Chapter Seven

Captain Torres

The Starship: Seattle Grace
Destination: The Colony World of Homestead II
Status: Autopilot
Crew: 257 asleep, 1 awake
Passengers: 4,998 asleep, 2 awake
Year: 3487
(38 years to go...)

They both looked up, but the voice was coming from the comms system. Then a blue figure walked out onto the second floor deck and stared at them. She looked at the tree, the leaves completely still in their void of nature. "What are you two doing?" She asked, apparently it was rhetorical because she walked to the elevator and joined them on level one of the Concourse.

Mark stood up, leaving the broken robot on the floor. He took a step closer to Lexie but she didn't look at him. "Who did that?" Captain Torres asked, her thumb pointing towards the tree.

"I did," Mark replied, a guilty look strewn across his face. It felt like he was back in grade school being told off at recess.

"And who are you?" The Captain continued.

"Mark Sloan," he pointed to himself then Lexie. "This is Lexie."

The Captain looked at the brunette expectantly, "Grey. Lexie Grey."

"Anybody else awake?" Her voice was a little hoarse, gruff from being asleep for so long. She sounded tired, drowsy, but she had a job to do.

"Just us." Lexie replied.

"How far along are we?" She looked at Mark for that response, assuming he was the more technical of the two.

"Thirty-eight years to go..." He looked down, he didn't want to see Lexie's face, didn't want to acknowledge his part in this.

The Captain took a deep breath, then produced a hacking cough into her fist. "Sorry, about that. Hibernation hangover, get them all the time." She brushed it off like it was nothing, "hibernation failure. They said that couldn't happen. Three people, three pod failures." Lexie's eyes found Mark's, he didn't look back at her. "Something here is very wrong." Mark scowled, he hadn't thought about it.

They walked to the bridge, Mark and Lexie trailing behind like kids in detention. When the sealed door finally opened at Torres' touch, Mark almost gasped. "You have no idea how long I've been trying to get in there."

"Now that you're in, don't touch anything." The Captain replied, taking the lead into the room and checking the consoles. Inside was the usual space grey that coated every wall. But there were darker patches, spots of blue; everything looked sharper, more technical. More useful. Mark imagined what it could've been like if he'd been able to get in here from the start. "I have to check the navigation, comms and life support systems. But everything seems pretty good-"

Unauthorised personnel. The voice exploded from the console at Mark's curious touch. He recoiled, Lexie was looking at him like he was some sort of reckless idiot. "Sorry."

"Looks like we're still on course, so whatever's wrong with the ship, NavCom is still on the job." Torres took a look at the navigation system and the autopilot was working. They were moving forward at half the speed of light, there hadn't been any major breakages to any of the major systems. But the three of them were standing there, so something must be off.

"Something's wrong with the ship?" Lexie asked, Torres turned around to face her, a serious look across her features.

"Three pod failures, yeah there's something wrong with the ship. Question is, what?" She turned to the centre console and pressed a few authorised buttons. She opened the diagnostics and a 3D projection of the ship appeared in front of them. "This is odd. I should be getting diagnostics from all over the ship but there's just nothing here. No data." As Mark looked at the ship, and Lexie stood around perplexed, Torres had a grave look on her face. "Gotta check all the systems manually. Do you think you two can handle that?"

"Why don't we just keep going? Whatever's wrong with the ship it can't be that bad, right? If the navigation is still on." Lexie said, trying not to sound scared and putting on her professional doctor's voice. Shame she'd never be able to use it on a patient.

"Para nada, if the pods are failing, then there's something seriously wrong with the ship. If we don't find it and sort it out quickly, we're all going to be dead by the next light year." Mark looked up from the console and started paying attention, he had no idea it was this bad.

Lexie's face fell. "Well, there must be something we can do."

"Yeah, we gotta check the systems manually-" The Captain bent over as her stomach gripped like a vice. She groaned, it was loud and guttural, something else was wrong here.

"Are you okay?" Lexie asked, stepping forward, away from Mark and unfolding her arms.

"I'm fine, honestly. I can get checked out later, first we have to check the systems."

Grand Concourse. The voice announced as they walked back through the main living area of the ship. The Captain turned back to Mark and said, "two years huh? Anymore trees I should know about?" It was a well-meaning joke, but Mark frowned. He was about to answer when they walked past the smashed robot, Torres hadn't noticed it properly earlier. "What happened here? Did you break that?"

Mark shook his head, standing back a little, he looked at Lexie. "These guys have been breaking down. This is the fifteenth, I think. It was cleaning the deck," he pointed upwards, behind them. "It just flung itself off and smashed right in front of us."

"Well, I've never seen that before." The Captain said, observing as Mark looked over at Lexie, his eyes flicking towards her every couple of seconds like he was checking something. "You two er you got something going on?"

