Abi was aware of her breathing first. In and out. In and out. A steady slow rhythm.
The air was growing colder with each breath, spreading an icy chill through her chest. It reached down to her stomach and up to her throat, bringing a shock of awareness with it as she woke up. Her body felt heavy and weighted but slowly she was able to wiggle her fingers, shift her feet, and finally open her eyes.
They burned when Abi first opened them and she blinked until the blurriness went away and they adjusted to the dim light around her. After taking several deep breaths she was able to turn her head to look around her but she froze when a sharp pain shot through her neck. She moved slower this time, trying to take in her surroundings.
Am I in a hospital?
The bed she was laying in was small and a tall wall lined the sides. Above her head a dull blue light blinked every few seconds and Abi watched it for a few moments, shifting her body slowly to carefully roll onto her side. Her body felt stiff and her movements were agonizingly slow, but she managed to propped herself up on her elbow to peer over the wall. The bed she was in wasn't that far off the ground but the thought of crawling over it sounded exhausting.
Abi relaxed back into the bed and took a moment to look herself over. She was wearing white clothes that felt like spandex when she brushed her fingers over her legs. They fit tight and didn't offer much warmth, and were a far cry from anything in her own closet.
Abi continued to check her body over slowly, moving her cold fingers over her stomach, then her arms, and finally her head covered in the same fabric. Everything felt sluggish and slow but aside from her sore neck and heavy limbs, nothing seemed to be wrong or broken. Abi waved her fingers in front of her face, all ten perfectly accounted for and as she remembered them. Even the thick pink scar tissue that ran across the back of her left hand was still there. Abi lifted her head to count her toes. As cold as they were all ten were there, freckly as they had always been.
Taking a slow deep breath, Abi moved carefully back onto her side and peered over the wall again. There was a strange box next to her with the same blue light blinking at the top, but in the dim light she couldn't make out much of what was around her. She wiggled around until she was kneeling in the bed and managed to step over the wall.
The cold floor felt like ice to her foot and Abi sucked in a quick breath. Her chest ached at the sudden movement but she kept going and climbed completely out of the bed. The ache in her chest worsened and her hands trembled as she forced herself to stand up straight. A wave of nausea turned her stomach and Abi doubled over, spitting up an acidic bile that made her nose and throat burn. She spit as much of it out as she could, recoiling at the horrible taste and wiping her mouth on the slippery fabric over her arm.
She held onto the wall of the bed to support her weight until she was sure her knees wouldn't buckle as her body continued to tremble. The pounding of her heart in her chest finally slowed as Abi took deep calming breaths, stepping over the pile of vomit on the floor to the box beside her bed.
The same blue light blinking steadily at the head of what was another bed like hers. Unlike hers though, she noticed a pane of glass covered the top as she stepped closer. A man was in the bed, his skin impossibly pale and his eyes closed. Abi reached out a shaky hand and tapped her fingers on the cold glass.
"Multiple system failures in need of attention." Abi snatched her hand back as a loud voice spoke and she scrambled back to crouch low beside her bed. She frantically looked around for the person until the voice sounded again, coming from speakers somewhere above her. "Overall structural integrity was maintained during the incident. Two sections of sleeping pods require attention. Available non-essential personnel, please report to Nursery to assess damages to colonists."
The booming voice echoed through the room and Abi stayed where she was, listening hard for any other voices. Her shaking hands clung to the wall around her bed as she peered around the room.
It didn't look anything like a nursery. For as far as she could see in the dim light, there were two rows of beds covered in glass. Somewhere farther away Abi could make out red blinking lights, but none of them made any sense to her.
None of this makes sense.
Abi turned to sit on the floor and leaned against her metal box of a bed. She scooted up towards the head when she realized she was almost sitting in the pile of vomit, the bile still burned the back of her throat and she suppressed the urge to gag again. She took a deep breath to settle her stomach and climbed back to her feet.
Wherever she had woken up, there had to be a way out.
Abi stepped over the vomit and glanced around the two rows of beds again, a new determination to escape surging through her. She was drawn to the red blinking lights that flashed across the room and she stepped down the walkway between the rows. All the beds were exactly alike, all filled with people that seemed to be in a deep sleep. Or dead. They all were so lifeless it was hard to tell the difference.
Why aren't they waking up? Are these people trapped here too?
Her heart felt like it jumped into her throat when she heard footsteps. A silhouette passed in front of the red lights, briefly casting the room into even more shadows
Abi scrambled to hide between two of the beds, scooting as far away from the walkway as possible and squeezing herself into the dark corner. Her heart raced as the footsteps came closer and closer, then stopped. Abi pressed her hands against her mouth. Whoever it was, if they listened carefully they might be able to hear her heart pounding in her chest or her shaky breaths as she struggled to calm herself down.
"How many colonists have we lost?" a man asked, his voice far closer than Abi had anticipated. She pressed her hands harder against her mouth and tried to control her breathing through her nose.
The woman responded again, her robotic voice echoing through the room from above. "Forty-seven colonists have expired due to the malfunctioning of their pods. Forty-eight pods have experienced malfunction."
"Has the forty-eighth colonist been awakened?" the man asked, his footsteps slow as he started to walk away.
There was a long pause, then, "Yes."
"Location of the forty-eighth pod, Mother?"
"F-415."
Abi held her breath as the man walked towards her hiding spot and she tucked herself as tightly into the corner as she could, pressing her face into her knees. The footsteps passed by and Abi let out a slow shaky breath.
She crawled on her hands and knees towards the walkway, hoping the dim light was enough to hide her as she peered around the corner of the bed - or pod. A tall man was standing maybe forty feet away at the end of the bed she had woken up in, stooping low to look at the vomit she had left on the floor.
