Part 2: Abyss

Erica slipped through the steel hallways, feet skimming above the floor. Despite her mastery of the overlays, she almost lost the human several times as he dashed left and right.  

Black robes billowed out behind him in a wind she didn’t feel, his bare feet silent against the steel. Leven’s dark hair was now short enough that he might have passed for a Novan if it weren’t for his priest-like garb and compact features.

He stumbled to a halt, and it took Erica a few moments to see why. Facing them in the hallway was a figure in an exo-suit. One of her captors, or Andari as they called themselves. She froze, but Andari paused only long enough to nod to Leven, passing her by without a glance. She let out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding and leaned against the wall. 

The overlays were still her domain and hers alone. She’d been questioned every day about access to them, which meant that the Andari were still locked out of engineering. At least, most of them were, the man who’d first trapped them had full access to the overlays and enough knowledge to keep them there.    

Leven glanced over his shoulder, looking straight through her after the figure. She wanted to reach out and touch his face, but he was moving again, black robes brushing the floor around his bare feet. She suspected that when he’d been human, Leven hadn’t worn such traditional clothes, it seemed more like a statement. 

Erica pulled up directions, and the walls of the hallway formed signs and arrows as if they’d been scribed into the metal originally. A glance told her she was close to the aft of the prism, heading for the outer ledges. 

She had been sure he wouldn’t try something like this again, but it twisted her gut that she’d be powerless to stop him in the overlay as she was. Luckily, Leven’s implant was still working enough that it allowed her to see him, even if she couldn’t make direct contact. 

She walked beside him for a time, refraining from scouting the hallways ahead. There was little she could do about it, and besides, they were a team, even if he didn’t know it. She hoped that he guessed her air when sealed vacuum doors opened for him when the workshop doors and most of the systems let him in without an access card. 

She considered switching to an overlay with sunlight as they stepped out into the night but pushed the idea away. She had to see what he saw to be able to help him, even if it meant darkness. 

Something was strewn across the ledge that stretched out over the chasm and stars below. It took her a few moments to realise that they were parts of an exo-suit. A gauntlet lay to her right, black trails of dried blood connecting it to the body in the centre. An occupied exo-suit. Her gut twisted further, and she reached out for his arm, but he was already stepping over dark shapes that might have been body parts or pieces of black plastic. 

“Don’t, Leven,” she said, but he continued, stepping carefully over to the largest collection of parts.  

“Where are we?” she asked, looking up. She paused and began to shake her head, “Is this who I think it is?”

Blue lines outlined the edge of the ledge and those around it. She looked directly up and whistled. “Oh, you’re a clever man.” Without any technology of his own, he’d worked out that this was the crash site of their initial attacker—the one who’d had access to the overlays. 

She glanced back at him and, to her horror, watched as he removed the helmet and threw it aside. It rolled a few times, then disappeared off the side. Leven fished in his robes for a second and pulled out a black cylinder the size of her finger. Light splashed onto the body, onto the man’s body, and Erica let out a gasp. 

Inside, her stomach twisted tighter, and a childlike cry escaped her lips. She grasped for a name, a connected memory. She came up with nothing. This was normal or had been when more people were on the ship. Her body remembered even when she didn’t.

She joined Leven by the corpse but he wasn’t interested in the man as much as what he carried. He fished around in the pockets chest pockets. If she’d known this man, he wasn’t one of the Andari, or at the very least, he was a traitor. The thought was even more disturbing. If she didn’t know his name and he wasn’t one of them… 

“You’re from the bridge.” She moved closer to the face. Later, she would delve into her field memories and see what came up. This explained why the Andari were unable to access the overlays, but it opened up a whole host of new questions. Had Andari bought one of her crewmates? Had he always been on their side, or was he simply caught in the heat of the battle? 

Leven was back on his feet, tucking a thin black card into a pocket. On a whim, Erica pulled up the health information package. Numbers and red bars blinked into existence above the man. They were all red. She scrolled through a long list of fractures, internal bleeding and extreme concussions. She ignored it and moved down. Nine days since death. 

