Isolation

Chapter 5

After another 10 minutes of walking we reach a bronze door with an Aztec design melded into it. It looked powerful and seemed to radiate a warrior presence.
"This is Kappa. Kappa is a scavenger group. Kappa kicks ass. People in Kappa go to space and they are scientists. They master any form of martial arts, and then they must become an actual survivalist. Then they must learn how to survive in space and fly a spaceship for their solo missions. Then they travel to planets and try to find life. If they find life on other planets they analyze it and store it in the biohazardous zone." Katie kept this explanation short.
"That's cool I suppose. I've never been much of a science nerd, you know that, but science is cool. Space is frightening though, but I guess I better embrace it now or never." I stared at the doors deep in thought. Then I turned to Katie. "How did you do it? Survive an entire year alone, you didn't know anybody but your parents and I'm expecting nobody would allow you to be a shut in." I didn't mean to sound brash but I don't know how she did it.
"I was fine. You know me, I'm a fighter." Katie smiled at me and nudged me with her elbow. "Come on we got more ground to cover." And with that she dodged my question and my annoyed look by turning around and walking in another direction. But I knew when to leave it be and when I should persist with questions. Now is not the time to keep questioning her. We walked for another ten minutes and came to silver doors. "This is Beta. Our per say army. They are our guard I guess. Theta is the face, delta is the heart, kappa is the backbone and beta is the muscle. Although, most people would argue that Kappa is the muscle and beta is the backbone, I say the reverse. Anyway in Beta you master a martial art form, work with weapons, memorize every inch of this ship, and enforce the laws." Katie was about to say something but I cut her off.
"You talked about the guards with me before, it sounded like you don't like them. Did they arrest you?" I questioned Katie. She knew she couldn't dodge this question.
"Yeah, they arrested me. I was sneaking out to investigate the other sections of the ship. At this time I didn't know when the doors would be locked. So when I heard the alarm go off that the doors had closed I panicked. I was already trapped in section two so there was no way I could make it up to four in time. I couldn't even make it out of two. So I saw a guard asleep on duty and new that every guard has an ID to get through each of the doors on their patrol. So I basically took his badge to get back up to my floor without getting caught, but I did get caught. And then instead of just being charged with breaking curfew I got charged with theft and attacking an officer too." She finished the last part quickly and had her head down but I heard.
"Wait what!? Why were you charged with assault of an officer? Wait, let me guess. You made it through the first door fine and then the guard woke up and somebody spotted you, chased you and you ended up trying to fight them off but it didn't work?!" I deadpanned, crossed my arms over my chest, raised an eyebrow, and sighed. Classic Katie.
"Hey it was working for a while!" She tried to defend herself. "But yeah, that's basically what happened." I sighed again and rubbed my eyes but gave up on folding her.
"What's done is done, but do me a favor and try not to break laws very often anymore?" I semi pleaded semi demanded.
"I like how you said 'try' and 'very often'." She laughed.
"That's not the point!" I scolded but chuckled as well since I was glad Katie hadn't changed that much if her wit was still the same. "Ok come on next place. Where are we off to next?" Katie and I fell in pace again.
"Alpha. We are off to Alpha."