access the video, radio, and diagnostic feeds throughout the ship. Salazar was already busy poring over the video feeds of each deck and didn't even look up to answer.
"It's worse than we thought," she said. "Many of the decks are either on fire or have no oxygen."
"What do you see on O-Deck?" Alexis' tone shifted from determination to concern. "Anything?"
"Fire. A lot of smoke and debris. Bodies."
Alexis knew it would be bad, but until she saw it with her own eyes, there was still some hope to cling on to.
She moved in to view the monitor. She grabbed the controls and scanned the deck, moving from camera to camera. There were bodies everywhere, most of which were burned beyond recognition or not even whole. The images disturbed her to her core, but she did her best to hold it together while she looked around for clues.
The viewing platform had been completely destroyed. Alexis knew this meant any hope of David's survival was all but lost, but she wasn't willing to give up yet. Even if she couldn't save David, there might be others who needed help. As she cycled through the cameras furthest away from the platform, she saw the damage to the deck was less, and she found several areas that were still viable, but there were still no signs of life.
She scanned a camera near The Pub and paused as flashes of the goofy character David had created for her tried to turn her determination into grief. She thought about how important it was to him to make a life with her, and her callousness to the feelings they both shared. Tears began to swell in her eyes as she started to allow herself to mourn, when she noticed a service entry missing its grate.
"Here!" she shouted, wiping her eyes. "Someone made it out."
Salazar and Levi rushed over to the console.
"There, do you see it?” said Alexis. “There are survivors down there."
Salazar turned to one of the officers. "Are there any junctions near that entry that we can get to?"
The officer moved in and retrieved a schematic of the ship on the console. Zeroing in on the Observation Deck, he fanned outward. Like working on a maze in reverse, he swiftly and skillfully plotted a course, avoiding areas that were too dangerous or potentially impassable.
"This is your best bet," the officer announced. "You can take the service crawls up to Q3, but then you’ll come out here." The officer pointed at a service entrance, a small distance from Alexis' quarters. "Make your way down the corridor until you get here, where you’ll need to re-enter the crawl and work your way back down."
Before the officer could finish explaining the route, he was interrupted by a ship-wide announcement pouring out of every communications device in the room. A computerized voice filled the air.
“GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT - Emergency systems have been activated. If you are in an area that has been affected...”
"Well, that's nice. Can we shut that off?" Salazar looked around the room.
As if in answer to her plea, the computer's voice was shut down mid-word, only to be replaced by another, more human voice.
"Greetings, L’Dopterra crew. We are very sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused you this morning. We understand that you are probably scared and in need of assistance. Please stay where you are, and someone will find you shortly. Remain calm, everything will be over soon. We appreciate your patience."
"Who the hell was that?" Salazar demanded.
Alexis was definitely concerned about the cryptic nature of the message she had just heard, but she wasn’t going to let it deter her from her mission.
"If you figure out what is going on, ping my com,” she told Salazar. “I'm going to see if I can find these people."
"I’ll come with you." The officer reached under the console, pulling out a mobile tablet. "I can help you navigate down."
"I'm taking Levi as well," Alexis announced. With David gone, she had no plans for allowing anyone else she loved to leave her side.
* * * *
Alexis, Levi, the officer, and two other crew members filled their packs with water and supplies and made their way into the very same service entrance that Alexis and Jennifer had to be extracted from just a few hours before.
As they descended, it dawned on Alexis that she didn't know the officer's name. "What do I call you?"
"Douglas, ma'am." Leading the team through the maze of crawlspace tunnels between decks, Douglas kept a steady, quick pace.
"Are you an engineer, Douglas? You seem to know your way around the ship pretty well."
"I am actually a Shadow, ma'am. I am shadowing one of the engineering officers. Well, I was." He stopped walking for a moment to ponder his new situation. "He was on the flight deck when it exploded."
"I'm very sorry," she said. "Look, you don't have to call me ma'am. I'm not military and I'm not that old yet." She smiled as Douglas straightened himself out and began walking again.
Alexis glanced behind her and noticed that she and Douglas had created a large gap between them and the rest of the team.
