T-Plus 17

Compared to the other residential sectors the trio had hastened through, Esther was more familiar with Sectors 3A and 4A. Both were the sectors meant for the scientists and doctors that worked in and around the Station, and due to that, this was the second most area she frequented on a daily basis. As she walked down the hallway outside Vaughn’s room, she already caught sight of rooms belonging to other acquaintances.

Both sectors’ walls were fortified with an extra layer of sound and blast proofing, the second one being courtesy of a certain scientist. The rooms were large, although not as wide as the administrators’ rooms in Sectors 2A and 5A. She was told the extra space was requested by several researchers for their excessive amount of books and research-related materials they couldn’t keep in their work laboratories. She, too, used the extra room for her plants, and Vaughn had, evidently, turned his into a personal lab. These two sectors were always rowdy, filled with intellectual conversations, sophisticated chatter, and the occasional muffled explosion that could be heard through several walls. The silence was an eerie comparison.

The only hints of people in recent times led to Vaughn’s door, their panicked path from earlier was marked by dampened dust trails and dirtied footprints. Following it would lead her back to the main corridor where the water was nowhere to be seen, but she would do that last. A quick glance at the other interconnecting hallways in 3A showed some other humanoid traces that she could tell.

Some miscellaneous trash, scuff marks on the otherwise dusty walls, and almost mirroring dirty footprints. She wasn’t an expert, but even she could tell there were at least two different types of footprints left behind. A set of boots like the technicians’ were mixed in with a set of wedges. They led the way out to the main corridor alongside their own footprints heading in. The outward leading set were faint compared to their more recent ones and was easily missable, especially when they were in a hurry to get Hensley to a safer location. Seems like they weren’t the only ones evading aliens.

This was the first obvious sign of any survivors that she’d seen on the first floor. There were two sets of footprints, one being a technician or wearing technician boots. The other one wore wedges, pointing toward a female researcher or administrator. Considering those points, it was highly likely the trio that had gone to scavenge the first floor before them: Audrey, the Navigator, and Lucky and Johnson, the two technicians.

Stepping out into the corridor, she ignored her group’s footprints and focused on the fainter trail leading toward sector 3A. The further she followed it, the fainter the footsteps became, but they were visible enough until she reached the entrance to sector 3A. By then, the trail faded back into dust. However, she didn’t need the trail anymore. The closer she’d gotten to the sector, the more signs of recent human habitation there were. And now that she was standing at the entrance, she could faintly hear noises.

Voices speaking, their words muffled by distance, echoed in the otherwise empty hallways. Esther followed the walls closely, peering around the corner where the voices were resonating from. Just as she stepped foot around the turn, the voices muted themselves and disappeared. Esther stepped into the hallway, staring in shock at the first few fellow survivors on the first floor. Gathered in front of a door as they were sorting through their own spoils of war were Audrey, Johnson, and Bacon. Yes. Anna Bacon, the last member of Lab 5C’s trio of misfits.

The last time she had seen Lab 5C’s assistant was during the initial turmoil as they were making their first attempt to reach the space elevator. Amidst the panic of Jiang being injured, their original group had split up, and they all lost track of each other. Granted, Vaughn, Jiang, and Kuznetsov found them again, but they had lost track of Bacon until right now. Evidently, she had managed to keep her head on her shoulders and stayed here on the first floor this entire time.

“Audrey... Bacon...,” she muttered as she stepped toward them.

“Dr. Emerson?” Bacon asked in return as Audrey ran up to her in a rush.

“Dr. Emerson!” the Navigator shouted as she grabbed Esther’s arms in excitement. “You found us!”

“You guys are fine... Wait, where’s Lucky? She went with you and Johnson, didn’t she?” Esther said, confirming the numbers before her.

“‘It’s a good thing you found us here, Doctor!” Audrey said, pulling Esther toward one of the rooms that were further down the hallway.

The doorplate outside the room pinpointed it as Bacon’s room. Most of the clutter was centered around this door, suggesting that the assistant had long made this her base of operations. With the other three as her guides, she walked inside to see the last technician laying on the bed. She was sleeping with several blankets and sheets layered on top of her. As Esther stepped closer, she could see beads of sweat form on Lucky’s forehead, dripping down the sides of her face. The doctor leaned beside the bed, noting the heat radiating from the technician’s body.

She lifted the blankets off the patient for a moment, her eyes resting on the gaping wound on Lucky’s left arm. It was bandaged loosely, the blood soaking through the layers of linen. She pointed at it, turning to the other three in the room.

“How did this happen?”

“Which way did you come in from?” Audrey asked, exchanging glances with the other two.

“I came from Sector 4A. Vaughn and Hensley are in Vaughn’s room over there right now,” Esther explained. “I followed your footprints over here.”

