Their kids are going to be safe. Smith sacrificed her life to ensure that she moved the wire keeping the robots stuck by the EMFs for a few minutes longer. John was able to warn Judy, and she started the countdown to launch. Only 3 minutes three minutes, then their kids would be traveling to Alpha Centauri, away from the murderous robots chasing her children, Maureen thought.
Running through the halls of the Resolute for the first time since Judy handed her that whiteboard Maureen let herself feel something other than desperation. She felt hope.
*in the transport Jupiter*
Penny isn't thinking. Well, she is thinking, just not about what she is currently doing. She hasn't been able to think of anything other than her last glimpse of her parents. They tried to keep it together for Judy, Will, and her, but Penny saw right through it. At this moment, that is her curse; she sees people, and she will never forget what she saw in her parents. Her Mom's pleading steps toward them, and her father's arms gently pulling her back, their subtle erratic breathing as they tried to bite their tongues and not cry out for their kids to come back to them. Their ordinarily full of hope, support, and confident eyes now showed Penny fear and sadness she had never seen before. Penny tried her hardest to burn this picture into her mind. she replayed their word a hundred times in her head, repeating them as if she would magically forget if she stopped for a second.
Judy is strong. She led Will and me into the transport Jupiter and immediately got to work preparing to captain a ship full of children to another universe. Judy is entirely focused on her mission until a call interrupts her. Penny can't determine what is said, but when Judy gets up and starts the Jupiter launch sequence, Penny asks, "What's wrong?". Judy wastes no time relaying their dad's message that they must leave imminently. Penny rushes into the main room to help kids settle into their seats as her sister makes an announcement ending with "launch in t-3 minutes".
Launch. It was such a simple word, but to Penny, that word reminded her that they were actually leaving their parents. No one was going to come up with another plan at the last minute to keep them together like she was secretly hoping they would. As she focused on the memory of her parent's voices, she buckled the kids into seats until someone caught her eye. Why was Will out of the garage? Didn't he hear we are about to leave?
"Will, where are you going? We're trying to take off," she calls after him in that older sister voice she hates using.
"It's too late," she hears him mutter while maneuvering his way through the kids and out of the Jupiter. Penny is chasing after him and calls his name as he runs out of the airlock. Penny tries to keep up with him, but she isn't as small as Will and is slowed down, but as she makes it to the edge of the airlock, she can hear metallic echoing steps coming closer and closer. She peaks out from behind the wall and sees her baby brother with one hand raised against an army of scary, very unfriendly robots. But it seems to work. The robots slow and stop in front of Will, but then it all comes crashing down.
"Will Robinson" the leading robot says. Penny's breath leaves her lungs. Not only are the robots at their Jupiter, but they also know her brother's name.
"You know who I am" she hears Will ask. Without an infliction of fear in his voice, Will takes a step closer to the robots.
"We don't have to fight," Will takes a breath "it doesn't have to be this way," he says with an understanding he must have learned from all of the times mom had to break up their petty fights. The seconds pass slowly as the robot turns to look at his army and then back to Will. Penny feels the instinct kick in as the robot raises its top arms, and they turn bright yellow. She moves automatically to grab her brother, but surprisingly she doesn't feel the pain she expected came along with a blast from a robot.
"Scare..crow?" she hears her brother mutter as she pulls him towards the airlock.
"Will! Will, come on." she pulls "come on, come on," she hears herself repeating as she pushes him toward the doors. They hear a loud clash of metal that can only mean the robots have started fighting as she pushes Will into the airlock in front of her.
All of the sudden, she's on the ground. She sees Will punch the pad that closes the door, then turn to look down at her. He looks at her stomach, which causes her to look there too. She sees a blast mark on the plate in front of her stomach. There is burnt brown material, but it didn't go through the plate.
"I'm fine. It hit the plate" she looks at her brother with surprise and sees him smiling back at her. He grabs her hand and pulls her to her feet. They start running to the cockpit, they need to leave right now, and that's when she feels it. She slows slightly, and Wills's hand slips from hers as he keeps running. The pain was mild at first. It reminded her of the time she burnt her arm trying to curl her hair for a school dance. Maybe it just burned my skin, she thought to herself.
