GEMINI
Everyone knows about the Ark Twins, Lily and Alice. The Doctor and the Mechanic. The girl they didn't float for breaking the law and the girl who saved the Ark. Now separated between the Ark and the Ground, can the girls survive without one another to rely on?
CHAPTER 7 – On the Ark.
Alice
The control room was eerily silent when I got there the next morning. Everyone was avoiding my father's eye contact, flinching when he spoke and Callie was shooting daggers at him, through her tears. I frowned as I did a quick headcount, checking the monitors as I did. We'd lost 10 more overnight, including Wells. I cautiously approached my dad, "What's going on? Where's Abby?"
Callie sniffled and I tried to read her expression. My dad just looked murderous.
"Doctor Griffin has been detained. She will answer for her crimes"
I stuttered, "Wait… What? What happened?"
Callie looked up sadly, but my father spoke over him, "She exceeded the maximum medical supplies allowed per patient."
"What the hell, Dad? Are you insane? You can't float Abby!" Callie reached out to try and calm me as my protests became louder but I shrugged her off.
"It's already been decided, Alice. Her execution is set for 30 minutes from now."
I folded my arms and stepped up to him, glaring as I did, "No! You can't just execute everyone who disagrees with you!"
"Young lady, you watch yourself!" My dad replied, his anger bubbling to the surface, "I will revoke your clearance if you carry on like this."
I turned on my heel and marched back out of the control room, "I'm not going to let you do this, Dad! You can't do this!"
"ALICE!" I heard him yell after me as I ran down the corridor, heading for the medical bay.
Jackson was checking on the Chancellor as I hurtled through the ward. "Alice! Calm down, this is a ward!"
"We need to do something!" I breathed, looking at Thelonious' monitors and charts. "We can't let my father kill her! How is he doing?"
"Well, he made it through the night and his numbers are improving… but I don't know how he can help." Jackson checked some of the Chancellor's tubes, "He hasn't woken up from the anaesthesia yet."
I rolled a stool next to Jaha's hospital bed, close to his head and took his hand, "Chancellor Jaha? I don't know if you can hear me… I know you've been through hell and you are probably in a lot of pain. But we need you. Abby is about to be floated; she broke the law saving your life."
Wiping a tear from my cheek, I looked up at Jackson who was watching me with intrigue, "So, Thelonious… Please. Wake up. You have to stop my dad. You're the only one who can stop this."
Jackson had walked around the bed and placed his hand on my shoulder. "We should go, we only have ten minutes."
"No, we can't be out of time. I can't let him do this." I knew that Lily absolutely loved her mentor and I had always admired her, but I couldn't explain the tears that were flowing down my cheeks.
"Alice. Come on. We need to get to the airlock." I took one last look at the Chancellor and leant down right next to his ear.
"Please… we need you."
xxx
Callie had her arms around Abby's neck when we arrived at the airlock and Jackson hurried over to them. I decided to make one last attempt at trying to convince my father.
"Daddy, please. Don't do this. Abby is the only one who can figure this all out. Please. You don't have to do this."
My father folded his arms, watching Abby, "Our laws are there for a reason, Alice. You have to understand that."
Abby reached out her hand to me and I wrapped my arms around her, feeling very small, "I'm so sorry Abby. I tried."
"You're all he has left, Alice. You're the only one who he'll listen to. Watch them for me." She pulled back, kissed my forehead and walked into the airlock.
I backed away from my father, finding surprising comfort holding onto Callie, who was sobbing.
"JACKSON! See if you can reverse engineer the wristbands for communication. Talk to Sinclair! Ali, help him! Nod if you understand." The airlock doors sealed her in and I forced my head to move. Clenching my eyes tightly and waiting for that all too familiar 'whoosh', I found myself muttering under my breath, "I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry."
"STOP!"
xxx
I hadn't spoken to my father all day, still angry at him for trying to float Abby. I'd given the Chancellor a briefing on the work I had been doing and had started working with Jackson and Sinclair on using the wristbands to communicate with the kids on the ground. We were muttering quietly about it in the mess hall when Raven Reyes marched up to me.
"Birdy." I nodded at her as she sat own opposite me.
She had a determined, 'up-to-no-good' expression across her face that I recognised all too well, "Okay Wonderland. Your father is on the council. What is going on with the Skybox?"
"I'm sorry Raven. I don't know any more than you do." I was a terrible liar and she knew that, but Jackson's nod out of the corner of my eye told me that I was convincing.
She reached over to steal something off my tray but I batted her hand away, "So you know about this virus outbreak in lock-up?"
I nodded, "Yeah, I haven't been able to visit Lily."
"Something is going on. And I'm going to find out what it is." I rolled my eyes after her.
xxx
Jackson, Abby and I were looking at the data from the wrist bands and while they looked at the reasons behind the transmission terminating, I was trying to understand how they worked. I rolled my eyes at the clanging coming from one of the air ducts.
"What's breaking now?"
Abby rushed over to the air duct and pulled Raven down, "Apparently you have a thing for air ducts."
She folded her arms and looked at the monitors, "They're not dying."
Her gaze fell on me, ""Don't know any more than me" Huh?"
I grimaced, "Sorry, Birdy, it was classified."
"What are you talking about Raven?" Abby interrupted, going back to Raven's earlier statement, which got me thinking.
Abby handed her a wristband and she turned it over in her hands then looked up at me, just as I caught onto her thought pattern.
"They're taking them off!" We chorused, smirking at one another.
Jackson frowned, "Why would they do something so reckless?"
Abby shook her head, smiling with a proud look on her face, "Because we told them not to."
After giving Raven a lecture about the sensitivity of the topic and how she couldn't say anything, Abby left for the council meeting. I'd tried to push the meeting to the back of my mind since it was my father lobbying for the Population Reduction Initiative. It was the most extreme and brutal of the solutions to the life support problem, and my father wasn't exactly known for his merciful nature. Instead, I beckoned Raven over the design of the wristbands that I'd been pouring over for the last few hours.
"We've lost all communication with the kids on the ground, so we're looking to see if we can use the wristbands to send a signal down. But according to Sinclair, they weren't designed to receive which is really stupid because they sent them down in a hundred year old dropship that was bound to crash land anyway…"
"Wonderland, you're babbling." Raven interrupted me, looking at the design.
I cleared my throat, "Sorry. Anyway, I was looking at the design and they could probably tinker with it on the ground and send up sort of Morse code signal."
"But then you have the issue of that of…"
"Who's going to tinker?" I nodded, finishing her sentence. I pointed up at the monitor. "I recruited Monty myself, he could maybe do it. Because the wristbands are only functional when they are embedded in their bodies, it's really difficult. It's a stupid design really."
"Damn engineers," she muttered, "This was probably Wick's brain child."
I chuckled, looking back up at the monitor, checking on Lily.
"So, what does all of that mean?" Raven asked and I followed her gaze to a monitor with a face that I recognised. Finn Collins. Her boyfriend.
A.N - A fairly boring and short chapter, sorry! The next few chapters are going to be very Lily-centric, so I thought Alice deserved her own chapter. I love the idea that Raven and Alice are friends and often work on projects together. Next chapter will be up soon.
Thank you for all the lovely reviews, please leave more. I really appreciate them
~C.I
xoxo
