The Edge of Darkness

Chapter Seven: The Discovery (Part I)

We ran out of the horrible little white room, and Ethan stopped behind me to slam the doors closed, rip open his arm alcove and wrench a random attachment in the handles so that it stayed closed for some time. Then he grabbed me again and we took off, racing down the levels, occasionally running into and tackling the Authorities before they could even lift their plasma guns. Pre-emptive striking was the only way we managed to stay alive.

An alarm started wailing. In my six years aboard the ship, I had never heard that alarm. It was a hideous sound.

Three Authorities stepped in front of us, and instinctively, instead of trying to take them on, we turned down the main corridor and pounded away.

"How did you know where I was?" I asked him, finally, as we slipped down a smaller corridor before they could see which way we'd turned.

"A voice in my head told me exactly where to find you," he replied. I grabbed him just in time: an Authority in front of us lifted and fired their plasma gun, and it missed us by inches. More were piling into the corridor. There was no place left to go but forward.

Finally we made it to a large room. We both grabbed the big, heavy metal doors and heaved them closed together; then quickly built a little barricade out of random objects we could find to keep the door sealed. A chair here, a lamp there, a wrench, and a desk later, and we fell against the doors, catching our breath and trying to make each other out in the darkness. The wailing of the alarm was deadened in this space. Only then did we look around.

It was a dead end. It was an enormous room that looked somewhat familiar, with a big desk running right around the circumference at about waist-height, and metal walls. It was too dark to see anything else.

"It's too dark," I whispered to Ethan. Instantly the metal walls peeled back to expose darkness dotted with starlight in front of us, and the overhead lights blinked on. It revealed more details of the desk-like object in front of us – a desk that had far too many buttons and gadgets on it.

"We're on the bridge," Ethan said wondrously, catching on faster than me.

Welcome, X-445 and R-658. Welcome, Max and Ethan.

The voice sounded in my head again. I looked at Ethan. "Did you...?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I heard that. It was the voice from before."

"Who are you?" I asked, louder, trying to feel brave but still riding on the shock from the earlier ordeal.

You will discover what we are in time. For the moment, step up to the captain's log.

We hesitated, looking at each other, feeling a bit like children. Someone was observing us, someone that we couldn't see: and I didn't like it, not one bit.

Hurry, the voice encouraged warmly.

I reluctantly stepped forward to the chair I supposed was the captain's because it looked bigger and more comfortable than the others; added to that, it could easily turn around and slide towards another, smaller desk that was, for the moment, blank. I peered over the side, and saw a tablet lying on the chair as if someone had simply left it there in a hurry, or perhaps forgotten about it. I picked it up. It flickered on when I curiously pressed a button.

"Now what?" I asked.

Read the logs. Find the coordinates mentioned.

I did as the voice said. Someone started banging on the door. I heard the dull thumping and pushed it to the back of my mind. If the voice had wanted us dead, it wouldn't have helped us escape.

I flipped some of the pages of the tablet, scanning the entries. It spoke of boring things: food supplies, maintenance checks, population report – not exactly the three thousand we started out with. Then I saw the coordinates and stopped flipping the pages.