SIREN

Chapter Five

The asteroids on the screen faded away and in their place, a black box appeared. Three white dots popped up and blinked at us. A few minutes passed and nothing took their place.

'Maybe I...' Hoshi mumbled, fiddling with a series of buttons.

A beep interrupted her and a wrinkled old man replaced the spots. He was stood in front of hundreds of people, each of them attending to keyboards and paperwork. Behind them, two large flags hung from brass poles: one with the UN logo and one with the continent of Pangaea. He grinned and shook his head from side to side. 'Olga! Oh, it's good to see you!'

'Likewise, Doctor Richards,' she smirked.

'From what data we've received, everything is going fine. Is that right?'

Captain Maximova's features fell and she shifted in her seat. 'We had a few malfunctions, but everyone's alive.'

'Oh? We haven't seen that yet. There must be a delay somewhere. What's happened?'

'Miss Hori's pod locked itself down. We got her out, but she's unfortunately dealing with slight case of hypoxia. I think we can--'

'Don't sugar coat it. How bad are we talking?' Doctor Richards ran a hand over his short ginger beard. He bucked his head at a worker and received a clipboard.

'I'm okay, Doctor,' Hoshi said, looking up.

'Hum,' Doctor Richards said, 'has Doctor White checked you over yet? Where is he?'

'He's tending to things in the laboratory,' The Captain rolled her eyes.

'What about Sam? Or Jaq? What're they doing?'

'Jaq is in the workshop, and I think Sam is on his way to check on Doctor White,' I said, swimming over to my desk.

'Ah, Tommy, how are you?'

'Fine, sir,' I said, getting back into my chair.

'Good,' Doctor Richards said, 'listen, I'm going to send the last two years of world news, just so you can all catch up.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Captain Maximova.

'I'm sure Tommy has told you that there's been no change to the Poseidon transmission, at least, none that we've seen.'

'Um, well, I was about to, but we got preoccupied.' I ducked my head down and opened up Doctor Richard's message. Headlines from days gone by took up my screen.

'With what?' he asked.

'In a word, asteroids,' the Captain said, 'the transmission is coming from behind a huge blockade. We're talking about thous--'

'Can they be removed?' Doctor Richards lowered his sagging chin and peered at us. The light above his head illuminated his fiery red hair.

'Sam might be able to pave a way by using an Eagle. If he does a good enough job, we could fly through with no problems whatsoever. Fletcher has reservations about that plan, though.'

'Oh? And why's that?'

'Because, sir, an explosion could cause—' I stopped and gawped at my screen. One of the waveforms had spiked. 'Wait.'

'What's...?' Doctor Richards said, but he was cut off by a harsh buzzing sound. His face wobbled from side to side and then disappeared.

'Just what the Hell is going on?' Captain Maximova roared as she got out of her seat. 'Answer me, Fletcher!'

'Variation found,' my computer squawked.

'Oh, you don't say,' I grumbled, fussing with the keyboard.