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Voyager: Chapter 17

Stupid. I thought to myself. I had walked right into it, whatever was going on. The world was going by so slowly and everything came into focus. I saw Crane, or at least someone that looked like him, sounded like him, for god's sake, maybe it was him. No, it couldn't be. Crane wouldn't do this, he wouldn't stab me for no reason and yet the bleeding wound in my side said otherwise. He stabbed me and was now walking over to finish the job.

My eyes darted around, desperately looking for something within reach to defend myself with. There was nothing, the whole goddamn place was spotless, there was nothing I could use. Only if I had just waited to clean the place up, but no, I had to get up early and help cart away every throw able brick. Now I was going to die because of it. The irony was not amusing.

"What do we have here?" Crane stopped just at the edge of the pool of blood that was oozing out of me. I tried to back up more, but the adrenaline that was running through me did nothing to stop the sharp, agonizing pain that shot through me with even the smallest of movements.

"Crane." I weakly moaned. "What are you doing?"

He threw his head back and gave a crooked laugh. "Crane is gone." He stepped into the blood and kneeled down next to me and put the knife under my chin. The end stuck slightly into the soft skin, drawing a little blood. "Now you're next."

I looked hard into his eyes. Dana was right, behind the big brown eyes, I saw nothing. The eyes were supposed to be the window to the soul, I saw no soul. Despite the malice and cruelty on this things face, his eyes were rather expressionless, empty. Crane was gone.

"I'll make this fast human." He said quickly. "I have a schedule to keep to."

I wasn't about to just lay down and die. I didn't make it this far just by doing that. If he was going to kill me using the body of my friend, then he was going to work for it. "NO!" I yelled and grabbed his arm and pushed it away. The knife drew a long gash across the underside of my shin as it was pushed aside, but it wasn't as bad as the one in my side.

He reeled back into the room in surprise, dragging me along with him and tried to shake me off. I held on for dear life, it was this or die. "You stupid animals, why don't just die." He yelled at me and tried to switch the knife to his other hand. I yanked hard on the arm and managed to get him to drop it. By this point in the struggle, he had pulled me entirely onto my feet and we were both trying to grapple each other. Even without the knife, he was winning, he had the mass and muscle of Crane on his side, I simply had my will to live that was pushing me.

The struggle didn't last much longer. He shoved me against the wall and punched me square in the face. I collapsed the floor with a broken nose and possible even a shattered cheekbone.

"You damn humans." He growled at me and slowly bent over to pick up the knife. It was at this point that I saw Dana's collapsed form on the floor on the other side of the room form where I was. She was on her back and had a small cut on her forehead, but was breathing.

The fake Crane followed my gaze to her. "Unlike you, she didn't put up much of a fight, but she does have one thing going. I need her alive, I don't need you."

"Why?" I coughed up the words, barely. The adrenaline that had let me fight back was draining out of my system, leaving me squirming in pain.

"No more questions. There's no time." With the knife in hand, he walked to me and brought it up to strike. I closed my eyes and turned my head away.

"You're right." A voice called out from somewhere else. "No time."

I opened my eyes in time to see the fake Crane's eye explode as a bullet went through the back of his head and out the front.

It was Tom. He held a hand gun in his hand which was shaking horribly, it was a miracle that he had actually hit anything. He lowered the gun to his side and then just dropped it. He ran into the room and went straight to Dana where he carefully lifted her up into his arms. He glared at me as he stood up and walked out. I don't think he intended to leave me there to die because Susan ran in right after he left.

She came over to me, stepping over Crane's body and her gaze immediately went to my side. "That's not good, we need to get you some bandages." She reached out a hand and I took it and found myself with my arm over her shoulder and limping out of the room.

"We're all screwed aren't we?" I asked between heavy and labored breaths. The right side of my face was swelling up, leaving me with just my left eye to look out of. Whatever had taken Crane's body had done a serious number on me, each step was like climbing a mountain.

"Maybe." She didn't push me to go faster, she went at my speed and kept one hand over mine where the wound in my abdomen was to keep the bleeding down. "Carlos got some good news. Admiral Anderson sent a ship. The fastest ship he could get. It will be here in an hour."

"An hour?" I exclaimed. Most ships took three to six days to get from Earth to Mars. This ship must have been insanely fast.

"Yeah. I know. Almost didn't believe it, but if it means rescue, then I'll believe anything. Now stop talking, you're bleeding everywhere."

She took me to their medical room and began to bandage me up. I guess the gash wasn't as bad as I previously thought because the bleeding had begun to slow, but I had lost enough blood that I had turned a sickly shade of grey.

