Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: Out of Options

Alvin’s POV

No one at the table said a word. Eleanor, Theodore, Jeanette, Simon, Brittany, myself, all looked at each other in shock and disbelief. Dave seemed somber but hardly surprised.

“Do any of you have any questions?” our agent, Dan Helling, asked the six of us. 

I couldn't in all honesty speak for anyone else in the dimly lit room, but I could sure try, and I for one felt insulted. Here this guy was, a man we had met not five months ago who had been our manager for a total of four shows, telling us our careers were essentially over. 

Again, no one said anything. 

“Come on, guys,” Dave piped up. “This isn't the end. Not even close.”

“Really?” Brittany retorted. “Because that’s what it sounds like.”

Mr. Helling sighed. “Look, attendance at your concerts has steadily dropped for a full two years. There are bands that never had a platinum record - even some that haven't played together for decades - that are getting more clicks… selling more albums. Singing chipmunks used to be an exciting, fresh novelty, but the shock factor has died and the fact of the matter is that most people just don’t enjoy your voices.”

“Y-you’re our agent,” I said. “Isn’t it your job to fix this?” 

“It’s my job to ensure that you guys remain as profitable as possible through the twilight of your careers,” he said, looking at me frankly. “That means scaling things down a bit. Doing a lot of non-music related projects. Performing in smaller venues. Doing whatever it takes to squeeze every dollar out of you guys until you retire in a year, maybe two.”

Anyone who knew me knew that the phrase “scaling down” wasn't in my vocabulary. I kept my mouth shut, but I knew this was bothering everybody. It was a slap in the face. No longer popular, on the last leg of our careers. Soon to be washed up and forgotten, at only the age of 18. 

Without a word, I hopped off my chair onto the floor and started walking towards the door, wanting to exit Helling's office before I said something I'd regret. The others quickly followed my lead. 

Dave followed behind us. He opened the door for us while Mr. Helling still sat at the table. As we filed out, he turned his head politely towards our visibly disappointed manager and said, “Let us know if you come up with anything.” 

Mr. Helling cracked a cordial smile at him and nodded as Dave shut the door softly behind himself. 

Simon’s POV

The car ride home was mostly silent, minus Dave’s 80’s rock station. 

“Soon, we’re gonna be as washed up as whoever sings this damn song,” Alvin moaned.

“ Alvin !” Dave scolded. 

Alvin shut up. This was hard news for all of us to hear, despite how evident it was that Dave knew well before the meeting with Helling. But this was all clearly especially hard on Alvin. I think he always envisioned that his music life would never die, that he was infallible. Now he was dealing with his own mortality, and it wasn’t pretty. 

“I refuse to let myself slip like that,” Alvin said. “Dave, we need a new manager. Mr. Helling has got to go.”

“Mr. Helling isn’t the problem here,” Dave replied. “He’s just trying to make the most out of a bad situation.”

“Well ever since you hired him, all he’s been focused on is down-sizing and it’s because of that that our numbers have been slipping! He hasn’t been getting us out there enough!” 

“Alvin…” Brittany said softly as she put her hand on Alvin’s shoulder. 

He frowned as he looked into her eyes, then let his eyes sink back to the floor of the car. 

Again, this was hurting all of us, but Alvin was taking it especially hard. And the rest of the car ride was pretty much silent. Minus the 80’s rock.

Brittany’s POV

We all still had that sick feeling in our stomachs as Dave's car screeched to a stop in our driveway. And I didn’t know how to make Alvin feel better. The second we stepped foot inside the house, he just went straight up to his room and didn’t come out or make a sound.

I gave him a half hour or so before I went up and knocked on his door. 

“Who is it?” his voice softly responded through the door.

I turned the doorknob and walked in. “Your favorite,” I said flirtatiously. 

“Oh…” he sighed, sitting on his bed facing his window. “Hey Brit.”

I walked up to him and sat myself right next to him. “You know, Al’, we’re gonna be fine. We already have enough money that if we spend it wisely… we can live comfortably for the rest of our lives.”

He shook his head. “It’s not about the money, Brit. It’s about my purpose. My pride, my legacy. My music. Music is my life, and I can’t just let it go.”

“We can get into other things,” I tried. “It’s not like we’re just gonna be sitting around, bored.”

“Then what will we do? Simon and Jeanette aren’t sweating it; they can get into any field of work they want. And Theo and Ellie are already getting the green light for that cooking show they’ve always wanted. They’ll still be able to follow their passions. Music is my passion.”

I smiled and winked at him. “If you ask me, being a showoff is your passion.” He rolled his eyes and grinned. “Plus I can think of one or two other things that you seem to be pretty passionate about,” I said, taking care to make it very obvious what I was referring to. I leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “and those won’t go away with our record deals.”

He hugged me, but then I heard him sigh. Embracing him in return, I silently hoped that I had improved his self esteem, if only just a little bit. 

><><><><><

Later that night, I noticed Alvin didn’t feel as warm as he usually does. He was shivering, despite the fact that he had all the covers.

Dave hadn’t really cared about us sleeping together since we had turned 18. Not that we had waited that long to try. 

Neither of us said a word that night. We merely spooned and waited for our alarm clock to go off in the morning. Not unlike how we were all just waiting for our fame and fortunes to slowly dwindle down until there was nothing left. 

Eleanor’s POV

It was already 7 am, and Alvin and Brittany still weren’t awake. Not that we were surprised, being pretty sure their motivation to work was long gone after the previous day's meeting. 

We all sat around our kitchen table, including Dave, having already eaten breakfast. 

“Should we just get to work without them?” I asked.

Dave shook his head. “I actually have something very important to talk to all of you about,” he said, “before we get started on anything.”

As if on que, we heard Alvin’s bedroom door upstairs open and close, with two pairs of tiny feet pit-patting their way down the stairs. They both entered the kitchen, side by side, looking groggy from lack of sleep.

“Morning, you two,” Dave said, somewhat uncomfortable. No matter the pathetic job the two of them had done keeping their intimacy a secret for years, he had never truly gotten used to the idea of any of us sleeping together.

Alvin quickly noticed that we were waiting for them. “What’s this all about Dave?” he said, yawning. 

“Sit down,” Dave said, his grimace transforming into an excited grin. “I have exciting news.”

Alvin’s ears perked as he took a seat. 

Once we were all seated and looking at Dave in anticipation, he allowed his grin to turn into an ear to ear smile. “Ok, so Mr. Helling got back to me last night.”

Everyone looked like they had been let down already, especially Alvin. 

“No no no, you’re going to like this,” Dave insisted. “At least, I think you guys might. At least some of you. But we can't do it if everyone's not on board. Frankly, I'm still not sure how I feel about it.”

“Dave,” Simon interrupted, “What is it?”

Dave bit his lip, pondered for a moment, and said, “he told me that NASA is planning a mission to Mars. But they don’t just want astronauts to go. They specifically invited you six to take part.”

Everyone’s eyes were wide with amazement.

Dave continued, “he wasn't able to explain why, exactly. You know, why you six in particular? But he said he'd be able to set up a meeting with the heads of the department.”

We all stared up at him, dumbfounded, our mouths hanging partially open as if everyone wanted to respond but were hoping one of the other five would speak up instead. With so much to consider with as momentus of a news break as I had received in my life, the right words failed to reach my tongue.

“Well?” Dave prodded us. “What do you guys say? Want to hear them out?”

Jeanette’s POV

You could tell that everyone was nervous as Dave powered up his MacBook, while we all stood on the kitchen table directly in front of its monitor. Mr. Helling, who had driven down to our house for the meeting, was the only one who truly seemed relaxed. “There’s no need to be anxious,” he assured us. “This isn’t a job interview, per se. They came to me because they want you six specifically. If anything, they are nervous about how you feel about this entire concept. They’re mostly going to be pitching the trip to you.”

That made us feel a little better. Or, at least, it made me feel better. I had to admit that the prospect of visiting space was exciting for me, no less Mars. But I had my doubts, especially when it came to a government agency that seemed to be trying to use celebrities for a publicity stunt. 

The MacBook screen finally came alive, and just in time for 1pm. We all tensed and waited in anticipation, when suddenly the Facetime app opened with an incoming call. It was an unknown number from Austin, Texas. Dave hesitated, as if having a few extremely late second thoughts, before finally clicking the green button at the bottom of the screen. 

The live video feed went full screen, showing two men sitting in front of a plain white wall. The man on the left was wearing a nice suit and tie with thick brown hair combed to the side. The man on the right was mostly bald, wearing an outdated pair of glasses and a white lab coat. 

The man in the suit looked at all of us and said, “Hey all, how are you guys doing.”

We all looked at each other before Dave answered for us, “We’re fantastic, how are you guys?”

“Great! Great… well I should introduce myself. I’m Julian Mitchell, I’m NASA’s Public Relations Department Head, and with me right now is Tom Butler, who’s been assigned to direct the mission that we hop you guys agree to take part in. He’ll be the head honcho behind the whole operation.”

The bald man nodded at us and said in a heavy southern accent, “pleasure to meet you all.”

“The pleasure is all ours, sir,” I said nervously. 

“Charming,” Tom responded, clicking his tongue. 

“Yes, well, I’m sure you all have a lot of questions,” Julian said. 

Without answering verbally, a few of us nodded while the rest waited patiently.

“Well, let me give you the rundown,” Julian began. “Essentially, we’re trying to land non-professional astronauts on the planet Mars for the first time in history. Thanks to recent revelations in rocket technology, among other things, we have the means to not only equip you guys with the ability to travel all the way to Mars in about 1 week, but you’ll have enough fuel to get you all the way back as well. This will be an absolute spectacle; unlimited press coverage… millions of people rooting for you as brave pioneers.”

Alvin barely attempted to hide how much his interest was peaked.

“So how long, in total, would we be gone?” Theodore asked. 

“If all goes according to plan, exactly 44 days,” Tom said abruptly.

“See, you’re going to fly there for 7 days, set up base camp and live there for exactly 30 days, then take another 7 to pack up and return home,” Julian clarified. 

“I have some questions myself,” I said. 

“Ask away,” Julian shrugged.

“This whole thing seems eerily similar to the Challenger mission back around 1986. Are you familiar?”

Julian nodded. “That tragedy could have been avoided if only someone had heeded many… material deficiency concerns that were brought up immediately before the launch,” he said solemnly. “We’ve learned from that incident. We have implemented numerous programs and processes designed specifically to prevent anything like that ever again, and they have been successful. Nothing even close to that awful has happened since then.” 

“Ok, I hear you,” I said, shrugging, “but I also still have my doubts that you guys could physically get us to and from Mars in 2 weeks. Seems quite impossible to me. I mean the latest estimates I've found on a one way trip to Mars are for about six months.”

“Well see, that’s where you guys come in,” Julian said.

Tom once again interjected, “you six offer the unique advantage in that you think and act just like human beings, but are considerably smaller. All of the equipment, including the shuttle, will be chipmunk-size. Perfect for you guys to live comfortably, and due to the fractional amount of mass as compared to any rocket we've launched prior, it will take far less energy to propel you guys into higher speeds. That, combined with the utilization of a nuclear reactor supplying propulsion, will allow us to send you up with enough fuel for the return trip.”

“Wait wait wat!” Simon bursted. “We’re not going to have any experienced astronauts with us?”

“That’s correct,” Tom said.

“But see, you’d each go through an extensive training camp to prepare you and teach you the ins and outs of the mission,” Julian said. 

“So this means that either we agree to this mission, or there’s no mission at all?” I asked.

“That’s correct,” Tom said. “The choice is all yours. If you accept, you will be compensated with 750,000 dollars each, and we can fly you down here on our dime for your training. But please get back to us as soon as possible so Julian can make an announcement.”

“Will do, you guys,” Dave said, “Thank you.”

Tom nodded, before the screen went dark with the words “Unknown Caller has ended the call”. 

Theodore’s POV

Dave sighed. We all had our doubts, but I think we all simultaneously wanted to do it.

“Well,” Mr. Helling piped up, “you want a popularity boost, this is as close to a sure thing as you can get.” 

Dave nodded. “Look you guys, you’re all 18. You’re adults, which means this is your decision. Is there anyone that definitely doesn’t want to do it?”

No one made a move.

“Ok, so is there anyone who definitely does want to?”

Alvin raised his hand right away, followed closely by Simon and Jeanette. 

The three of us who were holding out studied the room, anticipating the peer pressure which we knew was coming our way. But the persuasion attempts did not begin as quickly as I would have expected, possibly because neither Alvin, Simon, or Jeanette could determine quite how to convince us.

After a moment of additional hesitation, Eleanor raised her hand as well, and when she saw the worried look I gave her, she said, “this is our once-in a lifetime chance, Theo. To do something incredible.”

Well, that was all I needed to hear. If Eleanor is going, then it was my job to protect her. I raised my hand. That just left Brittany, who was the most visibly on the fence out of all six of the chipmunks.

“Brit,” Alvin said softly, “We just need this one little thing. This one thing and our careers are back on track. Don’t you ever miss the days of being adored by the public?”

“Adored by the public for my appearance, or my clothes… or at least my singing voice. Alvin, we have no experience and no business going into space. Simon and Jeanette? Sure. They have the brain power. The rest of us? I'm just not sure we're cut out for it.”

“Look,” Alvin sighed at her, “everything will be fine. Those people at NASA want this to succeed just as badly as we do. They wouldn't put us in that space ship until we're truly ready.”

She looked at the floor, eyes darting from left to right, likely considering the multiple worst-case scenarios going through her mind.

“Please, Brit,” Alvin pleaded, “I swear to you I won't let anything bad happen.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she grumbled before raising her hand.

Dave looked like he wanted to cry, both tears of joys and sadness. “I guess that settles it,” he said. “Everyone pack your things, we’re going to Austin.”

Chapter Text

Brittany’s POV

I stared out the window as the houses and buildings of Houston raced past underneath us. I sighed as it finally sunk in that we were about to land. It would be quite a while before I ever stepped foot in our nice, comfortable house in L.A. that I had always taken for granted. 

On the other hand, I was giving up comfort for what I knew very well was the chance of a lifetime. I wasn’t dumb. I knew what it meant to be the first Earthlings to ever visit Mars. And not only that, but to be able to come back. 

I peered out the window once again as the runway was flying by right under our feet. A pit formed in my stomach out of anticipation as it seemed every inch that we got closer to the ground, it felt more and more likely that I was going to feel the sudden jolt of our touching down. I waited intensely as I clenched the armrests next to me. I held my breath until finally we hit the Earth. The jet bounced and rocked, and then vibrated as we slowly came screeching to a slower and slower pace. 

“We’re here,” Dave said to the six of us from the seat directly behind me.

I thought about saying something sarcastic, but I decided to save it. 

It wasn’t long before the jet had docked and the captain could be heard over the loudspeakers (interrupting my playlist), “ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for flying with us today. It is currently 98 degrees and sunny in Houston, Texas with fourteen percent humidity. If you need assistance exiting the aircraft, then any of our stewards or stewardesses would gladly help you. If not, we hope that you enjoy your stay here and that you come see us again sometime soon.”

I rolled my eyes. Neither of those are very likely , I thought.

As we exited through the gate, there was a man waiting inside the airport with a sign that said, “Chipmunks & Chipettes”. 

We walked up to him and he knew we were who he was waiting for immediately. He politely escorted us to a limousine, closed the doors behind us, loaded our baggage, and drove off. 

None of us were astounded by the luxury of the limo, as we were used to that kind of treatment. Or at least, we used to be. To be very honest, despite all of the car’s commodities, the best part was the Air Conditioning. It was awful hot out. 

It was another hour or so before we reached it: NASA Training HQ. It was a large building in the middle of nowhere, mostly white, with the NASA logo spray painted on one massive windowless wall. In fact, the entire building was essentially without windows. To top it off, it was in the middle of a hot, barren desert. I gritted my teeth knowing that it only went downhill from here. 

The limo driver wasted no time after handing us our bags before speeding away and leaving us, stirring up a cloud of yellow and brown dirt in his wake which caused me to go into a coughing fit. 

We took a moment to examine the sight before us. NASA's headquarters towered over us with an intentionally mysterious presentation. It was equally as intimidating as it was impressive, and it left us all awestruck.

We trudged towards what looked like the main entryway. The only hint we had that it was where we were supposed to go was that it was literally the only entrance we could see. It was a large, thick metal door with a security camera hovering above it. To the side was a red light and a green light. The red light was lit up; the green light was dim.

Dave stepped up to the door and looked up at the camera which stayed fixated on us. Suddenly, the red light went dim and the green light buzzed on. Dave looked back at us and shrugged, then turned back around and pulled the door open. We all followed him inside, as he shut the door behind us. 

Inside was a well lit greeting room, with a front desk and two waiting chairs with patterned red cushions. There was a man sitting behind the desk, wearing a navy blue suit and a laminated clearance badge lanyard around his neck, who looked up and smiled at us. “Welcome!” he said. “They’ve been waiting for you in the conference room. Come with me, I’ll escort you there.”

We obliged, following him up a short flight of stairs, around a corner, down a hall, three doors down to our right.

“This is the it,” he said. “Go ahead in. If there’s anything you guys need, let me know.”

“Water?” I asked.

“I’ve been instructed not to let you guys drink water just yet,” he replied, forcing himself to maintain his smile.

I gulped down my thirst and nodded.

With that he nodded at us and walked off. 

Dave opened the door for us and waited for us to hop in before walking in behind us and closing it. Inside the room was a luxurious, round wooden table. On the other end of the room sat Tom, the bald man from the video chat. Next to him was a short but stocky brunette woman with a hardened face and her hair in a pony tail. She wore a sleeveless gray t-shirt and sweatpants. 

“Come in!” Tom said to us. “Sit down, please.”

We all did as he asked. 

“Allow me to introduce Captain Raegan Megyesy.”

“Call me Captain Megs,” she cut in. I was pretty sure her voice was deeper than Dave’s.

“Fair enough,” Tom said. “Anyway, she’ll be in charge of your training and will be completely responsible for making sure you six are ready for everything you can - and will - encounter on your journey. With my supervision, of course.”

Captain Megs tipped a nod at him, then turned her attention back to us. 

“How long will this training last?” I asked.

She smirked at me. “Until I say you’re ready,” she responded. 

“We’re very excited to be working with you little guys,” Tom said. He observed Dave finally taking a seat next to us and said to him, “Mr. Seville, you’ll be able to watch their progress in training during designated times, but I’m afraid you won’t be able to have direct contact with them until their training is complete. If you’d like to say your goodbyes at this time, that would be ideal, afterwards I will show you to your living quarters.” 

Dave nodded then glanced at the six of us with pronounced longing. We all quickly ran in for a giant group hug. “I love you guys,” Dave said. “I’m so proud of you. I know you guys will do great.”

We broke up the hug as Dave stood up. Tom walked over to him and put his hand on Dave’s shoulder, before leading him out the door. But just before he shut it, Dave called, “just remember, I’ll be watching you guys!” 

And then the door shut. 

And so we were left in the room with Captain Megs. She smiled down at us, all standing on the table. “Alright, look you guys,” she said in a less than feminine voice, “you’re in for some pretty intense experiences while you're here.”

I caught Theo and Ellie giving each other worried glances.

“And that doesn’t just mean physically, either,” Megs continued. “Don't get me wrong, I will be working you guys out. It's probably my favorite part of this job. But my purpose here is also to push you all to the limit mentally and psychologically. Because I’ve been up there.” She raised a single index finger, pointing towards the roof. “I’ve been up there, in space. There has never been a mission in this program's history where everything has gone according to plan. Even if nothing were to go wrong, which will not happen, you need to be alert at all times. You have to make the best possible decision, every turn you take. My training will be actively saving your life down the road, whether or not you recognize it in the moment.” 

I liked something about this woman. She got to the point. She didn’t try to sugarcoat things, or mess around with us like Tom or Julian.. 

“The main thing to keep in mind,” the imposing woman said in a reassuring tone, “is that no matter what I put you through, no matter what task I assign to you, it is merely designed to give you the illusion of being impossible. There is not a single challenge that will be placed upon you which we are not certain you can accomplish, nor anything that I have not accomplished myself. There will be moments where you wish more than anything for it all to be over. And we will make it easy to quit. Oh, God, will it be so tempting to give up. But you cannot. You have to be mentally tough; to be willing to endure excruciating pain in order to reap the rewards. Any questions?”

