T-Plus 17

In varying degrees of exhausted and frazzled, the trio dragged their feet into Toast’s room. Oliver collapsed onto the couch, elevating his leg on the arm rest. His extra length stuck out the side, hovering precariously for one of the others to trip over him in a moment of inattentiveness. He was already in too much pain to care about the inevitability of more stacking on top of what he was experiencing.

Between his foot throbbing and his vision wavering in and out, Oliver slapped his cheeks to remain conscious until the other two gave the all clear. He could hear the two of them rummage around on the far side of the room where the bathroom was located. He could make out the sounds of cabinets being opened, doors being shut and sealed, and eventually someone plopped on the couch across from him.

The sound of a backpack unzipping beside him pulled him out of another lapse of awareness. He forced open his eyes, focusing enough to make out Emerson’s bleary form leaning over his legs. She glanced his way when he shifted his feet into a more comfortable position. The doctor leaned closer to him, raising an arm to touch his forehead with the back of her hand.

“Bruising worsened into either a crack or fracture,” she muttered. “Mild fever, either from the water or the injury. Lack of antibiotics, this is a great start.”

“Will he be okay, Doc?” Toast’s voice asked from behind the area of the couches.

“What medicines do you have in those cabinets of yours?”

“Uhhh, whatever Soup threw in there?”

More sounds of steel cabinets being thrown open by their owner echoed in the room. Oliver could hear boxes being shoved around, pills rattling in their bottles, unidentified liquids splashing in their containers, and Toast and Emerson’s low conversation concerning drugs and chemicals.

“We can’t use the water,” Emerson cursed. “Please tell me you keep water bottles around here.”

“No? If I wanted water, I’d just turn on the tap.”

“Useless.”

The longer they talked, the harder it was for Oliver to keep his eyes open. This couch wasn’t in any way comfortable, but right now, there was nothing stopping him from drifting off even with the two’s quiet bickering becoming louder by the word. A hand pressed against his forehead again, and he could hear Emerson’s voice in his ear as his eyes closed.

“Drink this first.”

A cold hand propped him up for a moment as Emerson placed a pill into his open hand.

“We can’t risk turning the water on right now, so you’ll have to make do.”

With some effort, he dry swallowed the medicine before laying down against the lounge pillow. Someone draped a blanket on him and his leg was settled on a higher elevation with some extra pillows. His brows furrowed from the constant pain, but his exhaustion overtook it in the end.

***

After making sure Hensley was settled, Esther stood to acknowledge Vaughn. The scientist had settled himself on the other couch, after tossing the medicines he had pulled out from the cabinets back where they came. Not bothering with him, she instead went to make sure their impromptu barricade in front of the bathroom.

On top of the general barricade made of towels that blocked the crack under the door, they had also plugged the drains and faucets inside the bathroom. Considering their strength of forcing the faucet open in Kuznetsov’s sink, these preparations should only be distractions in the grand scheme of things, but it should be long enough for them to make their escape.

Since they lost the water aliens in the corridor, they should be safe as long as they didn’t announce their location by using any water in this area. Probably. Her final checks done, Esther turned to peruse the scientist’s medicine cabinets. “Medicine” cabinets were a general term for them. Their contents ranged from general medicines, to harder to come by chemicals, to ones Vaughn had to have snuck out of his laboratory because they were dangerous materials that required special licenses and containers. Yet here they were, stuffed next to general antibiotics as if they were normal household medicines.

Esther could only shake her head and handle those with care as she shuffled them around. Finding a few more general use medicines, including various painkillers and a few more antibiotics, she slid them into the extra pockets they had in their backpacks. There was never enough, so finding even a handful was more than enough.

Looking around, Esther blanched at the state of the scientist’s room. Comparing it to the technicians’ rooms in Sector 1 and 6, this room was about double the size. Comparing it to Kuznetsov’s room in Sector 5, this room was a quarter smaller. Esther’s own room in Sector 3 was more or less the same, although hers felt a lot roomier if she took in how Vaughn “decorated” his personal space.

He had made a lab away from his lab. Nevermind what he mixed into his medicine cabinets, there were barrels of unidentified substances lining the far wall. Several had tipped over from the previous weeks’ chaos, but luckily, they were all still intact, minus a few dents here and there. A broken chemistry set littered the floor, the glass fragments strewn around where it used to sit on the foldable table that probably never got folded. The table itself had been tipped over and was now laying on its side. Even the bed was squished into a corner and was more of a cot.

“I had questions on how you would randomly have liquid nitrogen in your room, but seeing this explains more than enough,” Esther remarked with a shake of her head.

Vaughn waved away her accusatory glance, pointing at Hensley instead.

“Is he going to be all right?”

