In the Dark

Amara floated at the edge of awareness for hours before she woke, groggy and detached from her extremities. She lifted her hand and flexed herr fingers. Her body's reactions were slowed, like moving through a thick, frozen sludge.

The strength of her limbs restored as she worked them. She focused hard on flexing and relaxing her hands, curling her toes, and shaking her legs until it became instinctual.

Still, no AMPs came. The Cryo Bay should have been a flurry of movement by now. AMPs and nurses should have teemed the halls, milling between pods, testing reflexes and monitoring vitals of each round of animatees. Where was the warm face to greet her and soothe her through the recovery and the confusion, to help her regain cognition? She peered around the hall, straining against the glass to get a good view.

The walls were smooth, hiding hundreds of pods tucked into flush, sterile white walls. Angry fluorescent lights glinted off the walls and filled the room. Nothing moved, as far as she could see, except a single flashing red light. She pressed the release button and regained an unsteady footing as her pod tipped forward. She gagged as she carefully removed the tube from her throat and pulled the mask away. She inhaled deeply, her first breath of air in....

The door opened with a pop and she pulled at the interface. 1,156 days. Too early. Just under 2 years early, and now they were off-course. The siren came to her then. A long shrill. It beeped once and then cut off, along with the blaring light above the exit.

Amara stared at the light, shuffling through the reasons she would have been woken early, and alone. The safety measures they had in place should have woken the entire 1st crew, the AMP's and the nurses.

She sent her pod away and then checked Charlie's pod, then Alex's. Both interfaces remained dead at her touch. Amara frowned and moved through the room, pressing a hand to each interface before she reached a line of 12 figures with dark, metallic skin.

She approached the first in line. Artifical Medical Practitioner: 1596

"1596, activate." Amara told the machine. "1596, ACTIVATE!"

She pressed her forefinger to the button beside the humanoid's neck. The figure animated and its eyes lit in a soft blue. "AMP 1596, activated. Please state your name and status to commence manual command activation." The humanoid said in a flat tone.

Amara sighed. Everything was broken. They should have animated with presets to eliminate this process. "Amara Hutton. ExoCaptain."

1596 whirred for a moment before a harsh chirp sounded from its chest. "Recognition failed. Please try again."

Amara restated her name and rank.

The chirp sounded again and Amara hissed between her teeth.

"Recognition failed. Please enter your 10-digit password."

An interface slid out from the humanoid's chest. She entered her password and submitted it.

The chirp sounded again. "Invalid password. Please try again."

She tried twice more, each attempt left her more frustrated. Only her hard-won poise kept her from sending a fist through the machine.

"Invalid password, would you like to reset your password?"

"Yes."

"Password reset unavailable at this time. Please try again later." The humanoid whirred as the lights faded and its head fell. Amara stared, openmouthed, feeling the rage boil in her stomach. She took a breath before moving to the next AMP and running through the same process. As the second machine shut down, she couldn't help but lash out.

She gave up and retrieved her clothes from the locker beside her pod. She pulled on her stiff uniform as she made her way down a long hall of Cryo rooms.

The interface of the control room lit up at her touch and she entered her information.

PASSWORD INVALID

Her heart sunk. It dropped to her feet, through the floor, and the many floors beneath it, into open space. Why did they even rely on passwords anymore these days. Society had advanced to near-perfect facial and audio recognition, using outdated passwords that could be forgotten or mistyped seemed pointless in this day.

Because even that fails. She reminded herself of the AMPs failure.

A shuffle from behind her had her turning in time to see a shadowy blot flit across the hallway. She followed the blot to the room it had disappeared into and found nothing.

"Hypnapompic hallucinations are common after waking." She recalled the words.

Amara was a force to be reckoned with, one of the youngest to ever make captain, and one of the first women. She had proven herself enough to be elected first captain of The Last Exodus. But technology had always been her downfall.

She retrieved a crowbar and returned to the Cryo Bay. She heard a muted shuffling beneath the echo of the tap of her feet down the long hallway and stopped. She looked around and listened, but when the last echo faded, only silence reached her ears. With a shiver, she turned into the room and found the name she was looking for.

It took hours to pry open the drawer, she needed to first force purchase in the smallest of slits between the metal. And then hours more for the man to regain consciousness.

"Tomas." She sighed with a grin, when he finally stepped from the pod, dripping, teetering, and mostly naked. He froze as she uncharacteristically wrapped her arms around him. She quickly pulled away.

He looked around, a daze in his eyes. "Where is everyone?" he asked with a gruff voice.

"That's why I woke you. I don't know what happened, but the system is malfunctioning. I woke up early and I can't access the interfaces or the AMPs. I'm locked out of control."

Ah. He smirked as he noticed the destruction of his pod. "How early?" He asked with a yawn.

"A little over two years." She shrugged in apology. "If we fix the issue, you can take my pod."

Tomas, ever dutiful and focused, needed no further prompting to follow Amara to the control room. Beneath the echo of their footsteps, Amara swore she could still hear the steady cadence of a hidden shuffle.

*****

Amara paced while Tomas worked at his computer, connected to the interface through a thick cable. He had gotten sick of her peering over his shoulder and banished her to "over there". But her energy had to go somewhere.