No one said a word. 

She smirked again. “Then follow me.” 

The first place she led us was down the stairs, but still well past the greeting desk. We came to a giant glass window, about three times as wide and twice as tall as a man, through which we could see inside a large white room. Inside the room was a chipmunk-sized shuttle simulator, a mud pit, a rope obstacle course, and a few other areas designated for physical training.

“This is where you’ll be spending most of your days for a while,” Megs said. “We’ll be conducting the vast majority of our training exercises in there.”

We moved on to a room across the floor. It looked to have a double sliding door with the letters “FES” imprinted on it and a small window at Meg's eye level that none of the rest of us could gaze through. “This is the Flight Elements Simulator,” Megs said. “Anything we do in there won’t be pleasant, but it will all be very necessary to prepare you for the sensations you will experience during space travel.”

Our last stop was on the very top floor, in what appeared to be the far corner of the building. “This will be the room in which you will sleep,” Megs told us as she typed a code into the keypad that was embedded directly to the left of the gigantic titanium door. She pressed the pound key, prompting the entrance to come to life and slide upwards with painful, rusty screeching.

Alvin glanced upwards at Megs with a smirk, clearly enjoying the spectacle and gadgetry he had thus far observed. “Will we be given that code?” he asked.

Megs broke into an uncomfortable fit of laughter. “Not likely, no. You'll be accessing this room when we say you can access it.”

Alvin's smirk faded instantly.

We all walked into the dark room, with small flashing colored lights all over the place. Megs flipped a switch which quickly illuminated the whole place. There were six beds, perfectly sized for chipmunks, sitting across from each other in the center of the room. The wall farthest from us had a counter with cabinet space below it. Pipes and valves littered the overheads, walls, and the floor. Seemingly random buttons, switches, control panels, and multi-colored LED bulbs flashed in different patterns across nearly every free inch of real estate. There were no windows.

“The room will be kept at 60 degrees Fahrenheit at all times, including when you sleep,” the Captain said as she watched us look around the room while rubbing our arms for warmth. 

“I have a question,” I said, raising my hand.

“The answer is no,” she said smiling. “The flashing lights will never be shut off. These are all elements to get used to while you’re sleeping. Which reminds me…” she trailed off as she walked towards one of the beds, which we just now realized had seatbelts on them in the shape of an X. “It’s very important that each of you guys strap yourselves in,” she continued. “Every night. In your own bed.” She emphasized that last part, glaring at us. “This is, more or less, what you can expect your sleeping quarters to look and feel like on your ship.” 

><><><><><

It was only 9 pm, but we were already exhausted. Training hadn't even commenced yet, which was an intimidating thought in and of itself. We were just wary. 

We all changed into our specialized space pajamas, facing away from each other and using our bed frames for privacy. With no further instructions, pulled ourselves onto our assigned beds and buckled ourselves in. 

Just as I was about ready to fall asleep, I heard Alvin say to us, “we got this, guys. Never look back.”

I lifted my head off my mattress, trying to get a glimpse of him, but I was unable to raise it enough to see more than his shape because of my constraints. I sighed, laid back down, and fell asleep, shuddering from the cold.

><><><><><

It was seemingly just two moments where I was out. If I dreamt, I did not remember a second of it. I remembered shutting my eyes, and almost immediately after, the whole room came violently alive with sirens. The main overhead lights were flashing on and off, and an electronic voice was repeating the phrase, “ALERT! URGENT ATTENTION NEEDED! ALERT!” 

It all happened so fast. Our beds vibrated to a degree where I felt my fillings flinging around inside of my body. In a panicked state, I scratched at my seat belt until I found the release button. I freed myself and hopped off the bed, the noise and flashes still violating my senses. I covered my ears and looked around. It looked like Alvin had fallen off his bed and onto his back, having been shaken off by the vibrating beds. Probably didn’t buckle up last night. 

Through the flashing lights I could see everyone else safely hop off their beds while Alvin picked himself up painfully. I couldn’t help but smirk at his arrogance being turned against him. I walked myself over to where Simon and Jean were standing, all of us still with our hands pressed tightly over our ears. 

“WHAT DO WE DO?” Jeanette screamed so that Simon at the very least could hear her.

“WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!” he yelled. 

We all scrambled over to the lone door that was our way out. We pushed and pounded on that door as hard as we could, desperate to get out of this loud room, to no avail. I looked around the room. There had to be a way to open this hunk of metal. I suddenly noticed a large red button all the way at the other end of the room, with the label “ACKNOWLEDGE” plastered underneath it in orange letters that were all capitalized. 

Without hesitation, I scrambled across the room with the others watching me curiously. As soon as I reached the button I slammed my fist into it. I turned and looked and sure enough, although the noise and flashing lights didn’t stop, the door slid open. The other five wasted no time in sprinting out of our room. Alvin peeked his head around the corner of the frame to watch and make sure I got out. I began running towards him but without warning, the door slowly started sliding back closed. I picked up the pace, sprinting as fast as I could. I moved my body with more intensity than I ever had in my life. The door was almost closed. As soon as I was near enough to the exit I dove forward, coming to a painful slide which carried me through the doorway just as I could hear the metal click into place behind me. I skidded to a stop and peered behind me. The door was fully closed and the noise of the alarms were reduced to only a faint, barely detectable buzzing. 

Suddenly, the noise and vibrations stopped altogether and our bedroom seemed still. But before we could let the ringing leave our ears, a man’s voice spoke quietly through the loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling: “Chipmunks and Chipettes, Captain Megyesy is expecting you at the FES as soon as possible, please.” 

We obeyed these directions and made our way down the stairs. 

“That was fucked up,” Alvin said. “There was no need to wake us up like that.”

Simon rolled his eyes. “It wouldn't have been so bad if you had strapped yourself in last night like we were told.”

“What if I had badly injured myself?” Alvin persisted.

“Their risk calculation,” Simon retorted, “probably assumed that we would actually listen to their safety instructions.”

“Well their first mistake was to assume I’d listen to anything ,” Alvin chuckled.

“Well,” Simon said, rolling his eyes again, “looks to me like it’s more your problem than theirs.”

Before the arguing could go further, we arrived at the room that had FES printed on the doorway.

“Morning, cadets!” We all jumped and turned around at the sound of Megs’ voice behind us. 

“Morning!” Theodore said politely.

“How’d you guys like your wake up call?” she asked, chuckling.

“That was your idea?” Alvin asked, looking almost betrayed.

“Oh, hell no.” She laughed. “That’s how this facility has woken up its trainees since long before I was going through the same program that you guys are enduring.” 

“Is that going to be how we wake up every morning ?” I exclaimed. 

“Better believe it,” she replied. “It teaches you to be calm in the face of emergency. It’s another thing you get used to, trust me.”

I groaned, but she ignored me.

“I have a couple important things to say to you guys before we get started. First things first, I want to make it clear to all of you that you are equals, both in this training pipeline and on your mission. What I mean by that is not that there is no chain of command, nor that you won't have to take any orders. What I mean is that each of you are equally capable . And to prove it, you’re going to split up into two teams.”

We all looked up at her with wide eyes. We hadn’t really felt like competitors in forever. She smirked at us.

“It’s simple: chipmunks… vs. chipettes. You see this?” She dug a strange, large bronze coin out from her pocket and held it up so we could see it. “This is a shower token. Individually, it is worth ten minutes in a hot shower. Trust me when I say this thing is going to feel very valuable starting… well… pretty much right now. These things are your currency; a man, woman, chipmunk, or chipette with a shower token is a millionaire. You will be given the opportunity at the end of each day to cash in any tokens you earn. The catch is that every exercise I put you through will be a competition, and the winners will be awarded with a shower token each. Any questions?”

The Chipmunks and Chipettes all looked at each other in anxious anticipation. For the first time in a long time, we weren’t completely on the same team.

“Good,” Megs said. “This brings me to your first challenge.” She walked over to the FES and pressed a button to open the door. “Go ahead in and take a seat, side by side with your team.” 

We walked inside obediently. I remarked silently that the interior of the FES resembled that of a roller coaster simulator. There was little lighting to speak of, making the contents of the structure difficult to initially make out. As my eyes adjusted, I examined my surroundings. 

The back of the room had a less-than-convincing image of outer space through a “window”, which in reality was just a screen behind a thick layer of plexiglass. Similar to our sleeping quarters, the room was littered with pipes, valves, buttons, switches, lights, and other pieces of machinery. There were six chipmunk-sized seats, 3 on each side of the simulator, facing each other. We did as Megs told us to, sitting girls on one side and guys on the other. We each buckled up without being told to do so. 

“Here’s the deal,” Megs said to us, peering inside through the doorway. “It’s going to get really cold in here. Not cold enough to cause any real damage to your limbs, or your organs, or anything else. But you’ll be very uncomfortable. I promise you. Above each of you is a button. Press that button, and it’s all over. But the first person to push that button loses a shower token for their whole team. Good luck.” And with that she slammed the door shut, and there was only us, buckled to our seats.

I didn’t like the idea behind this challenge at all, and as I looked around me, I could tell that everyone else expected me to be the first one to push that button. 

There was an ominous, audible shift in the ventilation machinery. I felt the temperature in the room gradually drop, from room temperature to cool, from cool to chilly. The whole meanwhile the screen mimicking the window at the far end of the room was becoming “cracked” and “icy”, adding to the effect. 

Not today , I told myself. 

The temperature continued to drop until it felt like I was outside, butt naked in the snow. 

Alvin could probably sense the discomfort on my face, and was definitely eager to end this, so he chirped in my direction, “gee, this really sucks, doesn’t it Brit?” He had that stupid sly grin on his face that I had secretly fallen in love with years ago. 

It was so cold now that we could watch each others’ breath escaping our mouths and condensing onto the pipes above us. “Nah,” I replied to him. “I could go all day.” Unfortunately the uncontrollable shuddering kicked in right then. 

Alvin smirked knowing he had done his job. 

Jeanette leaned over to me and whispered, “look, Megs specifically said that we could stay in here as long as we want and not get hurt. We just have to ignore the pain.”

I nodded but didn’t speak to conserve body heat. 

“This is pointless,” Alvin piped up again, steam spewing from his mouth as he spoke. “Everyone knows men have a higher pain tolerance than women.”

I glared at him. “Call me when you’ve given birth, hun.”

“Call me when you’ve given birth, hun ,” he snickered.

Eleanor chuckled. “Pretty sure you’d wanna know about a baby a little earlier than that, Alvie.”

The four of them laughed. Alvin chuckled nervously. I stared at the floor awkwardly. 

The stabbing pain of my toes going numb was starting to get into my head. I was able to rub my fingers against the seat belts to save a little bit of warmth, but my feet had nowhere to go besides dangling uselessly just inches above the floor. And the worst was knowing that every time I took a breath, my body heat was floating away into the atmosphere. But I wasn’t going to quit. It wasn’t even about the shower tokens anymore. I just had to beat Alvin. 

“G-guyss-s…” Eleanor said, shuddering violently, “I-i-i don-don’t think I c-cann go mmmu-much lo-onger.” 

“Yeah, you right,” Alvin said, also shaking a little bit. “That oozy, painful feeling in your toes really bites, doesn’t it?”

“Alvin,” I snarled, “Sh-shut thefuck… u-up.”

He let out what was as close to his devious laugh as could be through the chattering teeth and shudders. 

Eleanor started to sniffle. “I have to d-... ta do iit.” She slowly started raising her hand towards the giant, friendly-looking yellow button above her head.

Suddenly, a button was pressed, but it wasn’t Eleanor’s. It was Theodore’s. An electronic woman’s voice said, “Exercise completed”, as the door to the room slid upwards and the temperature slowly began rising again. 

I breathed a sigh of relief as we all unbuckled ourselves and slid to the floor. 

“Theodore!” Alvin exclaimed. “Why the hell would you do that? We were about to win!”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

Alvin slapped his forehead. “Those were easy shower tokens!” 

“Take it easy on him, Alvin.” I said grinning slyly at him. “His pain tolerance met its limit.”

He turned around to face me. “I mean, it's pretty clear to me that you guys used your evil witch sorcery to trick Theo into quitting,” he said shrugging. “You all basically cheated!”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Cheated?”

“Mhm. You had to seduce Theodore into being a traitor. But it’s no big deal. Now that I know Theo’s on your side, I can put our team on my back. We won't lose again.”

“That's enough!” Megs growled at both of us.

Already in an awful mood, Megs escorted us to the main training area.

And so we competed, non stop, every day. For 27 straight days, we would wake up to that awful ruckus, but every time we would be more and more ready for it and dealt with it more and more smoothly. For 27 straight days, we raced through obstacle courses, struggled in simulators, memorized key combos to solve problems. We got dirty, sweaty, frustrated, but always persevered and enjoyed every last second of whatever shower tokens we earned. 

Captain Megs was right. Every day, we became tougher, smarter, quicker. Our pain tolerance went up drastically, as she often pointed out, based on the FES competition that we were forced to partake in every 3 days. 

I found myself, over time, carving out a niche with any challenges that involved communication and the relaying of information. I shined in relation to the others with a particular exercise that was essentially a more technically challenging version of the telephone game. It took place in a flight simulator, where my blindfolded teammates had to navigate us through a debris field while I guided them using only radar. Whenever Megs had us prepare for this test, we would be elated knowing it would be a guaranteed shower token for each of us.

Jeanette, she excelled in many areas. Her athleticism was never her strong suit, so she did have the tendency to hold us back in obstacle course runs. But what she lacked in mobility she more than made up for in her scientific understanding. She gained such an excellent grasp of the reactor plant and the mechanical and electrical systems on board that she put even Simon to shame. Any events simulating the failure of any of these components were deduced and combatted efficiently and calmly thanks to her brain power.

Ellie showed little special promise in any arena outside of being an outstanding teammate. That is of course until about three weeks in, when our group began basic field medic training. I had never observed someone more of a natural at applying a tourniquet than her. The speed and the care she took in diagnosing symptoms and injuries was unparalleled.

For what it was worth, the boys showed bright flashes at times as well.

Alvin, for instance, was unsurprisingly adept at the physical regiments. He was always dragging his brothers through the obstacle courses, sometimes literally if Megs decided to have some fun and force us to run it while tied together. But he also seemed talented in the rover simulator, which was an event we only ran twice. One of them being a race, which he won by a longshot. He did indeed turn out to be the shower token bread winner for the boys as he so confidently predicted.

The flight sim machine was where Simon shined, particularly in segments where he had to coordinate efforts between his two brothers. Tracking wind vectors, debris in the area, making adjustments with expertise became the norm for their team, and it was entirely thanks to him. He developed a knack for seeing the bigger picture and making decisions under pressure, even resisting the protests of his older brother when necessary.

As it would come as a shock to precisely no one, poor Theodore was average - at best - at nearly every challenge. That is except for a single day's lesson dealing with the storage and serving of freeze dried food. Obstacle course? He drove the other boys mad with his lack of endurance. Navigation? He wasn't stupid, but his nerves consistently got the better of him. But put some vacuum-sealed, freeze dried fruits and veggies wrapped in cellophane in front of him and apparently he becomes a magician. He even drew verbal abuse from our captain and trainer over how much care and effort he put into the presentation of his final product.  

Even the subjects we struggled with initially, we all showed gradual improvement. Those of us who were physically limited grew faster and stronger. Those of us who were petrified by the idea of blood and disfigured anatomy slowly grew less feeble stomachs. Those of us who would have rather died than read a text book on reactor theory had at least put together enough of a basic understanding to make it through our tests. By the end of four weeks, it felt as though we had no true weaknesses. We finally felt ready for this mission. The only problem is, Megs didn’t. At least, not yet. 

Chapter Text

Simon’s POV

It was the same routine, every day, for forty two days. Forty two. Days. And I’d be lying if I said the worst part wasn’t the wakeup call we got every morning. It was just like that first day. The alarm would go off, and we would need to push a button to open the door and get out of our rooms. The only catch was, each day the button that was programmed to end the alarm was different each day. This particular morning it was thankfully on the wall directly behind my bed. Yesterday morning it was adjacent to the sliding door. 

We met Megs as soon as we had all recovered from our morning routine down in front of the pain tolerance testing room, as we had every three days for the last forty two. Our trainer was waiting patiently for us. 

“You guys have been getting faster,” she said smirking down at us. “I’m impressed. Simon, is everyone ready?”

“Yes ma'am,” I replied, noticing the jealous look on Jeanette’s face. Technically speaking, it had not yet been decided which between the two of us would be the head pilot of the mission. And although she claimed that it did not matter to her, I knew she was bitter that it seemed to be going more my way. After all, why ask me that question if Megs were not leaning towards putting me in charge?

“Right, well, I’m going to throw something new at you guys today,” the gruff woman said to us. “That’s all I’m going to say. Get in there and make me proud.”

Confused, we all obeyed. Exactly the same procedure as the first time, as well as every other time we took this test. The Chipmunks and Chipettes were buckled in on opposite sides of the structure. The only door shut and sealed behind us. The temperature started to drop.

Over the past six weeks, we had all done a good job of improving our times. We had figured out a few tricks, including keeping our eyes shut and breathing as little as possible so as to conserve body heat. Obviously this meant only talking if it was absolutely important. Because any heat that escaped your body was undoubtedly gone from the room very quickly.

And we were on a roll today. It was still a competition between the Chipmunks and Chipettes, winner gets shower tokens. But no one had talked. No one took any breaths that seemed too deep. We all definitely felt in our hearts that we had beaten our best time yet. And although we physically felt a numbing pain from the freezing cold, in our minds we felt we'd be able to go on forever.

Then the twist came. 

Megs’ voice piped up over the loudspeaker, “ here’s where it gets interesting. ” Which, although no one said anything, had us all petrified. “ I want to remind you all that no matter how you feel in there, it’s nothing that will cause you permanent harm. ”

Suddenly, I felt the temperature begin to rise, and rise and quickly. It was only a few seconds before we were back up to room temperature, which, to our bodies, felt like we were baking under a noon sun in the summer. And that was just the beginning. Very quickly it went from room temperature to mid-90’s. And it was still climbing. We realized our strategies would have to change soon. 

The shock of the sudden switch from freezing to hot had our bodies tingling. We felt like we were being suffocated in the heat, especially as it rolled up to what must have been 110 degrees. Our breaths became long and rapid. 

The whole room began to glow orange, faintly at first, then slowly becoming more and more bright. Flames began to burst on the screen that was simulating the room’s “window”. The entire simulator vibrated and shook violently as it continued climbing in temperature. It honestly felt like being baked in an oven… during an earthquake.

“I’m gonna pull the plug!” Theodore exclaimed desperately. 

Just as I was about to encourage him to keep going, Jeanette interrupted me: “No, Theo!”

Everyone looked at her in shock. She was on the cusp of winning shower tokens. Brittany, especially, looked pissed. 

“We can get through this. Together. They can’t keep us in here forever!”

We were all sweating puddles by then. But Theodore gulped down his discomfort and pain and did not press the button, as did we all. 

Suddenly, only a few moments later, the machine powering the heaters was turned off. The pronounced whirling sound of the air conditioning kicked in. The room quickly cooled back down to room temperature. 

Alvin groaned. “Ok, who pressed the button?” 

No one owned up to ending the drill. 

The door to the room slid open, allowing Megs to step inside. “I was the one who ended the test,” she said gruffly. 

We all looked at her, confused, as we unbuckled ourselves and hopped down to the floor. 

“I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear that all six of you have been granted double shower tokens,” Megs continued to our delight. “AND the rest of the day off of training. Enjoy yourselves. I’ll speak with you again tonight.”

We all jumped and celebrated, hugging each other. It was a great sense of victory. Megs nodded and walked off, leaving us to do whatever we wanted for the first time in forty two days.

Alvin’s POV

Theo and Ellie were busy applying water to dehydrated food that had made up our diet over the last six weeks. It was disgusting as hell, but I had gotten used to it. Theo and Ellie did their best to make it taste good and I always felt like I had to pretend they succeeded. 

Jeanette and Simon were kind of in their own world, on the other side of our bedroom, making small talk. Brittany was sitting by herself. I half-confidently walked up to her and sat next to her. She forced a smile at me. I smirked back, acting as though I barely cared about her. 

