Chapter 21
Alice
Alice had never been transported before; she'd avoided it her whole life.
And now, as she lay on her back staring up at the sky above her, she could appreciate how awesome that plan had been.
Because transporting hurt. It burned. It ripped. She had never felt anything like it.
She forced another bare breath, her chest hardly moving. She had nothing left. Nothing at all.
She was just fortunate she hadn't landed on the barren snow-covered wasteland of the planet below. The cold and cutting wind would have killed her in an instant.
But in a moment of rare luck, Alice had rematerialized inside a hanger bay. As she lay on her back, her arms spread wide, her legs at an odd angle, her head shifted to the side, she stared up at the smart-glass ceiling above her with one eye.
Right at the end, when the transporter beam had surged in power, something had happened to Alice.
She'd connected to it.
Whatever concentration she'd had left, she'd used to control it. Snapping it away from its source, she’d forced herself to rematerialize.
And fortunately for her she hadn't popped up in space or head-first in some bulkhead.
As for the robot, it hadn't been so lucky.
Shifting her head barely, she could see the remnants of it.
It had appeared two meters to her left, right inside a chunk of patronium ore that had been unloaded off the hulking mining transport that took up the whole hangar bay around her.
Alice had read about what happened when a transport beam mistakenly made an object rematerialize inside something else.
Not pretty. Those were the only two words that could describe it.
Chunks of metal and sparks still played and twitched around the room. But the robot would not be able to re-make itself; Alice knew enough about the technology of her own kind to know when one of their devices was down.
If the robot had not rematerialized in something as heavy and dense as patronium ore, it might have been able to right itself.
That was the second piece of luck Alice had gotten today.
The third was that this hangar bay was empty. There were no workers scurrying around, not even any maintenance bots. The whole place was dark save for the light filtering in from the smart-glass above. Maybe the workers had gone off duty for the day, or maybe the whole place had been shut down for a quarantine sweep. It didn't matter. All Alice cared about was that right now she was alone.
Her eyes drifted half open, her body heavy and full of fatigue. She wanted nothing more than to give up and surrender to unconsciousness. Let the swirling darkness take her. But if she did that, she would either not wake up at all, or end up back in that holding cell. This time with the flickering image of John Doe drifting into view above her telling her he knew exactly what she was.
An Old One.
Alice groaned. No, she clutched her throat as tight as she could and she let out a desperate, resounding cry.
She pushed herself up.
She could not stand, but she could crawl.
She shifted forwards, her hands and face and arms bleeding. Her blood was not red. It was hardly blood in fact. It was a white-blue substance that evaporated as soon as it touched the ground.
It was seeping from the cracks in her skin that had appeared after the robot had tried to suck her dry. Given time, they would heal. Given time, Alice would heal too. But time would be the key.
She had to get to somewhere safe.
Before the computer alerted the security forces to the fact that something huge had just tried to rematerialize inside a chunk of patronium ore.
Alice made her desperate, slow, jolting way over to the other side of the room. She had the door locked in her sights, the one that would no doubt lead to a corridor outside. She had no intention whatsoever of clambering through it only to fall in front of some surprised worker's feet.
It was the maintenance shaft to the left she was headed for. It would lead into a service duct.
Alice, still groaning, not caring that her voice echoed through the cavernous hangar bay, made her way forward. Every movement of her arms sent spikes of pain through her, more blood trickling and oozing out of the cracks along her chin, lips, and neck.
Finally she made it, then, her eyes virtually rolling into the back of her head as she expended yet more precious energy she did not have, Alice logged into the ICN and overrode the security keeping the panel closed. She pulled it off, clambered inside, then locked it in place.
Though droplets of her blood laced the metal, they soon evaporated, leaving no trace, no DNA, no residue.
Telling herself she could do this, begging her body not to give up, Alice crawled through the maintenance shaft. Fortunately her body was small enough that she could fit through with ease.
Still keeping half a connection to the ICN, Alice let it guide her. She also used it to find out what level she was on and what was around her.
Apparently she was on the top floor of Block Alpha.
It made her laugh through a croak.
Her very own home town, as it were, though Alice had never been allowed to travel this high up.
It made sense too; if this was Block Alpha she could understand why that hangar bay had been empty. The weather fields would still be shut down, so everyone would have been evacuated.
It made her let out the shortest, sharpest of laughs.
Alice was not often lucky, yet here she was striking the jackpot again. Okay, not the jackpot; she'd been unlucky enough to run into John Doe and almost get killed by a soldier robot.
Still, she would take the opportunities given to her.
‘Computer,’ Alice croaked, her eyes half closing, ‘find me the closest room with an omidium power source.’ Now that she knew the whole level had been abandoned, Alice had no problem in talking.
Even if the computer had already alerted security to the fact something had rematerialized inside a chunk of ore on top of Block Alpha, it would take them a while to bother sending anyone in. Not whilst the weather fields were down; it would be far too dangerous.
‘Closest room with omidium power source is aboard a vessel,’ the computer chimed back, its voice echoing around the panels around her, appearing to come from all directions at once.
‘Direct me to that vessel,’ Alice croaked back.
It was her only option.
An omidium power source would do two things for Alice. It would shield her from being scanned, and it would heal her.
Her race had been renowned for their ability to sustain themselves through multiple energy sources, whether it be food, air, electricity, force, or power.
But some sources were far more useful than others. Omidium was one of those sources.
As the prospect of it loomed in her mind, Alice crawled a little faster. Her hands were caked in sweat, the blood trickling down them hissing as it evaporated.
‘Now all I have to do is figure a way to get on board said vessel without tripping security,’ she told herself, using her voice needlessly, listening to it echo and sound around the enclosed metal service duct around her.
It would be no easy task. But Alice was desperate. When was she not?
As the computer directed her, Alice's mind focused on the task. It prevented her from asking a single question. Just what vessel was she headed to?
If she had known, she would have turned around to find something else.