She hears will round the corner and shout, "Judy, let's go!" she manages a few more quick steps as the pain spreads through her body. "T- 20 seconds," she hears Judy say as she walks into the cockpit. She grabs hold of the railing to steady herself, suddenly feeling very dizzy. She watches Judy flipping switches and pressing buttons as the Jupiter gently launches from the Resolute. They are free for only a few seconds before the entire ship shakes and throws Penny to the ground. Judy opens up full communication between the transport Jupiter and their parents Jupiter 2. the audio plays throughout the cockpit.
"Dad, we took a hit." "I lost engine number one," Judy says. "Is it critical?" Penny hears her dad say in return. She thinks his voice might have some of its power back, and that makes her happy. The world gets blurry as Penny fights herself to listen to the conversation.
"Judy, don't worry. You'll be okay. We'll make sure," her Mom says over the speaker.
"Mom," Penny manages to plead softly as the burning inside her stomach intensifies. She didn't even mean to say it out loud or even loud enough for her siblings to hear. After all, they were busy trying to fly a Jupiter away from big scary robots. But her siblings must have heard her because the sound of Will yelling, "Penny!" echoes in her mind as she closes her eyes and the pain reaches her heart.
Judy is so focused on 95 other kids aboard the Jupiter that she doesn't notice when her sister's witty comments don't play over the speaker. However, she notices the missing jokes as Will screams their sister's name.
"Penny!" Judy hears Will say as he unlocks the straps of his belt. Judy instinctively turns her head toward where Will is looking. And there is Penny, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Judy is frozen, and time seems to slow. "no, no, no, no!" Will yells as he collapses at Penny's side. A voice comes through the speaker. "Will? Will, what's wrong?" their mother says as their father follows "what's wrong with Penny?" he says, and then they both ask in unison, "Judy, what's happening?".
As time speeds back up and Judy's parent's voices echo through her mind, 'what is happening?' she thinks to herself as she unlocks her safety belt and moves toward her sister. "Penny!" she hears herself say as she moves to her sister's side that Will isn't on. "What happened, Will?" she asks, half yelling.
"She said she was fine. She said it only hit the plate on her stomach." Will yells as a sob escapes.
"What only hit her stomach?" Judy asks as she reaches for the burnt stomach plate and unclips it from her sister on the side covered in blood.
"The blast from the robot, she pushed me out of the way, but she said it only hit her plate and that she was fine!" he says as he moves his sister's wavy red hair off her face. Judy wishes he wouldn't have done that because instead of seeing their sister's usually smiling face, Judy and Will see a pale and clammy version of their sister that is unconscious.
"Oh my God!" their mother yells. "Judy, tell me what is happening."
"She has a pulse," Judy says as she places a hand against her sister's neck, "but she's not conscious." Judy then moves her hand back to her sister's side to try and find the source of the bleeding "Mom?" Judy cries, "there's so much blood I-I can't find the source."
"You can do this, Judy," she hears her dad say, "remember your training." She tries to ignore the fact that the person she's currently trying to save is her sister, and she moves her hands slightly to the left of where the stomach plate would have covered. There she fells the steady pulse of blood, and she covered the wound with her hand. "I found it," she pauses and looks at all the blood surrounding them on the floor "lower left stomach wound," she says confidently "the blast must have hit only a part of the stomach plate and went into Penny," Judy says "Mom, Dad" Judy pauses "I would estimate that she has lost over a quarter of her blood volume."
"Can you stop the bleeding, Judy?" her Mom asks. Judy hears the question her Mom asks, but she also hears the question she doesn't ask. 'is Penny going to die' Judy's mind fills in the question that their mother meant to ask.
Judy pushes even harder on the spot Penny is bleeding from and then looks up to find her brother's eyes. "Will I need you to keep pressure on the wound" Judy says, and Will imminently places his hands where he sees Judys. She is positioning Wills's hands in the right spot when she hears her father say, "Judy, please." Judy has only ever listened to her father's voice sound like that once before, and that was when she was trapped beneath the ice, and they didn't think she would survive.
"I'm trying," Judy manages to say, trying not to let her emotions entirely change her voice.
