The boarding ramp began to close and I felt hands pulling me out of the way. My head knocked against Rojjel's glasses as we sunk to the floor. I clung to him, and he let me hold tight and wail helplessly. I could feel him trembling. Just minutes ago he'd been calm and collected, though shaken, when Mickey and I had been trying to fix up Beth, but now that Sophie was gone as well... he wasn't holding up.
Neither was I.
My mind was a mess. An inane amount of things had happened in the brief time since we'd arrived on Werayne. We should never have come here, should have defected from the war before we had the chance to oppose the Weraynians; how could we have expected them not to retaliate, to try to stop us? Now Beth was critically injured and Sophie was... gone.
A scream welled up in my throat and emerged as a horrible squealing cacophony past my lips. I had to get a hold on myself. I wanted to run to the cockpit and beg Trista to turn the ship around, to chase the Weraynian ship and rescue Sophie, but I knew that would be a suicide mission. Not to mention that it was vital to transport Beth to a medical facility as quickly as was feasible.
I glanced over to the stretcher where Beth lay unconscious. Mickey sat diligently at Beth's side, tears streaming down his face. He adjusted the resonance device he'd placed on their body, that was keeping them stable internally throughout the journey. It shouldn't take too long; we were heading for an Alliance medical ship that remained where the blockade had previously been situated.
I burrowed my head back into Rojjel's shoulder and screwed my eyes shut, waiting for the trip to pass, willing myself out of existence. The ship vibrated around us, permeating my being. I couldn't envision where we could possibly go from here; would we defect? Now? With everything so fragile? One thing at a time Abigail, I reminded myself, we need to get Beth medical attention first. But my thoughts were spinning out of control. How had things fallen apart so quickly? How could I have let any of this happen? I'd been right there, next to Sophie. I should have protected her; the memory of her screaming my name before she was overcome by the Weraynians, the last thing I'd seen of her, tortured me. I'd been practicing with my powers, yet hadn't been strong enough to keep her safe this one time. If I'd tried harder to get her to move when the others took Beth back to the ship... But all of this guilt and blame was useless, and solved nothing. I was sick of my own thoughts, of my brain and the way it cycled in on itself.
I think we were all operating on autopilot when we reached the station. Everything was lights and hurried exchanges, following people down tight corridors, comforting hands on shoulders. Rojjel seemed to have taken on the role of caretaker, keeping close to me and murmuring instructions as we weaved through the facility. Finally Beth was taken into a room where we couldn't follow. We sat against a wall in a daze, as Mickey explained to one of the medics everything that had happened to Beth and what treatment they'd received. I had nothing but the utmost admiration for that man - he'd just lost two of his best friends two different ways yet he was holding himself together far better than anyone could be expected to. I thought of Sophie's Alliance stories; Mickey had plenty of experience staying composed in difficult situations, but this one was beyond deranged. I rose, trancelike, from where I was seated and wandered over to his side. Before long, the person he was talking to rushed off, and he turned to face me.
"Abigail, are you al-"
I wrapped my arms as far as I could reach around him, and he squeaked and tensed up against me, before lifting his graspers to hug me back and giving me a long squeeze. He sighed.
"Don't worry Abigail, we'll get through this." He said into the top of my head.
"I know." I said, muffled against his chest. "We will, together."
I pulled back and held him at arms length, summoned all my strength to look him in the eyes, even while I wanted to break down again. "I'm- I'm sorry for falling apart back there. You kept Beth alive, and took charge when everything started going wrong. I don't know what we would've done without you."
"Hey, it's okay." Mickey said, tears welling up in his three eyes. "I just wish I could've done better. Stopped Sophie from... from-" he broke off, choking back a sob.
"No, it's not your fault." I told him sternly. "And you know Sophie, she'll do just fine, wherever she is. We just have to do what we can, until we find her."
Mickey nodded weakly. We stood silently together under the harsh light in the hallway, sharing our grief.
"Hey," Trista approached us, and gently placed a hand on Mickey's tendril. "How's Beth doing?"
"They're still in surgery." Mickey said somberly. "We won't know anything for another hour at least, but the last update I got was good. They're alive at the very least."
"That's good news." The corner of her eyes creased as she smiled softly. "The hardest part of this is over, now that Beth is here I'm sure they'll make a full recovery. I managed to make contact with the Staarus base and fill them in on what happened; they're wanting us to return to base as quickly as we can."
