Sarah7
Chapter 5

Sarah blinked. Were those tears? She wiped absently across her face, leaving a dusty wet smear across her forehead and cheeks. She carefully avoided knocking off the device resting on her ear and covering her left eye. She felt a growling in her stomach. Was that... hunger?

“Sarah.” Max said in her earpiece.

“Yeah. Yeah I’m here. What do I do now?” she said quietly. There was a faint sizzling sound coming from the destroyed drone.

The small light shining from her eyepiece cast a bright light in front of her, but only served to accentuate the darkness around her. She was cold, tired, and now hungry. What kind of a nightmare was she waking to?

“I am three floors down from your location. The shaft of the service elevator is out the door of the weapons room and to the left about 50 meters. Your eyepiece will guide you there. Are you ok?” Max said, again in a voice that didn’t seem quite right. She pushed that thought down again and clenched her jaw in determination.

“Ok. I’m coming.”

She may be crazy, or dreaming, or something else, but she knew one thing. The only way she was going to get any answers was to find this Max person. She knew deep within her that there was a logical explanation for all of this, and if she had any hope of surviving and discovering who she really was, she had to not only find Max, but to get off this crypt of a ship.

In a few moments she arrived at the doors of the lift. Something had fallen from the ceiling and crashed into one of the doors, and it had fallen inward to leave a gaping entrance large enough for Sarah, if she dared enter it.

“Your signal is getting stronger Sarah. I think you are right above me. Can you find a way to open the door of the service elevator?” Max asked.

“Um, it’s already open. Something crashed into the doors and one of them is almost broken completely inward. I think I can squeeze through.”

She knelt carefully and poked her head inside, her light sending a dusty beam around the chamber. She placed her hand on the door and suddenly it collapsed inward. Windmilling her arms she threw herself backwards as the broken door and pieces of debris fell down the large shaft.

With a thud that knocked out her breath, she hit the dusty metal floor. Alive, if not battered. A broken piece of metal had struck her thigh as she had fallen and she felt wetness on her leg. She touched the spot on her leg and yelped. She lifted her fingers to her face in the darkness and the lamp revealed they were red with blood.

“Oh no! I cut myself falling! Oh God!” she was slipping again into panic.

“Sarah. Look in one of the containers on the belt you have. There should be a med kit. Do you see it?”

With shaking fingers, Sarah felt around her belt until her fingers touched a box. She pulled it out of its container and opened it. Small bags of wrapping, and some small containers marked ‘First Aid’ were in the box. Again Sarah felt strange, as if someone else were guiding her fingers as she dispassionately opened one of the bags, cleaned her scratch with one of the containers (How did she even know what they were for?) and tightly wrapped her leg. The wound was only a superficial cut. Bloody, but only life threatening if she let it get infected, or keep bleeding.

She shuddered, and not completely from the cold.

“Who am I?” she asked herself in a half-whisper.

“You are Sarah. You’re a survivor. And hopefully my rescuer!” Max answered.

She started. Jolted out of her thoughts she stood up again and peered over the opening left by the fallen door. The shaft was very large, it looked like it was meant to carry large amounts of supplies from floor to floor. She looked downward and fought off a feeling of vertigo.

“If you look to your right, you should see a safety ladder embedded in the wall. You should be able to reach it from the door. Can you see it Sarah?” Max urged. She noted that he seemed to be feeling a new sense of urgency.

“Yes, I see it. I’m coming down!”

She couldn’t believe her own voice. Down? What if she fell? She could see the elevator now below, but if she fell from here, she would surely not survive.

Tamping down her fears again, she swung over to the ladder with a practiced ease that surprised her. The rungs of the ladder were rusty, and some had been bent at odd angles, buckling from the pressure of the crash. She had to test each step, and within a few moments her arms were quivering with tension.

“You can do it Sarah. Please hurry!” Max called.

She heard something crash above her and she almost let her grip slip. “What was that?”

“Scanning … Unfortunately, two more drones are coming to our location. You must hurry!” Max called.

Sarah’s heart leapt into her throat and she started going down more quickly. A rung buckled under her and she slipped. She was falling!

She screamed.

It was cut short rather abruptly by the top of the service elevator. She had only fallen a few feet. ‘I must have been climbing faster than I thought’ she said to herself.

“Now what? I’m here? Where are you?” Sarah called.

Above her she began to hear the familiar clinking of metal that told her more drones were coming.

“The elevator is almost to the next floor, but it is jammed. I am unable to reach the manual release, but you can from where you are. Look where the cable is attached to the top of the elevator. Do you see it? There’s a large lever there. You have to pull it downward to release the elevator.”

“Release it? But won’t we fall?” she asked as she climbed over twisted metal and dust to reach the connection point.

“Only for a moment, the elevator will lock once again when it reaches the floor. Go now! Hurry!”

Biting her lip, she pulled away a piece of twisted wires and metal to reveal the lever. It was large, and had a release grip at the top. She grasped it, and with the last of her ebbing strength, pulled the lever down.

It was at that very moment that two vicious looking drones dropped from the jagged opening three floors up and crashed into the top of the elevator - not 2 meters from where she stood.

The elevator began to fall, passing the floor it was supposed to stop at and continued to gain speed.

“Maaaax!” Sarah cried.

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