Please, purr for me

Ch 3 - Distress

Time frame: starts a few moments after Ace left the room.

Marco

Marco had noticed that Ace had been uneasy throughout the day, seeing that he couldn't fall asleep either, even with him releasing pheromones only confirmed it. After Ace had left the room, Marco went over the day, trying to figure out what could be wrong, but nothing caught his attention. He was sure though that Ace would tell him if something was really wrong or upsetting him.

With that thought in mind, Marco turned around and tried to get some shut eye. As his eyes were closing the alarm bells scattered throughout the ship started blaring.
He was immediately alert and running, or better yet, half flying, to the deck. He vaguely noticed the other commanders and division members rushing the same way.

The closer and closer to the deck Marco got, the more anxious his inner Alpha became. His Omega had just gone outside. Did something happen? Is he okay?

Making it all worse, was that besides the trampling of feet behind him and the alarms, there were no sounds coming from outside, nothing that could indicate an attack, an infiltration, a storm, nothing.

Finally arriving at the deck, the group stopped running - it was dead silent. There was .... Nothing?

-Was it a false alarm? No.... if it was, the ones on watch would have turned off the alarms by now or would at least be on their way to silence them.

On that note... Where are the ones on watch? Why are they not on the deck?- Marco's brain was going 100 miles an hour, going through all the options of what could be happening.

After sending some division members up the masts to check on those on watch, Marco started inspecting the ship, searching for the cause of the alarms.

-Port side of the deck was clear, nothing to see at the bow, starb– -

"THATCH!" – "Someone get Bay." – "Get the nurses!"

Instantly he was rushing towards the shouting, but froze the moment when he saw the scene.

On the deck... was Thatch, his best friend, drenched in a red substance. If it wasn't for the pained expression of his friend, he would think Thatch had just switched his attire to a red one. Not a single white spot of his chefs' attire could be seen, even his yellow scarf seemed to disappear into that same sickening colour.

He reached out his hand while taking a step closer, "That-" – "GET ASIDE" – "LET ME THROUGH", Marco was roughly pushed aside by different pairs of hands. Bay and the nurses had arrived and made their way through with hands full of medical equipment. She started barking out orders, her whole team was moving as a well-oiled machine following her instructions. And while Marco could hear that Bay was yelling, very loudly at that, he wasn't registering anything.

-Where is Ace?- was suddenly his only thought. At some point in all the chaos, his Alpha had called for his attention, that they couldn't pinpoint the location of their Omega, couldn't even feel the barest of a presence.

By now the ones who went to check on the watchmen had come back down and they were pale, very pale. He vaguely heard the words "Shot" and "Dead". Marco was immediately filled with dread. This wasn't an accident, someone was onboard, someone had been onboard and had not only taken out the ones watch without anyone noticing, but this intruder also managed to take down a commander. But... who had rung the alarm?

Marco made his way over to the dial mounted on the main mast. Blamenco had made a new alarm system a while ago with the dials they had gotten from skypiea, push one dial and all the others dials will go off with a horrendous sound. -"You don't have time to start pulling an old string on a bell when you get attacked, let alone make sure anyone hears it."- Blamenco had said to him while installing dials throughout the whole ship.

Marco's breath caught in his throat the second he saw the dial. Scorch marks. "Ace..."

Next chapter will be up as usual on Monday.