A Land of Despair

An Alien Piece of Junk.

Walking behind her, my attention was focused on the way she walked, it was a very confident stride. Her shoulders were pushed back, making her back stand straight and her hips swayed as she bounced slightly with each step, one would think she was taught how to walk by a professional, if such a thing existed.

When we finally got to the door of the ship, we found Mike and Tina standing outside looking in, they both turned to me waiting expectantly, as if for me to tell them what we should do next. I knew this, I knew that that was what they were waiting for, but I decided to ask them about it anyway, "what are you guys waiting for?"

They eyed each other before looking back at me, the expressions on both their faces quite unreadable at that particular moment.

"Should we go in?" Tina questioned hopefully, as if looking for my permission.
And, if I would have been to give an honest answer I would have said that I was not sure, but being the person that I was, I said "yes, let's go," instead. My only comfort coming from the fact that I had also emphasized for everyone to be careful.

As we entered cautiously, it was evident that the door had been opened for quite some time. The inside was dusty, the floor littered with dried leaves and sand, small insects here and there while the upper areas were covered in cobwebs.
The ship looked non functional to say the very least.
From the time I walked in, it was evident that the ship had no buttons, there were no controls or levers either.

How was it operated?

The room we were in seemed to be the main operating room, I thought so because there was what seemed to be a large screen in one place, and right under it a curve of some sort, looking at it, it seemed like the place controls were supposed to be. And in the center, there was a structure that looked like a table, but there were no legs, just a mould that elevated from the floor, the way hills and mountains grow from the earth.

"Search for documents or weapons or useful objects, but be careful for anything, it's difficult to know what could set something off." I instructed.

Everyone began looking, carefully going through nearby corridors and checking for any signs of what might be shelves. But there was nothing, not even lines to separate built in structures, it was all just one big piece with nothing to go on. Like an open egg.

"This is a waste of time, there's nothing here. This is just an alien piece of junk." Tina spat, kicking into the wall of the ship.

"I hate to say it, but she's right," Mike added "we have nothing to go on, and we don't know what to do to get anything from this thing." Once he was done speaking, he slapped the table structure twice for emphasis.

"That's true, it seems like there's nothing here. But we have done our part, we at least can report back what the ship looks like in the inside. That's enough in my book." I expressed, there wasn't much we could do anyway.

"So we can go?" Tina asked, already walking towards the exit from the other end of the large room.

I nodded my head in agreement.
Before i could turn around to walk out as well, I realized that Hope was not among us.

"Hope!" I called out,
Tina stopped in her tracks, it seemed she had completely forgotten about the other person we had brought along with us.

Mike pointed to a spot near the screen where she was crouched down and giving us her back.

"Hope?" I breathed in question this time, taking a step closer, her back stiffened as she realized she was being spoken to, "what are you doing down there?" Came my question.

"Did you find something?" Mike guessed, hoping she did.

Hope shuffled clumsily with her hands without turning to face us, as if she was caught holding something and wanted to hide it.

"What's in your hands?" Tina exploded, going closer to her, in order to see for herself.
Before she could get to her, Hope released a small squirrel from her hands and it ran out of the ship as fast as it could, with that, she was up on her feet facing the rest of us.

Tina was livid. "So this whole time, the rest of us are working to find some sort of clues and you are chilling and playing with that... that thing?"

"You know damn well that I was not part of your mission and I did not ask to be here." Hope hissed. Her voice was full of emotion, I had never heard her sound that way before. I hoped nothing had happened during our time here.

"That's the dumbest thing I've heard all day, you should have stayed outside then, with your animal friends."

"This is not even a big problem, I don't get why you're making it one. Get over yourself!"

Tina was stunned for a second, before facial expression turned to one that was visibly upset.
"You bi-"

"Tina! Enough! Can we just go..." I pleaded, exasperated with the situation.
That was the first time I had ever spoken so sternly with her and I half expected her to fight me.

She huffed and began to walk out, head held high and proud as ever.
As she passed Hope by, Tina pushed her aside, this caused her to lose her balance and stumble.
To try and steady herself she put her hands on the counter under the screen, as soon as she did this the whole room lit up with flashing red and white light in intervals, the screen cleared from the blackness that covered it, now showing an alien sign for "warning" and a warning alarm began to go off.
The ringing was high pitched and extremely loud, the security alarm echoed through the streets of the rundown town we were in, though quite far off from inhabited areas, someone was bound to notice soon enough.

We all began to panic, looking around at each other for any sorts of ideas on what we should do.

"Look what you did." Tina was quick to accuse Hope.

Hope, who was now holding her own shirt tightly as if to control herself from panicking, looked at Tina in disbelief, she then took a step back but was limited because of the counter and instead put her hand on it to steady herself. "I didn't do anything." She defended.

Before there was a response, the top of the table at the center opened up in a circular motion as something round and glass surfaced partially from the opening. At the same time, the roof of the ship, directly above the table, opened up as well.
While this was happening, all four of us watched silently, each of us frozen in place as well as open-mouthed with anticipation.

Suddenly, a bright red beam shot out of the glass shape on the table, straight through the open roof and into the clear afternoon sky.

I had seen this before.

I knew what it was.

I knew what was coming.