There was little doubt that it was the same man, the one who’d initially attacked and trapped her. He’d warned her, given her a chance. “You could have been trying to save me,” she said, reaching out to brush a strand of short hair from his face. The hair didn’t move. “Or are you a traitor?” 

When she straightened, she realised they had company. Another figure in an exo-suit faced Leven on the ledge. She wished that she was able to identify them but they were either unpowered or had a closed electronic system that her data package was unable to track. 

The figure didn’t move threateningly towards Leven, but her heart thudded in her chest, fingers clenching of their own accord. Never before had she felt so helpless in the overlays. Locked out of engineering, she was almost useless and contacting Leven had so far proven impossible. She could access computers, but, as one might have guessed from his choice of attire, Leven wasn’t particularly interested in most technology. Yet… That card, surely he wanted it for the computer in the workshop. 

The figure shifted to the side, raising his free hand in a peaceful gesture, the other gripping a large metal scraper. The cleaner was here. 

“Did you make a deal with him?” She asked as Leven passed by, “Why does he go free and I don’t?”

Of course, he didn’t reply. Still, she watched him for a few moments as he began to scrape the remains of the corpse over the edge of the ledge. There was something she could learn from this if only she could put her finger on it. 

Before she had a chance to follow Leven to see what he might find with the access card, she was back in her body, blinking awake. A host of aches and pains returned in a single rush, and she groaned, rolling over.

“You watch how much you go in there,” a male voice said, young and with a softer accent than most of the Andari, “They’re threatening to take the chip off you again.”

She sat up now that the initial pain had largely subsided. She was still in the same cell, four bare walls, marred only by a door on one and a locker in one corner. Her bed, toilet and clean undersuits filled the rest. 

The man in the exo-suit, Harv was his name, sat by the open door. She reminded herself that he had no chip connection, or at least he had none here. She wondered if he was bored out of his mind with nothing to do but watch her all day. She shivered at the thought. 

“You could seal the door,” she said, “That might stop the noise, but they’d worry themselves sick I was planning something in here.”

Harv let out a laugh, then cut it short. It was as if he realised that he shouldn’t be relating to the prisoner. She wished for a moment that she had her suit or that he would take his helmet off. Without a suit of her own, she was vulnerable. She couldn’t lie or hide anything.

“And besides,” she continued, “They need me. Or they will.”

“You seem so sure of yourself,” Harv said, “But you must see the effects in the overlay by now, we’re making good progress.”

She didn’t give him the satisfaction of being right and shook her head. In truth, she had seen the cracks in the overlays, especially the more elaborate ones. Sometimes, marble flagstones melded with grass, creating quite an odd feeling underfoot. 

“You would save yourself a lot of time in here if you let us in.”

She laughed, the sound cold and harsh as it bounced around the room. So far, they hadn’t tried anything physical to break her and removing her chip hadn’t got them anything more than a headache. 

“You might destroy the overlay servers,” she said, “But you won’t access them yourself and I certainly don’t have the power to do so.” She wondered briefly if she should be convincing her captors that she was no use to them. She’d seen how they’d casually began scraping the remains of one of her crewmates off the steel floor. 

“There are other ways,” Harv said, “You are our last resort.”

“The could the ship,” It was a weak threat. If the bridge had the power to do it, they’d probably have done it already. The prism might lose a good store of air, but it would be worth it to suck the parasites out. 

She rubbed her eyes and sat back in bed. It was strange to think of the prism as a ship. Yet under constant acceleration, it fit the arbitrary criteria in her head. There was so much to tell Leven, to show him. She was a technician on the most advanced hunk of metal in the solar system and she would live out her days in a steel box with a bored guard. 

“What got you this exciting job?” She said after a long enough silence that she began to fidget. 

Harv chuckled, the sound distorting over his helmet speakers, “Apprentice. A few years of making tea and babysitting is supposed to build character. Right now, I’m inclined to agree.”

“You’ll never be so bored again?”

She could imagine him grinning as he laughed, this time more free than before. It eased her to think that this man at least hadn’t killed any of her crewmates or friends.

“Why did you wake me?”

He stood from the sitting position of his suit and threw a silver package across the room to land on the bed. “Dinner time.”

She grimaced. Emergency rations. “So you still haven’t got the machines up and running?”

