Genesis (1st-person POV)
"Put on the suits!" I yelled over the alarm. "Right now!"
We all ran for the pile of suits by the staircase to bunks. I forced myself to calm down so my labored breaths wouldn't deplete our air supply even faster.
As soon as my helmet was on, I turned to my crewmates. "Without external tanks, these suits will give us about twenty minutes of oxygen, thirty if we're careful. Hopefully that's more than enough for us to turn things around."
"With our luck?" Jericho muttered, his broken voice carrying through a private channel between the suits. I ignored him.
"There's a way we can reverse the sabotage," I continued. "There's two keypads on the ship, in admin and oxygen. If we enter the emergency authorization PIN into both pads, the system will reboot, and the flow of oxygen will be reset to normal."
We all picked up our weapons and turned to the door to find it already open, probably as part of the emergency protocol.
"We're not splitting up," I said. "Whatever happens, we stick together."
Astrid nodded, holding up her Grand Slammer.
I took the lead to admin. We left communications with our backs to each other, Elara in the middle. Every time the red lights faded out, darkness rushed in to take its place, and my heart raced at the thought of Ceres or Zaniah hiding in the shadows, their footsteps thumping on the hard floor in time with ours.
We made it without any incident. Jericho and Astrid stood guard while I led Elara to the keypad.
"What's the code?" she asked.
"1-1-3-1," I said immediately. Elara started typing it in. Right before she pressed enter, I sucked in a breath. "Wait--!"
She submitted the key. The input screen lit up red and displayed a sixty-second timer.
"Ooh...my bad," I said sheepishly. Hopefully no one used that code on the safe under my bunk.
"What do we do now?" Jericho asked, digging his hands into his hair.
"Hold on, the right code should be here." I scrambled to pull out my tablet to access some paperwork, but I faltered as I stared at my reflection on the blank screen.
They knew we were here. We hadn't been proactive enough to smash the tablets to bits or hide them when we had the chance, but right now it could save us. I switched it on and scrolled through the files until I found the unrealistically long PDF of the safety measures.
"Come on," Elara pressed, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her hands clenching and relaxing like she needed something to hold.
My eyes darted about the blurring text as I swiped up as fast as I can until I hit the later pages on oxygen complications. "Just a second. I know where it would be. There's just...a lot of scrolling."
"Captain!"
A heading at the bottom of page 167 read "Oxygen Flow Malfunction Procedure." The next page was 169.
"It's missing," I said, boiling. "Nareem left it off when he sent it to me."
"Fantastic. Now I have to get my hands dirty."
Without hesitation, Elara ripped out the panel over the keypad, exposing a mess of colored wires. As she fiddled with the system, I looked out the door.
"Jericho?" I asked. "Astrid? Y'all still there?"
The silence that follows sent a chill to my head. I ran into the hall to find them gone.
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An Imposter Among Us
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