Ethan nodded, not totally convinced, and turned to his sister, who was eyeing him, oddly. “Did you make contact with Sierra and Kern?”
“We’re ready and awaiting rendezvous coordinates,”
Elora’s comm crackled to life, Kern’s voice answering the question before she could.
“Sure hope this plan of yours works, kid.”
“Me too,” Ethan answered, honestly. “We’ll make contact again once we’re in the air.” The comm clicked off, signifying Kern and Sierra’s return to wave silence, and he let his gaze come back to his sister, who’s curious look still remained.
“What?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You should see yourself right now,” she answered, a bit of sadness mixing with her already surprised expression. “You’re just so . . .
grown up
all of a sudden. Were we really apart that long?”
“A lot has happened,” he admitted. And a lot had. Maybe more than he would ever tell her about. Much of it he wished he could forget himself, and knew that he never would.
“To both of us,” she added, raising a hand to touch his face. He did his best to smile and placed a hand over hers. He supposed they had both been changed by the events of the past few days. Maybe neither of them would ever be the same for it. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
Ethan had fantasized endlessly about living a life like the one Jarred led. One ripe with danger and excitement. A constant adventure. He understood now how childish that dream had been. There was a dark cost to all that adventure. He had experienced it first hand. Behind the danger and excitement, there was an equal, if not greater amount of suffering and loss. People . . .
innocent
people . . . suffered and died.
But not today. Nobody else was going to die in this place. Not if Ethan could help it. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he could just stop all the bad things he saw around him from happening and keep all of those suffering people from dying at the hands of their greedy tormentors. The universe wasn’t a kind or gentle place. He had seen enough of it in his life to know that. Nobody could save everyone. But he
could
help
these
people. And he intended to.
Once they were all aboard the bulk freighter, Mac would fly them clear of Ryza and they would then rendezvous with Kern and Sierra, find a safe place to land, send the ex-slaves on their way and make their own escape on the
Fancy Girl
. A simple enough plan, as long as nothing went wrong.
As Mac turned on his heel to return to the freighter, Ethan reminded himself there would be plenty of time catch up with Elora later. For now, there was still work to be done.
“I’m going to head back and check on the rest,” he said, stepping back from his sister’s embrace. “Make sure Tarik hasn’t eaten anyone.”
Elora smiled at the joke, but the sadness was still there in her expression.
“Just keep them moving towards the ship,” he continued, hoping the reminder of her own job duty would take her focus away from whatever she was feeling. The last thing they needed right now was to be distracted. As he turned to go, he heard Elora calling out to him again, and he glanced back at her.
“Ethan,” she said, raising her voice over the anxious lines of passing escapees, though he was still close enough with at she did not have to shout. “I’m proud of you.” She paused a moment before continuing. “Mom and Dad would be too.”
The comment surprised him a bit and he felt a rush of pride surge through him as the words’ meaning sank in. Growing up without either parent for some time now, he had been more accustomed to hearing comments akin to, ‘
What would Dad say?’
, or
‘What would Dad think about that?’
, usually following one of Elora’s scoldings for something he shouldn’t have been doing. Would they truly have been proud of him? Apart from the fantasy of being an adventurer, which had so recently smacked him in the face along with the bitter taste of reality, it was what he had always secretly wanted. Considering the possibility, he supposed they would be. Ethan smiled back at his sister at that and continued on down the corridor.
Maybe Elora was right. Maybe he
had
grown up. He had always figured that growing up was something that just happened once you were a certain age. You reached it and then magically people would finally start seeing you as an adult. That was definitely a child’s way of looking at it. Now we was beginning to see that it was not that way. Not so simple. Maybe it didn’t happen with age, but with the things you faced and
how
you faced them. Maybe once you lived through certain things,
saw
and
did
certain things . . . you could never go back to being a kid again. Maybe that’s when you finally grew up. It had happened to his sister when their father was taken. She had been forced to become an adult. Forced to become the parent. Maybe it was
his
turn now. After all the time spent wishing for just that, it was funny that he now found himself hesitant to cross that line into the grown up world. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
A whaling alarm tone startled Ethan from his thoughts as the light panels in the corridor began to flash in red sequence with the repeating wails. His eyes searched through the quickly panicked crowd of escapees, still hurrying towards the docking bay, but he was unable to see to its end. Glancing back in the opposite direction, he was also no longer able to see the exit doors, nor his sister. Probably no closer to her than he was the end of the fleeing crowd, he knew there was only one real direction to go. One choice.
Ethan took his first step, in the opposite direction of his sister . . . of escape, and knew that he had crossed that invisible line. And the moment he made that choice . . . he knew that there was no going back. Pressing forward, he ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach and continued moving through the stream of escapees, determination driving him. Soon he had passed the last of the fleeing beings, and he set into a full sprint down the open corridor.
As he approached the cargo lift, which they had used to shuttle the groups of escapees up from the lower holding level, Ethan became certain that something had definitely gone wrong. There was no sign of Tarik or any of the remaining escapees, and they had been coming up steadily since their breakout had begun. He couldn’t be certain anyone was left to come up, but if there weren’t any remaining, then where was Tarik? If there were, what had delayed them? In either case, the answer probably meant trouble. And considering the alarm blaring in his ear, he would have to say that trouble was a definite.