He just grunted and settled back into his sitting position with no need for a chair. Realising their moment of connection was over, she took one look at the packet of sludge and lay back on the bed, willing the room’s lights to dim. She had things to do and a human to help. 

The room looked no different in the overlay, but the lights dimmed with a gesture, and she was up and out of the door, moving past Harv. She almost felt sorry for him, sitting there with nothing to do. She plotted a route to the rooms in which Leven was staying, an old workshop near the top of the ship. She slipped through the hallways, following the signs while simultaneously checking her internal map. Not for the first time, she envied the way Leven knew his way around the Prism with nothing but his bare feet to guide him. 

Twice, she almost walked through a fully suited Andari. Both of them carried the same long metal scrapers, and she tried not to imagine who they might be scraping off the ledges this time. 

She wondered what it would take to get a good look at one of their faces, just enough to get a shot of it. So far, she’d sent all the information she’d found to the bridge despite the lack of replies. She hoped that if they were listening, they might hold out long enough for her to get Leven to safety by the time they decided to vent the ship.  

She passed a few ledges as she approached Leven’s apartments and shuddered at the thought of the bodies that might lay on them. Later, when she was meant to be sleeping, she would go through her database. She could even do it when talking, although she might let something important slip, and she needed all the advantages she wanted. Still, she was doing as well as she could have in her situation. 

If they decided to take it away from her again, she’d be unable to stop them, but they’d find that she wouldn’t last long without it, not without some strong chemicals. She was about as addicted as one could get to her implant, without it, she was barely a monkey, replying almost fully on a few recent memories and a host of primal instincts. When the humans had faced the same but heightened degradation of their memory, she’d felt the pain in their screams, and it had haunted her ever since. For a moment, she let herself feel a little satisfaction at the resurfaced memory. That was almost three hundred years old, that one and was perhaps the only one that was not from the last twenty years. 

She came face to face with a door. A sign on it read Exo-Suit Repair in various languages. She waved her hand, and the door slid open. 

The room was large, lined with workbenches, their shiny surface littered with pieces from Exo-suits. Tools of every kind were magnetically attached to the steel wall, and a few lay where the room’s previous occupants had left them. The only thing out of place was the mattress in the corner and Leven in his black robes, sitting up at a screen on the wall, hands moving over a trackpad attached to a wheeled trolly, his bare feet curled over the footrest. 

For a moment, she just took him in, the focused look on his face, the way his forehead creased when he was concentrating. Something fluttered in her chest, but she ignored it, recognising it as only a primal instinct. An unexpected side-effect of her addiction meant that her instincts often came stronger than most others she knew and often with awkward results. 

“You’re something else,” she said, perching on the bench beside him and looking at the screen too. When nothing appeared, she glanced at the control to her right, and it flared to life for her, too. The man from earlier took up a corner of the screen, his name below. Lucious Herald. 

The name didn’t stir anything within her. Perhaps she’d known him by a nickname. Something in the description caught her eye. Prism Security Ltd. 

She could try and hack the computer to display a message. But what should she say? Would he trust that it was her? Before she could decide, her security package flagged a new third presence in the room. She spun. 

“Don’t blame him for it.”

Erica spun, tripping over the wheeled trolley as she did so. 

The third presence was a woman with dark skin and soft features. She had the ageless look of one who took regular drugs promoting skin health. She was too perfect, even her smile was too smooth. 

She wore a crisp blue coat and trousers, a bright star splashed across one breast and complementary teardrop earrings of the same colour. 

Something like fear slid up Erica’s throat. She refrained from taking a step back; this woman was from the bridge, she was unlikely to be in any danger. Unless, of course, this was another of the traitors. 

“We have to talk,” she said, again in a voice much too pleasant for the way Erica’s stomach was twisting. The woman gestured to the door.

“Where were you all this time?” Erica said as she stepped back out of  Leven’s workshop, “We were out there for a week before they caught us.”

The response was a raised hand in a silencing gesture as the woman stepped into the next room alone. The room was almost identical to the first, save the mattress was replaced by two comfy chairs at the back.

“I suppose you don’t remember me,” the other woman said, relaxing back into the padding, “I’m Julie.”