“So… how you planning on using those shower tokens?” I asked slyly.

“Probably in the shower, dumb ass,” she giggled at me, rolling her eyes. 

“Not what I meant,” I responded.

She looked straight into my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno,” I said, pretending to think about it. “I was thinking maybe we could pool our tokens… later tonight?”

She grinned at me. “Alvin Seville. Isn’t that against the rules? That’s why there’s a girls locker room and boys locker room.”

I looked at her with wide eyes in fake shock. “You clearly forget who you’re talking to.” 

“Food’s almost ready!” Eleanor called to all of us. 

“Before we eat,” Simon interjected, “I suggest we all shower. Use up those double shower tokens that Megs generously provided for us.”

I smiled at Brittany and whispered in her ear, “only use half of them.”

Brittany’s POV

The guys were in one shower room. The ladies were in the other. It was just like any day, where we were all about to cash in the tokens that we had earned during the challenges, excited as we were about to have our only opportunity of the day to gossip about the other three. We each had four shower tokens, good for a total of twenty minutes. As Jean and Ellie started inserting all four of their tokens into the slots by their showers, I made the split-second decision to only use two of mine. I made sure to act like I had used all four while sneaking the other two inside of my towel.

Each of our showers turned on to our great satisfaction. 

“So why do you guys think Megs ended the test today?” Eleanor said.

“I don’t know,” Jeanette said, shrugging. “She clearly wasn’t mad at us, cause she gave us the day off. I guess we’ll find out later tonight.”

Eleanor nodded. 

“I bet we passed the test,” I said. “I think she thinks we’re ready.”

“For the mission?” Eleanor gasped.

I smirked. “I feel ready, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Well,” Eleanor continued, “if training’s over, who do you think will get the job of Head Pilot? Jean or Simon?”

Jeanette blushed. “I-I really don’t care. Either one of us would do the job well.”

“Oh come on Jeannie,” Eleanor insisted. “I love Simon as much as the next person, but everyone knows you’d be way more qualified to pilot this thing.”

Jeanette shrugged. “The guys are probably saying the same thing about him. Besides, there’s way too much pressure being the number one and I’m not sure I won’t let it get to me.”

We decided to change the subject, and mostly just talked about the food Ellie and Theo had made, and whether or not it was going to be any good.

After what, I suppose, was about ten minutes, my shower abruptly shut itself off. 

“That was not twenty minutes,” Jeanette scowled, looking at my shower head. 

I shrugged. “Oh well.” I grabbed my towel, careful not to drop my two remaining tokens, and began drying off.

“You should complain to Megs,” Ellie said.

“Nah,” I said. “It’s all good. I’ll just start getting ready for dinner. See you guys later.”

Jeanette’s POV

Megs had called us all down to the conference room where we had first met, and that was where we all sat. At first she looked at all of us with her usual stirn grimace, but once she knew we were all paying attention her face loosened up into a smile.

“My work with you guys is done,” she said. “Today you six proved to me that you are ready for deep space travel. I’ve already made my recommendation to Tom, the head of the mission, and he agrees totally. There’s very little more I can help you with.”

We all held each other's’ hands in congratulations. We were going to be the first Earthlings to visit Mars. 

“Jeanette,” Megs continued, “you showed me tremendous leadership and perseverance today when you encouraged Theodore to push himself despite the fact that it could have cost your team. It’s that kind of selflessness and compassion for each other that I was really looking for. On top of being physically ready, you guys know how to be there for each other now, no matter what.”

“Thank you ma’am.”

Eleanor's ears suddenly perked up as she turned her head to ask our trainer, “Megs, have you decided who's going to be in charge of the mission?”

She nodded, solemnly. “We have decided to go with Simon for that position. His team won the most drills, and we believe he’ll do a great job.” 

I was crushed. But I did everything in my power to internalize it, represent my face from showing a single emotion other than joyful congratulations. I really did feel good for Simon, whom I had deep feelings for and genuinely believed would do a good job. But I also felt frustrated and overlooked. 

“In fact,” Megs continued, pulling a folder out and tossing it out onto the middle of the table, “I have official positions set here for each of you. All six of you have been training for these positions, but these are the official job descriptions.”

Simon

Head Pilot

Main responsibility is to pilot the ship as it launches, while it is under way, and while landing or docking. Is additionally responsible for all major decisions made during the mission. Safety of crew is priority number 1. Success of mission is priority number 2. Can use any means necessary to ensure that either of these priorities are met. 

Jeanette

Head Engineer

Is responsible for monitoring and maintaining stability and function of ship's power plant, as well as all mechanical, electrical, and electronic systems on board. Additionally responsible for all tools and devices that the crew will use. Will also take over as 1st in command of mission if the Head Pilot is ever unable to continue their duties, in accordance with protocol.  

Alvin

Field Manager

Versatile crew member who should be at the forefront of any expedition or job that would assist the mission. This includes but is not limited to repair jobs, driving rovers, and collecting material to be studied. 

Brittany

Head of Communication and Navigation

Two main duties include tracking and reporting any necessary information regarding the whereabouts of the ship or any other equipment, as well as monitoring all signals and communications sent to and from the ship’s computer.

Theodore

Nutrition and Health Monitor

Main duties are to monitor calorie intake by each crew member, ensure food is rationed properly, and also to see to it that all living conditions for the crew members are as optimal as possible. Is also the main assistant to the Medical Officer.

Eleanor

Medical Officer

Must make decisions on health and conditions of any and all crew members, including head pilot. This includes both mental and physical health. Has the power to quarantine anything including other crew members. Has the power to relieve any crew members of their duties for legitimate medical reasons.

I politely gave Simon a warm hug of congratulations. On the inside, I was screaming.

“None of these assignments should come as a surprise to any of you,” Megs said. “You each have been training for these jobs for six straight weeks. With that, I dismiss you. You’ll be meeting here with Mr. Julian Mitchell. I bid you all farewell, and good luck.” 

With that, she stood and saluted us as we began to walk one by one out the door. I was the last one out.

“Jeanette, a word with you?” Megs called, stopping me dead in my tracks. 

I turned around slowly to face her. She motioned for me to come closer. Nervously, I obeyed. 

“I understand you feel disappointed by getting second in command,” she said.

“Oh… no I understand,” I croaked halfheartedly.

“Save it,” she retorted. “I’ve been in your position. But if you had not expressed fear to your teammates about taking on the position…”

“When did I do that?” I asked suspiciously.

“Today, for example, in the locker room-”

“You were listening to that?” I interrupted in shock. 

“We’ve bugged every single room in this building. Including both locker rooms.” She spoke as if this was standard procedure. 

I felt embarrassed.

“Look,” she said, “I just wanted to remind you that your title may say ‘second in command’, but outer space is nothing if not unpredictable. Sooner or later you’ll get your chance to shine as a leader, God forbid something happens to Simon.”

I nodded glumly, unable to look her in the eye. “Am I dismissed?” I asked.

She sighed, nodded, and watched me excuse myself and walk away without saying another word.

Brittany’s POV

I looked around nervously, being out well past curfew. To be perfectly honest I had no idea what would happen if I was caught. The whole hallway seemed lifeless and still, only making me harder on myself for every single little noise I made. 

As I crept through the hallways, past the meeting room and past the main training gym, I couldn’t help but imagine Captain Megs being just around a corner, waiting for me patiently so she could bust me and simultaneously scare me to death. She’d have that look on her face, like she knew she had to look disappointed but at the same time she was my age once too and understood to some degree. I hoped she remembered those days well, God knows how long it had been.

Fortunately, Megs never appeared. And the entirety of NASA training headquarters remained asleep as I finally arrived outside the shower rooms.

If Alvin had kept up his end of the deal, he would be inside the girls’ washroom with his two extra shower tokens. “He’s in there,” I told myself under my breath. “He wouldn’t just leave you hanging like that.”

I took a deep breath and walked in, looking around each corner nervously. Looking for Alvin. Please let him be in here , I thought to myself. 

The second I had entered through the doors and walked through the tile laden passage, around the corner, I gasped with delight. Alvin stood right smack in the middle of the large shower area, in his sleeveless training outfit, looking confidently at me. “Alvin!” I giggled, immediately realizing that I was a bit too loud. “What if I was someone else?”

Alvin shot me one of his signature shit-eating grins. “Aw, Brit. Who would be dumb enough to be up past curfew ?”

Chapter Text

Eleanor’s POV

There was no alarm the next morning. We each rolled out of bed, one at a time, peacefully, at least two hours past our normal time. 

And seeing as though we were in no hurry to be anywhere, I decided to whip us up some breakfast. I began gathering what was left of our supply of dehydrated foods and tried to plan something that would work. Theo offered to help right away, of course. 

“What do you think?” I asked him. “If we rehydrate the peppers, onions, and ham we could use the powdered eggs to make an omelet?”

He thought about it for a second. “But we won’t have cheese,” he said. “We should use those ingredients but we could just make like a breakfast stir fry with them. You see what I'm saying?”

I giggled. “Genius,” I said, winking at him. 

We got to work right away. He began the process of rehydration, I started the eggs. He chopped the ham, I chopped the veggies. We took turns sautéing and stirring. The end product was a rough hodgepodge of a stir fry by our standards, but the whole gang seemed to love it and that’s what really mattered.

We all paraded down towards the meeting room, where NASA’s head of public affairs, Julian Mitchell, was standing waiting for us outside the door. “I trust you enjoyed your breakfast,” he said, checking his watch. “I figured you would appreciate being allowed to sleep in.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jeanette said. 

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Simon asked.

“Today you will be finally introduced to the actual equipment you’ll be using on your mission,” Julian told us. “After that, you’ll probably spend a while prepping for the live interview you’re scheduled for in a week."

“Did you say, ‘live interview’?” Alvin said, smirking.

“Yes, Alvin. And you will be prepped on what to say. To the word. Which means no improvising. You’re gonna be taught how to walk the line.”

“Please. If you’ve ever seen me speak live, you’d know you have nothing to worry about,” Alvin insisted.

“On the contrary,” Julian snapped, “I have my job to worry about. Furthermore, NASA has nothing if it doesn’t have credibility. Now are you done?”

Alvin shut up.

“Good,” Julian sighed. “Follow me to the testing lab.”

Alvin’s POV

Who did this Julian guy think he was? I’ve been through absolute hell the last six weeks, and I was simply trying to lighten the mood. I’d have liked to see that fragile old man go through only half of what I went through. He was in charge of protecting NASA’s image? No wonder they came crawling to us for help. 

He led us all the way down another flight of stairs to what, I supposed, was the basement of the building. At the bottom of the staircase was a thick metal door, which Julian opened with a six digit code. 

On the other side was a giant room, where sparks were flying everywhere as the finishing touches were being placed onto the machinery that we would use on Mars. There was also that bald guy, Tom, waiting for us. He was chatting with a husky, gruff man with thick facial hair and a hard hat on his head. We walked over to greet him.

As soon as the guy in the hard hat walked off, Tom noticed us and said, “Oh! You’re finally here!”

“These are some pretty sweet-looking toys,” I snickered.

“Yes, well I am sure you’re anxious for a tour,” Tom said as enthusiastically as he seemed capable. “Let’s begin.”

It was easy to get hypnotized looking around at the machinery being built, even though it was merely chipmunk-sized. But what really caught my eye was the Rover. It looked easily big enough to fit all of us, with eight giant wheels that looked to be able to climb over anything and everything. The whole thing just looked tough, including the thick glass dome on the front end that allowed the driver to navigate. 

Without caring about what the rest of the group was doing, I ran over to where they were testing the rover on a treadmill made of an artificial bumpy terrain of red rocks and sand. 

“Ah yes,” Tom said, following behind me. “This is the new MR-17, a Mars rover designed specifically for this mission. Alvin, you’ve taken more than your fair share of goes in the rover simulator. Your skills have proven excellent in driving it.”

“Can I get inside?” I asked.

He hesitated, then shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

The inside of the rover was insanely high tech. It had all of the controls and displays that they had tested me with on simulators. I strapped myself into the driver's seat and pictured myself actually on the red planet. I noticed there were cameras all over the place; one inside the cockpit looking down at me, the cargo bay, two acting as rear view mirrors, one facing the front. 

“What’s with all of the cameras?” I spoke into the microphone of the headset that I had just strapped around my forehead.

“As much of the mission as possible will be recorded and transmitted back to NASA HQ,” Tom explained.

Well, I thought, it’s a good thing Brittany and I got our special night out of the way, before the cameras were watching.

Brittany’s POV

“So, Brittany, help me understand how you fit into this mission?” Anderson Cooper's question made me blink. He hadn’t asked either of the other five that question, all of whom were sitting with me on the couch across from Cooper's desk. 

“Well… what exactly do you mean?” I asked, squinting at him.

“As in, erm… how are you going to contribute?”

I shrugged. “Well, I’ll mostly be manning the radar and the cameras to… help everything go smoothly. I guess that’s a good way to put it.”

Anderson nodded. “I see. I guess the overarching question on everyone’s mind in America is… why a group of singing chipmunks?”

“Well…” Simon began to try to answer but he trailed off.

“I mean don’t get me wrong you guys are very talented at what you do. But you never really struck me as astronauts. I just don’t see why NASA would put all of its eggs in the baskets of six chipmunks who have no flight or space experience, for the single most important mission in this planet’s history. Can you at least speculate on that? Any of you?”

“It’s all economics,” Jeanette said. “Not only did making the mission chipmunk-sized reduce the cost of the mission by 90%, but it also allowed that we could be sent with enough fuel to get us there AND back. The entire project would have been impossible without us.”

“Right, well, that makes sense, but all this seems a bit rushed, doesn’t it? I mean the public only recently found out about a month ago. And now, NASA’s already announced that they’re basically ready for takeoff. Does that not concern you at all?”

“There’s no reason to be concerned,” Simon insisted. “All six of us have been through rigorous training for an extensive period of time. We’re ready.”

Theodore’s POV

We had all known this moment would come. It was the day of the launch, Houston was buzzing with excitement. And here we were, us six chipmunks, in the prepping room, alone with our father for possibly the last time. 

No one said a thing at first. Dave stared down at us with tears welling up in his eyes. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m just so proud of you guys.”

We all ran in and embraced him in a seven-way group hug. 

“You guys have accomplished way more than any person in history,” Dave continued. “And you’re only eighteen year old chipmunks. I’m very proud to call you family.”

We still hadn’t broken the hug.  “Dave, every last one of us will return home safely,” Simon said, also holding back tears. “I swear to you.”

Dave chuckled through his sniffling. “I know, Simon. These things always work out in the end. You guys always end up ok, no matter what.”

Alvin smiled warmly. “I’ll try not to be so much of a dumbass this time, Dave.” 

“So just a little bit?” Dave joked. 

Everyone forced an uncomfortable laugh, almost as if we were trying to convince ourselves that this was just a short farewell. Even though, if everything went entirely as planned during this mission, it’d be at least 44 days until we saw Dave again. And that was if nothing went wrong.

As everyone slowly began breaking away from Dave, I was the last one still squeezing him tight. This was the man who had taken my brothers and I in when we had nothing. He had helped us develop our talents into a phenomenon. He had watched us as people grew to love us, but he helped make sure fame never changed us. He had comforted me when I had nightmares. He had helped us grow into young adults. He had cared for us. 

“I’ll be here for you when you get back,” Dave whispered in my ear.

I nodded, wiping my tears into his shoulder, and hopped down and joined the others. 

Dave glanced at the clock, which read 7:03 am. The launch was at 10. “It’s time for you guys to start getting ready.” He turned, opened the door, and stepped out. But before he closed it behind him he looked back at us and said, “and don’t forget, I’ll be watching you guys.”

And that was where he left it. He closed the door, and now it truly felt like we were on our own. 

A few moments later we were joined by scientists and doctors. I couldn’t speak for anyone else in that room, but I, for one, still felt lonely. 

Alvin’s POV

They started the long process of hooking up heart rate monitors to our bodies and helping us into the many layers of space suit we had to wear during launch. It was uncomfortable, and it didn’t take long after I had slid into the final outer layer that I started to get hot and sweaty. I looked at the clock and we still had an hour till lift off. 

Suddenly, the phone in the room began to ring. One of the nurses walked over and picked it up. “Hello?” There was a pause. “Right now? Mhm? Ok, thank you. I’ll let him know.” She put down the phone. “Alvin, they want you in the Medical room ASAP.”

“Now?” I looked at her with wide eyes. “They want me to walk all the way up there in this suit?”

“Apparently.” The woman didn’t look up from the checklist she was working on or even make an attempt to care about my dilemma. 

I rolled my eyes. But as I walked out the door, in my three layers of space suit, I turned and gave one last glance at Brittany. She smiled at me in a way that made my heart skip a beat. 

Halfway through the walk to the Medical office was a brief but very beautiful scene. It was a bridge, leading from the smaller prepping building that the other five still occupied to a different wing of the launch headquarters. And as I walked across it I was stopped dead in my tracks by the view to my left. Our ship, called the Caesar , stood tall amongst the support poles mounted to it. Even though it was “chipmunk-sized” it was still, at a minimum, the size of two freighter trucks combined. There was a large crowd of people that had gathered miles away from the ship just to watch the takeoff. Even from where I was standing I could hear the sounds of the people grumble through the wind that was blowing in my face.

“Mr. Seville.” I jumped as Captain Megs’ voice spoke to me from behind. 

“Megs!” I exclaimed. Where did she even come from?

“A word or two?” she asked in an imposing way that made me nervous. 

“Well, actually Captain  I’ve been summoned to the Medical office so, I should probably get going.”

“No you haven’t,” she said, stepping in front of me. “I was the one who made that call. If you please, it’s important.”

I was still looking for a way out. “Actually, I should probably get back to the prepping room.” 

But she stopped me again. “Listen here, you little shit,” she growled down at me, “I know what you and Brittany did in the locker room the other night.”

I looked up at her with shock evident in my eyes. “Oh, um, right well… it wasn’t us?”

“‘It wasn’t us’?” she chuckled sarcastically. “Is that what you were planning on telling a multi-trillion dollar government agency when they discover you knocked up one of their crew members and got her pregnant?”

“Woah woah woah!” I backed up from her, insulted. “No need to disrespect the pull out game like that!” 

“You think this is a joke?” She didn’t seem as angry as she was pretending to be. “I could have reported you, but I don’t think it would have made a difference.” She leaned over the railing to stare at the Caesar along with me. “They've been so desperate to push you guys into action, to pull you through this mission by your ears that I probably would have been told to keep my concerns to myself.”

“Look,” I said to her softly, “what’s this all about?”

She sighed. “Listen Alvin, I’m going to give you some instructions. Now it’s very important you keep this between us.”

“What do you mean?” I said. 

“In the cargo bay. On the Caesar . Hidden in a cabinet in the back left corner. The cabinet’s locked, and the only key is strapped underneath your mattress.”

“What’s inside the cabinet?” I asked suspiciously.

She hesitated. “Only open it in the case of extreme emergencies. I think it may come in handy. Just… please, keep this between us. Promise?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I read you Captain.”

“Good,” she said. “You should get back to the prepping room now.”

I saluted, somewhat jokingly and said, “aye aye, sir.” And with that I began to walk back in the direction I had come from. 

Just as I was about to round the corner out of her sight, she called out, “Alvin!”

I stopped. 

“I'll be pulling for you little guys. I'll watch as much as I possibly can.”

“Thank you, Megs. For everything.”

And I walked off, feeling confused, scared, thankful. Second thoughts were beginning to pop into my head about this mission. But it was too late to go back now. 

Simon’s POV

There was one last thing to take care of before we boarded the Caesar. All six of us stood side by side, with Tom in front of us. In his hand he held six little white pills.

“Cyanide pills,” he confirmed for us, as he handed us each one starting with myself. “Throughout the course of this program, we’ve had our astronauts carry one on their person at all times.”

Eleanor’s hands were shaking as she was the last one to take her cyanide capsule.

“Now remember,” Tom continued, “these pills are only to be used in the case that you are stranded and there is no hope for rescue.” He must have seen the frightened looks in our eyes, because he finished with, “never in the history of NASA has an astronaut been in the position of swallowing their pill.”

