Louise and Edward wondered the labyrinthine passages of the spacecraft, desperately looking for any clues as to the whereabouts of the Medical deck. It felt as though they had been navigating the darkened corridors for an age, in actual fact they had only left Louise' Stasis room ten minutes previous. Time didn't seem to flow at it's normal rate, two minutes felt like an age, ten minutes a lifetime. All the while, the darkness played tricks with their eyes; shadows took on demonic forms, people seemed to dart in and out of the gloom. The whole journey was unnerving and it was taking it's toll on them.
“What was this ship like before?” Edward wondered.
“I don't know.” Louise replied. “But right now I’m really not liking this. It's like something from a messed up dream, one you can't awaken from.”
“This light, constantly flickering. The sound of failing electricity all around us, not really knowing what’s real and what isn't.” Edward said, “I swear I keep seeing things in the shadows.”
They continued walking through the darkened bowels of the ship, both of them on edge and paranoid, even the smallest sound would set their hearts racing; both of them convinced they could see things moving all around them, moving silently; keeping just out of sight.
“What do you know about Alpha Centauri?” Edward finally asked.
“More and more as the minutes pass.” Louise announced.
Edward was taken aback by her response, his older mind struggled to remember anything.
“Really? What do you remember?” Said Edward, surprise in his voice.
“Well, this may not be one hundred percent accurate, but the more I think about it the more it's trickling back.” She began. “But, Alpha Centauri is the closest system to Earth. I think it has three stars, two roughly the size of our sun and a tiny one. There's also a planet which orbits one of the larger suns.”
“Anything special about this planet?” Asked Edward.
Louise stopped for a moment and tried to correlate her thoughts.
“No, I think it's too close to it's sun to harbour anything of interest.” Louise replied.
“OK, so what brought us out here?” Asked Edward, “there must have been something going on.”
Louise looked at Edward and smiled “well, that’s the best bit.” She said “we picked up a signal.”
“A signal? What type of signal?” Edward asked.
“That I can't remember yet, but things are coming back to me. What I do know, is that whatever it was wasn't announced to the public, they kept something back, something big.” She responded.
“What do you mean? Did they reveal anything to the world?” Edward said.
“Yeah, I think so.” Again, she had to stand still and try and arrange her memories into some kind of coherent order. All the while a dark cloud threatening to push them back into the depths of her consciousness.
“I think they just told the world they had picked up a transmission of some kind, a pretty vague but exciting announcement I guess.”
“So what were they holding back I wonder?” Edward questioned.
“I don't know.” Louise answered “But surely it has something to do with what's going on. I mean, this isn't normal. The more I think about our situation the more scared I feel. We've woken up on board an abandoned ship, probably light years from home, with no idea what happened.”
Edward listened to what she said, he agreed with all of it – this was messed up. They had both tried to stay positive and remain hopeful, but they both knew something very bad had happened. And that nagging feeling that the same was going to happen to them was difficult to shake off.
It was at this point they arrived at a stairwell, the red lights overhead flickered briefly then stabilised.
“There must be a lift nearby.” Guessed Edward
“Yeah I expect so, unlikely it's working though.” She replied.
Edward walked over to a sign on the wall, it was a map of the deck. 'Hyper Lounge 3' It declared in bold letters, with arrows pointing up and down the stairs; one labelled 'Engineering and Transmissions' the other 'Hyper Sleep 2'.
“OK,” Edward started. “If we go up we get to engineering, down we go to another Hyper sleep deck. What do you think?”
Louise pondered the options, “I suggest down, it doesn't seem right having to go through Engineering to get to Medical.”
“I'll trust your judgement, you seem to remember more than me anyway.” Edward said, slight frustration in his voice.
“Your memories WILL return, just give it time.” Louise tried to sound reassuring.
Suddenly the ship was filled with the voice of a man, both Louise and Edward stopped in their tracks and stood listening.
“Erm........This is James Horton. I am currently in Engineering, if anyone can hear this then please make your way up to Engineering. Hopefully we can all help each other to work out this mess. Thank you.”
“Thank God!” Louise said happiness in her voice. “It would seem we get to Engineering first, maybe we can get this sorted out after all.”
“How do we know we can trust him?” Edward asked
“Well, I suppose we don't really. But it's another crew member, that can only be a good thing right?” She replied.
Edward nodded, though Louise got the impression he wasn't convinced.
Edward closed his eyes, there was a pain deep in his head that was slowly getting worse. All around the red light seemed to grow darker, very subtly but he could definitely see it. He looked at Louise, she was glancing over the map on the wall. The corridor behind them looked dark, too dark. Shapes seemed to dance in the darkness, too real for his eyes to be playing tricks on him.
“Louise?” Edward whispered, urgency in his voice.
She turned around to look at him, even in the dim light she could see he had turned a ghostly pale, she stepped over to him. Edward was staring down the corridor they had not long walked up, like he was in a trance.
“Edward? Edward, what's wrong?” She whispered back.
He didn't reply for a moment, his eyes were transfixed on a point in the darkness. He looked frightened, no terrified.
“Edward.” She said a little louder.
He turned to look at her, his eyes were wide. He was trembling, visibly trembling. Louise became worried.
“Edward, for god sake what's wrong?” She said, loudly still.
“D-d-down the corridor, look..” He finally said.
She followed his gaze into the darkness, the emergency lighting started to struggle but she continued to stare into the darkness. What had Edward seen? She saw nothing but shadows in a dark, red light.
“Edward, I can't see anything.” She said.
The lighting continued to struggle.
“It's there, in the dark. It's coming towards us.”
Edwards words brought back memories of her own experience, something coming towards her in the dark. It unnerved her, her heart started to quicken. She looked hard in to the gloom. Edward started to step backwards.
“My god! It's coming! Get back!” Edward screamed at Louise.
She didn't know what to do, she was starting to feel the same fear she had felt earlier, yet she could clearly see there was nothing there. And that’s when the emergency lights switched off.
They were plunged into darkness, she could almost hear a low hum as the lights went out. Behind her she could feel rapid footsteps on the steel floor, like someone running around in circles.
“Edward” she called, “Edward it's alright! Relax! The lights will come back soon!”
She could hear his panting as he ran in circles in the dark, he was panicking. Clearly he was a lot closer to the edge than she had realised. He was behind her, she could hear his breathing right behind.
“Edward, please. It's OK” She tried to sound reassuring, although inside she could feel her own panic beginning to rise.
Please lights, come back on.
The footsteps in the dark continued, the panting became slower and deeper. And then the emergency lights came back up, stronger than before. Everywhere was silent.
“See, I told you it will be OK. Look the lights are working better than they were before!” She said, relief in her voice.
She was met with silence.
“Edward?” She said, as she turned to face him.
But she was stood alone, Edward was nowhere to be seen.
“Edward!” She called “Edward, where are you?” But her words drifted off down the shadowed corridor.
She stood alone and scared as something crashed down behind her, disappearing into the shadows; making her heart nearly burst from her chest, while a sharp pain began to rapidly spread from the inside of her skull.