Convergent Realms

VII

Robert woke up and immediately felt something different. Maybe it was the taste of the air, or the sound of ambiance, but something was different. Different, and in his mind, inherently wrong. Once he realized that he needed to stay vigilant, his eyes darted around his surroundings. Everything was dark.

He blinked a couple of times, the light hit his eyes. Or, at least, existence did. Before, it'd been an off-black, now he could see dark, smudgy shapes both close and far away from him. Something must've gotten into his eyes. Now with clear vision, his eyes caught something that wasn't quite as dark as the rest of his surroundings, or a different kind of dark, at the very least.

He propped himself up with his hand and reveled in what might just be moonlight. He'd made it. He'd made it! And if he made it, everyone else had, too! He jumped up, adrenaline now starting to flow throughout his body, and nimbly adapted to the changing surroundings of a "sinking" ship, as it could be called. Sparks flew in certain exposed panels, drops of lightly viscous liquid poured through the roof, and some groans could be heard from shipmates.

"Everyone up, now!" Robert shouted, knowing everyone would recognize his voice. Some people crawled towards him, and others lay where they were, obviously not conscious, but hopefully still breathing. One even managed a walk toward him

"You. What's your name?"

"I'm Hugh, sir."

Robert almost found the fact that Hugh hadn't stated his last name funny, as if Hugh himself had a bad tie to his last name, or he didn't want to be known if he screwed something up. Either way, Robert set him to work checking for survivors, and he himself peered through the smallest of space in the ship for anyone who was crushed in the multiple explosions that had gone on throughout the impact of hitting the surface.

In one particular cabin, he was in there for five minutes looking for the inhabitant. It had taken a while to get into the rhythm, but now that he'd been through hundreds of compartments back-to-back, he was efficient and cold in his check. Usually, he'd find a body, and move on. Occasionally, there would be someone unconscious but alive, and he would have to drag them somewhere where they could be easily seen. It made him hate when people were alive.

But this cabin didn't have a body or an unconscious person. He hadn't seen someone conscious since Hugh, but he still held out hope that he could get some more help clearing the cabins. It wasn't like they could've hidden - the cabins for lower-class crewmates were almost like broom closets, but whoever they were, they weren't there when Robert came to check. Eventually, he moved on, finding another dead, and then another, and then another.

At one point in this process, he found someone clearly conscious, and he was extremely excited when he could hear a painful rasp. It almost sounded like words, but without the breath in them, they could've meant anything and still be unintelligible. Robert came up to their body, and now he could clearly see why there was no breath in him.

First off, a metal rod had pierced the woman's lung. No more breathing for her, unless of course, Robert dragged her to the medbay. He would've considered if it was worth it or not, but when he looked at her legs, his decision was made. One of the legs wasn't even connected anymore. He doubted that it would take him any amount of time to find it, but he didn't really feel like digging through different remains to get to it, and the other leg was twisted in a way that was unnatural to any mammal he'd ever seen.

He sighed, explained to her that it would take more energy than it was worth to drag her to the med bay, see if the systems were still online, and attempt to fix her with tools he didn't know how to use, but she just wouldn't quit. Everyone wanted to be saved. It was human nature to want to stay alive. It's hard to look past yourself and see a greater cause. Robert knew this, but it didn't make it any less frustrating when she sobbed and begged for "mercy". She should've begged for mercy when the ship was coming down when she still had the chance.

He turned away from her after she just started screaming, which was pretty pitiful, considering one of her lungs was probably punctured, and Robert was just about to head into the next compartment when he noticed a leak. In the few hours he'd spent (at least he'd thought, it could've been a day or simply half an hour, he really had very little perception of time with no light) he'd seen probably a million leaks, so the fact that it was a leak was not the special part. The special part was that the leak smelled a heck of a lot like the fuel the ship used to run. Which meant he needed to get everyone in the vicinity out fast because that stuff was both highly toxic and heavily combustible. So much more work.

And then it turned out it wasn't. He really didn't need to be surprised, he should've known most were dead, but he was extremely disappointed when he found only one survivor worth rescuing. He seemed rather grateful in his slumber as Robert carried him back to the main hall, where he'd been keeping the survivors. He looked in awe at his work, a great hall, which used to be filled with tables and food and talking, brave people, now a husk of its original form, housing maybe a hundred or so people. About three of them were conscious, and of course, none could move, but time heals all wounds.

Time had to heal all wounds, because, as it turned out rather grimly, most of the medical supplies packed for the journey and beyond were unusable after the crash.