Mickey nodded thoughtfully, and glanced from the door Beth was behind to Trista and me. "I'll stay here with Beth, wait for Steve to arrive, make sure everything's okay. You'll have to pass on my apologies to the leaders."
"Of course, Mickey." Trista rubbed Mickey's arm. "Take care of yourself, alright?"
He nodded, eyes pricked with tears that he quickly wiped away.
"You good to go, Abigail?" Trista asked me softly.
I nodded mutely, and gave Mickey one more hug.
"I'll call you when I have news." he said into the top of my head. "Of Beth or Sophie."
"Thank you." I said, trying not to get choked up again, and then I followed Trista down the hall and back to the ship with Rojjel.
Back at headquarters I sat with my head in my hands while one of the leaders grilled us for information about the attack - what ship had arrived and how many Weraynians it held, what did the device that injured Beth look like, what weapons had been used against us, and so on and so on and so on forever. Rojjel was the one who answered most of the questions. I sat tensely through the explanation that our work should not slow down just because of what had happened, couched in disingenuous comments of comfort. Then they dismissed us for the day, and I wandered, torpescent, vaguely following Rojjel towards our quarters.
I was dreading facing the others.
We'd been away for almost double the time we'd intended; Jayken and Alexa should've been asleep at this time in our day-night cycle. Yet we found them fretfully waiting up for us, Jayken ran to us instantly while Alexa stood pensive, arms crossed and face stony. I briefly locked eyes with her but she jerked her gaze away from mine. I wondered what she was thinking.
Jayken tentatively took my hands in his; I could tell he wanted to hug me but was worried about my reaction, like I was a delicate object formed from glass, which might shatter at any moment. He shook his head mournfully as he tried to speak a few times with no luck. Then he managed, "I couldn't believe it when they told us... I really thought it might be some cruel joke, and you'd all walk in here together... Can I get you anything? Do you want some warm blat? Or to vent? Or to be left alone? Or some cookies?"
"Jayken, come on." Alexa stepped up beside him.
He dropped my hands and rubbed his neck. "You're right, Lex, sorry. Abigail, I'm sorry, I just wish I could do something to help."
"It's okay." I said tiredly. "I get it. It's been... an extremely long day. For all of us."
"Yeah..." Jayken said, blinking rapidly. "By the way... Is Beth...?"
I glanced at Rojjel, who answered for me, shaking lightly. "They're alive. Mickey stayed behind with them and he said he'd keep us updated. But we don't know yet if they're going to recover."
Jayken looked heartbroken. In the silence that followed, I felt as if the room was expanding, making it even more painfully obvious that there were only four of us here, when there should have been Beth and Sophie and Mickey with us.
Alexa finally spoke up, expression pained. "How did it even happen? The leaders barely told us anything."
I could feel Rojjel's eyes on me, hesitant to voice the answer. I took a deep breath to pull myself together and explained, "The place they sent us to - on Werayne - it was empty... They knew somehow that we were coming and removed all the technology, so we couldn't set anything up. Beth and Sophie... investigated a pile of discarded parts outside the facility while we were still inside. They triggered a device left by the Weraynians who abandoned the place, which is what injured them both, but mainly Beth. Mickey said it was something to do with their alien biology, an organ sac ruptured due to the shock. So we resuscitated them, but Sophie froze up. I tried to get her to move while the others transferred Beth to the ship, and that's when a Weraynian craft appeared. I tried to fight them, Sophie and I were separated during it, and they captured her. The rest of us managed to escape but... we lost... in so many ways." I stared fixedly at the floor whilst the others stood silently. Rojjel slumped into a lounge and sighed. Jayken patted him on the shoulder, at a loss for words, and then excused himself from the room and headed for the kitchenette.
Alexa took the practical approach. "Do we have any leads on where Sophie might be? They've managed to rescue Weraynian prisoners before."
"She could be anywhere." I said, feeling the growing helplessness like a weight in my chest. "Most likely on Werayne. We can only hope we'll find something to lead us to her."
She crossed her arms tighter and seemed to shrink into herself. "Yeah... It will be okay, alright? Abigail? We'll find her."
"Yeah." I said half-heartedly and we stood in silence once more as my brain decided to torture me by bombarding me with a thousand thoughts at once, swirling around and almost making me nauseous.