Never in the history of NASA. 

Because no human could fit inside the Caesar , it was our responsibility to run all final interior diagnostics ourselves. I was in the cockpit with Brittany as she was working out the kinks with the ship’s navigation and communication instruments.

I watched as she typed into the ship’s main computer, the Motherboard, “ this is Brittany Seville testing Motherboard communication systems. ” The monitor showed only a solid, dark blue background with white letters in the standard Times New Roman font. 

We waited for a few moments before the computer screen refreshed with the response of, “ we read you Brittany. Proceed with testing instruments. ” 

I nodded, reassured as everything was going smoothly. “Brittany, you got it from here?” I asked her.

She turned to the surveillance screen next to her and began flipping through each and every one of the cameras on board as she muttered, “yeah I got it… erm, Captain.”

That caught me off guard as I wasn’t yet used to being in charge. Well, actually I was, but not officially. “Good,” I said, “in that case I’m going down to the engine room to check on Jeanette.”

“You do that,” she said without looking at me. 

Jeanette was busy, as I expected, doing her job.

“Everything checks out,” she told me. “The combustors react normally. The thrusters on all sides are functional. The control rods for the reactor showed full range of motion.”

“So if everyone else’s departments are a go, you’re saying that we’re ready for liftoff?” I asked, clarifying.

“Yeah,” she said, “I think so.” 

“Not good enough, Jeannie,” I said. “Anything goes wrong… it's our lives on the line.”

She hesitated, but finally said. “We’re ready. The ship’s in good shape.”

I nodded. “Then this is it. Ellie’s medical supplies and tools are all accounted for. Alvin just told me in the cargo bay that all of the equipment is ready. Theo said all of the rations are on board and organized. Brittany’s instruments are all functional. We’re taking off.”

Jean looked up at me. “So this is it?”

“What do you mean,” I said, looking into her eyes with confusion. 

“You know, I’ve always liked you,” she said to me in a mildly playful fashion, “Simon Seville. Always had a crush, even back when we were little kids.”

I stepped closer and grabbed her waist as she put her hands on my arms. “I know,” I whispered.

“Things will never be the same between us,” she said, tears beginning to swell up in. “We’re never going to be that cute celebrity couple that everyone adores. That won’t be us anymore when we get back down here.” 

I wiped her tear away with my finger. “Don’t think like that. Whatever life throws at us…” I paused to think of the right way to put this, “we can get through it. Together.”

She looked up at me. “You mean that?”

“Of course,” I said, reassuring her. 

Without warning, she leaned in and pressed her lips against mine. And we stood there for at least 5 minutes locked in a passionate kiss.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was 10 am. All systems had checked out. Launch was proceeding according to plan. As all six of us buckled into our assigned seats within the cockpit, we could hear the sound of Julian Mitchell’s voice blasting over loudspeakers, announcing, “ attention, everyone! The launch is about to commence! Please join us in giving the Chipmunks and Chipettes a warm farewell as they begin their heroic journey towards Mars !”

“Ok,” I said as soon as everyone had buckled up. “All systems go?”

“Yes sir,” Brittany said from her seat behind me, “Navigation's good.”

“Engineering's good,” Jeanette confirmed.

“Medical, good!”

“Berthing and rations are good.”

“Very well,” I said gleefully. I waited patiently for only a couple seconds before calling, “Alvin?”

I heard an unsure “um” behind me, indicating that my older brother's silence was more so due to his inability to decide what to call his area of responsibility rather than due to insubordination. 

Nevertheless, I gave him a stern, “ Alvin ?” and turned my head over my right shoulder to glared at him.

His eyes widened, he bit his lips and said, “auxiliary equipment good!”

“Very good.” I cooed, cracking a faint smile and turning my head forward towards the window, “Houston, begin the countdown.”

“ Confirmed ,” Tom said into our headset from launch headquarters. “ Julian, begin countdown. ”

Once again, Mitchell’s voice boomed out through and across the launch site: “Launch commencing in ten… nine… eight… seven… six…”

“Jeanette, fire the primary boosters!” I yelled.

“Five…”

“Aye,” came Jeanette’s reply. 

“Four…”

The Caesar began to rock violently as the boosters began to fire up.

“Three…”

Things began to get hot. And very loud.

“Two…”

Cheers began to erupt from the crowd.

“One… liftoff!”

The cockpit became more stable as the landing legs of the ship were slowly lifted off of the pavement. 

“Brittany give me updates on our altitude,” I yelled as I took control, trying to keep us balanced in mid-air. 

Brittany obeyed, “Currently at 3 meters and climbing. Now at four meters… now at five.”

“Jeanette, energize the upwards thrusters on the forward side.”

“Aye.”

With Jean’s press of a button, the Caesar began to surge forward while still climbing. I pulled up on the stick, forcing the nose of the ship up towards the sky.

“Jean, put the back thrusters at one hundred percent power and kill the primary boosters.”

Jeanette did as she was told, and with a jolt we began to blast upward towards space. 

“Altitude now at one hundred fifty meters and climbing,” Brittany filled me in.

“Noted!” I responded.

As we flew, the cockpit was once again shaking even more violently than they had prepared us for in simulators. 

“We’re now at a mile.”

The controls of the Caesar seemed to fight me for every inch, jerking about with every gust of wind. Keeping her nose facing at a steady angle away from Earth's surface was proving to be more of a challenge than I was prepared for, with only an attitude indicator and the general position of the Sun in comparison to my window to guide me.

“Three miles.”

I was struggling to keep us headed at the same general angle. This battle felt like it was taking hours.

“Forty-one miles.”

My neck, arm and back muscles were very close to giving in.

“Eighty miles… Eighty-one now.”

“W-we’re out of Earth’s atmosphere!” I yelled at my crew.

The ship began to calm down. The flight felt significantly smoother. “We’re at one hundred and fifty miles above the Earth’s surface,” Brittany updated me.

“Jean kill the thrusters!” I barked over my shoulder.

She did as I commanded. The rockets propelling us forward died instantly, meaning the speed of the Caesar began to decrease steadily. The whole ship ceased to vibrate completely. We were finally free of Earth’s gravitational pull. We had done it. We were on our way. 

Chapter Text

Brittany’s POV

I felt weightless. I felt like if I had unbuckled myself from my seat I would have begun floating aimlessly around the room. Because, well, that was exactly what would have happened. We had done it. We were free of Earth’s gravity. It was just us six chipmunks hurling towards Mars. 

“Brittany!” Simon called back to me. “Let Houston know we’re still looking good. I’m switching it to auto pilot now.”

I rotated back to the Motherboard and typed, “ Caesar has broken gravitational pull, autopilot being engaged. All systems looking good. ”

The vibrations of the ship slowed to a significantly calmer rumble after autopilot had been switched on. The ship made a slight adjustment in course to make sure we arrived at the planet as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Motherboard’s screen lit up again. Houston’s response was: “ Congratulations you six. You have made your planet proud. Communications from now on will get slower over time, due to distance. ”

I quickly replied with, “ Noted. ”

I unbuckled myself and allowed my body to rise above my chair. I had to know what this really felt like, not just in a simulator. Everyone else soon followed my idea, prompting some “woah’s” and “damn’s”. 

Simon was the last one out of his seat. “Now hold on a second, everybody,” he said to us. We all stopped and stared at him from wherever we were holding on to a railing or chair. “I think that before we all just go off and do our thing, that we need to set up shifts. Because at least one person needs to be manning this cockpit at all times, even when we’re on autopilot.”

We all agreed, but no one volunteered. 

Simon nodded. “I’ll go first, then.”

“I guess it only makes sense that I go second, then,” Jeanette said glumly.

“I’ll take it after Jean,” Theodore said.

Eleanor giggled. “I’ll get fourth shift.”

Just as I was about to take fifth, Alvin beat me to it.

It didn’t really matter, so I just volunteered for sixth and moved on.

“Right,” Simon said. “I’ll set a timer. Every two hours, the next chipmunk needs to be in here to relieve their predecessor.”

That was good enough for the rest of us, as we all broke apart, leaving Simon alone in the cockpit. And you best believe my first stop was the kitchen, along with Theo and Ellie. “Can we break any of the food out yet?” I asked them.

They exchanged unsure looks. “Well, we each have a limit of food we can eat per day,” Theodore said. “If we eat now that’s less for later. Everything's portioned out precisely, with very little excess reserved for emergencies.”

“I know that,” I said. “I’m just starving. I don’t know why. It’s probably just been a long day.” 

Ellie shrugged. “We could ask the rest of the guys and see if they want anything,” she said sweetly. 

“Good idea!” Theo chimed in. “I’ll go see if I can find Alvin or Jeannie.”

Alvin’s POV

I didn’t know what everyone else was doing, but my first move was to slip all the way down to our sleeping quarters. Everything Megs had told me before we lifted off was still fresh and clear. Her specific directions still replayed in my mind over and over, including: “ Only open the cabinet in the case of extreme emergencies. ” I just wanted to make sure the key was exactly where she said it would be. 

In all honesty, it took me a little while to even find the sleeping quarters as the ship was so large and intricate. Or maybe it also was because I was somewhat disoriented from having to push and float my way down hallways. The quarters themselves were a relatively small room that was designed similar to where we slept at NASA HQ. 

Each of our beds were labelled. The chipmunks beds were on the opposite side of the quarters as the chipettes. My bed and Brittany’s bed were in opposite corners. I looked around to make sure I wasn’t being followed, then pulled myself over to my bed, window side, as far from the entrance as could be. “Under the mattress,” I muttered under my breath to myself. I double checked one more time to make sure no one was looking. Then I slid my hand underneath the mattress, which was little more than a bag of plastic stuffed with cotton, and began feeling around for the key. 

I had to thrust my arm underneath the pad all the way up to my shoulder until I finally felt it. It was velcro'd down to the bottom of the mattress. “Bingo,” I said, unstrapping it and grabbing it in my hand. 

But then I paused. What am I doing? I asked myself, knowing full well I didn’t need this key yet. I should know what’s in that cabinet, I told myself. Then I shook my head in disgust. No, listen to instructions for once in a life.

Theodore’s face suddenly popped into the doorway, which made me gasp. “Hey Al,” he said cheerfully. Then he noticed me shoulder deep in my mattress and said, “what’re you doing?”

“Oh, nothing,” I tried. “Just making sure my bed’s nice and comfy, ya know?”

“Oh, well I can check to make sure there’s nothing wrong with it if you’re having problems,” he said.

“No thanks I’m good,” I said, with my arm still underneath the pad.

“No it’s no big deal!” he insisted as he pulled himself in my direction. 

“I said no Theo!” I snapped at him. I immediately regretted my short outburst, knowing it would emotionally hurt him and possibly even make him suspicious. But it was too late to second guess or hesitate now. “Leave me alone, please!”

He stopped himself, shocked at my sudden outburst. He gave me a suspicious look, raising an eyebrow and muttered, “Some of the crew are thinking about breaking out some of the rations. What do you think?”

“Nah, I’m not hungry,” I responded in a more polite but rushed tone. “Thank you.” It was a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, and to apologize for myself without literally doing so.

“Ok,” he said, shrugging and turning his back to me. He would periodically squint at me over his shoulder in suspicion as he guided himself out of the quarters and back the way he came.

The moment he was out of sight, I exhaled forcefully. I didn't understand why I felt the need to be so secretive. Perhaps it was simply my nature, to learn something that only I knew and to want to explore it. Or perhaps it was the creped and nerve-racking tone that Megs had used to bring all of this to my attention. Regardless, I was as on-edge as I had been in my life. That’s it , I told myself. I am opening that cabinet. And that’s that.

Simon’s POV

Being in the cockpit alone wasn’t all that bad. I was able to watch what everyone else was doing via the camera feeds through the Motherboard monitor, while I sat strapped into the Captain's chair and anxiously hoped nothing went wrong. My sweet Jeannie had gone straight to the aft section of the ship to admire the view of Earth through a tiny port hole in the engine room. I was aware that Brit, Ellie and Theo had travelled to the kitchen and were playfully arguing with each other, although I was unable to make out the dialogue due to the poor audio quality. I had lost track of Alvin. 

After a while of flipping through the camera feeds, the door to the cockpit slid open behind me. I turned to see Theodore push himself in with his legs. “What’s up Theo?” I asked, turning back to the video feed. 

“Nothing much,” he said, casually. “Do you think we should break out some of the rations now or save them all for later?”

“I’m good for whatever the rest feels like,” I muttered, legitimately not caring in the slightest, staring at the monitor as each spacebar transitioned my video feed from one compartment on board my ship to another. 

He grabbed onto my shoulder. Partially, in my mind, because he needed something to hold onto to hold himself down. “Alvin was acting real suspicious just now,” Theodore told me in a rushed voice, as if he were worried someone would overhear him.

My ears perked. “How so?” I asked calmly.

“Well,” Theo began to explain, “I found him in the sleeping quarters to ask him about the rations, but when I tried to get close to him he snapped at me.”

I chuckled. “You sure he wasn’t hiding Brittany in there?"

Theo shook his head. “She’s been in the kitchen the whole time… it looked like he was hiding something under his bed.”

“Hmm,” I thought for a minute, before beginning to flip through the camera choices. “Let’s see if we can’t find our pal Alvin, then.”

I began by flipping to the feed of our sleeping quarters, finding it empty. Next, multiple different passageway cameras, which were likewise empty. This was followed by the mess, which was little more than a small kitchen and a metal dining table with uncomfortable steel benches, where Brittany and Eleanor were still chatting. I quickly examined the next feed, which was an overhead view of a portion of the cargo bay, before impatiently skipping to the reactor compartment. “Wait!” Theodore exclaimed. “Go back.”

I went back to the cargo bay camera, and wouldn’t you know it, there was Alvin. He looked to be snooping around the area where the rover was strapped by all four wheels into the grated steel deck. He was looking all around him, as if searching for something. His eyes finally fixated on one corner of the bay, away from the wall that the camera, unbeknownst to him, was perched on. Or perhaps he was aware, and simply was hoping that nobody happened to be watching. He pushed himself towards whatever he had taken a good, long stare at. I panned the feed to follow him. He finally stopped himself at a large green cabinet, which we could only see a single side of.

Alvin’s POV

This was it. It had to be. The pastel green cabinet was protected with a custom reinforced steel lock and it was located in the corner of the cargo bay. I pulled out the key and inserted it carefully, checking over my shoulder multiple times for anyone who might see me. As it fit perfectly, I twisted it counterclockwise, which didn’t cause it to budge, and then tried to the opposite direction. The key twisted a full half circle and made a satisfying click sound. I pulled on the key, pulling the door open with it.

I peered inside and was shocked at what I saw. 

Guns. At least two dozen, racked up so that the cabinet was literally packed full of them. But these weren’t ordinary guns; they were chipmunk-sized. Perfect for a creature of our size to use just like any normal human being would. There were, by my rushed count, four AR-15's, eight M9's, four AK-47'S, two Marlin Magnum's, a few more rifles and handguns I did not recognize, a stack of grenades, and plentiful ammunition to top it all off. We were armed to the teeth. Or, I supposed that as of that moment, I was loaded. What to do with this information was totally my decision. 

But that wasn’t it. Duct taped to the floor of the cabinet was a plain white piece of plastic. When I examined it closer I realized that it was in fact a pregnancy test. 

Simon’s POV

From the angle of the camera, we couldn’t see what was inside that cabinet. But we could tell that whatever it was, Alvin was surprised to see it. 

“What do you think’s in there, Simon?” Theo asked me.

“Who knows,” I said, “but whatever it is, he’s clearly up to something.”

“I hope not,” Theodore said. 

Suddenly, Alvin shut and locked the cabinet without taking anything out from inside it. He looked around, as if trying to make sure no one was watching, and pushed off towards the exit of the cargo bay and floated into the main passageway of the Caesar . “I want to find out where he keeps that key,” I said.

But just as I began to follow him through the halls with the cameras, the cockpit door swung open. Like a teenage boy who didn't want to get caught watching adult videos, I quickly clicked back to the view of the kitchen and peered over my shoulder. It was only Jeanette, floating towards us with a happy-go-lucky smirk on her face. 

“Jeanette!” I said. “What are you doing here? My shift isn't up yet.”

“I know,” she said, pulling herself right next to Theo and I to see what we were looking at. She chuckled. “Creeping on the girls in the kitchen, huh?” she joked.

“Y-yeah,” I said.

“You got us,” Theodore said, trying to laugh.

Alvin’s POV

I wasn’t fooling around this time. This time, I wasted no time in racing into the sleeping quarters, tucking the key back under my mattress, strapping it in with the velcro, and getting the hell out of there. I had to find Brittany. 

Then I remembered: the crew was talking about eating. I should try the kitchen. Without wasting time, I flew out of the quarters and recklessly took a left, barely looking where I was going. I zipped through hallways and up through hatches, forgetting exactly where I was more than once. 

I was going so fast I almost went right past the kitchen, but I managed to grab a railing and stop myself with a violent thud that alerted Eleanor and Brittany, who were both inside relaxing. 

“Alvin!” Brittany exclaimed. “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, pulling myself into the kitchen. 

“What’s the rush, Al’?” Ellie asked me. 

I smiled at her with the same innocent smile I used to always shoot at Dave. “Oh you know, just couldn’t stand another second away from you two.” 

“Aw,” she said, rolling her eyes with a grin that she couldn’t seem to help but crack. “Compliment taken.”

I chuckled and turned to Brittany. “Brit. A word with you, please?” I said through gritted teeth, eyes widened abnormally to convey urgency.

“What’s going on?” she asked softly.

I leaned in and answered in her ear, “we need to go somewhere where there’s no cameras. What room has no cameras?”

She giggled. “Alvie, is now really the time for that ?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I insisted. “Please? It’s urgent.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at me to make sure I was serious. Then she glanced at Eleanor who was shifting her eyes rapidly between us and the floor, clearly making an attempt to act uninterested in our conversation. Brittany turned her head back towards me. She whispered in my ear, “follow me to the engine room.”

And we both floated off, with, I was sure, Eleanor’s gaze locked on us the whole way. 

I followed behind Brit all the way down to the engine room, even though I knew where it was. It was mostly quiet, now that the thrusters had been reduced to no power. She led me to a section tucked between a massive lagged pipe and a wall, with a ventilation duct directly above us. I peered around us for a few moments and assured myself that we were not being watched, either in person or through the motherboard screen.

“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “A lot has happened, and I should have filled you in on it sooner but I didn’t.”

She gave me a confused look. “Alvin, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Before we took off,” I explained, “Megs, she told me there was a key under my mattress. And she told me that that key opens a cabinet in the cargo bay. She said to only open it in an extreme emergency.”

“Well, have you tried opening it?” she persisted.

“You know me too well,” I said, pursing my lips through a proud smile.

“What was inside?” she asked anxiously.

I gulped down my nervousness, as Megs had told me to keep all of this to myself. “Guns, Brit.” 

She gasped.

“Chipmunk-sized guns. Dozens of them. And ammo. But that’s not all Brit…” I trailed off.

“What else is there?” she said through deep breaths.

“Megs told me that I might need what’s inside that cabinet - the guns. She made it seem like we were in danger.”

“What do you think that means? In danger of what?”

I sighed. “I dunno. Maybe there's something out here - another space crew, perhaps working for another government, that we have to worry about. It could be anything, but the way she cornered me when she warned me, and spoke in such a rushed, quiet, nervous way. It was as if she didn't want anybody to know she told me, or didn't want anybody else to know what was inside the cabinets. Maybe she was keeping a secret from NASA, or maybe she was worried about letting any of you five know. She made it extremely clear that she wanted me to keep this all a secret. Why? I can’t be sure.” I bit my lip, unsure whether I wanted to include what I said to her next. “But we may want to keep an eye on the others. Our brothers and sisters, I mean.”

Brittany gasped. “You don’t think any of them would try to hurt us… do you?”

“I just- I don’t know what to think,” I admitted. “But if anything happens at least we have protection -  and each other. No matter what happens, priority number one for me is to keep you safe. Priority number two is myself. My brothers and Jeanette and Eleanor come after us.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me about any of this?” she asked angrily. 

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I’m sorry. From now on, you’re totally in the loop.”

