T-Plus 16

Noting the timestamp written in the message, he compared it to the clock in the corner of the screen. Triton’s follow up message was scheduled to arrive in fifteen hours, more or less. With no other noteworthy message, Oliver closed out of the tab. He gave a glance over the other windows, seeing if there were any other notifications that had gone unnoticed in the recent scheme of events. However, other than the weekly notices of maintenance, there were no other pending messages.

“If they’re sending us messages to this platform, couldn’t we just send our plea out to them using this?” Emerson asked.

“We wouldn’t be able to even if we wanted,” Oliver explained, closing out of the system. “When they locked the Space Elevator after they declared quarantine, they also locked this system’s communication system. We can send messages, but they’ll just bounce back.”

“How do you know that?” Toast asked, peering at the screen.

Oliver pointed at a gray icon in the corner of the screen near the clock.

“Triton has the right to override our communication systems in an emergency, otherwise that would usually be blue.”

“It was a passing thought,” Emerson sighed, straightening again. “Whose room next? The Chief?”

The technician glanced once more at the system before closing out, letting the screens sleep, so it’d be easily accessible tomorrow. Once he made sure everything was still okay, he led the way out into the main corridor again, heading toward Residential Area 6A.

Last time, they had followed the traces of Oliver’s blood to his and Daniel’s rooms. On this side were the remnants of Daniel’s blood, although they hadn’t known it at the time. The dried droplets crept out of the stairwell, chased past the Elevator, and disappeared around the bend of the corridor out of sight. Some splatters were smeared or partially stepped in, and it was clear the other technician’s ordeal had driven the group into a panic.

The trio bypassed the last traces of that chaotic day, stopping in front of the next area they were going to raid. The bloodtrail bypassed this hallway, which meant that they’d be one of the first people who’d stopped by since the alien ordeal began. Or it should’ve been that way. There were faint traces of footsteps and sliding marks that tracked through the thick dust that coated the floor. Oliver paused midstep, observing the already stirred dust trails around their feet. He stopped the other two from moving forward, as he knelt down to check some of the corners ahead.

“What’s wrong?” Emerson whispered when he came back.

“Someone’s been by here,” he answered. “But I’m not sure if they’re here now or if it was a while ago.”

“Do you think it was from our missing trio? Or do you think it’s from when Jiang and the others came by here?” Emerson asked, gesturing at the bloodtrails that were behind them.

“I don’t think it’s from Lucky and the others,” Oliver muttered, shaking his head. “There’s pretty thick dust over this, so it’s not too recent.”

Toast peered over their shoulders, glancing between the bloodstains and the dust trails.

“You think it’s Bacon?” he asked. “She’s the only one that’s still unaccounted for... provided that she hasn't become alien food already.”

“Do you think she’s still down here?” Emerson asked Toast.

The scientist shrugged, a flicker of hope flashing across his face.

“I hope so. She was a good assistant.”

The group grew more somber for a moment, thinking about how a young lab assistant had been stuck down here by herself this entire time. Oliver cleared his thoughts first, waving the other two forward. It just meant that she was another person they had to keep their ears and eyes peeled for as they made their rounds around the first floor.

Taking more caution in his approach, Oliver peered around the first corner, making sure the other two were safely behind him. Nothing was in the first hallway, so Oliver breathed a sigh of relief as they proceeded forward. Like before with Daniel’s room placement, the Chief’s room wasn’t placed too far back and was among those in the first hallway, due to his senior position. His was basically in the same position as Daniel’s room, but was on the left instead of right.

Pulling out his wad of key cards from his pocket again, Oliver entered the Chief’s room with one slide. He pushed the door open, poking his head in. Like the two rooms they’d already visited, this was in as much disarray. The further they stepped in the room, the more personal items they had to avoid damaging. Using his foot, Oliver pushed some of the pillows and cushions that had fallen close to the door and blocked their entry. Once they could all pile in without stepping on something, Oliver let the door close behind them.

If Oliver’s room revealed his hobby of plastic models and Daniel’s room had many of his family’s traditional items scattered haphazardly, then the Chief’s room revealed his stash of alcohol. The pricier ones had escaped the turmoil and remained unscathed in the locked glass cases attached to the wall. How the Chief managed to bring any of his collection into the Station was a question Oliver didn’t really want to know the answer to. The question he did want to know the answer to, however, was why the Chief never bothered sharing any of his stash.

“Wow, didn’t know the Chief was a liquor connoisseur!” Toast proclaimed as he stared into one of the closest cabinets. “Oh! Wow! I heard that one right there is hard to get outside of Earth. How did he manage to get a bottle?”

“He had a sophisticated hobby,” Emerson commented as she strode through the broken glass and dried wine stains on the floor.

The room reeked of alcohol and broken bottles and glass littered the floor. The pillows, blankets, and cushions that had gotten caught in the mayhem were now stained with a myriad of different wines. Every step one of them took had a high chance of treading across glass, so they made sure to keep an eye out on where they stepped.

