My mind refuses to accept the sight, like a scratched film jumping frames. Ivan slumped over the controls, blood still sluggishly seeping from that impossible wound. The ship lurches violently, alarms blaring, and I can't reconcile the image with the calm, determined man who was piloting us to freedom moments before.
Then the ship screams.
Not just the engines.
Metal screeches as the vessel is thrown sideways, tumbling through the air with a sickening lurch. The lights flicker, die, then flicker back to a dim, red emergency glow. I'm thrown against the wall again, Hestia's small body pressing against me, her screams a raw, ragged sound in my ear.
I look back toward Eric.
He's standing there. Calm. Unbothered by the chaos that's sending us all flying. His expression is unchanged from the moment he fired that shot. Cold, placid.
Dead.
He's not looking at anything, just out the front windshield as we plummet to the ground.
Mia...
I look to Mia. She's not looking at Ivan. She's looking at me. Her expression is a mixture of something I can't describe. Pity? Regret?
Her lips move, forming words I can't hear over the roar.
But I don't need to hear.
Her face tells me everything.
She knew.
Mia knew.
And she didn't stop him.
My world narrows to that one realization. The ship is falling, we're all going to die, but all I can see is Mia's face, the look in her eyes, the knowledge that she betrayed us.
I'm thrown again as the ship hits the ground with a sickening crunch. Metal shrieks, bending, twisting, breaking. The world is a blur of motion, of sound, of pain.
I manage to keep my grip on Hestia, shielding her with my body as much as I can. We're tossed around like dolls in a box, but I hang on, my arms wrapped around her, my mind a screaming void of horror and disbelief.
The ship skids across the sand, throwing up a plume of dust and debris, before finally, mercifully, coming to a stop.
Silence descends, broken only by the groaning of metal and the soft sobs of Hestia.
I'm alive.
I'm alive.
I look up, my vision swimming. Hestia is clinging to me, her face buried in my shoulder, her body trembling. She's alive.
Sinead... I see her slumped over the console, blood matting her red hair.
Peter... I can't see him. The front of the ship is crushed, the windshield shattered.
Mia and Eric... They're still standing, somehow. They're banged up just like me, but they've already stood back up. The ship is upside down now, the door we'd been so intent on closing in time now hung off its hinges.
Mia's gaze flickered to me for a moment.
I thought...
She might say something, but she turned and left the shuttle, walking toward the group of aliens running toward the crash site.
Eric's gaze remained on me.
He was still holding the gun.
His face was blank. His expression empty.
I scrambled backward, dragging Hestia with me. My heart hammered in my chest, a frantic, desperate rhythm. I had to get out of here. I had to get away from him.
He raised the gun, the barrel unwavering.
This...
The distance was too far.
We were cornered.
The door was behind him.
Behind him and the gun that...
His eyes are emotionless.
Staring at me.
"...Eric...." My own voice is nothing but a choked whisper, a ragged sob.
His finger is on the trigger. I can see it. The slight pressure.
My mind, my entire being, my soul...
Is just waiting for the bang.
And then.
He doesn't move.
His finger, which was about to pull the trigger, is frozen.
There's a flicker in his eyes.
Something behind the placid emptiness.
Conflict.
His lips are pressed together. His grip on the gun is white-knuckled. His brow furrows, as if he's fighting something, an internal war of which I can see only the external symptoms.
There's a beat. A second. An eternity.
The look in his eyes changes.
It's not...Eric's look. Not exactly. But it's not the cold emptiness that it was a moment ago, either. It's...something else. Something pained. Something desperate.
He's not looking through me.
He's looking at me.
Directly into my eyes.
His lips are a tight light, his hand trembles, and he stares at me. Staring at me with those familiar grey eyes.
It's...
Pain.
That look of resignation he got sometimes, but it's so much more intense than I've ever seen.
His eyes shine like he's about to cry, but there's nothing in his expression to say so. Not in that rigid mask of a face he wears.
The gun is still pointing at me, and the aliens, with Mia, seem to be finishing up with whatever report she was giving. Their attention is turning towards us, towards the downed ship.
He sees that, too.
I know he does. I can see that from the way his eyes widen slightly, the way his body tenses further.
His look screams one thing, and one thing only.
Run.
Run, Sarah.
Run. Run. Run.
That's all it takes.
One moment we're frozen. He's holding the gun. I'm holding Hestia. We're both staring at each other, and in the next, I'm running.
I run past him.
For just a moment, it's as if time pauses.
Like a breath that holds forever, as I pass by my friend.
As if I'm floating.
And then my feet hit the ground.
I run, with no regard for if I'm seen, as gunfire goes off, as if every moment he'd been holding back he paid back with interest. Shooting nothing but the wall, and - perhaps inadvertently - keeping their attention. Just for a moment. Long enough.
I know, with a certainty that fills my entire being, that if I even dare to look back, I'm dead. If I look back at him, I'll die. I'll slow down, I'll hesitate.
I'll die.
Hestia will die.
We'll all die.
So I run.
My feet pound against the ground, each step a jolt of pain, of desperation, of horror, but I don't stop. I don't look back. I run into the darkness, into the unknown, with nothing but the feel of Hestia's hand in mine and the ghost of Eric's eyes burned into my memory.
The landscape is a blur of sand and stars, the alien moonlight painting everything in shades of silver and black. My lungs burn, my legs ache, but I push on, fueled by adrenaline and a terror so profound it's almost a kind of clarity.
The ship is behind me. The aliens are behind me. Eric is behind me.
My world has narrowed to this one, single, desperate act.
But where am I running to?
That thought hits me like a physical blow. I'm running, but I have no destination. I'm just...running. Away.
Away from the horror. Away from the betrayal.
Away from the friends I thought I knew.
The ground changes under my feet, from sand to rock, the terrain becoming more treacherous. Hestia stumbles beside me, and I slow, just for a moment, to pull her along, my grip on her hand like a vise.
"We have to keep going," I pant, though I know we can't just keep going forever. "We have to get back to the base to warn them."
...I wasn't sure.
Until that moment.
Where I was going. But now. I know.
We have to get back to the base.
We have to tell them what happened. We have to tell them...
...Tell them what? That Eric shot Ivan? That Mia helped him? That they betrayed us?
It sounds insane. Even to me. And I saw it happen. How can I possibly explain it?
I can't.
I can't explain it, but I can warn them. I have to warn them.
Mia and Eric will have told them everything about the compound, about its defenses, about its people. They'll be coming. The aliens will be coming.
We have to warn them.
No matter what, we have to escape.
No matter what...
We can't die.