A realisation suddenly hit me. I glanced up sharply at Alexa, who raised her eyebrows worriedly at me.
"One of your visions... you said you saw someone dying, and me and Sophie with them - you saw what happened to Beth... didn't you?"
Her face dropped into a grim, haunted expression that told me I was right. Though normally so confident and haughty, she couldn't meet my gaze for long, but glanced around self consciously.
"I think so." she admitted in a low voice. "I would know for sure if I'd been with you. Maybe I would have recognised the place you went, and been able to change things. But I wasn't. I'm sorry."
"I wasn't blaming yo-"
"Just leave it, Abigail, okay?" she sniped at me. "Just because I have these powers and can see things are going to happen doesn't mean it's useful for anything, does it? I just see things that I hope aren't going to happen, and then they do, and I just get to live them twice." She spun around and stormed to her room, the door slamming behind her.
I stared after her, understanding dawning on me. I felt awful as I grasped the true source of Alexa's distress. After the Protector had appeared to us, a person with lightning powers just as she had envisioned, we'd discussed the significance at length. Alexa had been concerned that one of her visions coming to fruition was damning evidence, proving that all of her visions were predictive. I was a truthful person by nature, and thus never offered empty platitudes, or surety that her visions were merely dreams or brought on by stress, however I knew that, if they were in reality foretelling events, it was unlikely that there would be any recourse to come with that revelation, only more pain. Yet here we were again, another vision come to pass, and in her mind drawing us ever closer to the one she feared the most - Jayken, desperate and helpless, being tortured.
At that moment, Jayken reemerged into the room, carrying mugs of warm drinks. He handed one to Rojjel, who tiredly sat up from his slump to take it from him, and then frowned as he caught sight of me standing alone.
"Where'd Lexie go?"
I hugged my arms to my chest and smiled wanly; I knew Alexa wouldn't want him to worry about her. "She just went to bed. I'm heading in now too."
"Oh okay. You sure you don't want a drink?"
"Thank you, but I'm alright." I said, and turned towards my room, taking in a deep breath. I could feel Jayken's eyes following me with concern.
Once I was in the room and the door slid shut behind me, I slumped against the wall. Faced with this empty room, it was as if everything that had happened in less than a day hit me square in the chest. I was so tired, but the notion of getting into that bed without Sophie was astutely more painful. So I curled up into a fetal position next to the door, and willed sleep to come.
As time went on, the bed we'd shared remained untouched since the day I'd lost her. I couldn't bring myself to sleep in it alone. I slept on the benches outside our rooms, or on the floor next to the bed, or simply stayed up and wandered the corridors.
It wasn't long before the leaders began putting pressure on Mickey to return to headquarters with us so as to continue directing Alliance happenings. Fortunately Steve volunteered to take his place at Beth's side, and to give us updates on their condition. It seemed their body was in some form of regenerative coma. Mickey assured us this was not uncommon for some quantoformorous species but it didn't make anticipating the outcome any easier.
I sat with Mickey most days as he coordinated the Alliance, directed ships, answered questions, made decisions. I was desperately hoping for some good news, whether of Beth's recovery or more desperately that Sophie had been found. It was awful to be stuck here on this space station. The leaders had tried to engage me in their cause plenty of times, but after an incident where they'd forced me into training with my powers at the height of my grief over everything that had happened, there had been considerably less pressure for me to comply.
What had happened was this: Alexa, Jayken and I had been dragged back into our training room, and encouraged to channel our emotions into the interfaces for their upgraded spacecraft, hoping to benefit from our recent experiences - assuring us that this would all turn out for the best for the whole system and the war. In particular, they'd attempted to coax Alexa, inferring that the situation might heighten her sensitivity to visions. Watching her struggle to keep down her own fear and frustration, I was unable to hold back my own. I flew into a rage, not even having to touch the gel matrix or even go near it before it sparked to life and started to vibrate violently. Pieces detached from it and went hurtling across the room, the main device overloaded and imploded, sending debris scattered around us. I stood trembling in the midst of it, Alexa and Jayken untouched by the whole thing. The leader who'd been with us emerged from their cowering in the corner and meekly told us we had the rest of the day off. For some reason I hadn't been invited back since.
Other than that, a whole lot of nothing.