She rolled her eyes, looking like she was contemplating whether to slap me as hard as she could. She finally decided on wrapping me up in a tight hug. I squeezed her back, genuinely being thankful for her presence and support. 

“Brittany there’s… one more thing that was in that cabinet.”

She broke the hug and looked up at me. “What?”

I looked deep into her eyes, knowing she really didn’t want to know. Hands shaking, I reached into my right pocket, dug around, and pulled out the pregnancy test. She gasped in shock.

Theodore’s POV

Jeanette had finally taken Simon’s shift, meaning he and I could leave the cockpit and talk about what we had seen. As soon as we rounded the corner away from the central control system and down the passageway towards the sleeping quarters, Simon stopped me. “We need to discuss Alvin,” he said.

“What do you think’s going on?” I asked him.

“I don’t know, Theodore. I don’t know.” He sighed, deep in thought. “It definitely looked like he was up to no good.”

“W-what should we do?” I asked in a cracked voice.

“You let me take care of it for now. Don’t tell anyone, got it?”

“What about Eleanor and Jeanette?” I said.

“No,” he repeated sternly. “Tell no one. Let me confront Alvin.”

“You don’t really think he'd cook up one of his dumb schemes up here, do you? He has to understand that this isn't the time or place.”

He shook his head dismissively, “this didn't look like one of those instances. When he does something stupid back home, you can plainly see how much he enjoys it. You can practically feel the enjoyment radiating off of him. He'll wear that grin that makes you just want to watch someone else smack it off. Even after he's caught. Remember when he caused all of that havoc on the cruise, before we went over the side?”

I nodded.

“Remember how little he cared? Remember how pleased he was with himself? When he was snooping through that cargo bay, there was not an ounce of joy on his face. Only nerves.”

“And those nerves got the better of him in sleeping quarters,” I added, nodding as I stared away in the distance. What Simon was telling me was making way too much sense.

“Precisely,” he said.

I gulped. “So you believe that this is more serious than in the past?”

He shrugged and pursed his lips. “Our very situation automatically makes any shenanigans ‘more serious’,” he retorted. “But yes. His actions are not uncharacteristic, it's how he seemed to feel when carrying them out that has me worried. All I know is, I feel that I must get to the bottom of what's going on with him.” As if remembering his original intent with speaking to me, he raised an eyebrow, and said sternly, “and remember, not a single word of this to anybody. Not one damned word. Understand?”

“Well I-”

I was interrupted by him saying, “great. Knew I could count on you, bro.” 

And with that he pinched my cheek and floated off. 

Eleanor’s POV 

It was actually very hard to prepare a meal for six in space. Especially since Theodore was barely any help, which was so unlike him. But something was clearly on his mind. So the responsibility for feeding our crew was placed - by default - on me, despite it not truly being my job. I managed to throw together rations to make plain baked potatoes, an apple each, and a few pieces of jerky. To drink we had only water from our small reserve. I think we all wanted to enjoy the fresh water, because after only a few days we would be drinking recycled water, which was a process none of us desired to think about. Despite my best efforts, the entire assembly of food that I produced was effective tasteless. 

We all strapped down together at the table, myself, Theodore, Alvin, and Brittany taking up spots on the corner bench, and Jeanette and Simon on individual seats across from us. Simon decided that it would be ok to leave the cockpit empty for a short duration seeing as though, theoretically, if any problems should surface, the Caesar would alert us.

“Sorry the food’s a little… erm, shitty, guys,” I apologized.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alvin said. “We’d expect nothing better than shitty food on a spaceship.”

Everyone began to dig in, forcing the completely tasteless, mushy food and water down their throats, knowing that if they didn’t, they’d be hungry later.

“So,” Simon finally spoke up. “Let’s talk about what we have been busying ourselves with. After we all unbuckled, I mean.” 

The five of us shot him confused looks. “Huh? ‘Busying ourselves with’?” Jeanette quoted him.

“Just because Dave’s not here doesn’t mean we need someone else to step in and ask us how our day went,” Brittany sarcastically grumbled.

“Humor me, I’m just curious,” Simon insisted. “About how everyone was passing the time while I was in the cockpit.”

Nobody volunteered to share first, which only seemed to please and encourage our Captain. We simply stared blankly at him, and he raised an eyebrow back at us.

Finally, he turned attention to his older brother, and said slyly, “Alvin, why don’t you start?”

After taking another obviously painful bite of jerky, Alvin noticed all eyes were locked on him. “What do you want me to say?” he said through a mouthful.

“Oh, we all know how easily bored you get Alvin,” Simon said cynically. “How’d you entertain yourself while I was taking my shift?”

Alvin swallowed his food. “I dunno,” he said. “Took a nap. Talked to Brittany. Just kinda floated around. Kind of boring, I know, especially given the fact that there’s just so much to do on board this ship,” he said, sarcasm and defensiveness venomously dripping from his tongue.

“You say that in jest,” Simon said slyly, “but if you believe that there’s little to do on the Caesar then you simply aren’t looking hard enough. Some of those activities might not be recommended - not that that’s ever stopped you before - but there’s plenty of ways to entertain yourself here that are quite safe. You may not know this, but I actually brought a magnetic chess and checkers board with us. As a matter of fact, it’s stored under the seat of the bench that you are sitting on as we speak.”

Alvin shrugged. “Never really learned how to play Chess. Checkers is easy enough.”

“Oh but it’s easy,” Simon insisted. “Chess is, I mean. I’d love to teach you. If you’re not busy, that is?”

“Um, I have cockpit watch pretty soon,” Alvin said in an unsure voice.

Simon shrugged, projecting a fake confidence while visibly shaking. “I could hang out with you while you’re up there.”

“Look, Si, I’m not really in the mood at the moment,” Alvin hmphed with frustration. “Also, you should get some sleep.”

“Tomorrow then?” Simon pressed.

Every one of us rolled our eyes, none more aggressively than Alvin, annoyed at the prolonged duration of this topic. “You’re not going to drop this until I agree to learn the game, are you?”

Simon smiled at his brother with an artificial warmness. “I insist,” he cooed.

Alvin sighed, exchanged glances with Brittany, quickly scanned the room, undoubtedly noticed his fellow crew members on the edge of their seats from the intensity of the conversation. He finally shook his head, looked Simon in the eyes, and said, “fine, tomorrow then.”

“Great!” Simon pretended to struggle to contain his excitement. “Something tells me you’ll be very good at Chess.”

Alvin, as if suddenly realizing something wasn’t right, studied his brother’s smug, grinning face. Simon raised one eyebrow at him, eyeing him down. They had a staring contest for a few seconds before Alvin went back to eating and avoiding Simon’s suspicious glares. 

I was almost glad that the others were distracted from my sub par cooking, but actual speaking between the six of us was very limited for the rest of the meal. The awkward silence pulled at my heart, but I was not the one to break it. And neither were any of my loved ones.

Chapter Text

Jeanette’s POV

Of course, with my luck, my second shift happened to be at the same moment that everyone else decided to try to catch some shut eye. 

The ship was almost totally silent, as we hurled towards Mars at a velocity that made me motion sick just to think about. There were no boosters or thrusters active. The autopilot had to make some minor adjustments to our course every once in a while, but the Caesar felt hauntingly still. 

I passed the time by tossing a crumpled up piece of paper between my hands, and by watching the camera feed from the sleeping quarters. All five of the others were strapped down into their beds. Brittany and Alvin were in opposite corners, as were Theo and Ellie. Simon was in the middle, across from the bed that I was going to be laying down on top of in just two short hours. 

Simon’s head was oriented so that he was facing Alvin, while Alvin was on his side, his back towards Simon, facing away from his brother. Every once in a while, the astutely observant middle chipmunk would open just one eye, look Alvin up and down, and then close it. Alvin would likewise occasionally open his eyes and turn to make sure Simon was still where he was. At one point, they both opened their eyes at the same exact time, and Alvin turned to face Simon while Simon was still spying on him. As soon as they made eye contact, Simon rapidly shut his eye and Alvin snapped his head back around. 

It broke my heart, the distrust they had for each other. And I didn’t even know why. It made no sense, and it seemed to literally sprout out of nowhere. All I knew is they were both acting weird at dinner. Simon showed off his best investigative techniques while Alvin clearly dug into a defensive, mysterious position. It felt, in a way, like old times. An instance where Alvin had done something he was likely to face consequences for and Simon wanted to do what he could to rectify the situation. Only, it felt much more sinister than any case I could think of from our previous life. No matter the case, if Alvin had done or was planning to do something that was not within the purview of our mission, it would automatically be made significantly more regrettable by the fact that we were in such a dangerous environment. Despite my fears, the family slowly tearing apart at the seams right in front of my eyes made my heart heavy. The fact that things had gotten so bad between those two and I was so out of the loop made me want to cry. 

Eleanor’s POV

I forced my drowsy self out of our sleeping quarters. My hair was all over the place, my eyes barely open. But it was almost time for me to take the cockpit shift from Theodore. I calmly pulled myself through the hallways and up to the door to the cockpit. I put in the code “1958”. The door slid open with a whoosh, allowing me to float into the flight control room.

Theodore was in the captain’s seat, staring ahead. Mars was just becoming visible as a little red dot on the horizon. He barely even seemed to notice me entering the bridge. He had both hands resting on top of his head with his fingers interlocked as he seemed to have something deep on his mind. 

I smiled slyly and floated over to where he was buckled down. He startled as I grabbed onto his shoulders to stop myself and wrapped my legs around his chair to anchor me down.

“Oh it’s you!” he breathed a sigh of relief. 

I giggled and whispered into his ear, “yes, hun. It’s me.” I started to massage his shoulders as I could feel they were tense. He chuckled nervously as I rubbed the knots out of his traps. When I finished I leaned in closer to him and said, “feel better?”

He smiled up at me and replied, “mhm.”

“Good,” I said giggling. Our eyes locked for a split second, prompting me to go in for the kiss. 

He went along, leaning his head back and returning the kiss, before he suddenly broke away and pointed at the cockpit camera staring down at us. “NASA’s watching,” he said.

“Well if they didn’t want to see any making out,” I purred, using my fingers to pull his chin back up towards me, “then they shouldn’t have sent six teenagers into space alone.”

He shrugged, trying to hold back laughter. “Good point,” he whispered, pulling me in for another kiss. 

We made out right in front of that camera for what felt like forever. Definitely past when Theodore was off of his shift. 

He finally broke away. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “Simon told me not to tell anyone, but you mean too much to me to keep you out of the loop.”

“What is it?” I asked.

He put his hand over his mouth to keep the camera from reading his lips. “Alvin’s been acting really strange lately,” he muttered.

I looked up at the camera, then also cupped my hand around my mouth and said, “yeah I noticed. Simon too.”

“Simon has a good reason though,” Theodore said, keeping his mouth covered. 

“Why?”

“We caught Alvin sneaking around on the camera feed,” Theo whispered. “He was acting very much like he was up to something.”

“What did he do?” I asked with wide eyes. 

“Opened some cabinet,” Theodore grumbled, shrugging. “We couldn’t see what was inside, though. And it's locked. We have no idea where he hid the key, or what he’s up to.” 

I pursed my lips, recollected what I had just been told, and decided to give Alvin the benefit if the doubt. “That all doesn't sound like anything that crazy,” I pushed back.

“I'm telling you, I saw the way he was snooping on that computer screen right there,” he growled, pointing with his hand that was not covering his mouth towards the Motherboard monitor. “Whatever he was doing, he was very worried about being caught. Not only that, but her snapped at me when I got close to him in the berthing area. He's not himself, and Simon and I are both very concerned.”

“You don’t think he’d put us in any real danger,” I asked unsteadily, “do you? Theo?”

He rolled his eyes. “No of course not,” he said sarcastically. “He’s never done that.”

I squinted at him, surprised that he’d make such a comment. “I mean on purpose. Like to just screw us over. This is space, anything goes wrong we could die.”

“Just trust me Ellie,” he said to me. “Alvin’s hiding something from us. I'm not saying you can't trust him, I'm just asking you to keep an eye out.”

I nodded, wanting to cry about the fact that this was where our group had stooped to. “Understood.”

Simon’s POV

We had all taken a few shifts each since catching some sleep. To my surprise, Alvin had actually taken up my offer on teaching him Chess. We sat buckled into seats on opposite side of the metal “kitchen” table as Eleanor was throwing rations together by herself (Theodore was on helm shift). 

The magnetic Chess Board stuck to the steel table, and the pieces stuck to their desired squares. 

I began by explaining to him the different pieces. “This is the king, and the queen goes next to him.” I was expecting Alvin to have that bored look on his face, even this early into my lesson, that signaled to me that he wasn’t paying attention, but he actually looked as though he was interested and comprehending what I was saying. “These are the bishops, they go on both sides of the king and queen. And these are the knights,” I said, placing the knights by both bishops. “And these are the rooks.” I placed the rooks in the corners where they belonged. I then placed eight smaller, less remarkable pieces in a row in front of my eight power pieces. “And these are the pawns.”

Alvin nodded and began to set up his own pieces exactly as I had shown him. He was white, I was black. It was puzzling me exactly why Alvin suddenly had an interest in learning the complex but fascinating game of Chess. Perhaps extreme boredom had driven him to look for anything to do. Or perhaps he was playing with me, and maybe even trying to convince me he’s innocent by spending some quality time with me. Either way, I thought it’d be a good time to make it clear to him that I had my eye on him.

“Good,” I said as soon as he had finished setting up his pieces. “Now, the first thing to keep in mind with Chess is that the white player always goes first.”

Alvin glanced down at his pieces, scanning the board as if he were afraid to tell me he was unsure. “Where can I move?” he asked me politely. 

“Well, you have some options,” I said, stroking my chin with feigned contemplation. “The most common first move is to simply bring one of your pawns a space or two forward.”

“Ok,” he said. He looked closely at his pawns, chose the one right in front of his queen and moved it two spaces ahead.

“This is a setup move. It is unaggressive, unalarming, builds a defensive formation allows you to utilize stronger pieces later,” I said, making sure to pause so that Alvin would make eye contact with me. I raised my eyebrow and squinted at him as I said, “It helps conceal your strategy. Obviously I, as your opponent, know what your ultimate goal is. But I don't know yet how you plan to get there. So you put something that is barely significant to you in harms way, while saving your more important pieces. But in reality you’re just setting up for a deadly strike that is to come later.”

I could tell Eleanor was paying attention to us because I could smell the potatoes burning.

Alvin gulped and looked back down at the board. “How do you win?” he said nervously. 

I smiled, knowing I had him where I wanted him. “Well, let me set up an example.” I rearranged the board so that a few more of our pieces had been brought out from their starting spots. “This is your queen, here, and it’s your move. And you see that you can take my queen way over here.” I pulled his queen piece over and replaced it with my queen, emphatically sticking the taken piece to the metallic table. “And you do, because you only see the short term benefits of that move. Unfortunately for you, that left your king wide open. So I take my bishop…” I moved my piece to a space from which it was threatening his king. “And wham! You’re in check."

“What happens now?” he asked, clearly becoming annoyed with my obvious metaphors.

I didn’t care the slightest bit how frustrated he was with me. The interrogation had become satisfying by that point, something I reveled in. I grinned at him. “Well, in this position you can’t move away from check, because you’re trapped, you can’t take the bishop, because you moved your queen away, and you can’t block the check, because there’s nothing left around to defend yourself. Therefore…” I took my bishop and violently whacked his king off of the board, sending it flying into the wall behind Alvin. “Checkmate.”

Suddenly, Eleanor noticed the smell of the burning food and exclaimed, “ugh, dammit!” She turned back towards her job in a panic as the king piece was still floating around the kitchen.

“And all because you had to get greedy, Alvin,” I emphasized in a harsh mutter.

Alvin did not flinch, even as his King had flown past him just inches away from his face. He eyed me to and down with folded arms and a prolonged glare. “Don’t talk to me about getting greedy, Simon,” he growled at me. 

I was surprised at him. “Look, Alvin , I don’t know what you’re up to. I have no idea the scope or the seriousness of your actions. But I know for a fact that you either will do or have done something that you're not supposed to.”

“And what makes you say that?” He raised an accusing eyebrow at me, as if trying to spin unto me the accusations of shady behavior.

He was attempting to get me to admit to him that I had been spying on him. But I was in no mood to divulge any information. No, it was his turn to do that. “I think it would be better for everyone if you just came clean about everything right now.”

He tried his best to maintain his poker face, but the twitch of his eye and hesitation gave away to me that he was considering telling me something of use. “There's nothing to tell. I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about.”

Strike three. “I am going to find out eventually, one way or another,” I warned in a growl.

Alvin seemed taken aback. He glanced at Eleanor, who had resumed watching us curiously while scraping the char off of her pan. He seemed to be studying both mine and her intentions, as if worried about being outnumbered. “If I did have something to hide from you,” he muttered, “what makes you think I would respond to threats? You clearly don't know me as well as you should.”

“It's not a threat,” I insisted calmly. “All I am doing is letting you know that I am onto you.”

“Don’t try to spin this around onto me, Simon,” Alvin snapped, looking me up and down suspiciously. “I’m the one who’s onto you. I know one thing for a fact; there is something suspicious happening on board this ship. I don't know when, how, or what it will be. But I know it is happening. And if you try to corner me or Britt, or make us uncomfortable at all…” he unbuckled himself and pointed an accusing finger at me. “I’ll be ready for you.” 

And with that he used his legs to push himself out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

I held it in until he was out of sight, and then I sighed out of frustration and slapped my palm with my forehead. What the hell had happened to my family? I suddenly noticed Eleanor, who had turned off the stove, staring at me with the king piece in her hands, which I had recklessly smacked in her direction. Tears welling up in her eyes. She slunk and let her eyes drop to stare at the floor as she tossed the piece to me. I could hear her begin to sob uncontrollably as I put the piece back on the board. 

Without saying a word to her I unbuckled myself and floated off, knowing she needed some space. 

Jeanette’s POV

Of course, everyone had heard about the “Chess lesson” Simon gave Alvin a few sleep cycles ago. We had also heard about the threats they had thrown at each other. I still had absolutely no idea what any of it was about. I had hoped Simon would have filled me in at some point, but he never took the opportunity to. The lack of trust on both sides had escalated at such an accelerated pace to such an unimaginable level that it felt difficult to keep up with. I supposed that hurling through a vacuum that could instantly kill us was heightening the tension, and surely did not help when it came to quelling things when they got heated. When one feels like they are spitting in death’s face with every breath, the slightest abnormality, an entirely unthreatening imperfection, a harmless misunderstanding, all had the power to bring the worst overreactions out of the best people. The same principle, as evidence by Simon and Alvin's stand off, applied to chipmunks. Perhaps I would have had a different opinion if either one of them had bothered to be specific to me about what their ailments were.

Alvin and Simon had done pretty much everything they could to avoid each other, which was probably for the best. One more confrontation could have ended badly.

After the Chess incident, Simon had announced that Alvin was no longer allowed to take shifts in the cockpit. Alvin didn’t complain, but that decision took a pretty big toll on the rest of us. Especially during the periods where we were supposed to be getting sleep. As a matter of fact, Alvin basically did nothing for those 96 hours where he was both functionally and attitudinally useless. 

When Theodore relieved me from my shift, I finally decided I was tired of being ignored. Knowing via NASA cameras that Simon was in the Cargo Bay, I wasted no time in flying through the ship, zipping by Alvin and Brittany as I made my way to meet him. I opened the door to the cargo bay and pulled myself in, looking around for Simon. “Simon?” I called into the giant void of a space which was littered with countless assorted pieces of equipment and machinery that were designated for us to use - or to hopefully not need to use - layer in the mission.

“Over here!” he said.

I followed the direction of his voice over to where he was kneeling, staring intently at a large green cabinet in a corner, clutching both edges of it to hold himself in place on the deck. “What’s in there?” I asked him.

“I haven’t the faintest idea, Jeannie,” he grumbled. 

“Well… why don’t you open it, instead of just trying to use your x-ray vision?” I suggested, legitimately trying to be helpful despite my tone coming across as sarcastically playful.

He shrugged, seeming to ignore my remarks. “Would if I had the key.”

“Where is it?”

“Look is there something I can help you with?” he snapped at me with a sudden burst of frustration. His look softened up as he saw the hurt in my eyes. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I’ve just been so… angry lately.”

