Chapter 3 #3
"There you are!" a familiar voice called from the direction we had originally come from. "You got farther than I thought you would. I swear that was at least a few miles or more of hallway to track you down. This place is such a maze."
The entire group turned to see Lyssa striding down the hallway toward us as she grinned while pushing a floating platform in front of her.
She had blood across her shoulders and back, and her blue hair hung in lank, damp strands, like she had been sweating a lot.
Her shirt was dry, but that was normal for the alien-made fabric.
"Lyssa!" Saoirse cried. "You're okay!"
"If you thought I wasn't going to be okay, why'd you all up and leave me?" Lyssa said with a frown that was over-exaggerated.
Then her frown instantly vanished back into a broad smile.
"I'm just teasing!" she said. "What are you all up to?"
"We're looking for a way off this ship," Andrea said, her tone sharp. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Mad science!" Lyssa said. "Consider me Igor hunting through a graveyard. Can I have that corpse? We need more bodies."
She pointed at Sigidi.
"He isn't dead," I said.
"Even better," Lyssa said.
"Why do you need bodies?" Andrea demanded, her voice growing shrill and high-pitched as her words came out faster and faster. "Why are you so happy? We need to find a way off this ship!"
"First, I already answered that question, because mad science," Lyssa said, holding up a finger.
She continued to lift up individual fingers as she spoke.
"Second, I'm happy because I have a serious endorphin high going on, and also you know me, I'm naturally chipper.
That and I might be experiencing a bit of extreme psychological shock after finding out what they did to the other women they took.
Third, there is a good chance that the shuttle that took off without us was the only way off this ship, and to take over the ship, Sara thinks we would have to fight a giant tentacle monster, which currently doesn't appear to want to hurt us, so I think we can all agree we aren't doing that.
Now if you all want to run around exploring, do that, but can someone first help me load this guy up onto the cart?
I've been doing a lot of lifting today."
She tapped a control on the side of the floating tray, and it lowered down closer to the ground and moved it next to Sigidi's comatose form.
"What happened to the other women?" Saoirse asked. “The ones who were taken before?”
Lyssa grimaced.
"Dead," she said.
She moved to Sigidi's shoulders, and I mirrored her, going to his legs. She gave me a nod and squatted down deep, her back flat, her core engaged, and I mirrored her.
"What do you mean dead?" Mei asked. "They've been feeding us and giving us rewards for exercising; why would they kill us?"
Lyssa and I stood up together, lifting Sigidi up and putting him on the cart.
"They use people for parts to make more of themselves," Lyssa said. "They're all mixed up with machinery, like biological cyborg Frankenstein monsters."
The group was dead silent in response to that horrifying news.
With the exception of Andrea.
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “They wouldn’t do that to us.”
She’d been trapped in the same room with us, with the same amount of interaction with our captors.
It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me that her mind would immediately jump to defending them except for the fact that I knew people like her back on Earth.
Some people would automatically defend predators and attack victims as if it was an instinct.
It was like it was easier for their minds to believe that the injured party would lie rather than believe in the banality of evil.
"What are you planning on doing with him?" I asked, ignoring Andrea as Lyssa used the controls on the tray to lift it back up to a comfortable pushing height.
"They have chips in their brains that can control their behavior," Lyssa said. "Sara has decided to do something about that."
"Trust the neurosurgeon to start cutting open alien brains before looking for a way off the ship," Andrea muttered. “Why doesn’t she just leave them alone? I doubt they want us desecrating their corpses.”
"You go look for a way off the ship," Lyssa said, unperturbed and also ignoring Andrea.
"Sara and I are going to secure as many of the existing crew as we can.
Just, if you see any tentacles, so far it appears that they won't hurt us if we touch them, but they will attack these guys, so don't get caught in the crossfire, okay?
Also, we have a stash of food and water if anyone needs anything.
There are probably more supply closets, so just open doors, I don't know. Good luck."
She began pushing the cart back the way she came.
"We should all go with you and get food and water and use your location as our central base of operations," I said. "From there we can split into groups to map out the ship."
"Do what you want; I'm just here to rob graveyards," Lyssa said.