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The boom when it landed was too loud to be heard. It could only be felt through the ground, through hands and feet and buttocks and deep inside my chest. Seconds later came a frustrated hamming on the outside, thin and petulant on comparison to the profundity of the small quake the door had made.
We lay face up on the floor, gasping for air. Pitr rolled to Alyssa and they held each other. For the barest moment, I felt a sharp stab of disappointment that Pitr’s first thought had been for Alyssa, but then the anger blew away like dust as I realised it didn’t really matter. He was there, they were both there, when it mattered and we were a team.
I levered myself up onto my elbows and looked around. It was another corridor, exactly the same as the one we had left but without the carnage. At the other end I saw three more doors, substantial, but nowhere near as imposing as the one we had just made it through. I couldn’t see whether the doors to the left and right had anything written on them, but I could make out the words on the door facing us. ‘Main Engineering’.
We were here. I let out a wild whoop and clambered to my feet. Pitr looked at me as if I had broken a spring, until he saw where I was pointing and a big smile crawled across his face. I saw him turn to Alyssa and point the door out to her.
The door didn’t open automatically. I had to nudge it with my mind before it started to slide open, splitting down the middle and disappearing into the wall on either side. I had expected huge machines and rank after rank of imposing control panels. I don’t know where the vision had come from, but I hadn’t expected something as simple as two control panels, each with two positions.
I won’t deny that the room looked very bright and shiny, with lots of white lights above, but it wasn’t much bigger than my home. Then again, the control panel staring directly at me was exactly as Noah had described. I worked my way along it, following the markers Noah had given me until I found the recess for the timing chip.
I pulled out the thong around my neck, then gave it a sharp tug . The thong parted, and I looked at the red crystalline square in the palm of my hand. Pitr still wasn’t there, and when I looked back over my shoulder. Pitr was only just helping Alyssa to her feet.. I took a seat in the chair closest to the slot for the crystal and. waited until Pitr came around to the front.
‘Garret?’
‘Waiting for you, mate,’ I said. ‘Thought you deserved to be here at the end.
‘Thanks,’ he said, sounding sincere and looking embarrassed.
‘Both of you.’ I said, turning to Alyssa behind me.
This wasn’t how I had imagined it ending. I had expected some kind of hero’s welcome. Not people lining the corridor’s applauding as we jogged past, crystal held high. I wasn’t that stupid. But I had expected some kind of welcoming committee. Not an empty control room at the end of a corridor full of corpses.
I took the crystal between thumb and forefinger, leaned forwards, and pushed it into the slot. There was a moment of springy resistance, then something took over and drew the crystal in further. I had just enough time to grab one end of the thong and pull it through the hole in the crystal before it disappeared. There was a beep, sounding inappropriately loud in the otherwise quiet room, then nothing. Ten seconds or so later, a whirring noise like fans slowly built up from behind the consoles. Lights started to come on, and text appeared on displays to be quickly replaced by diagrams and flickering information. Then, on large screens above each console, green numbers appeared and started counting down the remaining hours and seconds to the engines firing.
24h 20m 27s
‘Guess that’s it,’ said Pitr, also looking deflated. ‘What are we supposed to do now?’
It was a good point. Somehow, I had always expected to find somewhere I wanted to live.
I hadn’t had a chance to answer before the numbers on the big screen turned yellow and an insistent beeping started from somewhere at the far end of the consoles. As I watched, on panel after panel yellow lights stated to flick on, then a few red ones. The red seemed to take hold like and infection, spreading out over the controls until the countdown itself flickered and went red. The beeps were a cacophony, even together not loud enough to be uncomfortable, but the variety of tones and rhythms enough to make my head swim. Alyssa had her hands over her ears. I thought to the drone, and asked it if it could switch off the noise. In an instant there was silence, but the air still felt as though all the beeps were hiding in it and waiting to come out again.