“You’ve been angry!” I laughed at him, not believing my own ears, in a way that let him know he was about to get scolded. “You and Alvin have been tearing this ship apart the last five days. And you won’t even tell me why. Your second in command, your girlfriend, and you won’t even tell me what’s going on!”

“It’s Alvin,” he tried to explain. “He’s been snooping around. He has the key to this cabinet and won’t let anyone else open it!”

“So? What part of that says to you that it’s too serious for me? Or whatever ignorant excuse you would use?”

“Look I’m sorry. I was trying to handle this internally. I didn’t want you to feel unsafe.”

“I’m not a toddler, Simon,” I groaned. “I’m a big girl. I can handle drama.”

“This isn’t like the dumb shit we fought over in high school,” Simon whispered. “Alvin's been acting different. In a way that I cannot put my finger on, I have never seen or felt this before. He could be putting us all in great danger.”

“Well, I don’t know what he’s doing exactly, but-”

“But neither do I,” Simon interrupted, “and that’s what really worries me. Just promise me, whatever you do, don’t trust him.”

“Maybe I should talk to him?” I suggested.

“No!” Simon snapped. “It’d only make him more paranoid.” 

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

“Also, don’t trust Brittany. At least as far as Alvin goes. It seems to me whatever scheme, or whatever secrets he has, he's involved her as well.”

“What?” I looked him up and down with a shocked expression on my face. “How could I not trust my own sister? 

“Don’t think for a moment that Brittany hasn’t bought into whatever lies Alvin has fed her,” he warned me. “As much as it pains me to say this, Brittany’s just as dangerous as Alvin until she proves that she’s on our side.”

Brittany’s POV

Alvin had warned me about the others, in a kind of condescending way I might add. I understood that he was only trying to protect me, but telling me to not listen to or go anywhere alone with Simon, Jeanette, Theodore or Eleanor was pretty ridiculous. At the very least, as far as my sisters were concerned. 

I had lived my entire life with my sisters; all protecting each other through the best of times and through the worst of times. There was nothing, in my mind, that could divide us. I knew in my heart that they would never do anything to hurt me. That even if Simon were to try to overtake Alvin, capture him, or worse - the fears that Alvin had expressed to me which I still did not believe - that my sisters and I would prioritize each other.

All of this was literally over a cabinet. I understood Alvin's feelings on the matter. He had been specifically warned, and him alone, about a danger on board. And then he was given a key to a locked cabinet that had tools specifically designed for us as chipmunks to get out of danger. Why he was so quick to assume the danger was one of our brothers or sisters, I didn't know. Simon was undoubtedly at least partially to blame. He had come on way too strong with accusations after spying on his older brother. I still felt like it was truly in Alvin's best interests to just be honest with everyone, but I wasn't going to force that issue. In the end, from the others’ perspective, this was all about a cabinet. It was a stupid feud, which was an opinion evident in the eyes of everyone besides Alvin and Simon.

It was for that reason, largely, that I ignored my boyfriend's warnings and still helped the others out around the ship as much as I could. I tried to stay clear of Simon, but more because of how awkward I felt a private situation between the two of us could be vice me being worried for my safety.

I figured there was nothing wrong with assisting Jeanette and Eleanor in Medical, even though they didn’t really need it. Simon was on helm shift, Alvin in sleeping quarters as usual. God knows where Theo was. It was just the three sisters, doing checks on the systems in the Medical room.

I wasn’t really helping, because I had sort of invited myself, and I had little knowledge of what it was that they were doing. Ellie appeared to be filling out some sort of log or checklist, but I cared very little about the specifics. I just wanted to spend time with them. 

“The mini-greenhouse hasn’t shown any glitches so far,” Ellie said to Jeannette. “Let’s try bringing the temperature down even more.” She tapped the button reading “TEMP”, followed by “C” for Celsius, followed by “-63”. “This will be… the average temperature… on Mars,” she mumbled as she typed the commands into the control module. 

The HR-469, dubbed the “mini green house”, was a very sophisticated piece that was shaped like a box with a rounded dome top, made mostly of stainless steel with a thick glass sliding door and a slick array of buttons on the right side which illuminated a light blue color when touched. It had the appearance, overall, of a post-modernized microwave.

We could hear a faint rumbling and felt a slight vibration as it began to drop the temperature within the confines of its own storage to negative 63 Celsius. When it finished it gave a little ring noise as if something inside it had just finished cooking.

Hesitantly, Eleanor pressed the button to open the sliding door with Jeanette peering intently over her shoulder. The semi-transparent seal glided smoothly to the left, exposing the empty void inside, immediately releasing a wave of cold through the entire medical bay. 

“Awesome,” Eleanor said, shuddering a bit while grinning from satisfaction. “Works like a charm.”

“Anything else?” Jean asked her.

“Hmm,” she said, thinking about it. Suddenly, a playful smirk carried the corners of her lips from ear to ear as she let her eyes drift up towards the ceiling, then to her left until they rested on me. “Just a certain cabinet that we gotta open in the Cargo Bay.” She winked at me. “How do you think we could go about doing that , Brit?”

I chuckled nervously, a little bit offended. “I wouldn’t know,” I responded. 

“Oh come on,” Jeanette said in a fake joking tone. “Alvin has to have told you where he keeps the key, right?”

“N-no,” I said, looking away.

“But he has told you what’s inside, right?” Ellie pressed me. 

I glared into her eyes, clearly annoyed. “Maybe, maybe not. That’s my business.”

“So you don’t think he should show us what’s in there? That seems like a pretty fair request to me.” Jeanette insisted. She was getting increasingly on my nerves with each syllable. 

I rolled my eyes. “Look, Alvin was given a very clear warning that he might need to protect himself.”

Their eyes widened. “From what?” Jeanette said.

“He doesn’t know,” I said, regretting my admission immediately, knowing there was no chance to let this topic die anymore. “Maybe from Simon or Theo.” They gasped. “Or maybe from one of you.” 

“Wait,” Eleanor interrupted angrily. “You don’t actually think we’d do anything to hurt you or Alvin… do you?”

“Of course not,” I sighed. “I don’t know what to think. I just know Alvin’s not trying to cause trouble.”

“Why do I have a tough time believing that?” Jeanette scorned sarcastically.

I glared at her. “Say what you really mean, miss Second In Command .”

“Fine,” she snapped. “Alvin has a serious history of bad decision-making. And if he’s innocent then all he needs to do to prove it is to open up that damned cabinet. It's that easy.” Jeanette looked at Eleanor and nodded towards the door to the medical room, signaling to her that it was time to leave. This was especially infuriating to me, as I had already been planning to be the one who stormed away from the conversation. “Until then,” Jeanette continued over her shoulder as she floated towards the passageway, “he might as well be guilty.”

As they gently flew through and out the doorway, all I had time to say before it shut behind them was, “guilty of what?”

But there was no answer. They had left me. And I felt so alone. It was like I didn’t even know my sisters anymore. Or Alvin for that matter. Or myself. Oh God, I felt so alone. 

Alvin’s POV

After I had been dismissed from Helm Shift duties, I had spent almost all of my newly found free time in sleeping quarters. Which is not to say that I was always sleeping, because I wasn’t. But it wasn’t like there was anything to do anywhere else on this ship, especially since Simon clearly had no real interest in teaching me Chess. The main reason I mostly stayed in berthing, however, was because I was within reaching distance of the key to the cabinet in case of emergency.

I absolutely never left sleeping quarters when Brittany was on Cockpit Shift. I felt way too insecure. Because if push came to shove, I knew it would be four against one. 

In all this time I had to myself in the sleeping quarters, I had taught myself some floating tricks. The last couple of hours I had been trying this weird creative backflip off of the ceiling… over and over again. Brittany was on watch, meaning I would be absolutely nowhere else. Even if I had to go to the bathroom, I would simply hold it. Perhaps my predictability. As far as the zero gravity trick I had been practicing, I hadn’t landed it quite the way I wanted to. It wasn't until after what must have been the thousandth try when I finally managed to stick it off of the ceiling, do a full double backflip, and land both feet on Simon’s bed without a double step. I stuck both hands out away from my body like a gymnast and began bowing to an imaginary gathering of spectators. “Woohoo! And the crowd goes wild!” I exclaimed, making fake cheers with my breath.

“I’m hardly impressed.”

Simon’s threatening, cynical voice made me freeze. I turned towards the only door to the quarters, which was now blocked by not just Simon but Jeanette, Theo and Ellie floating there as well. 

My heart sank as I knew in my gut that it was do or die time. 

“H-hey guys,” I said nervously. “What can I do for ya?”

“I’m going to make this real simple, Alvin,” Simon threatened me. “You’re going to tell me where you’ve hidden the key. And then you’re going to wait here with Jeanette and Theodore while Eleanor and I go to open up that cabinet.”

I scratched my head, pretending I was confused. “I don’t recall what key you’re talking about, Simon,” I said.

“No more games, Alvin,” Theodore growled at me. “You have the whole crew on edge. Just give Simon the key and we can take care of this the easy way.”

I squinted at him. “Kiss my ass.”

Jeanette gritted her teeth and peered at her boyfriend as if knowing my impudence would trigger an equally hostile response from him.

“That’s it!” Simon exclaimed from frustration. “We’re doing this the hard way.” He turned to the others. “You all know what to do.”

Theodore and Eleanor stayed put, guarding the door, while Simon and Jeanette began pulling themselves slowly towards me on opposite sides of the room, looking ready to pounce at me at any second. They would grab the frame of a bed, pause to study me, guide their bodies to the side of the mattress closest to me, and push off to the next bed. Sweat dripped down my forehead as I tried desperately to think of a way out. Should I try to quickly grab the key and break through the wall of Theo and Ellie? There were a million things that could go wrong with that plan. Jean and Simon could get to me before I could even grab the key, and then they’d know where I had been hiding it the entire time. And even if I made it past Simon and Jeanette, Theodore and Ellie wouldn’t be easy to just blast through like a game of Red Rover. I cursed under my breath, feeling an impenetrable wall closing in around me. 

Just as Simon and Jeanette were almost on top of me, Brittany’s voice squeaked nervously over the ship’s intercom: “ Attention! All crew members report back up to the cockpit! We’re about to enter Mars’ gravitational pull. ”

Simon hesitated, exchanged unsure glances with Jeanette, before he groaned and said, “ok, everybody get to the cockpit, ASAP. And buckle in.”

We all started to float towards the exit of the quarters. But just as I was about to pass by Simon, he grabbed me by my shirt, yanked me to a stop, looked me dead in the eye and muttered, “this isn’t over. I will get that key."

Chapter Text

Simon’s POV

We all buckled into our assigned seats, as we had trained. I checked the navigation instruments over Britt's shoulder and realized we had a good half an hour until we hit the gravitational pull of Mars. I turned around and shot the auburn haired chipette a threatening glare. She pretended to not see it, keeping her eyes glued to the Motherboard screen. 

“Is everyone ready?” I barked. “Sound off!”

“Everything’s looking good on the engineering side!” Jeanette piped up.

“I'm good!” Eleanor said.

“I am as well,” Theodore said confidently. 

There was a long pause. I turned around in my seat and looked straight at Brittany and Alvin, who were pretending to be pre-occupied. “Sound off!” I repeated impatiently.

Alvin rolled his eyes. “I’m good.”

“All systems go,” Brittany added unenthusiastically. 

“Alright everybody,” I tried to sound encouraging. “We all know the drill. Just like in training.”

“Everything looks normal,” Brittany piped up, still looking down at the ship’s instruments.

“Good. Jean, are the thrusters fully functional?”

She shot me a confused look, grinning slightly at my attempts to sound authoritative. “I see no reason why they wouldn’t be,” she said. 

I blushed. “Right, very good. Thank you.”

It wasn’t long before the gravitational pull of Mars was first felt on the ship.

“Jeanette, make the reactor ready for a high power demand!” I ordered. 

As she followed my command, operating a few buttons and switches on her panel, the humming and vibrations of the ship became more prominent. Our momentum, combined with gravity, held us on our course towards the red planet. 

We began to accelerate, gradually at first, but exponentially increasing speed. Without my saying so, everyone double-checked to make sure they were strapped in reliably. We all knew that we were in for a bumpy ride. 

The Caesar continued to hurl towards Mars at a dangerously rising pace. The temperature inside of the cockpit began to get hotter and hotter. The whole ship started to shake violently. I took control and fired the thrusters upwards thrusters in an attempt to ease our descent. It slowed us down a little but didn’t have as much of an effect as I had hoped, particularly when it came to the comfort for those of us inside the cockpit. Memories of the final pain tolerance test began to race through my mind, as the ship now felt like the inside of a crockpot. Sweat trickled down my face as I carefully increased the power of the thrusters. I knew that all of the others on board were relying on me. 

We were now entering Mars’ atmosphere, flames beginning to form around the Caesar in a fashion similar to a comet. The ship was now shaking so hard that it made it difficult for me to see. 

“Simon w-we’re getting awful-l close!” Brittany shouted at me, struggling to get the words out while her head and body were thrashed about with the shaking of our ship.

Fighting for every inch of accurate movement of my arm, hand, and fingers, I fired the reverse thrusters to full power. All of our heads snapped forward with a jolt as the ship nearly instantaneously slowed its descent. The shaking subsided as the entire entire view through the cockpit window in front of us was shrouded in different hues of red. The feeling that we were free-falling became less prevalent as the thrusters resisted the intense plummet of the ship until we were hovering just a mile or so above the surface of Mars.

The terrain looked rocky in most places and very uneven. Cliffs, mountains, protrusions of red stone that resembled brick littered the entire landscape. Filling in the cracks between these imposing jagged landmarks was a dusty coral sand mixture. Entire deserts spread all the way to the horizon in almost all directions. 

Radar detected a flatter, sandier area, as opposed to the minefield of rock we hovered above in that moment, nearby to us. I quickly righted the ship so that we were facing the horizon within the cockpit, and guided us over to the smoother landing spot with brief sporadic bursts of the side thrusters. 

This flat strip, which the Motherboard had detected for us with the concurrence of Brittany, was a cove of compact sand surrounded at nearly two hundred and fifty degrees by one of the largest mountains our instruments could detect. This oasis did indeed strike me as an almost too perfect destination. They had never given me a test this easy in the flight simulator back in NASA headquarters. Besides the evenness of the ground within the confines of that elevation, the height and total enclosure of the alp would provide us with excellent protection from weather conditions.

Guiding the Caesar to our chosen site proved easier said than done. It seemed we had arrived in the middle of a windstorm, which picked up sand and small pieces of debris, hurling them across our bow and wingspan, blowing in a fifty miles per hour flurry from left to right from our view. The thousands of formidable chunks of Martian geological samples collided with the port side of our ship, creating noises that made us grit our teeth. The force of the wind made the timing and intensity of my controlled booster thrusts extraordinarily difficult to manage.

We finally approached the mouth of the opening of the mountain, which was maybe twice the width of the Caesar. The unpredictable swaying of our vessel in either direction brought us perilously close with both sides. Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes, making the situation much worse. Maintaining any sense of control with this thing was like trying to predict the future, desperately attempting to decide how to fight a given vector of wind before the ship even felt it. 

With the press of a button by Jeanette, the three landing legs emerged through individual openings in different sections of our hull and began extending away from the body of the ship. I began to gently reduce the power of the thrusters, letting Caesar lose altitude slowly as we penetrated the mouth of the ridges that towered above us on either side. 

“Too fast, Simon,” Brittany winced, staring at the radar feedback of the area surrounding our ship.

We were very near the ground now. Using the manual stick, studying the digitally scanned images of the terrain beneath us, I rotated the Caesar until the landing gear was perfectly situated so that all three legs would touch down on sand rather than any noteworthy formation of rubble. Sweat was still gushing from my forehead and sliding into my eyes and down my cheeks as I lowered us inch by inch towards the ground. Everyone held their breaths. We were just a few feet above the surface.

Suddenly, the wind picked up into a furious gust, unpredictably and nearly instantaneously blowing us about three yards off course. With the ship still in its landing programming and with no time for me to react or adjust, the foot of the back-right leg violently struck a large jagged red rock that was protruding from the sand. The whole ship jolted from the impact with a harsh screeching noise. We all gasped because we knew this was trouble as the other two legs finally touched down in smoother areas. 

“Shit!” I cursed as threatening sirens and flashing red and yellow lights erupted through the whole ship. We all unbuckled as I began barking orders. “Jeanette get down there and check the systems for damage. Alvin get in a suit and examine it from the outside.” 

Alvin and Jeanette stood up and left the cockpit in a hurry as I typed the code 1958 into the Motherboard and shut off the alarms. The sirens silenced and the lights ceased flashing, but continued illuminating the ship in a solid golden hue to ensure we were aware that there was still a problem that needed to be fixed.

“Brittany, is there a breach in the hull?” Eleanor said, wrapping her arms tight around Theodore from fear.

Brittany typed into the computer, which prompted a detailed blueprint of the ship to appear on screen. She studied it before saying, “no breach, looks like something isn't happy in the landing system though.”

I sighed, wiping the sweat off of my brow. “Everyone grab a headset,” I muttered. 

Theodore, Eleanor, and Brittany all obeyed me. I picked up my own pair, tightened it around my forehead, brought the microphone down to my mouth, and said, “testing. One two, one two. If you can hear me sound off, over.”

Brittany said, “ I can. ”

“ Mine’s working fine, ” Theodore said, trying to appear confident.

“ Same with mine, ” Ellie whimpered, gulping down her anxiety. 

“ I read you .” That was Jeanette’s voice coming through the headset all the way from the engine room.

“Excellent,” I breathed nervously. “Alvin, what about you?”

Alvin’s POV

I had forgotten how hard it was to get into those suits. And how uncomfortable they were. And as I stood in the middle of the cargo bay, forcing myself into the outer layer, I thought to myself how much I hated the fact that I was the “field officer”. Which basically just meant I was there to be the grunt and to do all the dirty work. Because, at least in the brilliant minds of those that produced this mission, I had no special skills.  

You could sense the slight tilt of the ship from the one landing support leg being propped up higher than the other two by the rock. 

I choked as I shoved the remainder of my body up neck deep into the suit. Still in a panicked hurry, I grabbed a round, clear helmet and twisted it and threaded it onto the neck portion of the suit. I could hear a click noise, followed by the sucking, whooshing sound of air, allowing me to know for certainty that the suit was airtight. 

“ Alvin ?” I cringed, as the sound of my brother Simon’s voice was not what I wanted to hear at that moment. Nevertheless, it was his voice that infiltrated the speakers on the inside of my helmet. “ I repeat, are you ready to go out, yet ?”

“Yes, Simon,” I groaned. “I’m good to go. Unlock the hatch.”

As I stood over the round hatch in the middle of the cargo bay floor, I couldn’t help but let my mind drift to the guns in the cabinet, only a few steps away. 

I heard a faint, deep clanking and thumping sound. “ Ok it’s unlocked. Get your ass out there now. ” 

I hesitated, and not only because I was unhappy with the tone that Simon was using to boss me around. Maybe I should bring a gun or two along with me before I give him the chance to lock me out ? But it was too late to grab the key. So I swallowed my doubts with a gulp, twisted the wheel to the hatch, and pulled it open. I climbed down on the ladder with tremendous effort on every step and pulled the hatch shut behind me, making sure to twist it and make it airtight. I was already breathing heavily and beginning to sweat from the energy that it took just to perform the tasks of shutting a hatch and climbing down a ladder in this suit. I lowered myself down further until I was directly above the secondary hatch below me, which led directly to the world outside. Squatting with a pained grunt, I took a deep breath and clutched the handwheel that was attached to the circular hatch beneath my body in both hands. I gritted my teeth and tried to twist it open but this one was way harder to budge, like a jar of pickles with fingers lathered in cooking oil. Finally, the wheel jolted loose, but only a little. This prompted what looked like steam to spray out from all around me as the ladder room depressurized. 