Lexie looked down at her feet, she didn't want to say anything, but when Mark's silence resounded through the room, she had to. "It's-it's uh... complicated." That was one word for it. Torres didn't have time to ask anymore personal questions though and moved on.

"Anything else been breaking around here?"

"The breakfast bar went crazy a few days ago. Shot out all this cereal, I couldn't get it to stop."

"I got stuck in an elevator." Mark said at the same time.

"My door broke, I was stuck in my cabin for two days."

"Two days?" Mark whispered to her, "you didn't tell me that. I thought it was a few hours." He rubbed his arm nervously, wanting to reach out to her, but stopping himself. She didn't need him anymore.

"Things like that don't happen. Not on this ship." The Captain chimed in, breaking off their stuttered conversation and leading them towards the hold.

Captain Torres opened one of the tech stations in the wall and proceeded to explain about what the passengers had to do. She slid in a blank slate and the data synced automatically to the file. She told them she was going to check the hibernation pods and that they should do all the tech stations on each deck. Mark was to take decks three and four. He did it, checking each station and syncing the data. But he didn't want to, he wanted to follow the Captain down to the pod room and explain. Wanted to tell her what he'd done when they weren't standing in front of Lexie, he couldn't deal with the judgment from both of them at the same time.

He finished up quickly and headed down to the hibernation pods, his sneakers squeaking on the floor, his heart pounding. His face was sunken when he arrived, found Torres underneath Lexie's pod, one of the motherboards in hand, a perplexed look on her face. She shook her head softly, tutting in disappointment. "You did this." She said, she knew Mark was standing behind her, she could hear his breath in the air. "You done making your rounds?" She asked him directly, turning around to face him.

He nodded. "I checked your pod," the Captain continued. "Problem's very simple. The clock chip's burnt out, it's not supposed to happen but it's pretty simple." At any other time, Mark would be annoyed that such a simple fault put him in this position, but now was not that time. "My pod's more complicated. Bunch of system failures that all happened at the same time, cardio-respiratory, immuno, and defib. Explains why I feel like crap." Mark almost laughed, this was a terrible situation. "But Lexie's pod," Torres stood up, "this is a man-made fault, no system failure could've caused this kind of short circuit. And all this time I'm thinking how lucky you are to get stuck with a girl like her." She took a step closer, accusingly. "It wasn't luck, was it?"

Mark shook his head, "no."

"She knows, doesn't she?"

"Yeah she knows."

"Young thing like her, I'm surprised she's still speaking to you." The Captain thought about this. He'd clearly been alone a long time, and she was clearly still mad at him. But then she thought about it, how lonely did a person have to be before they resorted to stuff like this? Maybe by his standards it was better than living alone. "How long were you alone?"

"A year."

"Still," Torres paused, "damn. You picked a good one."

"I know."

After the Captain took the slates back to the bridge and uploaded all the data, Lexie approached her. She didn't really understand all this high tech systems stuff, she knew Torres had a handle on that, for which she was grateful. But she really wanted to talk. Torres had seen the pods, she knew something was off because she was avoiding her gaze. "You saw the hibernation pods?" She tried to say nonchalantly but it was see-through. Torres knew what she wanted.

"I know what he did Lexie." She didn't turn towards the smaller woman she just kept her focus on the screens in front of her.

"And?"

"It's not my place to judge him. Man did what he could to stay alive."

"How can you take his side?"

"I'm not taking sides, I'm just vouching for a man who clearly hasn't had a voice."

Lexie realised she was speaking to a real life person, other than Mark, about Mark. It was wonderful to argue with a third party again. She felt an exhilarated joy, but shoved it way down, she needed this fight. "Do you think it's right for him to just take away my future?" Her arms were folded, a scoff waiting in her throat.

"I know, and I'm sorry. You're right, it wasn't fair on you. I get that. But the drowning man will always try and drag somebody down with him. He's struggling Lexie, I don't know if you can see that. A year is a long time for anybody to be alone, and without any hope of meeting anyone else for the rest of your life, how do you think he was managing? He's drowning- ahhh." The Captain gripped her side as a rush of pain hit her without much warning. Lexie tried to catch her but they both slipped onto the floor.

"This one makes sixteen." Mark said, walking into the command room with another broken robot in hand. He stopped when he saw Lexie on the floor.

"I need help," she said. Torres was still groaning on the floor beside her, she tried to move her into a more comfortable position but it was impossible, the pain was blinding. She started coughing violently, blood splattering from her mouth and onto her hands. "Whoa whoa," Lexie said, "just try to keep it in. Mark we need to get her to the med bay now!"