"Levi," she whispered loudly, "keep everyone together."
They traversed the tunnels for quite a while. She started thinking about how just yesterday she was complaining to herself about how long it took to walk the ship when she was above deck. She even found herself wishing she could use the elevator system that had tried to kill her just a few hours earlier.
As they rounded a corner and passed by one of the grates on the floor, Levi yelled for the group to stop. "Hold up a sec. I think there are people down there."
Douglas turned and bent down to peer into the grate. "I don't see anyone," he said. "Anyone down there?" he yelled through the tiny slivers of open space.
A few moments passed without an answer. Levi looked up and gave a slight shrug. "I swear I saw a shadow moving."
"Even if there is someone down there, how do we get them up?" Alexis asked. "It's twelve feet to the ceiling."
"We’ll have to try to get to them from underneath. There’s another junction up ahead that will get us to the crawl beneath them. If there is anyone on that level, we can try to get ‘em out there."
"Sit tight," Levi yelled down through the grate. "We’re coming to get you."
Alexis understood why Levi was so anxious to believe there were people still alive on that deck, but she couldn't help but wonder why they weren’t answering them.
Is he just seeing what he wants to see?
Moving forward, they reached the junction and descended the winding stairs to the level below, but the walls had caved into the tunnel in the direction that would have led them to the potential survivors.
"We’ll have to find another way in," Douglas announced as he brought up the schematic on his tablet. "It looks like we can get back up to this level on the other side if we enter on Q3."
"Okay. Let's keep moving," Alexis said, motioning to the group to move forward.
Finally reaching Q3, the team exited the tunnels. The lights on the deck were flickering, reminding Alexis of her ordeal in the elevator, but there didn't appear to be too much damage aside from a fair amount of dust, some smoke stains, and cracked walls. No signs of fire.
"I live here," said Alexis, not really sure why she was whispering. She cleared her throat and finished her thought in a normal tone. "I mean, I did, this morning."
It occurred to her that there should be people still on this deck. Maybe they’re the ones Levi saw on the other deck.
"Not bad," Douglas said, smiling. "I live on B2. It’s a lot like this deck, just without the doors and the carpet and the charm," he joked. "Okay, we're here," he announced as the team reached an entrance back into the service crawl. "Once inside, we can go this way to get to the Observation Deck.” He pointed to his tablet screen. "Or we can go this way to try to find the people Levi saw."
Alexis was anxious to either find David or put all doubts to rest. "I say we head to O-Deck and swing back to look for the others on the way back up."
"Let me take these guys and head back while you go to Observation," Levi interjected. "It'll save us time and you'll be able to move faster."
"I don't think we should split up."
"I can do this. You go find David and bring him back."
She paused, considering the bravery her brother was displaying, and realized the selfishness of her reasoning. Fighting against her instinct to keep him safe, she acquiesced. "All right. Go find your survivors. Bring anyone you do find back here and wait for us. If you run into any trouble, ping my com."
He nodded and turned away, and the two teams went their separate ways through the maze of tunnels.
"You're very protective of your brother," Douglas noted in an almost accusatory tone.
"Today I am." Alexis attempted to smile through her worry.
"It's good. Keep close what is important." As soon as he finished his statement, Douglas stopped. "Shh. Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"I think there's someone in the crawl, up ahead."
"Well, let's move." Alexis pushed past the young engineer. "They could be hurt."
As she rushed forward, a shadowy figure moved out from one of the junctions, nearly knocking her over. She looked up, instinctively ready to scold whoever it was for their clumsiness, but then an overwhelming feeling of relief swept over her. She stared up at David's dirty, bloody face and all of the emotions and anxiety from the day began to swell up inside of her. From David's insistence that they be a couple, to nearly dying in a broken elevator, to dealing with politicians and drudging through cramped service crawls all morning, it all came crashing to the surface as she finally allowed herself to experience what she had been feeling. Tears of joy, pain, and exhaustion flowed from her eyes as she tossed herself into David's arms, squeezing him, refusing to let go.
With as much cheese and smirk as he could muster through his exhaustion, David smiled. "Hey there, lonely girl."