I'd taken to wearing the teleport watch ever since I'd lost Sophie. It had been left behind during our mission to Werayne - if only she'd been wearing it when we were attacked, I could have grabbed it on her wrist and teleported us both to safety. Having it on me made me feel closer to her even though she was gone. It was something essential to her, her life and our friendship was so entwined with it, with her travels facilitated by it. It almost felt as if by wearing it I could summon her to me, and she'd appear in a flash of lightning safe and happy.
That thought in and of itself was absurd and selfish of me. Even if Sophie walked in the door right now, free from a completely non traumatic experience in Weraynian captivity, she would be far from happy, she'd be worried sick about Beth, blaming herself for what happened to them and desperate for news of their condition. When I last saw her she was in a similar state to when Riowyn died, if not worse. Beth was her best friend, they'd worked together for years. Even though they were okay and recovering, the pain and guilt would be far too real for Sophie.
We continued to receive daily updates in the meeting room, as the war progressed. It was a complicated affair; hearing about areas becoming occupied by Staarus forces on Werayne was demoralising, but on the other hand occasionally those occupations led to the uncovering of bases where various Weraynian groups were holding captives. I wanted desperately for Sophie to be among those, but thus far there had been no sign of her anywhere. The skirmishes in the spaces around Werayne and Halapatov were ongoing, and the Weraynians had managed to destroy multiple military and research bases of Staarus forces - some that our team had worked in. Meanwhile, there were some reports (though it seemed that they were as censored and limited as possible) of civil unrest within the main population centres on Flauraan, Halapatov and Aandrigo. Mickey had put out some feelers with the Alliance members helping on Halapatov, to connect with activist groups and see what was being actioned, as well as inquiring into any needs in pro-Werayne and Aandriggian communities. We were hoping especially to determine the whereabouts of the Protector, in the hopes that we might one day be able to join up with her as she had proffered, if we ever escaped from our current limbo.
Nothing had escalated in pressure per say, yet I felt like the world was closing in on me. I couldn't focus, couldn't think, I was constantly running on fumes, and I didn't even have the wherewithal to be concerned about this deficit in my cerebral faculties.
My life was characterised by absence, and I spent a disproportionate amount of my time asleep.
"Abigail!" I jolted awake, and blinked blearily at the desk where I'd fallen asleep. Mickey was standing behind me with a grasper on my back. He was wearing his Alliance coat and an expression somewhere between panic and elation, looking near tears.
"Mickey? Wha-?" I tried to process this turn of events, why he would have awoken me, until my brain snapped into focus and I leapt to my feet, scraping the chair across the floor. "They found her? They found Sophie?! Where is she? How did they find her? Is she okay?"
He placed his graspers firmly around me as if to steady me, overwhelmed by my flurry of questions. "An Alliance ship picked up a distress signal on Werayne, and when they checked it out they found her and others who were left behind when the Weraynian soldiers evacuated. She's at a med station now. I've let the others know, we're gonna go get her."
I could hardly believe this was happening. I took his grasper and squeezed tightly, and let him lead me through the base. Trista met us in the hangar, hair frantically tied up off her face, and wearing a mismatch of her pyjamas and work clothes. She gave me a tired but supportive smile and hurried us onto the ship.
Mickey and I huddled anxiously for what felt like an eternity on the trip over. Exhaustion kept washing over me. I had spent so long being afraid and on edge about Sophie, and that was so close to being over, yet I couldn't help being terrified that something even worse was about to happen, or that we'd arrive to the medbay only to find that Mickey's intel was wrong and Sophie wasn't there at all.
My heart was beating rapidly and I felt like I was drifting out of my body as we descended into the docking bay of our destination. Mickey led me through hallways and doors slid open. There was noise all around us but I couldn't focus on any of it. Where was she? Every moment I spent in this place without seeing her caused a mounting panic inside of me. I wanted to run to her, and kiss her face all over, wrap myself around her and never let go.
Finally, we reached a room where a few of the less urgent patients had been placed, and there she was; safe and whole and... The relief that flooded through me at the sight of her hit a wall as my gaze flicked straight to her new, prosthetic arm.
She raised the aforementioned arm and waved sheepishly. Concerns and questions aside, she at least seemed her usual self.
Mickey and I rushed to embrace her, and just like that we were reunited. Everything else, the exchange of updates and all our worries could be put aside for this moment.
With all hope, we'd have the rest of our lives to get through them together.