It was just a moment more before I had finally gotten the hatch completely open. As I peered through the new opening in our ship, I was greeted only by the intimidating view of ruby colored sand and dust, some of which laid inconspicuously still only a couple yards beneath me. Some of it travelled past my point of view in flashes, carried by the intense wind storm that was only mostly shielded from us by the walls of the mountain we landed inside of. I stared at the solid wall of redness below, feeling queasy. Snapping out of my trance, I crammed the rest of my body through the hatch, shutting and tightening it behind me, and placed my feet and hands on rungs of the ladder underneath. The dust storm had calmed down a bit but was still blowing, which made it hard to see where the next steps were. More carefully than I normally would have, I transversed down the final couple of feet of ladder until I was nearly to the ground.

Suddenly, my left foot slipped off of the bottom rung, sending me hurling downwards until I landed flat on my back. The impact of my body to the ground picked up an impressive cloud of dust and sand, engulfing my entire figure before being blown away by the wind. Without so much as lifting my head up, I stared up at the Cae sar above me; her hull, her boosters, her navigation lights, the three landing leg extensions surrounding me in either direction. Partially still in shock from my fall, I broke into a fit of spontaneous and uncontrollable laughter. The thought had just crossed my mind that the first Earthling step onto this planet was literally me falling onto my ass, and it cracked me up.

“ What the hell is so funny, Alvin ?” Brittany snapped at me through the speakers in the helmet.

“N-nothing just… fell,” I responded, calming myself down through controlled exhales, wishing I could wipe the tears of laughter off of my cheeks and eye lids.

I could sense everyone rolling their eyes from inside the ship. 

Finally having mentally moved on from my blunder, I pushed myself onto my feet and looked around. The bottom of the ship was high enough off the ground so that I could stand upright underneath it, although I standing beneath the exhaust of those boosters with Simon still at the helm made me nervous. Scanning my horizon in a three hundred and sixty degree spin, just about the only things I could see besides red rock, red dirt, and red dust were the landing legs. They were extended out in opposite directions like a tripod. I spun around again until - bingo - there was the one that I was looking for.

“ Simon ,” Jeanette said, “ Something is smoking in the landing gear section of the engine room… I think it’s continuously trying to fully extend its leg but it can’t. It’s putting a lot of stress on- ”

“ Just shut it down ,” Simon interrupted.

“ Roger that .”

By now, I had made my way all the way over to the support beam which I was supposed to investigate. The foot was resting in an awkward position and appeared to be literally bent out of shape, with the steel toes wrapped awkwardly around the large stone that it had been placed atop of. Some of the joints that lead up towards the ship weren’t completely extended, at least not to the extent that they were supposed to be. And I could see a thin trail of smoke coming from the joint that connected the leg to the inside of the ship. “I can see smoke too,” I said grimly.

Suddenly, the smoke thinned out and went away. 

“Oh wait, it stopped,” I said.

“ That’s good ,” Jeanette said gleefully, “ ‘Cause I just de-energized the motor. ” 

“ What else do you see, Alvin ?” Simon pressed.

I looked the whole thing up and down one more time. “ It looks stable enough, but it looks like we could be stuck here awhile. ”

I could hear everyone groan through the headset.

“ Very well ,” Simon said to me, “ Return to the Caesar, if you please .”

“Nah, I thought I’d stay out here and admire the lovely view,” I said sarcastically. To my surprise and frustration, I didn’t even get a response.

Brittany’s POV

“Brittany, stay here and keep watch.” Simon’s words still echoed through my ears, even long after he had left me alone here in the cockpit.

Everyone was scrambling around in the wake of the “crash landing”. Except for Alvin, he seemed pretty relaxed. Me, I just decided to sit back and let everything work itself out, as it always had done in the past. It honestly didn’t even seem like that much of an emergency to me. The landing gear was damaged but it was repairable, and we were already planning on staying in this area for a while, anyway.

I watched over the camera feeds as Jeanette took Simon into the engine room, which was hazy with smoke. Simon coughed and waved his hand around his face like a fan so he could see and breathe better. Jeanette, who was clearly already used to the hazy conditions down there, pointed to the motor that I assumed powered the landing gear. Simon nodded, shrugged, and briefly spoke. Jeanette hesitated before responding. Simon slapped his forehead and rubbed his temple out of frustration. 

Without warning, the cockpit door slid open with a whoosh. I jumped and spun around in my chair, to see Alvin walk in and give me a sly grin. “Hey gorgeous,” he said.

“ Alvin ,” I giggled. “Not the time or the place.”

“It never will be,” he whined, rolling his eyes and stepping towards where I sat. He put his arms around me, and before I could protest he kissed my cheek. “How have you been holding up?” he whispered, sounding genuinely concerned for me.

“Eh, ya know. Trying to not be too stressed out.” I looked into his eyes. “Was it bad?” 

“The leg?” he said shrugging. “Not too bad. But we’re gonna be here a while.”

“I meant the thing with the others,” I whispered. “In the sleeping quarters.”

“Oh,” he chuckled. “To be totally honest with ya, Brit, I had no idea how I was going to get out of there.”

“Yeah I could tell,” I joked.

“But it doesn’t matter now,” he continued. “They’re busy with other things at the moment.”

But that wasn’t good enough for me. “So… what happens when Simon brings the attention back to you? And the key and all that?”

He bit his lip, as if thinking about how to properly answer that. “I’ll do what I have to do, I guess,” he muttered. He must have seen the fear grow in my eyes when he said this, because he almost effortlessly lifted me from my seat and held me romantically as if cradling a baby. 

“Wooh!” I gasped, startled at his sudden affection. 

“Feels nice to have gravity again, doesn’t it?” he whispered into my ear.

I giggled as he strutted around and sat himself into the chair I had been sitting in myself, placing me lying across his lap. We made prolonged, silent eye contact, just staring into each others’ eyes lovingly.

I suddenly had a strange craving for peanut butter. “I’m hungry, are you hungry?” I said in an excited tone.

He scoffed at me. “Hungry? We just landed. And everyone's scrambling around the ship, terrified they're going to find something else broken. Good luck getting Theo to get you a meal right now.”

Deciding he was right, I sat up in his lap and leaned my face in towards him. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer until our lips locked. I slid my hand up his torso until it rested on his chest. We made out for a few minutes before I laid my head down on his shoulder and sat there until I fell asleep. 

Theodore’s POV

“We should never have agreed to this,” Ellie muttered, her head down, her arms folded across her chest, and her back turned to me. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.”

I put my hand on her shoulder to calm her down. “Look, it’s been tough. On all of us. And not a lot has gone our way. But try to look on the brighter side, for me?”

She wiped the tears off of her cheeks and turned around to face me. “What brighter side?” she asked me cynically. 

I thought about this for a little while, before coming up with, “we’re all still alive and unharmed.”

“Theo,” she whispered, “if that’s the bright side, then that just makes me think even more that this mission was a bad choice.”

“How about the millions of dollars we have waiting for us when we get home?” I cooed, still attempting to calm her or to bring her back into her usual positive mindset.

“We've already made millions,” she croaked through intermittent tears, “and neither the money nor the fame we are gaining from this mission will do us any good if we don't make it home.”

I gritted my teeth because she had a good point. I wasn’t that great at this whole comforting thing. I had always been the one who needed comforting throughout my childhood, and it had usually been Dave who was there for me. Even in the past, Ellie and I were usually there for each other . But in this case, I felt all of the pressure of being there for support, and I really just felt like I had fell flat on my face.

“I don’t even know why I’m here,” Ellie continued, whimpering. “The only reason they even brought me was in case someone got hurt. And God forbid that ever happens.”

Brittany’s POV

I suddenly stirred awake. My cheek was sore from being pressed against Alvin’s shoulder for too long, who was remained asleep even after I had jolted my head off of him. I looked around to try to spot what had woken me up.

As if on cure, there were those three distinct “ping” noises again, clearly coming from the Motherboard computer. They were in a definitive pattern; the high pitched bellows were pronounced and spaced in precisely equal amounts of time from each other. The computer repeated it: “PING, ping, PING.”

I carefully rose up out of Alvin’s lap, trying to not wake him, and placed my feet onto the cold metal floor. Hunching over the Motherboard screen, I squinted to try to see what it was trying to tell me. The radar took up the entirety of the screen, with the Caesar representing the center dot, surrounded nearly entirely by our new mountain home. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“PING, ping, PING.”

I sighed and pressed FN+t, commanding the Motherboard computer to “track” the source of the commotion. The screen remained as it was for a moment, calculating, before automatically zooming outwards and expanding its scope. Once it steadied at a significantly larger overhead view of our surroundings, it scrolled upwards a few miles, and then scrolled right a dozen or so. 

“PING, ping, PING.”

The screen throbbed with green ripples as the source of the “ping” had been tracked. My eyes widened at the pattern the Motherboard was showing me. “There’s no way,” I told myself. This was so odd that I made the decision that I almost never made.

“PING, ping, PING.”

I reached for the headset and wrapped it around the back of my head. I didn’t bother to tighten it, instead pressing the headband against me with my left hand and holding the microphone up to my face with my right. “Simon, it’s Brittany. I need you in the cockpit right now.”

“ Brittany? What’s the emergency? ” He sounded almost more annoyed than concerned.

“Just trust me,” I grumbled, ensuring lack of patience was evidence in my voice, “you need to take a look at this.”

“ Ok? I guess I’ll be right up, then. ”

“Thank you.” I put the headset down, still staring at the radar screen.

“PING, ping, PING.”

Jeanette’s POV

“Ok, here’s what we know,” Simon said, calling for the attention from our whole crew, who he had assembled for a meeting in the crew's mess around the metal dining table. “The stress from the impact has snapped a rotor or two in the landing gear engine. Correct?”

Simon looking to me for confirmation threw me off-guard a little bit. “Yes,” I responded, “two of them. That’s the bulk of the damage.”

“Shouldn’t be too tough of a fix?” he pressed.

“N-no,” I said. “But as I already told you, it’ll take some time.”

“That’s understandable,” he said, waving me off. “And Alvin, you said the leg itself didn’t look too bad from the outside?”

Alvin shrugged, as if reminding us he is not an expert. “I mean, parts of it looked kind of fucked up. The entire foot is bent around that rock, and the joints were frozen in a position that they definitely should not have been. But I didn’t see anything that really looked unfixable outside of that.”

Simon nodded. “All of that is the good news, I’m afraid,” he sighed. 

We all gave him a confused look. 

“Brittany, roll it out,” Simon commanded.

Without saying a word, Brittany dragged out a large, thin sheet of paper and laid it on the table for all of us to see. We leaned over and squinted but couldn’t figure out what was depicted. 

As if sensing our confusion, Simon spoke up. “This is a radar diagram of an area on Mars just a few dozen miles North-East from here.” 

“What is all of this?” Theodore asked, pointing to the map. “What are all of these shapes?”

“That’s the thing, Theo,” Simon said. “We don’t know what those are. They’re too perfect geometrically for them to be natural.” 

“Could they be NASA projects left behind?” I asked.

Simon shook his head. “According to the official records, NASA has never landed or explored within five hundred clicks of where we currently sit.”

I looked back down at the radar print-out, scanning it again as if it would answer my questions this time. There was a large, dark square in the center, connected to it with narrow white rectangles were several other precisely positioned circles. Many other shaped laid scattered around the mysterious figure. 

At the center of the giant square was a small green dot which had ripples spreading out from it like a pebble being thrown into a pond. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the dot.

“The reason I discovered that image,” Brittany responded to me, pursing her lips, “was because Motherboard picked up a signal from that exact location.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of signal?”

Simon answered before Brittany could even open her mouth. “We’re not sure exactly, but… I believe it is some sort of distress signal.”

Brittany gulped before setting a recorder down on the table in front of us and pressing play.

“ PING, ping, PING. ”

“An SOS?” I gasped.

Simon looked around at all of the eyes that were now concentrated on him. “It’s possible, he said.”

“Oh, hell no!” Alvin said. “All of this has bad news written all over it! I say we pick up and move to the opposite side of this planet as whatever is making that signal.”

“We can’t just run away from a call for help,” Eleanor insisted.

“Besides,” Simon interjected, “we can’t move this ship right now anyway. The landing leg is too damaged to use right now. We don't take off unless we plan on going home.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Theodore said.

“None of you are doing anything,” Simon insisted, trying to calm us down. “Except for Alvin and I.”

“Wait, what?” Alvin exclaimed.

“The two of us will take the rover to see if we can find the source of this signal,” Simon continued, ignoring Alvin. “The rest of you will stay here. And wait for us to get back.”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Alvin protested. “I don’t know what your deal is, Si, but since when is it your first instinct to run towards trouble.”

Simon chuckled. “Since when has it been your first instinct to run away from it?”

Alvin was about to respond sarcastically but realized Simon had him pegged. He crossed his arms furiously and simply muttered the words, “fine. But let’s make it quick.”

Chapter Text

Alvin’s POV

Preparing for the journey to the mysterious shapes should not have taken as long as it did. But I was taking my sweet time. The rover itself already came equipped with the tools Simon and I needed: Mars suits, flashlights (as the sun was beginning to set), the only thing it didn’t have was a gun.

While Simon busied himself by rummaging through supplies, I carefully slipped into the sleeping quarters and snatched the key from under my bed. 

“Be careful.” Brittany’s voice made me jump and spin around to face her.

“Jesus, Brit,” I sighed. “You scared me.” 

“Please don’t do anything stupid. Not this time. For me?”

“Don’t worry,” I assured her, walking past her towards the passageway she stood in front of. “I told you before, I’ll do what I need to do. No more, no less.”

And with that I rounded the corner and left her alone. Alone to get lost in the never-ending trap of running worst case scenarios through her brain. 

Simon’s POV

“Just don’t provoke anything,” Jeanette pressed.

“Look, Jeanette, now’s not the time,” I told her as politely as possible, checking to make sure all of the equipment was secured in the surprisingly spacious rover. 

To my shock, she grabbed my shoulder and spun me around to face her. “For once just listen to me, alright?” she shouted at me in utter frustration. 

I sighed and crossed my arms. “Look, I’m sorry. But there’s a lot going on right now.”

“I just don’t want to see anyone getting hurt,” she insisted. “Promise me you’ll stay level-headed! We need to trust that Alvin wants to do the right thing!”

“Jeanette I can’t guarantee anyth-”

“Promise me!”

I rolled my eyes, letting out a deep sigh. “Fine, I promise I won’t start anything.”

“Thank you,” she said, stepping onto the steps out of the rover. “That’s all I needed.”

“But if he has any funny business going on,” I retorted, stopping her in her tracks, “I’ll do what I need to do.”

Brittany’s POV

Frustrated, insecure, confused, scared, helpless. I clumsily plopped myself into my usual cockpit seat. I was to be monitoring Alvin’s and Simon’s mission through the camera feeds and guide them with my navigation instruments and the angelic sound of my voice. Because what else was I good for?

I began flipping through the camera feeds that projected the inside of the rover. I watched as Simon fidgeted around with the Mars suits, allegedly making sure there were no holes or tears in the fabric. I transitioned Motherboard to the overhead cargo bay cams, where I could see Alvin enter with an anxiously quick pace. He appeared to be nearly ready to get going. I found myself putting my paw on the screen longfully. He looked so brave, so strong, so confident, so hot. I didn't know what I would do if he didn’t come back.

My muscles tensed as I watched him take a good, long look at that cabinet in the corner. I could tell he was in the midst of a serious internal debate over whether or not to sneak a small handgun onto the trip, just in case. His eyes darted between the rover, the entrance to the cargo bay, back to the cabinet. And finally, he shook his head and moved on towards the rover, which prompted a massive exhale of relief to exit my lips. 

Alvin climbed up the steps leading to the entrance hatch on the left side of the rover, twisted its hand wheel four and a half turned counterclockwise, pulled open the door to the compression chamber, and entered. 

Alvin’s POV

Making sure to dog shut and lock both layers of hatches behind me, I took a deep breath as I entered the rover with the ignition key in my left pocket and the key to the cabinet in the other for safe keeping.

I had taken an extremely risky leap of faith by not grabbing a single gun on my way out. Would I regret it? Only time would tell. I had no way of knowing what Simon had up his sleeve. He made me nervous, with his constant nagging, and prodding, snooping and questioning. The way he cornered me before our descent into Mars, only to be saved by Brittany, made me nervous. The part of me that ultimately won over was the same part that reminded me that he was my brother, and it would be more beneficial for me in the long run to prove to him that I am not whatever he clearly thought I was. If I was wrong, my odds were fifty-fifty; there was no outnumbering me while traversing the Martian desert.

He turned his head as I approached the front section of the rover and looked up at me. I spun around with a jump and glanced back at him, but we didn’t say a word to each other. There was an awkward split second of eye contact before I turned my back to him and stepped into the cockpit. the cockpit, where I was to work my magic controlling the vehicle, was a round glass dome with the driver’s seat, a steering wheel, pedals, several other switches, buttons, and controls, cameras, a monitor, and instruments. I slid smoothly into the driver’s seat, and admired the view from where I sat. There was nothing to see through the dome, as we remained motionless inside of the cargo bay at that time. I admired the engineering that had been entrusted in my care.

“Ok,” Simon said, breaking the awkward silence. “Everything’s checked out. We’re good to go.”

Without saying anything, I buckled myself in and strapped a headset around my forehead, prompting the “Smart One” to do the same. I looked up at the camera pointed directly towards me from the top-center of the glass dome and gave it a wide grin. “How’s the view from up there, Brit?” I spoke into the microphone.

“ It was pretty good until your ugly ass came into the picture, Alvin. ” Brittany’s sarcastic response made both Simon and I l

chuckle out loud.

“And that's why we don't pay you for your opinions,” I retorted jokingly, “so how about you just keep them to yourself, and drop the ramp?” 

After a momentary still silence, there was a sudden jolt that rocked the rover, before the floor of the cargo bay in front of us began slowly lowering. After about fifteen seconds of the access gradient rumbling and whirring as it descending into an inclined slope, the tip of the ramp hit the dirty red surface of the planet, swooping up a cloud of dust. The opening formed in the hole of the ship was just tall and wide enough for us to drive through.

I winked at the camera above me and said, “much obliged.”

“ Just get out of here so we can have a break from dealing with you ,” Brittany responded.

With that, I shoved the key into the ignition and twisted. But it wouldn’t budge. The key would not twist. I looked at it in confusion before I realized I had tried to use the wrong key. Embarrassed and hoping Simon hadn’t seen me, I put the cabinet key back in my pocket and tried with the other. 

This time, to my great satisfaction. the engine of the rover hummed to life. Keeping my foot on the brake, I put the big machine into gear. A rush of excitement filled my veins as I felt like a little kid again, daydreaming about driving cool cars. 

I looked up at the camera one more time to say, “I’ll see you soon, cutie,” before slowly lifting my foot off the brake.

She giggled through the headset as the rover rolled forward with an unexpectedly immediate but rugged acceleration, like an old tank. “ Well I’ll be seeing you the whole way through, lucky for me ,” she said as the front tires began treading down the ramp.

As soon as the rear wheels had hit the incline of the lowered platform, Simon said, “Roger that, Brittany.”

I eased the brakes just a little as the rover slid down the ramp. It wasn’t long before the front tires hit the dirty surface of the planet, causing the entire vehicle to jolt against its suspensions. The back tires followed suit almost immediately after, flinging our heads and bodies back and forth slightly more violently than I had anticipated. As soon as the whole vehicle was off the ramp, I shifted to a higher gear and pressed the gas pedal. The sudden outburst of speed with a viscous-sounding humming noise took me by surprise. “This thing really goes,” I joked as the rover continued to accelerate. 

Simon shot me a glare, and I could not discern whether it was due to my reckless driving or his general annoyance with my personality.

“ Alvin, set a course for North-East by East, ” Brittany instructed. 

As soon as we were clear of the mountain pass, I turned the wheel to the right until we were headed straight for the location that the distress signal was coming from. The ride was somewhat bumpy but I didn’t care. Driving the rover truly felt like driving a futuristic, fast, impenetrable tank. I felt giddy and invincible. It brought me a rush of adrenaline and happiness in such a primal way.

Jeanette’s POV

I knew, as I had known since my initial inspection, that repairing the landing gear was busy work that would take me at least a few days to complete. Busy work that I was very eager to procrastinate from however I could. The very minute that I had dug up the three replacement rotors I needed for the job, I decided to check on Simon and Alvin.