“So you met the water aliens,” Bacon murmured.

Johnson approached her with what they had left of their first aid supplies, half an empty kit he dug out of his backpack. She pulled out her personal flashlight, shining it on Lucky’s arm as she undid the wound’s wrappings. The other there settled down nearby to recount their past experiences.

After the trio came down here to scout for supplies and electronics originally, they got ambushed by the water aliens, and as they bypassed these residential areas, they ran into another swarm of rock and a new type of metallic alien. It was a combination where the metallic one led all the other types, and they guarded the area around sector 2A, effectively blocking that side. Trying to break through that side was what brought around Lucky’s injury. She had blocked a projectile from hitting Audrey during a short warp. As they were retreating, Bacon rescued them and led them here to her safe haven. Since then, they’d been here, using what meager supplies they had to keep Lucky’s fever down.

As for Bacon, after the initial lockdown and loss of power, she had gotten separated from the others, so she used her memory of the Station and made her way to her room in the dark. It was before the aliens swarmed the main corridors, and she survived up until now by eating minimally or raiding the storage rooms nearby. According to her, the water aliens had appeared around four or five days ago, and even she didn’t know how many were among their numbers. As for the rock aliens, they appeared even earlier than their water brethren, and the one metallic one was the most recent addition to this floor’s alien forces. She had thought of finding the others, but according to Bacon, her paths were quickly blocked by both types of aliens, and there was no way she could break through either side by herself. She’d been stuck here since.

“So when I heard these three making a ruckus, I came out to see who it was,” Bacon finished explaining. “We’d been subsisting off of the supplies they kept on them and what I had left, but rationing for four when we only have enough for two is difficult. Luckily, Miss Zimmerman has access to her room, so we were planning on scouting it out for more supplies when you walked by.”

Taking a syringe and one of the small blood-stopping bottles in the first aid kit, Esther administered a small dosage to Lucky. Using the remaining bandages in the kit, she rewrapped the gaping hole in the technician’s arm, wounding it tightly and tying a knot to keep it in place. She rested the arm on a pillow before standing up again.

“I’ll explain what happened on our end as we walk. One of you will stay here with her. There are antibiotics in my room as well as another first aid kit. It’s why I came over here in the first place.”

“I’ll stay here,” Audrey volunteered, casting a worried glance over the technician.

Esther nodded, waving at Bacon and Johnson to follow her out. The doctor shouldered her pack again, adjusting it to the bottles inside didn’t clink too noisily as she walked. Bacon’s room was halfway down the first hallway on the right upon arriving at sector 3A. Esther’s room was down the second hallway on the left, a short distance away compared to the stretch between residential sectors. However, it still took a good ten to fifteen minute stroll as they avoided the danger spots according to Bacon.

Although the lab assistant tried to keep this area free of aliens for her convenience, she couldn’t control what part of the plumbing the water aliens came out of, and several of the rooms had already become flooded with them. If they came too close to the doors, Esther could hear the dripping and splashing of water. Some of them even had water pooling out from beneath the door, to which Bacon had left some Caution: Wet signs a good distance around them.

At the end of the hallway, they arrived at Esther’s room. She vaguely remembered Hensley promising her that they’d stop by her room to finally get her shoes that would fit after the initial outbreak where she lost her heels in the elevator shaft, and yet here she was without him, getting her own shoes. She shook her head as she carded herself in, entering into a mess of soil, fertilizer, and dying plants. Her precious indoor space garden had turned itself over in the onslaught of the Station quaking from the space anomalies and breaches. Luckily, the ones she kept in a tightly locked aquarium had avoided most of the chaos, although they were wilting without water and light.

As the other two ventured into her room, she headed for the cabinets on the far wall where she kept her stash of medicines and chemicals. Unless Vaughn’s extensive collection, hers were all over the counter and labeled and shelved properly. At a glance, she could fish out several that were necessary for both Hensley and Lucky’s situations, while bringing along a few more ointments for Jiang when they got back to their base on the third floor. She settled them in a separate pocket from Vaughn’s concoctions in her bag, handing the molotovs and one of nitrogen mixtures that was scalding her fingers with cold to Johnson to hold onto.

“Where did you get a hold of these?” the technician asked with wide eyes.

“Are those Toast’s?” Bacon asked, peering over his shoulder to look at the handwriting on the notes attached to them.

Esther nodded, her bag organized again. She glanced over the contents of her room. Other than her plants, most of her room had been packed up and ready for her transfer before the initial outbreak. Most of her personal belongings were safe from the onslaught of soil and rocks and torn foliage, and her suitcases were shoved up against the wall beside the stripped bed. That day the Station had been turned upside down should’ve been her last day here, but yet, here she still was, stuck. Ironic really.

“Come on. We need to get these to those idiots,” Esther said, leading the way out again.