They hauled Torres to the med bay and Mark lifted her into the autodoc. A highly advanced machine that could administer most medical care at the push of a button. Lexie hadn't seen this model in person before but she'd read about it. All med students were required to know about the technology that could assist them with providing care. Also it was much faster at scanning and assessing the problem than a human doctor was.

Mark and Lexie stood over the pod-like doc and waited for the scan to complete. Lexie bit her thumb and looked up at Mark, he was scared, she could see it in his eyes. He wasn't sure how they were going to make it out of this without Torres. Lexie promised herself that she would do everything to save her, just so she didn't have to see that look on his face again.

Liver failure, respiratory failure and internal bleeding. The machine announced, Lexie stepped forward and gripped the screen. "No, that can't be right. She was fine, she was just standing there." But she knew as she said it that it was a lie. People with live failure did just drop down, she'd seen it happen with her father. Mark's hand gripped her shoulder as she opened the doc and Torres opened her eyes.

"What's wrong with me?" She asked, looking at Lexie's distressed face as an indicator. "It's not good, is it?" Lexie shook her head. The Captain held out her wrist and scanned her band on the screen, "there. Do what you can." Before her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she collapsed back into the autodoc.

"What's happening?" Mark interrupted, but Lexie was too focussed to reply to him. She leapt over Torres onto the doc and checked her pulse. Nothing. She was in cardiac arrest.

"Chest compressions." She whispered to herself before starting CPR, "one, two, three..." She counted all the way up to thirty before stopping, checking her pulse again. Still nothing. Lexie took a deep breath and closed her eyes, thinking. Mark knew this was not the time to interfere so he stood back, away from the autodoc. Out of the way. Lexie got up and closed the lid of the doc, tapping the screen violently, she found the life support options. Then the machine was sending adrenaline and defib shocks through the Captain's body. Her chest made one lifeless thump against the bottom of the doc, then another. It was the third try that restarted her heart.

The lid of the doc opened after a few minutes and Lexie sat on the edge of the bed-like machine. "What's the situation kid?" The Captain asked once she got her breath back.

"You're going to need a liver transplant otherwise your heart is going to keep failing. The doc has implanted a pace maker which should shock you again if anything goes wrong, but in the meantime I need to find out if this machine is capable of saving you." Torres nodded, trying to get up but Lexie pushed her shoulder back down. "No you're not going anywhere, I have to do this now."

Lexie checked the screen for transplants but there was nothing. Nothing organic anyway. And they weren't in a position to test her or Mark for a match, much less have the time to complete the transplant and recover. She put her fingers to her head and tried not to panic, she couldn't lose her first patient on the table. First and only patient. She had to do right by herself. Time to believe in yourself, Grey. She said to herself, pretending it was coming from her mom and dad. Mark seemed to understand what she was thinking because he stepped forward, his hand on her lower back. "You can do this Lex." He said confidently, like he did truly believe her.

She looked back at him, her face completely blank but her eyes eternally grateful. She leaned into his touch, and scanned Torres again. There was one option left, a implant that acted like part of a liver, but it wasn't ideal. She'd be left with only half a liver capacity and on medication for the rest of her life. But it would save her.

"Okay Captain-" She started, about to explain the procedure.

"Call me Callie, please."

Lexie nodded, "Callie, I'm going to let the autodoc insert a device into your liver. You are going to have to take tablets to maintain your vitamin A levels. I think you'll be okay. Just bare with me." Callie tried to take everything in but she was exhausted, she hadn't had a full sleep since waking up from hibernation. Lexie put her back in the doc, her hand resting on her arm. "Okay, can you count backwards from ten, and by five you should be asleep." She said, setting up the machine for general anaesthetic. She held Callie's hand as the medicine was administered. She could let the machine take over now but she wanted to make sure she went to sleep, make sure she fell asleep, not sure whether she was going to wake up, but in good hands.

Lexie let the machine do the rest of the work as her and Mark stood over the coffin-like autodoc. She folded her arms nervously, looking between Mark and Callie every few minutes. She was chewing her bottom lip, Mark's calming hand on her shoulder. She was grateful for him here at this moment, even if he couldn't do anything, he was there. And that was enough.

"You were amazing," he said softly. He wasn't expecting her to reply, he just wanted her to know. But she turned around and launched herself into his arms, hugging him tightly.

"I was so scared. Thank you." She said into the scruff of his neck, the soft material of his shirt caressing her skin as she gripped him tightly. His body heat enough to calm him down as she peeled herself away from him, trying to regain her composure. She cleared her throat, remembering she was supposed to be mad at him.

"Lexie, I'd do anything for you. You know that." Somewhere deep down she did know. She might be angry with him, but she knew he'd save her life if he needed to. She trusted him.