Erica perched on the edge of her own. She didn’t offer up her name, this Julie would already know it. “I don’t,” she said, “But you didn’t answer my earlier question.”

The smile vanished from Julie’s lips, “Our objective is to keep the Novan empire running, yours is to keep us safe. You have failed. Instead, you run after the last of your pet humans while these Andari people wreck our home.”

Erica took a deep breath, trying to calm the fire that rose in her throat. She could think of a hundred foul things to call the other woman but settled on leaning forward. 

“You cannot help us,” Erica said, half question, half statement.

The woman continued as if she hadn’t just insulted Erica to her soul, “Escape yourself, and once you are free, I’ll lead you to safety.”

“The hatch to the bridge? What about Leven?”

The woman’s face twisted slightly, “Take him if you must, but he causes any trouble… If the Andari… No, never mind. Just get yourself out of there.”

Erica sat back and looked at the plain ceiling, the familiar steel and wondered how long she could continue looking at it. “You’re going to vent the ship, aren’t you? Why haven’t you done it already?”

The woman coughed, “Some wish for you to survive. I am not among them, getting you to safety is not worth the risk, even if you are our best technician.”

Delightful. The woman in charge of Erica’s life would rather she died of decompression. “I will see what I can do.” At the very least, Leven could go, if only she could contact him. 

Her smile was like that of a fox, “You have three days, seventy-two hours from now. I will contact you with directions if you get out.”

“Three days!”

She raised a hand, “You are in no place to complain.”

Erica sighed, rising as the other woman did. “And the others? The other technicians, engineers…”

The satisfied smile crumbled to dust, and the woman turned away, “Dead.”

She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach, but the woman was halfway across the room now, “Wait! One more thing.”

She turned, and they met eyes across the room.

“Can you give me access to that computer in Leven’s room?”

There was a moment of silence before she nodded, “Be careful, Erica, it would be best for all of us if he doesn’t have any contact with the Andari.”

Erica frowned and opened her mouth, but the woman was gone. 

“Look at your damned computer!” she shouted at Leven, but of course, he couldn’t hear her. Nobody could unless the Andari had finally made their way into the overlays. She’d thought it impossible, especially in such a short time, but here in the workshop were patches of grass interspersed with flagstones, and one of the steel walls had fine mahogany panelling from the workbench up. Whatever they were doing, they would soon find their way in or else destroy the only place where she was free. 

Once, she would have cared for the failing systems, for she’d helped build the ship hundreds of years ago. She could barely remember the time a few short decades ago when she’d taught the remaining humans their daily class about Novan living. Her life before was a mystery until she delved into her archives, and something inside her told her not to, to avoid it at all costs.

By the time there were less than thirty humans left, she had been sure that they would never fit in, never be able to live unaided in her world. She was now a technician or had been until her capture, but there was still one student in her care, and she wasn’t going to let him fall from her grasp.

Of course, watching him curled up under the sheets, the lights dimmed, she knew it was more than that. She knew it was silly to worry so much about him when the Andari would discover any day that she was their only way into the bridge. Yet, some part of her yearned to help him; it felt like the least she could do.

Erica sighed and sat back to wait. Now that she could write on the screen he used for research, she had to wait until he awoke. It hadn’t taken long to go through the information he’d gathered about their initial attacker, and although painful, she’d delved back into her archives long enough to find out that he’d once been a friend of hers, perhaps more. The information did little good to them now. There was a century between then and now, perhaps he’d wished to settle a feud or had decided to betray the empire. 

The overlay flickered, and she was back in her body again, slight pain and nausea rushing back in. She opened her mouth to yell at Harv, but she wasn’t in her cell. Instead, her bed was rolling quickly down a hallway, indistinguishable until she pulled up the overlay data package and signs and information appeared on the wall. They were heading inwards and were already quite far from her cell. 

She swallowed hard; this was it. They were going to beat the information out of her. Information she didn’t yet have. And she had nothing to bargain with. She ignored the sick feeling in her stomach and lay back again, closing her eyes. This might be her last chance to communicate with Leven. 

A few minutes later, she was back in his room. He was still sleeping, the sheet half off, the screen still bright. She pulled up the menu and selected from the options. It began to flash red and white, notifying a compressed gas leak, the sort that fueled the exo-boosters. 

