An 'Among Us' Short story

Chapter 4: Black Out

The next meeting felt surreal.

If you told me at that first meeting after Brown's death would only be attended by half of my crew while the other half would be viciously murdered....I would've thought you were delusional.

But here I stood. The new captain's title heavy on my shoulders. 

The remaining crew sat around the meeting table that felt too big now.
No one had really spoken after what happened to Red and it was collectively agreed that no one would. But one thing was for sure: The crew that now sat before me was not the same group I walked onto this spacecraft with. They all waited for me to speak but I didn't know where to begin. 

By logical steps -- not that logic had played a role in anything at this point -- everything should go back to normal now.  

"I think we can all agree that the threat is gone" I then began slowly.

"Yeah, unless anyone would like to admit that they have a bad habit of murdering people" White snorted in yet another poor attempt of a joke.

No one laughed. 

"We're only five left. What do we do now?" Purple asked and looked at me. Her once bright eyes were dull. Her face looked tired and pale. It seemed like there was nothing left in her.

I took a breath and straightened myself.

"We move on" I told her. It was the only thing that sounded rational at the moment "We mourn our losses and we move on. It's the harsh truth but if we keep dwindling on it, it won't help anyone. We have lost enough"

The crew didn't say anything but they didn't disagree either. I didnt know if it was because they trusted me and my words, or because they were at a point where they had no strength to argue with anyone anymore. 

"I'll try redoing the main frame and slowly work my way through rebooting the wires" Black said. 

I nodded.

"Get started on that as soon as you can. We'll possibly have to psychically fix the antenna outside the spacecraft but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. We'll work on getting the rest of the ship back up to date too"

Green piped up "Does that mean the experiment is over?"

It was the question that was hanging in the air. The elephant now finally revealed.
We hadn't been told what would qualify for the experiment to end. Since day one we were to understand that the experiment was important above all else and that we needed to try and continue it as long as possible. But could you continue an experiment with half of its test subjects ? 

I didn't know the answer...but I knew I couldn't tell them that. I was Captain now, I had to have every answer for everything, so I cleared my throat and tried to think of the most fitting thing to say.

That's what Blue would've done, right?

Oh who was I bluffing? Blue wouldn't have question himself on what to say, he just simply would know what to say.

And I clearly wasn't Blue.

I swallowed the heavy lump that was now rising in my throat.

"I don't know" I told him truthfully. 
Honestly was the only thing I had right now, so that's what I was sticking to.

"Our focus for now is to get communications up and running and trying to contact the Observers again to see where we go from here. For now, we will assume that it is still going and take action as such. You guys can turn in. Go get some rest"

They seemed satisfied with that answer and there were no objections, I had almost laughed with relief.  I noticed they were waiting for me to say something else. I frowned for a second before I remembered: