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They were alone in the hall together and he asked her, "What can we do?"
"Well," Mallory said, "where are the other humans?"
"You sure you want to go there?"
"Yes," she said.
"Then I'll take you, but be warned."
He took her to a massive set of rooms that spanned miles that were filled with containment pens, a lot like those on the spacecraft that housed people. Each of them seemed calm and peaceful.
"Are they okay?"
"Yes, in the containment pen they are put into a deep meditative state, in which they only need sleep and to eat."
She stared at all the pens. "What can we do?"
Elric shrugged and looked at her. "I wake them up?"
"What if you did?" she asked.
Mallory watched in awe as he shifted his arm to lizard form.
He put his palm onto the sensory screen and said into the box, "Release them all."
The bars went down and they all looked around, dazed then listened as Mallory spoke.
"You have been held captive, my fellow humans, but here you shall not remain. Together, we can unite to free yourselves. Together."
The people began to stand and move about, toward her.
"They will know we're here."
"Then we should take them to the hangar."
"Storm it," Elric said.
Mallory could feel adrenaline coursing through her body. She looked at all the humans and said, "And get us out of here."
"Exactly."
"Everyone come with me," Mallory said, and waved her hands. They began walking fast toward the hangar, crossing the hallways and grand rooms to do so. Guards appeared and took down human after human, but at the hangar there was a massive amount of them, still.
"Which ships are big enough for this many people?"
"Only one of them," he told her.
"Is it a Lezarus ship?"
Elric nodded. "It is."
"Show me," Mallory said.
"Come on everyone, keep up," she said. "Onto that ship over there!"
They fought their way to the ship. Mallory was at the front of the action. She was elbowing guards and punching them in their lizard-like faces while they ran to the entrance of the ship. She was hand-to-hand fighting the Lezarus guards in front of the massive, oblong spacecraft that was being filled up with humans.
One came at her and she side-stepped him and back-handed the back of his head so that he fell to the ground. Another came from her rear and she spun around to punch him once in the chest and again in the face. He stumbled and fell backwards.
"They're closing the hangar doors," Elric shouted to Mallory.
"All right. Hurry everyone," she yelled, as she punched another guard and jumped onto the deck of the huge spacecraft.
They set off for the control room. They ran past the mass of people bombarding the spacecraft. The hallways were clogged with people and Mallory and Elric had to elbow their way in.
"Away from the controls!" Mallory said to everybody and they shifted their positions.
"All right," Elric said to himself, starting to mutter. "It has been awhile but I think I can still do this."
He began pushing buttons and controls, then pressed a sensory screen and said into the box, "Earth."
The spacecraft shifted into drive mode and exited the hangar as the doors were closing around it. Those in the control room cheered and looked out the window, towards space.
"I need to set it in overdrive," he said. "Here's to hoping there’s enough fuel in it."
"Here's to hoping all of these people aren't used as fuel."
Elric gave a chuckle then was serious as he adjusted controls. "We need to go fast, and I mean it."
"This was a long ride when we came."
Elric replied, "That was on the auto-pilot spacecraft. That thing was dinky compared to this. It'll do the same distance ten times faster."
She laughed. "So not long at all."
"Let's see if we can out-maneuver them," he said, seeing two crafts approaching from the flank. He moved a few fingers and laughed.
"We just went into a slip stream. Virtually undetectable."
A shudder went through the craft and he looked around, concerned.
"Apparently that didn't work," he said. "No matter. We'll just slip in and out," he said as he maneuvered the controls. "We can make it work."
They waited to feel any more shudders, but none were felt and it remained quiet.