"Mother? How long ago did they wake up?"
"Eleven and a half minutes ago."
The man walked to the head of her bed, taking a long step over the mess on the floor and Abi shifted, crouching low and steadying herself against the bed as she watched the back of his head. Her bare feet made hardly any noise as she slowly crept along the edge of the walkway towards the blinking lights and back where the man had come from. There had to be a door or a window that way.
"What information do we have on this colonist?" the man asked, his voice quieter as he kneeled down to inspect her pod closer.
"Abigail Grace Reynolds. Born February 20, 1998 in Washington D.C. Asleep since 2016." Abi froze when she heard her own name echo around the room and for a moment she thought she would vomit again. There was that familiar flip in her stomach and she continued as quietly as she could towards the lights. "Her place on the Covenant was secured in place of Dr. Marcus Leonard Reynolds." Abi pressed her hand against her mouth to stifle her rapid breathing, her footsteps faster as she made it to the end of the walkway.
The red lights were flashing from above an open doorway and Abi let out a sigh of relief at the sight, moving faster towards the door.
I can get out of here. There has to be a door out here. Abi felt tears start to build up and her breathing became louder. Don't panic. Don't panic. Keep calm. You can get out of here.
"Hey! Wait!" the man yelled and Abi fought the urge to turn and look back.
She started to run for the door - to hell with being noisy now - her footsteps still quiet in comparison to the stomping she could hear behind her. Fear pushed her faster and faster until she flew through the door and found herself in a large hallway, the lights dim but enough to see by as Abi ran as fast as her tired legs could take her.
"A door, a door," Abi muttered to herself, looking at the metal walls on either side of her as she went. She slid to a stop, her feet skidding painfully on the cold floor as she finally found an open door. It only lead to another hallway but it was something, so Abi took off through the doorway as a voice echoed behind her.
"Miss Reynolds, wait! Mother! Lock doors R45 and R46!"
Abi's lungs burned as she ran and came to a stop at another door. Before she could pass over the threshold the door slid shut inches away from Abi's face and she jumped back. Footsteps pounded on the ground towards her and she raced down the hallway faster, looking for other doors frantically.
"Lock R47, R49 and S12!"
Abi slid to a stop just as another door shut in front of her.
She was getting closer to the end of this hallway and her options looked like they were getting worse, so when she saw a small door on the other side of the hall she ran as fast as she could through it. There air here was warmer and the lights were brighter. She blinked through the panicked tears and gasped for breath. There was a single open door at the end of this hallway.
Just how big is this place?
Abi felt her heart sink when the door down the hallway slid shut. She frantically looked around for any kind of door or window or handle, her shaking hands feeling the wall for anything that would give way. She pounded the metal with her fists when nothing moved.
"Miss Reynolds, please don't run. There is a lot that needs to be explained."
Abi let out a sharp breath - maybe if she was calmer she would have shot back something sarcastic - and continued to search the walls. She was growing more and more frenzied as his footsteps came closer.
"Miss Reynolds, please stop. I assure you that you are in no danger here," he said calmly, coming to a stop. His voice was composed and he wasn't even out of breath; in contrast Abi was aware that her cheeks were wet with tears and that her breaths were coming out in sobs. She still searched for anything in the hallway, any sign of a doorway or anything she could pick up and use to protect herself. "I need to take you to see a medic, your pod malfunctioned and we need to see if you're okay. I assure you our doctor is very qualified."
Abi would feel better about turning and facing him if she had a weapon of some kind, but she had found nothing. There wasn't even a broom or a single heavy object she could throw, so she wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach and sucked in deep breaths.
Abi finally turned to look at him. He was farther down the hall than she had thought and he held his hands opened out to her.
"I'm not armed," he said when Abi looked him up and down, searching for any signs of a knife or a gun. He was wearing clothes about as tight as the ones Abi woke up in and there was no sign of a weapon strapped to him. "I can assure you, Miss Reynolds. You are safe here."
He stepped closer and Abi backed up, only stopping when her back hit the wall. The hallway was narrow, but maybe if she rushed him she could slip by and try a different-
"If you're thinking about running again, I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why?" Abi asked when she finally found her voice. Her throat burned and her voice didn't quite sound like her own.
"These doors won't open for you. The only path right now is back to the pods and there are no other exits through that room." He waited until Abi's ragged breathing started to calm down and her eyes finally stopped seeking out weapons or exits around them. Instead, she stared warily at him like she was waiting for an attack. "I need to take you to see our doctor. She needs to see if your health was effected by the pods malfunctioning."
"That voice earlier. It knew my name, it knew about me and it knew my father's name too." The man nodded but didn't seem to infer her question. "How do you know all of that?"
"There is no easy answer to the-"
"I don't care if it's easy," Abi said sharply, wiping her wet cheeks on the back of her hand and taking slow deep breaths. Her heart was still beating rapidly in her chest. "How do you know my name?"
"When you were brought here you were already in an archaic version of cryosleep, but your information was with you and uploaded to Mother as well as your pod."
There were so many questions Abi didn't know where to start. Cryosleep? Mother? What kind of metal maze did they put her in?
"Please," the man said, holding up his hands again to prove he was not armed. "I need to take you to our doctor."
"And if I don't want to go with you?" Abi asked, wishing she sounded more bold and daring instead of terrified.
"I can physically take you there myself so our doctor can determine whether you need medical treatment," he said. "But I don't want to force you to go unwillingly."
Abi gave him a final look over. He was at least several inches taller than her and much more muscular, she didn't doubt that he could drag her there kicking and screaming if he wanted to.
"I'll follow you there," Abi said finally.
He nodded and stood a little taller, lowering his hands to his sides and motioning down the hallway. "That would be the easiest for both of us. This way, please."