A/N: Sorry this chapter is short, I'm trying to pace everything in this fic right as well as struggling to find time to write it, so I apologise for that :P

Please review and let me know what you think :)

I do not own Pitch Perfect or any of its characters

Beca's hands were shaking as she changed into her uniform. She fumbled with the zips and buckles of her jacket, and had to keep stopping to push back the urge to throw up.

She had never been this nervous before going on a mission before. Not even her very first one. Finding out if something had happened to Stacie was the most terrifying thing she had yet encountered. The idea that her sister, who had practically raised her, who had gotten her into the Bellas, who had looked after her those first six months, could have been captured. Or killed. She couldn't bare it.

Chloe kept stealing glances of her as she changed beside her.

She was nervous for a different reason. This would be her first time leaving Terram, and her brother was sitting at the front of her mind. He had died on his first venture out, on what was supposed to be a fact-finding mission. She was definitely nervous.

"You okay, Chlo'?" Beca asked, strapping her boots on.

"Yep," Chloe replied, not entirely convincingly.

"You'll be fine," Beca said. "I'll keep an eye on you."

"Are you okay?" Chloe asked, taking Beca's hand and squeezing it.

"I'm scared of what we're gonna find," she said, checking her gun. "But I need to know what happened to Stacie. I don't believe she decided to stay on that planet. Not when she could have come home."

Chloe squeezed her hand again.

"Ready, soldiers?" Aubrey asked, her voice betraying none of the fear that threatened to spill out.

Beca's eyes locked with Aubrey's, and she saw tears glistening in them. She nodded.

"Let's do this," Aubrey said.

The ride to the ship was quiet and tense. Fat Amy wasn't making her usual jokes. Cynthia Rose wasn't singing softly from the pilot's seat. Lily wasn't muttering weird and slightly creepy things under her breath. They were all silent. Waiting. Afraid.

Their small ship connected to the transport ship, two sets of doors aligned and locked in so the Bellas could make the journey across.

They stepped into the eerily quiet ship, and waited for the confirmation that they could take their helmets off. The air should be breathable, and the group never liked wearing them if they could avoid it. The recycled oxygen the helmets gave caused bad headaches, and they all felt like they couldn't see or hear as well in them.

"Okay, helmets off if you want them off," Aubrey said.

They all removed them and attached them to their belts, where they hung in case of an emergency.

"What if there are Screamers?" Chloe asked Beca in a quiet, slightly afraid voice. Beca tapped her ear piece.

"We can still get the white noise through here," she said.

The team began searching the ship, keeping their guns raised and their formation tight.

They reached the bridge of the ship and found nothing. No sign that anyone had been flying this ship for a long time. It wasn't even on autopilot, it was just drifting.

Cynthia Rose was studying the control panel, her hands moving across the screens and buttons, not pressing, just lightly touching.

She reached the screen in front of the pilot controls and jerked back her hand.

There was a splattering of something black across the screen and controls. Something that had, at one point several months ago, had been red.

"Whatever happened to the pilot, it wasn't good," she said, turning away. "We should keep moving."

Aubrey nodded and kept the group moving. Her mind whirring with frightening possibilities. If they had killed the pilot, what had they done to the prisoners on board?

As they left the bridge and headed down another corridor, Aubrey came to a halt. They were facing a door that said 'Prisoner Holding'.

The door was slightly ajar. It should have been locked. Protected by passwords and finger print recognition. But here it was, open. The room behind it in complete darkness.

"What do you think happened?" Fat Amy asked, her voice uncharacteristically nervous. "Prisoners escaped and overpowered the guards? Tried to fly someplace else and ran into trouble?"

"Why would they do that on their way back to Terram? And it wouldn't explain the other ships going missing," Beca said. "We need to go in."

"I know," Aubrey said, but she didn't move. Fear wasn't an emotion often felt by Aubrey. The Posen's didn't believe in it. 'Show no fear, show no mercy. Because you can guarantee the enemy won't show you any' her father had always said. But now she felt fear.

She had trained her whole life, learning the ins and outs of every alien life-form that existed in their universe. She knew their weaknesses. Their strengths. How and why they killed. She knew it all, so they didn't scare her.

But what she didn't know was what was behind this door. And that was terrifying to her.

Beca moved ahead, and pushed the door, which gave a squeal as it opened, light from the corridor barely penetrating the darkness inside.

She swallowed her fear, and switched on the torch that sat on top of her gun.

The beam of light broke through the darkness and Beca had to stifle a scream as it shone directly onto a face.

She thanked god that the safety of her gun had been on, as her reflex had been to squeeze the trigger. But as she looked at the face, she recognised it to be a human one. Probably a prisoner.

"We need some light in there," she said, her voice shaking.

"It's motion activated," Aubrey said, not liking the deathly shade of white Beca had gone. "We're gonna have to go in there."

"Okay," Beca said, bracing herself as she stepped into the darkness and waited for the lights to click on around her.

She couldn't help it, but the fear had started to overwhelm her, so she closed her eyes.

She heard the lights click on and then the gasps of the other Bellas.

Followed by a single, strangled cry from Aubrey.

"Stacie!"