He finally stirred and sat up, groggily rubbing his eyes. Upon seeing the screen, he jumped to his feet and rushed to the screen. She made it stop and wrote as fast as she could. 

Erica here, I know you can’t see me, but I’m in the overlay. 

Leven looked around, eyes passing right over her and then rubbed his eyes, turning back to the screen. Finally, he nodded. 

She typed furiously. They’re taking me somewhere. I think our time is up, but they won’t kill me yet. If you trust me, I can get us both out of here, but we only have three days. Get yourself a vacuum-rated exo-suit and keep it on as much as you can. 

Something tugged at her, and the overlay flickered again. She focused even harder. Don’t trust the Andari, even though they are not on the same side as the man who tried to kill us before. They are very— 

Someone was shaking her and speaking—no, shouting at her. 

Erica cracked her eyes open.

“Finally.” The voice was harsh, male. Four figures encased in black stood over her, the creak of shifting armour the only sound. 

Nobody stopped her as she sat up, instinctively pulling up the data package but nothing more. It was becoming increasingly important to see what everyone else was seeing so as not to miss anything. Her life might depend on it.

She was, according to the instructions on the wall and her internal database, as far in as one could go in the prism, excluding the bridge. They were at the entrance, or one of the entrances, to the bridge. The bridge of the prism was not merely a command seat for the accelerating ship, it was, to her best memory, the seat of the Novan empire. 

Stall. She had to stall. She looked around for a weapon. Someone grabbed her under the arms and lifted her to sit on the edge of the bed before she had finished scanning her surroundings. The gauntletted hands were gentle enough that it could have been Harv. She didn’t protest; there was nothing she could do. For a moment, she remembered rolling over to see Leven knock their attacker over the edge, having smashed in his boosters. She smiled despite herself. 

“I will be honest with you.” This voice was feminine but no less harsh, perhaps even as deep. “We need access to the bridge, and aside from stripping this ship down and burning a torch through it, you’re our only option.”

So they were here for more than the ship then. They wanted what was on it: the people, the power. It was even more of a reason not to aid them, not that she’d been considering it. 

She wondered briefly what those on the bridge thought of her. They could have sent help all this time, but now she was important. Now, she was worth saving? Something had changed, and Erica didn’t have enough time to work out what. 

“I can get you in,” she said, “But it will take some time, and I’ll need a vacuum suit.”

Nobody spoke, so she continued. Her cards were on the table; the question was whether they’d snatch them up or not. She waited long enough for it to sink in before continuing. “They will disable the artificial atmosphere as soon as they suspect something is off, it won’t do to have your only hope die from nitrogen bubbles.”

Someone chuckled. She recognised it immediately as Harv’s. It reminded her a little of Leven’s, the way his voice lilted. Her chest tightened slightly. 

“You’ve given us no reason to trust you,” the first voice said, “What if you’re bluffing?” His suit swivelled to look at the others, “Maybe a little…” He mimed a snapping motion with his gauntlets and gestured at her, “That might do the trick.”

Something like fear ran up her back, but she ignored it. “I don’t doubt that you have plenty of oxygen on your ship to refill your tanks, but how long does that set you back? How long until backup arrives? Give me a vacuum suit, and I’ll get to work immediately.”

There was another long silence.

“There would be no harm in it,” Harv said when nobody else seemed to provide an objection, “An unarmoured vacuum suit hardly gifts her freedom.”

 She thanked him silently, scanning the narrow hallway for the source. He nodded to her as he squeezed past.

“Get me intel on the—” was all she caught as two of the others stomped off along the hallway, leaving her with her fourth guard, the one who hadn’t talked yet. 

Carefully, Erica pulled back to lie on the bed. “I’m going to see what I can do in the overlay,” she said and closed her eyes again.

They didn’t stop her as she entered the virtual overlay. 

She half expected Julie from before to be standing by the entrance to the bridge, shaking her head, but she was alone with the guard.

She found Leven back at the workshop, half wearing a vacuum exoskeleton. It was not a hydraulic, armoured model but did come with an internal pressurised skin.

