Chimera 🌈 [ONC 2024]

14: Rift

Leanne soon realised that those lights in her vision were not stars. They transformed into sparks of connection, digital synapses in Valkyrie's blue mind. She soared through the artificial web, travelling through her memories which unravelled and lagged like a faulty screen. Leanne wanted to close her eyes at the sickening display but she forced herself to keep them open. She could still feel her body, sat in the Arcadia's heart, even if she could not make her limbs move. It was a waking paralysis, all to the view of Valkyrie's decaying brain.

And then it stopped.

Leanne was thrown from the technological cosmos back into the Arcadia's cockpit. She looked down from a point on the ceiling, seeing familiar spaces with a new angle. And more than the viewpoint, other things were different.

The cockpit was manned. Strangers sat at the console decks, riveted to the blinking panels before them. Leanne saw a warning pulsing on each one. She knew, even without looking and hearing the accompanying alarm, that something was wrong. She felt it, an imbalance in the ship, a cancerous growth right in her very core. Things had been set in motion that should not be.

Suddenly, the door peeled open and Stefania hurried in. Eyes turned towards her and Leanne realised these people were not strangers: they were the crew currently floating in the cryo tubes. A dark-haired woman rose to her feet, pulling off her headset. Leanne could hear the alert streaming from its speakers.

"We've tried to stop her from here, Commander," the crew member said. "She's not listening. We fear it's already started."

"Settle, Lieutenant Miyuki," Stefania responded. Her tone was steady but from where she watched, Leanne could see her hands twisting and squeezing behind her back. "I've accessed Valkyrie's power banks. I've tried to talk with her."

"Tried," a man said by the forward shield. "How do you mean 'tried'?"

"I'll not have that tone," Stefania snapped. "I mean that I have attempted to undo the process. And now I need you all to go to the centrifuge."

"Oh my god," the woman who must have been Kay Miyuki moaned, sinking back into her seat. "Can we even get into cryo fast enough? We're not meant to be awake for this."

"I'm aware. That is why all of you must evacuate to the centrifuge now."

"We're nowhere near the genesis point yet," Kay protested. "This is not the mission trajectory. If we are only a few co-ordinates off..."

"This is not a topic up for debate. You all knew the perils of this mission. And you know what might happen if you do not go now. I will see the ship into her next stage. All of you, to the centrifuge. Now."