"Sophie?" Louise's voice caused her to look up from her spot on the path. "Sophie, what's wrong? What are you doing here?"
She couldn't tell her. She didn't think it was even possible to speak. Sophie opened her mouth and began to make incoherent sounds, choking on non-existent words.
"Sophie!" Louise was worried now. She stared down at Sophie, fear and empathy in her eyes as she sat forward in her wheelchair. "Sophie, are you okay? Just nod or shake your head, yes or no?"
Sophie shook her head, causing Louise to enter hysterics. After a brief moment of Louise trying to get her to speak, Sophie looked up with cold eyes and said the words she'd never wanted to say.
"Aldred is dead."
Suddenly Sophie found the world shifting around her, and she was back on Shalron, watching the monster kill Aldred all over again. It ripped him apart as she screamed....
Sophie woke abruptly, covered in sweat and shaking violently. It had happened again. Another nightmare, how was this fair? She stood up from the couch where she slept and crossed to the bathroom, turned on the tap and started splashing water on her face. Then back to the couch she went and sat down, her face in her hands.
Why did she have to dream?
It had been a month since it happened. Sophie had been on Earth for a whole month. Ever since, she kept reliving the event, and the traumatic experience that followed. Nightmares weren't something that she normally experienced. She remembered having nightmares when she was about nine, but those ones were different. When she woke up all she had to do was remind herself the nightmare wasn't real, whereas now..... well she couldn't do that.
Deciding not to dwell on her nightmare, Sophie lay back down on the couch, closed her eyes and allowed sleep to overcome her again.
When she woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of birds chirping cheerfully outside the window.
Louise had made her way into the kitchen next to the lounge room, and Sophie could hear her cluttering around in there, probably heating up breakfast.
When Sophie joined Louise in the kitchen, her elder watched the young girl sadly. Louise had been devastated to hear the news of Aldred's death, and to see Sophie so cut up about it was heartbreaking. Over the past month, Louise had seen Sophie cry, blame herself for her companions death, wallow in her own misery and try, in vain, to pull herself back together.
Louise knew that Ronan Schofer, the head of Aldred's department, the one who oversaw all the work with the teleport watch, was becoming impatient with Sophie.
"We need to get Sophie back out there, Louise!" he had complained to the old lady the previous day at work. "The information that she and Aldred brought to us has been vital to putting together the puzzle that is the Eridanus' disappearance, let alone all the scientific information they've researched while in the field, and if she doesn't start again soon, I'm going to have to consider replacing her."
"You can't do that Ronan." Louise had warned him. "Sophie sees it as her duty to find the expedition, so you can't ask her to part with that teleport watch. The poor thing is just traumatized from seeing Aldred die, and to be honest I can't blame her! For a girl of her age to have been through something like that is just horrible, in fact you're lucky she's still sane. Just give her a couple more weeks to recover, please, and I assure you she'll be back to normal."
Ronan Schofer had scowled at this, but eventually gave in. "Alright, she has one week, but after that I'll have no choice but to take action." Then he had walked away, leaving Louise to try to think of a way to fix the poor broken girl who lived in her home.
Louise was jerked back out of her thoughts, and moved herself over to the small table where Sophie now sat dejectedly, placing a plate of food in front of her before serving herself.
Sliding into her place at the table, Louise looked again to Sophie, and noticed that she was still wearing the teleport watch on her wrist while she picked at her food. Louise sighed, trying to think of the right way to phrase what she was about to ask.
"Sophie....." she began, causing the girl to look up expectantly. "I just wanted to ask you, not force you or anything but, when are you thinking of using the teleport watch again?"
Sophie furrowed her eyebrows. "You mean go back to searching for the expedition? I don't really know. It won't be the same without... without..." she trailed off.
"Well, if you don't want to do it alone, surely we could get someone else to go with y-"
"No." Sophie immediately interrupted. "I don't want anyone else to do it."
"Sophie, be reasonable." Louise said gently. "You know that the Institution wants you to keep going, and it would be easier if someone went with you."
"Louise, I kind of want to do it alone." Sophie insisted. "Plus I'm not stupid, I know how to do it now, I don't need help."
"I know that." Louise sighed again. "Alright, you don't need to take someone with you, but do you think you'll be able to get going again sometime this week?"
Sophie thought for a moment. "Maybe...."
"Oh please, Sophie?" Louise urged her. "I don't want them to have to take the teleport watch away from you."
"They what?" Sophie's eyes widened and she gripped her watch wrist protectively.
"Sophie, don't worry about it." Louise told her, trying to stop the panic that was clear in the girl's eyes. "But Mr Schofer told me he wants results within a week, or he'll replace you."