Regardless, Ethan was faced with a few options. Firstly, he could wait to see if Tarik and any remaining escapees came up in the lift. Time being against them, that wasn’t ideal. The second was for Ethan to go down to the lower level to check on the problem himself. Considering the effort he had put into escaping this prison, returning to it was most definitely not a desirable option. That left him with one final course of action. To turn around and run back in the other direction. Back to his sister and the ship. To fly out of here and save himself, leaving whoever was left and Tarik behind. Admittedly, a part of him wanted to do just that. The scared little kid in him.
But he wasn’t that kid anymore. One that had fantasized endlessly about living a child’s idea of a life of adventure, right up until the moment he had been thrown into the reality of one. He had curled up into a ball at that point, wishing for someone, anyone to come to his rescue. That kid had been naive. Foolish. And he was gone, replaced by someone else. He was still Ethan Bishop, but a stronger, less naive version of him, forever altered by what he had experienced. For the better, he hoped. And this new Ethan wouldn’t succumb to his childish fears. He wouldn’t turn and run to save his own skin. Not when there were innocent people that needed his help.
Ethan depressed the lift’s activation pad, and was startled when the doors immediately slid open. It hadn’t even been called back down to the holding level. And it was still in functioning order, which eliminated the possible explanation of a simple malfunction in the lift itself as the reasoning for the delay. It also meant that it hadn’t been shut down by way of the alarm that had been triggered, the byproduct of the facility lockdown he feared had commenced. The fact that the lift was still running was a confirmation that was not yet the case, though he guessed the window on that eventuality was shrinking rapidly.
As he stepped into the lift car and pressed the sub level’s button, the doors sliding shut again, followed by the slight inertia of the lift beginning its decent, his mind began to race. If the lift was still active, what had delayed Tarik and the others? Obviously, the answer was whatever had triggered the alarms, and the odds were heavily leaning towards the security-mechs, which must have escaped from the high security detention area. He knew they would do just that eventually, but had hoped they would be long gone by that time. Unfortunately for everyone, he had been wrong. Ethan felt the lift come to a stop and stepped to one side of the car so that when the doors parted he would not be standing in the opening like idiot. Not that hiding in the corner would save him from whatever waited outside.
Once the doors had slid fully open, Ethan took a steadying breath and poked his head out to survey the scene. Surprisingly, he saw very little, the chamber the lift opened into having fallen into darkness, the only illumination coming from the sporadic overhead light panels flashing in rhythmic red sequence with the still blaring alarm tone. It took a moment for Ethan’s eyes to adjust, but he was soon able to distinguish the outlines of the chamber walls and the storage crates that were scattered about its floor space. As he continued to focus he began to see something more. Faces. The remaining escapees. A dozen of them. More.
Almost without thinking, Ethan took at step out of the car towards them, stopping himself short a split second later. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The beings were huddled closely together in the center of the room, all looking in his direction, obviously able to see him with the light of the lift car, but none of them were moving towards him. They weren’t moving at all, as though frozen by . . .
fear
? Something was keeping them there, and as that realization struck him, his stomach began to churn with nauseating certainty of what he had just walked into.
He suddenly found himself blinded by a pair of harsh lights, weapon mounted flash lights to be certain, both pointed into his face.
“Hands up!” a harsh voice behind one of them ordered.
Having already raised his hands, instinctively to shield his face, Ethan simply continued the movement, showing whoever had issued the order his open palms.
“It’s just a kid,” another voice said, from behind the second of the two lights. The dark figure stepped closer to Ethan, giving him a clear view of its armored humanoid shape, and peered into the lift car. “Lift is clear,” he announced.
Realization dawned on Ethan again. It seemed it hadn’t been the mechs that had triggered the alarm after all. These were the same elite troops which had ambushed Jarred and his sister earlier. Obviously they hadn’t all departed with Jarred to wherever he had been taken. These ones, unfortunately for him and everyone else, had remained behind. They must have noticed something was wrong and come upon Tarik and the remaining escapees before they could board the lift.
“We’ve got one straggler here, just came down in the lift,” the voice behind the first light said, his shadowy head turning away slightly, Ethan recognizing that he was speaking into a comm unit in his helmet. The trooper paused, as whoever was on the other end probably replied. “Copy that,” he went on, after a moment. “Detention area has been accessed. Mobilize those security-mechs and make for our location. We’ll hold here.” He returned his attention to Ethan then, the communique seemingly finished.
“How many more are up there?” the trooper asked, nodding towards the lift.
Ethan’s mind was racing. The trooper had found the security-mechs in the detention area and had apparently freed them, according to the portion of the communique audible to him. Now they were heading back here,
mobilizing
before heading up level for the others. And now they were asking him for details to aid them in whatever assault they were planning. Ethan knew there was little he could do to stop the armed troopers himself, but he might be able to delay them, even just a little longer. Give Mac and his sister more time to escape with all of the others. Determined to succeed in that endeavor, he did his best to look dumbfounded. “N-n-no one,” he sputtered in return to the trooper’s question. “Just me.”
The two troopers glanced at one another before the first turned back and shouldered his rifle for a point blank shot at Ethan’s face.
“Wrong answer, kid,” he replied, his voice, though muffled beneath his full helmet and faceplate, carrying an icy chill with it.
Ethan cringed, his bluff and attempt at stalling failing miserably. He guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised, but the thought that these soldiers would shoot an unarmed kid for acting dumb hadn’t occurred to him. The realization he was about to meet his end had barely begun to sink in when the aiming trooper vanished in a dark blur, his flash light equipped weapon clanking to the floor.