"This wasn't a malfunction, Amara. You were locked out of the system, we all were."

Amara whirled towards him, he stopped her with a hand.

"Nope, you stay over there, I mean it." He softened the words with a smile.

Amara huffed and settled back on her heel. "What kind of attack?"

"Someone put a virus into the system, it seems like it's been here since we left Earth, but someone activated it manually."

"You mean someone else is awake?"

"Unless they put themselves back to sleep, yes, someone was awake."

Amara laid a hand on the grip of her gun and smiled. She now had a good use for her heightened energy.

She searched the various bays and holds of the ship, even checking the cryopods, and beneath and around the plants of the Agro bay. The fruit trees still bore fruit, but the edges of the leaves had begun to wilt and the plants had begun to droop. Their self-sustaining hydroponic system must have begun to fail weeks ago.

She snagged a couple pieces of fruit and headed back to the control room. In the last hallway, she stopped suddenly. The shuffler didn't have time to halt and she whirled at the noise. "I hear you." She called into the empty hallway. "You're smart and very stealthy, but I heard you. You can come out now."

Silence filled the cavernous hall and for a long moment all Amara heard was her own haggard breathing. She began to wonder if the noise was indeed a mix of residual grogginess and a fabrication of anxiety. She began to move down the hall when a figure stepped from a darkened alcove.

She prowled down the hallway, eyeing the stranger. "Who are you?"

"That doesn't matter."

"What did you do to the ship's operating system?"

"That... also doesn't matter." The stranger smiled beneath his hood.

Amara grasped her gun and rushed towards the stranger. He halted her with a single outstretched hand, with a glistening barrel pointed directly at her chest.

"I wouldn't, if I were you. Although, it wouldn't matter, we'll all be dead soon anyways."

"Why?"

"Now that.. does matter." The stranger smiled and pulled back his hood. Amara couldn't place the dark eyes and tilted smirk, but she recognized the look of crazy. And crazy always had a long-winded tale.

"For centuries humans have proven that our existence is destruction. We destroy because we're angry, or prideful, or jealous, or because we're just lazy or selfish. We destroyed our world. A WHOLE planet, the destruction was slow, we had centuries of warning, did we change? No, we pushed our world to the brink, and then abandoned it to go destroy another world, someone else's home. I'm saving that world and all future worlds that our parasite species sets his sights on."

"Why did you wake me up if you just wanted to destroy us, don't you know I will stop you?"

He tilted his head back and laughed. With the distraction, Amara inched forward. He sensed the movement and refocused on her.

"Oh, the great Captain Hutton. You could try. I was scared of that at first. I didn't wake you, the system did. You were the last security measure, and the only one I didn't plan for. But it worked out well. At least now, the end of humanity will have an audience. Enjoy the show, Amara." He lifted the gun to his chin and pulled the trigger.

******

The ground beneath Amara's feet shifted and she tumbled into the wall. She heard a whoosh from down the hallway, and she righted herself and charged towards the control room.

"You did it!" She shouted as she rounded the corner and saw the open doorway.

Tomas stood with a puzzled look in the middle of the doorway. "No, I-"

He cut off as he caught sight of Amara and he moved towards her with a concerned face. "Don't worry about it." Amara said as she dashed into the room and to the core console.

"I didn't get the door open, I was still fighting through the virus."

"It doesn't matter now. Let's just focus on-" The ground shook violently beneath her feet. She gripped the edge of the console and started up the interface.

RECOGNITION FAILED. PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD.

Amara smacked a hand against the keyboard and screamed her frustration. She frantically typed her password in as the room continued to rattle all around her and through her, making her teeth chatter. All the sirens of the ship began to blare and an intense red light pulsed through the room.

PASSWORD INVALID. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

"Amara!" Tomas shouted from the far side of the control room.

The thunderous rattle and the shrill siren drowned out the clack of the keyboards.

"Not now, Tomas!"

PASSWORD INVALID. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

Amara could feel a hot pit of rage and anxiety choking her. She slammed each key with full force.

"Amara! Seriously! You need to see this." Tomas called, barely audible over the fray.

PASSWORD INVALID. PLEASE RESET YOUR PASSWORD.

Amara cursed and smashed her fist on the counter. "What is it, Tom-" She stopped as a blinding light caught her vision through a viewing port in the ship.

She glared through her fingers and slid a solar filter screen across the fortified glass. Her mouth dropped open and she stepped back. Her mind went to the thousands of souls aboard her ship. At least they were sleeping. The ship gave a great lurch, as if to solidify that the smug, crazy stranger had been right. She was too late.

"Tomas." she whispered. He turned. She ripped her eyes from the window and the massive star they hurtled toward and met his grim face. "I'm sorry that I woke you."

He cleared the distance between them in two strides and placed a hand against her cheek. Their eyes met with shared sorrow and regret. He pressed his lips against Amara's and sunk deep into the kiss. A moan passed between them.

He broke the kiss and laid his forehead against hers. "I forgive you." A deafening boom sounded through the chamber, and it rang through her ears. His body crumpled and a single tear rolled down her face.

She slipped the magazine from the gun, tossed it and the emptied gun aside and stepped to the window.

A captain goes down with her ship.