It was a mistake to tell her, Louise realised. Sophie looked positively scared, and ashamed, as well as really worried.
"Oh never mind." Louise collected both their plates and moved them over to the sink, before turning back to Sophie. "Are you coming with me to work today?"
"Yeah." Sophie got up from her chair and grabbed her jacket from behind her chair.
"Come on then." Louise headed towards the front door, with Sophie following and then locking the door behind them.
Entering the Science Institution, Louise swiped her ID, and so did Sophie, and then the double doors, that led to the room where they both worked, opened. A few scientists nodded to them as they passed, and then Sophie held open a door for Louise and they went into the records room. Louise crossed over to the main computer, swiping her hand across the screen and examining the entries from the day before.
"We're going to need to collect those reports from Kart and Reilley today." She mumbled to Sophie, as the younger girl opened one of the filing cabinets beside her. Louise still found it strange how they still used such old-fashioned storage systems, but at least it worked well.
Sophie appeared not to have heard what Louise said; as she frowned into the drawer she'd opened.
"Where's the notes on Shalron?" Sophie asked confusedly, pulling open another drawer.
"Cabinet fifteen, drawer six." Louise told her, and Sophie crossed over to the right cabinet and opened that one instead. "Why do you want it?"
"I was thinking of finally going over it, so that soon I can pick up from where I left off." Sophie replied casually.
Louise's face lit up and she turned around to face Sophie. "That's wonderful news!"
"Well, I was thinking about what you said, and I figured you were right, I should get back out there." Sophie smiled at her.
"Oh, good work Sophie." Louise said. "If you want the expedition records, they're in the drawer above that one." She added.
"Thanks." Sophie turned back to the drawers and pulled out the files she needed.
After a day of studying the records and carefully planning her coordinates and statistics for the next trip, Sophie went home with Louise, preparing to leave the next day. That night, she lay down on the couch with a grin, excited to travel across the universe again the next day.
Sophie was alone in a dark forest, with the sounds of creatures all around her, creatures she couldn't see.
"Aldred!" she called out, sure her companion had been with her a moment before. She looked fearfully around, jumping at every shadow, until she saw someone approaching her from a few metres away.
"Sophie?" that voice filled her with dread and excitement, both at the same time. That was when the figure stepped out of the shadow, and Sophie saw Aldred's face, horribly disfigured, and his body stitched clumsily together. It was a horrific sight.
"Aldred?" her voice quivered with fear. "What... what happened to you?"
"You know what happened to me." Aldred said spitefully, looking with distaste at Sophie. "I was murdered, ripped apart by that monster and it's all your fault! If you hadn't interfered I would have been fine."
"Aldred!" Sophie sobbed hysterically. "Aldred, I'm sorry."
"It was all your fault." Aldred repeated, staring down at her with such loathing that soon it was too much and her vision went black.
Sophie woke sweating and shaking once again in the middle of the night. She got up from the couch and moved over to where her bag was on the floor near the doorway. She glanced at the time on her teleport watch. It was 3:15am. Fantastic, she thought. She knew she should go back to sleep, but she was scared of having another nightmare. Looking back down to her teleport watch, she thought about her plans for the day. The coordinates for the next planet were already entered into the teleport settings, and staring at the watch, Sophie was itching to leave right now. Could she? Well, it seemed a better idea than waiting for the morning. You know what, she was going to leave, but first she had to leave a note for Louise.
She grabbed a piece of paper from the desk on the side of the room and quickly scribbled a message telling Louise where she'd gone and explaining why. Then she hoisted her backpack over her shoulder, opened the front door and, standing on the front path, Sophie looked up at the sky and pressed a button on the teleport watch. Darkness enveloped around her and she was off!
The darkness dissipated and Sophie was standing on another planet, one whose sun was shining brightly overhead, indicating that it was midday. Sophie checked the coordinates on her teleport watch to the ones on her scanner, and then nodded to herself. If she'd travelled to the right coordinates, then this was Megloss, a planet with a human colony.
She was standing in the street of a town, and so moved over to where a young boy was playing so she could ask him a question.
"Is this the planet Megloss?"
The child looked up from the ball he had been throwing around, and stared at Sophie. He was about nine years old.
"Yeah." He replied. "What, you stupid or something?"
Sophie smiled. "No. I'm just a visitor, that's all."
The boy looked confused for a moment and turned his head away, thinking.
"What do you..." he turned his head back but Sophie was already gone.
She was around the corner, sprinting her way towards what she hoped was the town centre. She stopped once or twice to ask for directions, and soon she had a general idea where to go for information on the Eridanus.