"You're doing great, sweetie," Judy hears her mother say in between sobs. "We're going to make sure those robots don't follow you through the rift," they hear their father say. "No, we can't leave now," Will says "yes, you have to go" their fathers' words pause "we believe in you, you will help Penny, and you will make it to Alpha Centauri. You will finally be able to live your lives in peace," he says. "I can't-"they hear their mother start to say before their father speaks again "we'll make sure they don't follow you," he says to them as they hear their father tell Don to take over their Jupiter, then their parent's voices are gone, leaving Will and Judy with their unconscious sister and 95 other children.
Judy manages to fix Wills's hand in the correct position to hold enough pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding. She runs to the medbay and searches through the cabinets until she grabs blood clotting powder. She rips the package open and dumps the contents over her brother's hands into the wound. "This should help with the bleeding," Judy says as she stands up "where are you going" Will pleads to her. "I have to be ready to fly when mom and dad tell us to go," Judy responds, and she can see the pure fear in her little brother's eyes. Judy crouches back down and places her hands over her brother "do you feel that steady thump?" she asks him in the calmest voice she can muster. Will focuses for a second, then replies, "yeah, I can feel it." "that is her heartbeat," Judy says "just focus on the rhythm of her heart," and her brother gives her a nod and then focuses on his hands. Judy runs back to the main controls and quickly runs the Jupiter through its programming. It takes a few minutes, and as the computer tells her, it's ready for the jump.
"Mom? Dad? are we okay to jump" Judy asks into the radio.
"Yes! Yes, go!" her mother yells over the speaker. The conformation robot starts to open the rift. "how is Penny?" Judy hears her dad ask through the speaker.
Judy waits for a response from her brother, and when one doesn't come, she quickly turns around to face him. He's entirely still, eyes locked on his hands. "Will? how is Penny?" Judy asks hesitantly.
"Will, please answer us," their mother's soothing voice plays through the speakers.
"it stopped," Will says flatly.
"What stopped Will?" their mother asks.
"The thumping mom, her heart stopped beating," he says as Judy runs over and crashes into him and their sister. She frantically searches for a pulse with her mother's scream of grief rips through the cockpit. Judy places her hand against her sister's neck, concentrates on finding a pulse, and smiles at her brother.
"i-"she starts to tell her parents that Penny is alive, the clotting powder worked, and the bleeding stopped, which is why Will couldn't feel her heartbeat, but her sentence gets cut off as the rift opens and the Jupiter loses communication. Judy grabs Will and Penny as their Jupiter is pulled through the rift. They come to a stop in a new place, safe from the threat of robots, and her sister's pulse is getting stronger. She smiles and wraps Will into a hug. He seems to realize that Penny didn't die in his hands just now because he returns Judy's hug and squeezes her tight.
"She's going to be okay, Will," Judy exclaims "her pulse is getting stronger," she tells her brother.
Will smiles at her then his face drops. "What is it, Will?" Judy asks, "Mom and Dad" he states, "the transmission cut out. They don't know she's alive. I told them she was dead!" Will mutters as the memory of their mother's scream echoes through his head.
"Hey, you didn't know any better," Judy grabs his attention, "I told you when it stopped it was bad. I was wrong, not you" she rubs his shoulder calmly "it is my fault," she sighs. Their parents think Penny is dead, and there is nothing Judy can do. They are galaxies away, and their parents have no way to contact them. "We just have to find a way," Judy states. "To do what?" Will asks, "A way for Penny to tell them that she is okay."
*back in the Jupiter 2*
"-her heart stopped beating," Wills's voice echoes through their speakers. Maureen can help it; a scream rips through her body. Her baby, her Penny, the one who pushes her buttons but can make light out of any situation, the one who shares her face but is everything Maureen wanted to be, is dead. Maureen falls, but John catches her. He holds her as they slowly sink to the ground. Maureen feels John's arms wrap tightly around her as she pushes her head into his chest. Another sob wracks her body, but both of their heads snap up as they hear Judy start to speak. "I-"is all that comes over their speaker as the rift opens. The seconds slow in Maureen's mind as the transport Jupiter gets sucked through the rift when the rift closes a few moments after the entire Jupiter 2 is silent. John, Maureen, Don, and the rest of the crew stare at the spot in space that just sucked the kids through. Everyone seems to be holding their breath as Maureen turns her head to John and says, "Penny is dead."