I explained what had happened with Crane, how whatever had control of his body declared that he was gone. She found this disturbing. Was this the final stage of the Collectors? Once the aliens were done doing their sick experiments, they finally decided it was best to just mind control us.

When I did finish getting patched up, I noticed that it was oddly quiet. The gunfire that had been audible through the building had gone silent.

"What's going outside?" I asked Susan who was now attending to the cut on the underside of my chin.

"Hold still for a bit." My talking made it difficult for her to put the bandage on. I stopped talking until she finished and took a step back to inspect her job. I repeated the question.

"Something is going on with the Collectors." She said and folded her arms across her chest. "They just stopped advancing for some reason."

"Stopped?" I asked. Collectors were relentless when they put their minds to something. Hearing that they had stopped was something that caught me off guard. Today was just full of surprises.

"Yep." She confirmed. "One second they were about to overwhelm us, the next they just stopped walking and now they're just outside standing around."

"Any idea why?"

She threw up her arms in the air. "Maybe it has to do something with Crane now being dead. I don't know, but I'm not complaining. The longer they just sit around, the higher the chance that we survive long enough for that ship to get us off the planet and to safety."

I nodded in agreement. No argument from me there. I was starting to feel the remorse from accepting that Crane was really gone now. Before, it was easy to accept that he was gone because there was no body, there was always a chance that I was wrong. But this kind of way of learning that I was right was just a total mind fuck. He was there, but not really and now the man that I had thought was gone came back and... It screwed with my head. People shouldn't be put through this kind of torment.

Carlos walked in looking rather pleased with himself. "Hey there, you look like shit."

"Yeah." I muttered back. You look fat. I added silently.

He walked by me and went over to Susan. "Just got a message. The ship is in orbit. We need to get everyone to the roof now."

"Won't the aliens just shoot at us with their ships once we get back in the open?" Susan asked. It was a valid point, their ships did sport some massive weaponry, just look at the city.

"Would you rather set an appointment for the ship to come back after the aliens have decided to leave?" Carlos sarcastically remarked.

"Fine." She looked over at me. "Help Liam up top, I'll get everyone else."

"You're the boss." Susan rushed off to do her thing and Carlos carefully got me to my feet. I tried my best not to inhale, everyone had body odor, he had something else going on.

It was slow going again and by the time we got there, everyone else had arrived. Tom was there, he was holding his sister in his arms. She was awake now, but had a nasty goose egg on her head. Tom on the other hand was just looking pissed off. I would just let him have his space for the time being, getting away from this should help brighten his mood. I wasn't even sure if he was mad at me for trusting Crane so easily, or just mad that his sister had been attacked.

"Up there." Someone point up to the sky where a small silver dot was moving towards us. Damn, was it moving fast as well. Ships had to slow down when entering an atmosphere to help keep the hull temperature, but this one was plummeting to the ground.

"It's going to crash." The ship was rapidly approaching the ground over the park where there were thousands of the Collectors just standing idle, not even caring about the ship that looked as if it was going to just smash into them all.

The ship which was shaped like and arrow head began to pull up and thrusters on the bottom pushed it so that it arced and avoided a crash. The pilot must have been insane to be performing stunts like that at a time like this.

It pulled up next to the edge of the building and a docking ramp lowered and extended out. Two heavily armed people in full black armor ran out and jumped onto the building.

"C'mon." They waved and yelled at us. "We got to move."

Everyone ran out to the ship. The men in armor waited until all of us were on board before getting aboard themselves and closing the ramp behind them. The ship immediately jerked as it began to accelerate. Carlos had left me near some crates and I used them to prevent myself from toppling over. Unlike the larger ships that didn't have windows, the cargo bay that now held some thirty frightened refugees had small circular windows and I was near one.

I looked out, we began to lift away. One of the ships began to turn towards us and fired. A red streak barely missed us and made the ship violently jerk to the side. If just one of those things hit us, even just grazed the ship, we would all be instantly killed.

Then the unimaginable happened. Another ship, this one smaller, but quicker fired on the one that shot at us. I stared in disbelief. Others saw this and soon there was a large crowd of both refugees and armored people straining to look out as the ships fired on each other. The smaller one was able to dodge most of the shots that came at it, but it was clear that it was losing. I wanted to cheer for it.

With the smaller ship firing, we began to break the cloud line, the view of the odd and miraculous smaller ship faded as other ships form around the city began to swarm it.

The cloud gave way to a clear and pristine sky. From up here, it was impossible to tell how much damage had been done below. It looked normal... The blue sky slowly became darker as we rose ever so higher into the atmosphere.

I gave one last look down below. There was a flash, a flash brighter than anything that I had ever seen before, so bright that I backed away from the window and so did everyone else. The ship began to rumble.