From Nothing to Something

Chapter 11

BOOM!

Ash woke up to a loud noise. He opened his eyes and saw smoke creeping under the doorway.

He rolled out of bed cautiously and grabbed his bow. He knocked an explosive arrow into it, and pulled back, ready to fire. 

Ash kicked the door open and was met with a wave of heat. "Argh!" He yelled as the heat burned his face and cracked his lips. He bent over and let out some rasping coughs. 

He squinted through the smoke and saw that the massive carpet was on fire, sending thick, black smoke up to the ceiling. 

Ash put back his explosive arrow and drew an ice arrow. He fired it, and a layer of ice spread over the carpet, smothering the smoke. 

Ash jumped back as veins of ice crept into the room. 

"Scarlet, wake up!" He shouted. 

Scarlet rose up from the bed. After smelling the smoke, her eyes popped open. "Wha-" She began.

"I don't know, we need to get out of here!" Ash said. 

They slid along the ice to the nearest elevator; they couldn't get down the stairs without risking serious injury. The ice was slowly creeping over the doors, sealing it in. Ash used his bow to chip off enough ice so that the door could open. 

There was blood all over the floor. Ash recoiled with disgust, as a body lay on the floor, suit tattered and tie stained with blood. Ash turned him over, and saw that there were sizzling holes: the doings of the Refuge's laser guns. 

Ash backed away and used the stairs instead, letting the ice overtake the body. 

Scarlet went first, scrambling up the stairs. Ash followed, trying not to slip and fall down the stairs.

"I think I know who they're after." Ash said, and scrambled ahead. 

"Who?" Scarlet asked.

"The captain of the ship, a hologram that they're blaming for the creation of the creatures."

For the second time this morning, Scarlet was confused.

Ash told her everything, about what he learned from the hologram, where it's from, and what information he got.

"Really?" Scarlet said.

They reached the ladder with the trapdoor. They didn't need to force it open, for it was already open. 

Ash climbed up, and was met with rain. It flew straight into his face. The wind howled in his ears. Above him, a thick, dark cloud layer was swirling endlessly above him. Lightning crackled, and the ship shook gently. 

Ash peered through the rain, and saw figures running up the stairs to the door. 

"Hurry!" Ash said, and knocked an arrow. He fired it, but the door slammed shut as the last soldier went through, and it bounced off. 

The wind blew it back, and almost impaled Ash in the face. He ducked, and it flew into the cloud layer behind him. 

The ship appeared to be flying through a storm shaped like an upside down bowl. In the distance, sunlight broke through a crack between the storm and the white cloud layer below them.

Ash ran against the wind to the door. He pried it open, and let Scarlet go first. Then he went, and the door slammed shut. 

Without the wind, he could hear the sounds of battle: gunfire, jumping and rolling around, shouting, and a weird sound that sounded like when the Neutranium Generator exploded, a sound like WOEOEOEOEOOOOOOO. 

He opened the door, and found people in dark red clothes firing their laser guns into the ceiling. "They have horrible aim." Ash thought. But then he noticed how with every shot, a spark was released, and the hologram loses its glow for a little bit. Then it heals. 

Ash watched as a little piece of the hologram stuck out. The air curved, popped, and sizzled at the same time as little waves extended out from the piece to the soldier. Ash heard the same WOEOEOEOEOOOOOOO sound.

He flew backward with such force that the metal door that was behind Scarlet and Ash broke off its hinges. 

The wind howled as Ash joined in the battle by kicking a soldier in the head. One down, five more to go.

As Ash was busy wrestling with a soldier, the soldier that got ejected out of the bridge onto the deck was cutting the thick ropes that kept the bags of helium and the ship connected.

Scarlet joined in the fight by punching a soldier in the face. He crumpled, and the hologram blasted the body out of the bridge. He missed the deck and fell to his death. 

The last soldier was firing his gun at the roof. At this point, the hologram was nearly invisible. 

The soldier was about to fire then again.

"No!" Ash yelled, and tackled him just as the gun fired. The laser sailed through the air and hit the ceiling. 

The hologram disappeared, and a little piece of metal the shape and size of a walnut clattered to the floor. 

Ash got on top of the soldier and kicked him until he was senseless. Then he grabbed the piece of metal and put it in his pocket and closed the wooden door between the hallway and the bridge.

Ash found a tiny button labeled MAP, and a non-artificial-intelligence hologram popped up. It showed a 3-D globe of the planet. The arrow was located at the west side of the large blob of land. The Refuge was on the east side. 

Ash zoomed in, and found that they were close to the other Refuge. 

Suddenly, the ship lurched and started leaning toward the bow side. 

Ash grabbed onto a railing as the ship lurched again and started falling down. Through the window, Ash saw the bag of helium float away. "Oh no." Ash said. Then his feet started lifting off the ground. 

Ash had never experienced falling before, and would have though it was fun if they weren't plunging down to their deaths. Ash heard Scarlet screaming, but he was too terrified to respond. 

"Warning, rapidly descending." A voice said. The globe disappeared and was replaced with a 2-D hologram of a orange triangle with an exclamation mark in the middle. 

Then that disappeared and was replaced with an "Altitude Meter." The number started at 3,000 feet and was rapidly descending. 

Ash floated over to the control panel and started scanning the buttons, looking for a stabilizer button. There wasn't one, so he pressed the Emergency Procedures button.

There was a whoosh, and a giant parachute popped out. But the ship was falling too fast, and the parachute broke free. 

They broke through the cloud layer, and Ash could see through the cracked glass floor, the ground. There was even more trash here, and the ground was covered in hundreds of neat stacks of trash mounds. They all appeared to be the same height, and they broke through the lower cloud layer. 

They flew past the area and now was rapidly falling toward an area where there was few trash mounds, but there were dozens that were under construction, with rusty cranes, trucks, and ramps. 

There also appeared to be people. They all looked up and pointed just as they flew over that area as well. 

The Altitude meter reached zero, and there was a deafening groaning sound as the ship met ground in the first time in decades, and rolled along the ground. 

A lonely trash mound stopped it, and it collapsed on top of the bridge, and Ash and Scarlet were knocked out cold.