“You’re running out of time.” 

Erica spun and found the woman sitting on the edge of the bed, regal as ever. She wondered if she’d ever worn an exo-suit and undersuit in her life. Still, this was her only lifeline, as frayed as it was. 

“I need you to do something for me,” she said, “I don’t think I’ll get out of there…”

The woman opened her mouth, but Erica cut her off, “I need you to let Leven in whether I am there or not. Give him the details and not me if you wish, but just promise me you’ll let him in.”

For a moment, the self-satisfied smile was gone, replaced with a serious one. She nodded once. “I will provide him with the directions, but the warning still stands. If we detect any odd behaviour, we will vaporise you or him on the spot.”

Erica resisted rolling her eyes. It wasn’t possible, not without some serious risk to whoever would stand in the airlock, holding the gun. No, the danger would be a rapidly depleting oxygen store as Leven hit his fists on the solid steel doors. 

“This will be the last time we talk,” the woman said, standing up. “I wish you well but don’t hope for saviour apart from death. Even those Andari will find the gust quite a surprise.”

Erica swallowed but nodded and held her composure until the woman was gone, after which she collapsed on the bed. The gust was what they’d always referred to as the last resort to a complete ship breach. Before the air was vented from the ship, the oxygen content was increased and mixed with a flammable gas. The result would be a scorching rush of flame that even Exo-suits would have a difficult time avoiding. 

She realised that Leven was completely suited and she hurridly connected to the large panel on the wall. 

I am sorry I have not been able to extract myself from the Andari’s grasp. However, the instructions to find your way to the bridge will be provided to you soon. Do not try to find me, or you will be captured too, you can help the most from the bridge. Again, I am sorry that we didn’t have more time together. 

Leven stood, fully suited, staring at the screen for a long time. He seemed to weigh options in his head before assuming a determined position before the door, checking his helmet. 

Before she could follow him out, she was thrown back into her body. This time, nobody was trying to forcibly wake her, instead, who she assumed was Harv was trying to get her foot into the vacuum suit. 

Her heart raced, and she wished they would be faster as they moved to her other leg. She needed to see that Leven was safe inside the bridge before she could relax. 

“Is it working?” It was Harv, but his voice was on edge as if he expected an attack at any moment. 

She cleared her throat, “I will be honest in saying that I am struggling to breach the airlock codes. However, I helped build and design them, so I also have been going through my backup.”

He nodded, pulling the suit up over her midsection and leaned down. If his helmet had been clear, she’d have been able to stare into his eyes. 

“They’re getting restless,” he whispered, “I trust that you’re doing what you can, but others would prefer… Harsher methods.”

“I understand,” she said, slipping her arms in and pulling the headpiece over her head, “Thank you.”

She lay back on the bed, which was now far more uncomfortable, and closed her eyes as Harv fiddled with the pressure unit. 

It took her another long minute to find Leven. He was running down the hallways, dodging left and right in a pattern she couldn’t discern but with the speed at which she could move easily, detached from her body.

“Where has she sent you?” She said, frowning, looking at the walls. Surely… “No!” She shouted at him, but of course, he couldn’t hear her. Julie had given him details of the airlock she was at because, of course, she had. 

Leven rounded the corner and almost slammed into a pair of Andari in their exo-suits. 

Erica bit back a curse and prayed that they would ignore him as before, but this time, they stopped Leven and gestured at his helmet. Leven seemed to consider his options, but before he could move, one of them had his suit pinned against the wall, and the other was fiddling with his helmet. 

Erica was frozen to the spot as they removed his vacuum seal and showed the short hair and compact face that was Leven’s. 

They didn’t move for a while and seemed to be talking. Then the two suited men glanced at each other and, letting go of Leven, began to fiddle with their suits. 

“Run!” But Leven didn’t move. Instead, he clutched his helmet and watched on as the two figures pulled off their helmets. 

It took Erica a few moments to realise why Leven had fallen to his knees. The two men didn’t have the elongated features of the Novans. Their features were finer and less smooth. They were human. Everything slipped into place in Erica’s head: the woman’s warning about Leven avoiding the Andari… The Andari were human. Because, of course, they were. Who else would try to usurp the Novan empire?