Caveship

5 || The Red Planet

"We're on a spaceship?"

"Yeah, as far as we can tell."

With a cry of disgust, Ava pulls away from Darius. "What took you guys so long? Seriously, I was alone for hours. The least you could've done was come looking for me," she whines, folding her arms across her chest. The room she'd been deposited into looks like some sort of engine room, complete with complicated and periodically noisy machinery that none of them can really begin to understand. Unlike the sterile white light of the rest of the ship, this room has a light blue, soothing color.

"We did. We were just as lost as you were until we found each other and started looking around," Sophia says, leaning against a valve. A hissing noise nearby from one of the machines quickly corrects her, making her push away from it back to a full stand again. "Did you try and look for us?"

"No. I couldn't find the door. Everything looked the same and—"

"How about we just go have this conversation somewhere else?" Sarah interjects. "We haven't explored the rest of the ship, maybe there's some sort of crew quarters we can sleep in."

"Or hot showers," Darius chimes in, looking between everyone. "I still got dirt in my shoes."

"Anything to be out of here." Ava whines, moving in closer to follow Darius and the others out of the engine room. Back out into the hallway, the door slides shut quietly behind them.

Each room in the hall seems to handle some sort of machinery and the ones that don't simply hold empty translucent tanks. Only one of the tanks has any sort of substance inside of it. Gaseous, a sort of gross mixture of violet and purple colors, and clearly meant to be released somewhere, it only further defies the group's ability to find anything familiar on the ship.

Passing by many of these, the most promising room of them all appears to be a storage room, with boxes latched firmly to the wall.

"Hey, Darius," Nicholas stops and calls over to his friend, who steps over, attentive. "What do you say we get one of these things off the wall and get it open. Maybe it'll have food, or something."

With a nod, Darius moves closer to the boxes and, in conjunction with Nicholas, begins to attempt to pull, push, and even lift, to remove the box. It holds firmly in place no matter how they attempt to jostle it, and it doesn't take long for the two to give up completely.

"Have you tried asking it nicely?" Sophia teases the two, her position suggesting that she's staying out of range of a swipe or other playful retaliatory measure.

"Sure. Why not." Nicholas turns to the box. "Would you be so kind as to detach yourself from the wall so we can see what's inside you?"

There's an audible, mechanical whir and hum, and the box separates from the wall, detaching. Everyone immediately steps back, startled, and so with no-one there to catch it, it falls to the floor with a noisy metallic clatter. While initially completely solid, with no obvious way to open it, once away from the wall it splits suddenly down the middle, lengthwise, and opens with a gentle hiss, as if a seal had been broken.

Cautiously, Nicholas moves closer to inspect the insides, spotting several devices inside the box. "Well, it's not food or water." He carefully reaches inside to pick up one of the devices, holding it up so everyone can see. It looks much like a bracelet, made of some strange, dull metallic silver that seems like it should reflect light, but doesn't. "But if you're in the market for futuristic wrist-wear, this is your box."

The rest of the group reach in to acquire one of the bracelets. Ava, careless of the potential danger the unknown device holds, immediately slips it on over her wrist. "It's pretty. A bit big, though."