Too Late
Cast
Locations
Organizations
A human stormed into the lab and slammed the door shut. Bry suspected it was Brittany, but that wasn’t his biggest concern.
“Were those gunshots?” he asked.
“Shut up.” Definitely Brittany. She stayed at the door until the lock clicked into place.
“What happened? Is everyone OK?”
“I said shut up!” she barked back.
Her typing soon joined her shaking breath as the only sounds in the room. She had full access to the station while Bry was isolated to this room and locked out of every system. Being quiet was the least, and best, he could do.
Another gunshot sounded and the lights went off. Gravity stabilization shut down. Brittany cursed and grabbed at the bolted-down table to keep from floating away. Emergency power kept Bry awake and air circulating, but it was the closest he’d come to powering down since they set him up here.
He had to do something. “Brittany, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know! They came here and started shooting, I don’t even know who they are! Oh God…” Her voice tapered off to a whimper.
Bry had never seen the rest of the station nor met most of its inhabitants. But he knew their names, heard their voices echo from the hall, and saw the result of their work to help him. Even if he didn’t know them, he owed them.
There are ways to evict trespassers from a ship. A station couldn’t be that different. Brittany would have the access needed, but listening to her terrified sobs, he couldn’t ask her to do it.
“What sort of work did you do?” Amy had asked more than once.
“Are you writing my biography?” was Bry’s usual reply.
“No, but knowing will help me make you human. You knew how to fire that big cannon, right? Was that from your work?”
“From my punishment, more like.”
“What sort of punishment gives you control over giant guns?”
The kind that forced you to kill people.
“You need to give me control of the station,” Bry said.
Brittany’s typing stopped. “I can’t,” she said.
“You have to. I’ll be able to see everything and act faster than any of you could.”
“And do what?”
A scraping came from beyond the door. The sound of someone popping a wall panel to override the lock.
“Brittany, neither of us want to die today.”
She pulled herself back to the terminal, but said nothing. Bry listened to the muffled voices beyond the door and waited. And hoped.
He'd died thousands of times already, from the day they stripped his mind from his body and sealed him away, to every time they unplugged him. Each time, he'd hoped they’d never wake him up again and he could have the death he was owed.
But now? This close to being a person again? His near-finished body lay one room over, months away from giving him freedom. In the hours he'd spent alone in this lab, he’d remember what it was like to move, to touch, to exist.
He couldn’t give that up, not now.
“Biometric authorization required,” said a computerized voice as the door opened and two humans entered.
Power surged through Bry as the station unlocked for him. Every light, camera, and appliance became part of his senses. He grasped at the main lab defenses, racing to the guns before the attackers could hurt anyone else.
He fired and so did they. At the end of a second, they were both dead along with one of the two turrets in the room.
“That’s it, they’re done.” Bry turned his attention to the rest of the station. Whoever those humans were, they’d destroyed all other turrets and damaged the power core. Nothing else was damaged. Emergency backup power would last for now.
“Where is everyone?” he asked Brittany. “I don’t see any… life signs…”
The dawning silence grew and Bry returned his attention to the lab.
“Brittany? Are you…” There were no life signs there, either. “Oh.”
He was too late. He failed to save even a single person, and now he was alone.
Again.
;_;
sorrynotsorry