THE THIRD CHAPTER
"The Longest Night Ever Part One"
Despite what the failed scientists and conspiracists (and perhaps some unfriendly lawyers) of this world would have you believe:
Impossibilities do not exist.
Because while there are unlikely things, such as the statistical probability of a high school student actually liking high school, nothing is truly and organically impossible. Laws, both in society and physics, can be broken given the right circumstance. And while breaking societal laws could very well lead to one's arrest and possible detainment for the remainder of his or her natural life, breaking the laws of physics can lead to very extraordinary things.
One such improbability was to happen tonight.
And in the essence of a great 1980's horror movie, it began with a thud in the night.
The thud of a great ship landing.
"Did you hear that?"
Santana's voice shot through the musty air. Kicking herself off the sterile cotton bed, she sticks her neck out in the darkness, carefully extending an arm across the next bed. She heard Quinn groan when she felt the other girl's rough touch, stirring just enough to roll over in her cot and snipe back a curt 'No, go back to sleep, you idiot'.
Which of course, she couldn't NOW.
Stubbornly, the raven-haired girl sifted through the darkness, which seemed thick and heavy at times, only lessened by the soft moonlight that drifted through the small side window of the bunker. Thoughtlessly, she pressed her hand against the glimmering dust that clung to impassive glass. She didn't recognize the shimmering, icy blue dust that rose as the ship made its descent to planet below. Or the multiple craters which seethed with almost silvery, white-hot gas. Like most eartheans would probably assume in this situation - she rightly assumed this was not Earth.
"Liar," She muttered angrily partly to herself, partly to the Rachel voodoo doll she had pictured in her mind. Well, if Rachel wasn't going to take them home, it seemed as though she would have to do it herself. Lightly treading across the room, she shook the half-sleeping blonde out of her stupor and whispered into the shell of her ear, "Wake up, sleepyhead. I think we have our work cut out for us."
When she heard the wooshing sound of the great sliding doors, she mustered the strength to sit up right in the cot and murmured, "Where are you going, Santana?"
And when there was no answer, of course, she would have to follow along.
"Honestly, what do you think you're doing?"
Absently, Santana waved her off, marching through the empty hallways of the spaceship with light, calculated steps. Quinn trailed behind her with equal indignation. When the brunette noticed, she simply tossed her hair, eyes still heavily focused on returning to the control room on the main floor, hoping she had recognized enough of the way to backtrack in the fading light.
"Getting us home, what do you think?" She sniped.
"I thought Rachel was bringing us home."
Seething, the brunette stole a moment to whirl at her. She pointed at one of the side windows, the icy-blue planet below practically bursting to life with an explosion of white gases. "Looks like Berry took a little detour."
Quinn's eyebrows furrowed as the unease sunk in. "But she wouldn't-"
"Well, she did." Santana retorted, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip lightly. Another set of doors slid open and she took in the immense, extraordinary control room, which had fallen silent now that silvery 'things' were gone. She gazed up at the expansive navigation screen, which in bright and bold green letters flashed AUTOPILOT.
"What are you doing?" Quinn asked, watching as Santana jostled something in the near darkness.
Santana struggled with the switches, frantically looking for something that could redirect the autopilot to an incredibly inconspicuous blue-green ball in the Milky Way galaxy, "Trying to find a way to reroute this thing."
Quinn leaned against the wall with her elbows bent, "Don't you think it's a little weird that this place is so empty?"
To be fair, it was probably a fair question, but Santana was already far too focused on the issue at hand to dwell over fair questions. She sifted through the various buttons, switches and levers that she found on the control board. Some did fantastic things when activated in the right order, other combinations were completely useless such as the one that filled the room with bubbles and elevator music.
Quinn blew the soapy substance out of her hair, watching as the furious brunette reached for a crank in the dark with an impressive label. She squinted her eyes to read it, eyes widening upon the awful realisation that by the time she had screamed for her to stop, the crank was already pulled.
The floor beneath them opened up.
For a second they floating, then falling, then finally - with a hard thud, pressed up against the dusty blue ground. Quinn rubbed the ash off her face and leapt back when she heard the geyser next to her fallen body burst with a jet of cold steam. Santana was a few meters away with her face planted very deeply into the ground below.
"Don't pull that." The blonde finished before promptly collapsing.
A mushroom cloud of blue ash formed where her face planted into the ground.
It was going to be a very long night.
…
…
…