Esther sighed, leaning against the counter beneath the cabinets. Including all the medicines she just raided from the shelves behind her, they had enough antibiotics to last them for a while, but that all depended on if Hensley was well rested and not running around the Station. Of course, that wasn’t an option at the moment. The others were waiting for them to send a message, and Triton’s message was going to arrive soon, if not already. Staying here for a prolonged amount of time without access to water was also not a good idea.

“If we can get back to the Engineering Bay, as long as he doesn’t move around too much, he should be fine,” Esther said, finally giving her verdict.

“So he’s not going to be fine, because there’s no way we can take him back the way we came, and we don’t know what’s up ahead,” Vaughn concluded with a nod. “Should we leave him here then? With one of us?”

“For the other to do what? Leave and come back with help? You said it yourself, we don’t know what’s up ahead, and with how we are now, there’s little chance we can make it back the way we came on our own.”

The scientist shook his head, holding up his fingers as he counted off.

“One, we can agree that we’re in no shape to continue. What, with your legs trembling as you stand there and Hensley out cold. Two, even if we bring Hensley with us, it’s the same as one person going anyway, since he’ll be a burden. Might as well stay here. Three, if we have to stay here, I’d like to know what’s outside my door.”

“So who’s going to go?” Esther asked, nodding to agree with the points he brought up.

“Probably you,” Vaughn said, saying something she wasn’t expecting. “If you make it to Sector 3, your room’s over there, right? If you have to, you can take refuge there instead of running back when things get tough. If you don’t come back after a while, I’ll come after you.”

“Are you telling me to trust you in keeping Hensley stabilized?” the doctor scoffed.

“If you tell me the basics on what to look out for, I don’t think I’ll have a problem.”

The doctor stared at the scientist still lounging on the couch. He was too forthcoming about this. Usually, he’d be the first one to volunteer to go scout the area, keen and eager on working on his own. This was the first time he’d offered to be the one to hold the fort. There was most definitely something more to this.

“And what are you going to do while you wait here with Hensley?” Esther asked as she put more of her weight against the counter.

“What else? I’m going to play with our new neighbors!” Vaughn proclaimed, pulling out his extra canisters of liquid nitrogen.

In addition to those, he also pointed at several of the tipped over barrels behind him.

“There are also a few other things I want to try out now that I have my lab at my hands again. I’ll be busy, so I’ll leave scouting ahead to you! Don’t worry, Hensley dying on us would be very inconvenient in the long run, so I’ll make sure he’s fine.”

That answer sounded more like him. With a nod, she staggered over to the couches. From his couch throne, Vaughn stood, waving for her to sit back in his seat. She didn’t need any further convincing, and finally released the tight tension in her legs. She laid down, resting her eyes as she heard the scientist rummage around behind her, probably already starting on his experiments. Once she got enough rest, their plans could move forward. But first.

“Could you at least keep your experiments quiet?” she asked.

“You’ll be fine, just close your eyes.”

Esther sat up in a hurry, giving herself a mild headache from getting up too fast. The faint emergency lights that were a new constant bathed the room in a dim glow. The room was quiet compared to when she was last awake, and the temperature had dropped, a testament to the fact that even with the emergency power on, the internal temperature system still needed to be fixed. The noises that she’d fallen asleep to had stopped, and she could see a figure burrowed underneath a blanket in the cot shoved in the far corner. Across from her, Hensley was still out cold.

She slid her legs off the couch, leaning over the coffee table in the middle to check the technician’s temperature. Still a lot warmer than her own but significant improvement from before she fell asleep. Considering she didn’t know how long it’d been since he last took antibiotics, she left the specific remedies on the table with a note for when the scientist woke up. Making sure their towel barricade remained intact, and that the two men would be fine for the, hopefully, few hours she’d be gone, Esther pocketed her trusty flashlight while also unattaching Hensley’s from his backpack strap.

The doctor picked up the smallest bag they had brought with them from where it leaned against the wall beside the door. It was heavier than she remembered it, and when she opened the bag she noticed a few new items resting inside. Courtesy of the room owner, there were several new breakable canisters nestled in an extra towel. At a glance, there were sticky notes attached to them, labeling what each was. A quick count said two were his “scare-away-water” nitrogen concoctions, one “use-because-it’d-be-funny” molotov for rocks and base aliens, and a new “because-I-had-some-from-Joey” canister of alien corpse. Where he’d kept that all this time, she didn’t know.

Armed with Vaughn’s generous concoctions and two flashlights, Esther slipped out of the room to fulfil her and the scientist’s earlier arrangement. It’d been a long time since she had to move on her own, and that thought didn’t make the task any less daunting. She shouldered the backpack on properly, keeping the flashlight in her free hand as she turned down the residential area’s hallways. First task, make sure this Sector was clear before moving onto the main corridor.