A few hours, two buses and a short walk later, she was standing in front of a large office building. Sophie walked inside, and was directed towards a section of the building called 'Spaceport Data and Records'. She entered the reception area of this section and approached the front desk.
"Er.... Hello." She greeted the receptionist, a stern-faced lady with neat brown hair and moon shaped glasses.
The lady looked up. "Yes, what do you want?"
Sophie smiled sheepishly. "I was wondering if you had any information on a spaceship called the Eridanus." She explained.
"I'm sorry, but that kind of information is not available to the general public." The lady replied, before turning back to the screen in front of her.
"I have credentials, if you need them." Sophie urged, determined not to back down. "The ship was lost years ago and I'm on a mission to find it."
"I can't make an exception."
Rage started to course through Sophie's veins, even though this was nothing. She and Aldred had been denied information before. This time seemed different somehow, though, and Sophie was not going to give up.
"I think you should be able to." She said coldly. "Seeing as my mission is to find out what happened to a few hundred lost people and the information you have would help greatly."
The receptionist looked up again briefly, evidently not caring. "Sorry, but no."
Keep calm. Sophie told herself, whilst looking at the receptionist in fury.
"All I really need is confirmation that the ship was here, is it really so big a secret that you can't even give me that?" she raised her voice slightly.
"I have already told you, no!" the receptionist looked really annoyed. "Now, would you please go away?"
This was enough to make Sophie snap.
Ten minutes later, Sophie was being escorted out the front doors by the building's security and then thrown on the pavement outside. She sat up, rubbing her arms and groaning. She may have aggravated the receptionist a bit too much with her attempts to get the information on the expedition.
Even after all that fuss, she was still not going to give up. She pulled her scanner out of her pocket, and took a quick scan of the building. Grinning at what the screen showed, Sophie put the scanner away, with plans already forming in her head. She knew that Aldred would not have approved, but he wasn't there anymore, and she was going to do things her own way now.
That night, after the closing time of most work places, Sophie climbed the fire escape of the building next door to her target, and, using a small pinpoint laser she owned, broke into the 'Spaceport Data and Records' section, through one of the windows on the side of the building.
She crept through the dark, empty hallways, trying desperately not to set off any alarms, until she could find the right file. She flicked through it, extracted the page on the Eridanus, and headed back to the window where she'd entered. Strangely, she found it sealed tight, a metal barrier covering the hole she'd made in the thick glass. That was when an alarm sounded.
"Drat." Sophie breathed as she started to run, jumping over desks as red lights began to flash. She heard doors bust open somewhere nearby and ran faster. Nearing the exit she heard footsteps coming her way and spun around, heading towards another escape. She pushed open the venting in the ceiling, stood on one of the desks and climbed through, until she was standing on top of the building.
Because that wasn't a conspicuous place to be at all.
She quickly ran to the side, preparing to climb down. She hooked her foot on the side of a railing and hopped down. She climbed, and climbed until she was close enough to the ground to jump. Unfortunately her right foot landed right in a crack in the weak road and became stuck.
Sophie pulled on her leg, cursing herself and her clumsiness. The leg wouldn't budge and Sophie wailed in despair. She had just committed a crime, and if they caught her stuck here in the ground with a stolen file in her backpack, they'd arrest her on the spot.
She could hear sirens somewhere close and pulled again, uselessly, on her leg. But it was well and truly stuck. How did this even happen? Sophie shook her head at the thought. No, don't freak out. You can get through this, just think. Her mind wandered off to possible ways of escape, and then she hit her face with her palm as she realised how obvious it was.
She opened up the screen of her teleport watch, and put in some coordinates that she knew of a nearby planet. Praying this would work, she pressed the button on the teleport watch, and disappeared. There was a moment of searing pain in her ankle as she felt it being pulled away from the ground and then across space.
Then she found herself on the rocky surface of another planet, an empty landscape, there wasn't a soul in sight. Sophie sought the refuge of a nearby cave and sat in there to recover her breath, and to pull out the file from her bag. She was glad she hadn't told the receptionist her name, because once they found out which file had been taken, it wouldn't be long until they figured out it was her who had stolen it. She was planning on sending it back, just not for a while. She skimmed over it briefly before placing it back into her bag.
She buried her face into her hands. Was this really what Aldred's death had done to her? Turned her into a criminal? She felt a surge of pleasure at having succeeded at retrieving the file, but more than that, an overwhelming sense of guilt. Sophie promised herself that she would never do something like that again without a really good reason.
Sophie eventually prepared herself to leave, typed coordinates into her watch and then moved on, to her next adventure.