Toast found the laptop and tablet first. He fished them out from behind the bed where they had fallen in the original chaos. They still looked okay, but like the others they had picked up, both devices were out of power. Oliver slid them with the others into his backpack. He stood, shrugging the straps on his shoulders. With three laptops, two tablets, and one visor, it had gotten considerably heavier. He fished one of the laptops off, handing it over to Toast, so he could help carry some of the burden.

“Does he have any other ones?” Emerson asked as Toast settled the laptop into his backpack.

“He should also have a visor,” Oliver said, recalling from his memory of what the Chief came to work with. “We might as well find it and hope it’s not among the glass around us.”

They scoured the room again, making sure to not leave any overturned furniture unturned. Other than either more stashes of wines and broken glasses and the occasional picture of the Chief’s family, or what they assumed was the older man’s family, the trio didn’t find another device.

“I didn’t think the Chief was a family man,” Emerson remarked as she set one of the photo screens that wasn’t too damaged back on a shelf, above the chaos that was strewn across the floor.

“Well, he isn’t really one,” Oliver said as he placed one of the few unbroken wine glasses beside the screens. “He spends most of the year here, even during galactic holidays.”

“You think he’d yell at us if we took some?” Toast asked, pointing at the still locked cabinet of wine.

“Leave them alone,” Emerson said, rolling her eyes as she headed for the door. “Don’t bring useless weight with us.”

Toast turned his pleading eyes toward Oliver, who also wanted to ignore the scientist’s request. He shook his head, pointing at the number stored behind the cabinet doors.

“We don’t have any room for any of them,” Oliver said.

The scientist continued silently begging them, clasping his hands together before his chest as he turned his gaze between them and the cabinet. Emerson had turned her attention away from, already standing beside the door and prepared to move onto the next room. Oliver sighed, running his hand through his hair as he thought up of a good enough excuse for the man.

“Look, we can come back after we check all the other rooms. If we have enough space, then maybe we can stop by and take one. You have to be the one to tell the Chief what and why you took one from his collection.”

“Easy!” Toast agreed, humming as he skipped over to where Emerson was waiting.

As the scientist opened the door and danced in the hallway with giddiness, Emerson rolled her eyes at Oliver.

“You gave in too easily,” she whispered as she led the way out.

“Hah, did you think we’d actually come back?” Oliver responded, keeping his voice down so the excited scientist couldn’t hear their conversation. “I just said that so we could keep going. If we distract him with other things, he’ll forget about this soon enough.”

“If you say so,” Emerson said, shaking her head as she pulled Toast back before he went too far out of their sight. They both looked over to the technician, and Emerson voiced their next question, “So? Where is the intern’s room?”

“I’m not sure actually. I’ve never been to his room.”

He pulled out the stack of cards from his pocket again, sorting through them until he reached the intern’s key card. He flipped it over in his hand, glancing at the string of numbers and letters that were in the upper right hand corner of the card. The last few characters were always the owner’s room number, so it wouldn’t be hard to figure it out. Joey’s were 6A43, meaning Section 6A’s room 43.

Oliver glanced at the door plate beside the Chief’s room. His was room 5, meaning the intern’s was somewhere further back in this residential section. Holding the card in his hand to make sure the room number was correct, Oliver led the way toward the branching hallway that housed rooms 41 to 50. Each section only had fifty rooms, meaning the intern’s room was in the last possible row.

“Huh, even Joey got better rooms than us,” Toast said as they rounded the last corner. “Didn’t he only join the Station recently?”

“The Engineering Bays have a high turnover rate with our interns, so these were the only rooms that were open when his batch was brought in,” Oliver explained as he glanced at the room numbers they passed by. “And besides, aren’t the rooms for the researchers larger than ours?”

Toast walked with his hands behind his head, nodding to the technician’s words.

“That’s true. We have another room connected to ours, right Doctor?”

Emerson also gave a nod, her gaze concentrated on the room numbers on the side Oliver wasn’t checking. She stopped in front of one of them, pulling on the men’s backpacks before they got too far. She pointed at the sign, which matched the characters on Joey’s key card.

Oliver double-checked, nodding as he slid the card into the reader. The door clicked open, and Toast pushed it open to reveal the inside of Joey’s room. Toast shut the door and turned to the other two who were just as surprised.

“We were going to Joey’s room, right?” he asked. “Not Lucky’s or the Nav girl?”

“Lucky’s room is around here, but we don’t have her key card,” Oliver said, still mildly blinded by what he saw. “And the Navigators’ rooms are sprinkled between Sections 3 and 4A.”

“I’m not surprised honestly,” Emerson said drily. “That that’s Joey’s hobby.”

Oliver unlocked the door again, and the three of them walked into the blinding aura of all the idol posters that covered the intern’s walls.