Wiping my hands clean of grease as I walked, I made my way through the halls from the engine room all the way up to the entrance to the cockpit. In no real hurry, I typed the code into the door and pressed enter. It opened up for me with a swoosh.

As soon as I walked in I saw Brittany standing, her back turned to me, and the headset resting away from her on her chair. She hunched over and put her hands on her knees. I could hear her breathing heavily. 

“Brittany?” I whispered. 

Still panting, she mustered up what seemed to be the extent of her energy just to turn her head in my direction. But before she could say anything, she collapsed to the ground with a thud. I gasped as she just lay there without making a peep or any movement. 

“Brittany!” I screamed as I darted over to where she laid motionless and knelt beside her. I began lightly slapping her face to check her consciousness, but she didn’t respond. I put my ear to her chest, and was relieved to hear that her heart was still beating and she was still breathing. 

I jumped to my feet and pressed and held the button to speak into the intercom. My panicked words, “Theo and Ellie to the bridge right now! This is an emergency!” rang out through the whole ship.

I spun back around and crouched beside my unconscious sister once again. I picked her head up gently and said, “stay with me, Brit. You’re ok. You’re going to be fine…”

I sat there for a moment holding Brittany tight. I rocked back and forth anxiously, more to calm myself than for my sister's comfort. Finally, Eleanor and Theodore rushed into the cockpit together. 

Eleanor saw Brittany in my arms and gasped. “What happened?” she exclaimed.

“She just… collapsed,” I sputtered. “Please get her to the medical room right away.”

Without wasting time, Theodore ran over to us and gently hoisted Brittany up and placed her on his right shoulder. With Ellie by his side, he carried her all the way out of the bridge as fast as his legs could move the two of them. I watched with nervous and reserved hope until the hatch closed behind them with another “whoosh” sound. 

I sat there on my knees for a few moments, completely still. 

Then I suddenly remembered Alvin and Simon. Rising to my feet, I stepped toward the Motherboard screen, where I could see the rover chugging along the rocky terrain of Mars, making impressive time with the help of Alvin’s reckless driving. I picked the headset up off of the seat, fitted it to my head, and sat down where Brittany had just been a few moments ago. 

I struggled internally with how to approach the situation before me. Things were already tense between Alvin and the rest of us. Him and my boyfriend were actively hurling themselves into a potentially dangerous situation. The last thing either of them needed in that moment was news that would distract them. “Guys… this is Jeanette,” I said into the microphone.

“ Jeanette ?” I could hear the confusion in Alvin’s voice. “ Where the hell’s Brittany ?”

“Brittany’s fine she just… needed a break,” I assured him.

There was a pause. Then Alvin responded to me with, “ I don’t believe you ,” in an icy-cold, abrupt tone.

“Look,” I said, sighing, deliberating whether or not to tell him the truth. “She just fainted. She’s fine.”

“ I see. ”

“ I’m sure she’s fine, Alvin, ” Simon spoke up.

“ I sure hope so… for your sake. ”

“ Are you threatening me ?”

Trying to stop this before it got out of hand, I interrupted, “calm down guys! Brit’s going to be fine. Alvin you should probably focus on the path ahead of you.”

“ Alright, Jeannie ,” Alvin grumbled.

“Be on guard,” I warned. “You’ll be arriving at your destination shortly.”

Eleanor’s POV

Though Theo insisted on carrying my sister himself all the way down to the medical room, it was clear to me that he was struggling. I did what I could to help him along the way, without interfering. 

When we finally arrived, I had to type in the code to open the airtight door. A clearly exhausted Theodore stumbled through the opening and strenuously laid Brit’s unconscious body face up on the bed as gently as he could. 

Theodore slid to the floor, panting heavily. 

I knew that me and my talents were now in the spotlight. That it was my time to either put up or shut up. That the pressure was entirely on me to save my sister. 

The first thing I did was check her pulse, which turned out to be dangerously low. “Theodore, get me a glass of water, stat !” 

Still clearly exhausted, Theo used his paws to pick himself up off the ground and jogged out of the room towards the kitchen. 

Her breathing was becoming very scarce, so without delay I began CPR. As I pressed violently against her chest, repeatedly I sang the beat: “Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive!”

I took a deep breath, opened her mouth by pulling her chin down with my right hand, and forcefully exhaled air down her throat. I put my ear to her chest, took another deep breath, and repeated. 

She still hadn’t resuscitated, so I placed my hands on her chest again and, pushing significantly harder this time, continued the CPR.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive!”

Suddenly, her eyes flung open and a long, raspy gasp escaped from her mouth. 

“Brittany!” I exclaimed as relief coursed through my body. 

At first, she barely seemed capable of responding to me, as she gasped and panted and choked with eyes wide, as if she had just been slapped in the face. But her breathing slowly became more regular, prompting me to throw a warm hug around her body. 

After a few moments of just laying down on the bed and recovering, she finally managed to murmur, “what the hell happened to me?”

I shook my head, tears of joy beginning to run down my cheeks. “I don’t know.”

Theodore suddenly charged into the room carrying a tin cup full of water in his right hand. He looked nearly as overjoyed as I was to see Brittany back in the land of consciousness. 

“But I’m gonna find out,” I assured her. “Don’t worry.” 

Simon’s POV

We were almost there. The rover had traversed the rugged Martian terrain with an impressive resilience and determination. The sun had almost set, leaving the great Martian desert a deep but dim red hue. 

I stood behind Alvin, clutching onto the back of his chair with white knuckles through each and every violent hump or rock, staring ahead of us through the glass of the dome as the rover rolled on through a tall, muddy trench. 

“Ok Alvin,” I grumbled just loud enough for him to interpret my words, “We’re basically there once we turn this corner.”

Alvin didn’t respond, even as we neared the end of the jagged cliff that stood tall to our right. He smoothly took his foot off the gas pedal, allowing the vehicle to lose speed. He then dropped it a few gears and squeezed the brake ever so slightly, decelerating us dangerously fast as he began to steer us to the right. My head and body shook with the unforeseen and sudden motion as my older brother recklessly piloted us around the edge of the mountain. The big machine had to climb a boulder as it rounded the corner, but it seemed to do so effortlessly. 

Suddenly, just as we had made it around the cliff, Alvin slammed on the brakes. The rover came to an abrupt stop with a painful screech, jolting the two of us forward and back and causing me to finally lose my balance and stumble forwards. 

There, just meters in front of us, was a giant American flag, flying tattered and worn, covered with dust. It flapped in the harsh Martian wind, looking almost defeated. 

But it was what was behind the flag that caused me to shudder. As Alvin rolled us carefully around the beat up American flag, we got a better view. To our left was some sort of greenhouse. It was apparent, despite the debris and dust coating the windows, that all the crops inside had died long ago. Beyond the greenhouse was an entire collection of structures, all of which towered above us as they were clearly designed for use by human beings. They all looked rusted and unused for God only knows how long. At the center of this city-like arrangement of construction was a large multi-story building that must have taken up nearly one-hundred thousand square feet of real estate. It was bulky, and very sturdy-looking, in contrast to the little huts that surrounded it. 

There was no movement or signs of life. The whole place looked abandoned, rusted out, and in some places, totally destroyed by the elements.

“What the hell could have happened here?” Alvin muttered as he pulled us up closer to the main building.

“Who knows,” I said. “But now I guess we have a better idea of why our national debt is so high.” 

“For real,” Alvin chuckled. “Why didn’t NASA tell us about this place?”

“That’s a good question. Jeanette, are you getting all this?”

“ Yeah, I see it .” Jeanette responded. 

Alvin lifted his toes off the gas, coasting us to a stop just a few feet in front of a very large metal sliding door that led into the main building. Without waiting for him to shut off the engine, I walked to the back of the rover and dug the coverall portion of my Mars suit out of the storage compartment. 

Alvin soon joined me in the awkwardly silent endeavor of getting our suits on. Neither him nor I said a word until our dome helmets were on and locked in. 

“Can you still hear me?” I asked, hoping for a response from both Jeanette and my brother.

He looked at me and lazily held his left thumb up with a disgruntled look on his face.

“ I can hear you fine, ” Jeanette said through my headset. 

“Ok,” I said. “Alvin, you bring the motion detector, and I’ll carry the flashlight.”

“ Affirmative ,” he snapped with sarcastic enthusiasm.

He and I both simultaneously grabbed our agreed upon equipment, then approached the air tight hatch that led to the decompression chamber. Alvin glanced over his shoulder at me nervously, wrapped both hands around the wheel, utilized his entire body and a great deal of energy to torque it counterclockwise with a grunt, spun it seven turns, pulled the hatch towards him as it swung open towards us. We both stepped inside the chamber and I closed the door behind us in opposite fashion. I put the entirety of my forearms around the wheel and placed extra emphasis and a pronounced “mmph” with my final effort on the wheel. If it was not air tight, the immediately following sequence would have been disastrous. It was a tight squeeze in the chamber with the two of us. After ensuring I was ready, Alvin pressed a palm-sized round green button to our right. Steam erupted from six different ports, three on either side of us, angled downwards from the ceiling, foggin up the chamber in seconds. The scene through my helmet caused me to break into a mild spurt of hyperventilating as the temperature of the air dropped, the density of our surrounding area thinned dramatically. After around ten seconds, the steam subsided, sucked through a powerful vacuum directly above us in the overhead. Alvin nodded, as if assuring himself it was safe, then opened the outer door leading to the planet in exactly the same fashion as he did the inner door.

We exited the rover’s belly cautiously, dogging shut the door behind us. I could clearly hear the strained breathing escaping both of our sets of lips. With each inhale, our lungs battled with the resistance of the air filters in our tanks. With each exhale, they pushed against the pressure of our suits. The resulting noise in my ears was akin to a harsh static that portruded with each breath from either of us. 

The sun had almost completely set, meaning my light was about to come in handy.

After stepping down from the second and final rung of the flight of stairs that led from the entrance to the rover, I examined the dirt surrounding me. My foot, after a dust cloud arose and floated away in the wind, had sunk halfway into the ground. I knelt down, brushed my free hand through the dirt, scooped some up. The viscosity of it was unnerving. The clay molded together unnaturally, effectively refusing to be separated. I crushed the clump into my fingers and rubbed it, watching the mud particles float in odd patterns back onto the surface. I stared in awe as the droplets, which initially were noticeably different colors and textures than the dirt they were surrounded by, gradually assimilated until they were no longer discernible. It was fascinating to just see and feel, and to take into this strange alien world that we had landed on.

“ Earth to Simon ,” Alvin's impatient groan annoyingly interrupted my studying. “ We're wasting daylight out here! Let's just get this done and get back to the ship… this place creeps me the hell out .”

I sighed, begrudgingly nodded, stood straight up, motioned towards the towering steel door to the main center structure which dauntingly stood firm against the wind. My brother nodded in return before I followed him in his approach towards it.

“Alvin, if you pick up any movement on that thing at all, you need to tell me right away. Ok?” I said sternly, referring to his motion tracker.

“ Nah, I thought I’d keep it to myself ,” Alvin snorted, rolling his eyes.

Ignoring him, I flipped on my flashlight. The projected beam powerfully illuminated any object I pointed at, seemingly from an endless distance. The dust polluting the air reflected and was revealed even more clearly than before. I shone it on the door. The metal was so rusty, so encapsulated in grime and dirt that almost no light reflected off of it.

Without waiting for me, Alvin walked up to the door and knocked on it twice. Piles of dust rained down off of the immediate portion of the building and covered Alvin where he stood, but other than that nothing happened. Alvin shook his head to get the filth off his helmet, and peered upwards. The door was coated with the traditional “NASA” logo, but the paint had worn, faded and chipped. 

To our right, a few feet above our heads was a numbered keypad, obviously there to enter a pass code.

“It’s too high up for us,” I grumbled.

“ No such thing ,” Alvin said, confidently walking underneath the pad.

Before I could say “don’t do it,” Alvin bent his knees and took a leaping jump upwards, barely managing to latch his claws into the top of the pad and hang there. 

“We don’t know the password,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Alvin examined the pad closely. “ You can tell which numbers are used, they’re less dusty, ” he said. “ Looks like 1… 3… 7… and 8!”

“You’ll still never guess the combo,” I snickered.

Alvin, ignoring me, typed four digits into the pad. To my surprise, the LED light bulb above us illuminated in green and the door began to slide open. Alvin dropped down less-than-graciously and turned around to still see my eyes wide. “ 17-38 ,” he said matter-of-factly. “ Fetty Wap. Not sure if there's any correlation. ”

I shook my head in disgust of his luck and instead turned and directed my light into the now-open doorway. The room was massive, bigger than our ship by itself. The floor was made of smoothened iron deck plates. Tools, mechanical parts, littered throughout the area. Four identical Mars rovers sat motionless and abandoned, side-by-side, facing towards us.

“ It’s a garage ,” Alvin said in disbelief.

But these rovers were different than the one we had brought with us. They were reinforced with extra-thick armor. Heavy plows were welded onto their front bumpers. They had lead spikes sticking out of them from all angles and turret guns protruding from the tops and rears of each vehicle. The weapon mounted to the top of each rover was surrounded by a metal protective bunker.

“These guys were not messing around,” I said, shaking my head as I scanned the inside of the garage. “Jeanette, you still seeing all this?”

“ Yeah, I’m still with you guys ,” she managed to say through her obvious amazement. 

Alvin and I walked in. I flashed my light all around as we walked, but we still could find no signs of life. We could see a hatch on wall opposite us that presumably led into the main building. I went ahead of my older brother, who still had picked up no movement on his tracker. I was moving with haste towards the hatch, but Jeanette’s voice stopped me. 

“ Simon, go back! Go back! I think one of the doors to the rover was open. ”

I hadn’t even noticed I was in such a hurry. I wasn’t expecting much, so I nonchalantly turned around and directed my light in the direction of the rover to our left. The blood curdling screams of Alvin and I could have been heard for miles. For lying in the doorway, disfigured and mangled, was a fleshless human skeleton. All that remained of him was the handgun that he clutched in his right hand until his dying moment.

Chapter Text

Alvin’s POV

Simon, stricken with shock, dropped the flashlight onto the steel floor, landing with a jolting clank. I took two defensive steps backwards, holding my motion tracker up in front of me in the direction of the lifeless pile of bones. “I’m still not reading anything,” I called into the darkness, which echoed in the massive emptiness of the garage we were standing inside of.

Calming himself down, Simon picked his light back up and shone it into the opening in the side of the same rover. “Oh God,” he whispered. 

The fingers of the skeleton still clutched around the handle of a handgun as if it would save him. His eye sockets seemed to be gazing right at me. 

“ What in the hell could have happened ?” Jeanette’s voice squeaked over the radio.

“I dunno,” I said, shuddering. 

“ Perhaps a mutiny ,” Simon suggested, moving slowly towards the lifeless skeleton.

“ But if that’s the case ,” Jeanette said, “ then where are the survivors? There had to have been at least one. ”

I cautiously approached the rover where the skeletal remains laid, hopped up the ladder with a strain, and into the midsection, ensuring I avoided disturbing any bones. Simon followed close behind me. As soon as we were in the belly of the vehicle, Simon shone the light back down on the poor bastard’s skull. 

“ Looks like he’s been here a while ,” Simon commented. “ At least a year or two, I’d say .”

My eyes automatically followed the light, as my brother turned around to illuminate other areas inside of the rover. I’m pretty sure my heart jumped into my throat at what we saw next. The whole floor of the rover, including the cockpit, was littered with even more skeletons. All of them were mangled, disfigured, bent in weird shapes. And all of them had obviously passed onto the next life in possession of weapons. One particular set of human remains had a rifle of some sort encased inside its’ rib cage.

Simon shone the light on all twenty or so of them at least twice each, as if to double check that they were dead. One thing was for sure, which was that they all died fighting. The inside of the rover was decorated with odd scratch marks and torn up padded seat cushions. 

I checked my motion tracker. “No life,” I said. 

Instead of answering me, my younger brother tiptoed around some of the remains and studied them as if searching for something.

“ You guys should move on and check inside the building ,” Jeanette said.

“Yeah right,” I scoffed. “I’ve seen enough of this place. You can count me out.”

“ You just said so yourself, there’s no life around, ” Jeanette retorted.

“Oh yeah, sure. That’s easy for you to say back on the ship, Jeannie.”

Simon butted in, defending his girl. “ Look, if we don’t get to the bottom of why these guys were here, then there really wasn’t even a point of us coming here in the first place. ”

“Fine by me,” I snorted. “I say we expeditiously disappear from this entire area and never come back again.”

He looked at me slyly. “ Oh, I’m sorry, I’m trying to reach Alvin Seville. Ya know? The brave one. Have you seen him around. ”

“You’re one sarcastic son of a bitch, Simon,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Fine, we’ll keep going. But I’m just tagging along to protect you.”

My little brother chuckled. “ Of course .”

Simon led us out through the open hatch door and down the steps to the floor of the garage. As we made our way towards the building's entrance door at the other end, I was religiously checking my motion sensor. Even the slightest blip of a reading, besides that of myself or Simon, and I was silently prepared to sprint away.

Opening the door was as easy as jumping and hanging off of the handle until it swung gently ajar. Well, at least it was easy for me. Simon was the one who actually had to do it. I crawled inside, which was not easy to force myself to do with no light. Hands shaking, I held it open for him, and then closed it behind us.

Simon looked around. We were in a depressurization chamber, a room that was designed to convert the atmosphere of Mars; give it oxygen and make it breathable. Suddenly, the chamber began to hiss as it filled with fog. This was not a new experience for us, of course. We were merely surprised that it was working. 

When the fog finally dissipated through the fan-powered escape vents, Simon ordered, “ Check the conditions .”

I did and reported, “oxygen and humidity levels are habitable, but temperature’s just above zero Fahrenheit.”

“ Well you’re welcome to take your helmet off, if you wish ,” Simon chuckled. 

“Pass,” I said, approaching the other end of the chamber. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

After yet another painstakingly long and energy-expensive process of opening the opposite hatch, we exited the chamber and entered a long dark hallway with tall forest green lockers lined up all the way down on both walls. Each of the lockers had a first initial and a last name stuck onto the top of their doors with a brass label plate. Some of them were wide open, some of them just a crack. Some locked shut.

Out of curiosity, I picked out the partially opened locker of a “T. Vasquez” to my right and opened it fully.

“ Alvin, what are you doing? ” Jeanette scolded me. 

Noticing immediately that this locker belonged to a woman, I joked, “I don’t think she’ll mind too much if I take a look.”

“ There is something wrong with you ,” she said in disgust. 

Vasquez turned out to be a Mrs. with two daughters, which I learned from the picture she kept on a shelf next to a loaded handgun. A semi-automatic rifle hung from a hook, barrel pointing downwards towards a pile of letters. I picked up the top one from the stack and began reading it. It was a typed and printed message from her husband, received on the date of January of last year. It talked about how he was glad that the mission in Afghanistan was going smoothly, and that he and the kids were going to be happy to see her in a couple weeks. 

A couple weeks. And by the looks of things, she never made it home. 

“ All of these lockers have guns in them, ” Simon noted. 

“Were these people… soldiers?” I asked. 

“ Look !” Simon said.

I turned to look in the direction he was pointing his flashlight. Above the hatch to the depressurization chamber from which we came, was a motto written with bold red sticker letters that read, “USMC: SEMPER FI”. 

And at that moment all three of us knew. These things had all belonged to Marines. And something had taken them out. 

Simon gulped, spun around, and recommenced trudging through the hallway of lockers. I hesitantly followed, folding up the letter as I walked. The exact moment he rounded the corner past the hallway, my motion tracker suddenly picked up two movement signals only about 25 yards away from him. “ Woah !” Simon gasped, diving in a panic for cover back behind the cornered wall, skidding to a stop just inches from my feet. 

I took a step backwards, ready to run, but Simon got ahold of himself and took a peek back around the corner. He eased up and came out from hiding, standing tall in the middle of the intersection of passageways. With a mild sense of curiosity, I joined him to see what he was looking at.

Two automatic sentry machine guns locked onto me the second I popped out from around the corner and followed me until I stood right next to Simon, where they continued aiming directly at us menacingly.

“ They’re out of bullets ,” Simon said. “ Otherwise we’d be dead already. ”

“How are they still online?” I wondered aloud, locked in a staring contest with the turrets.

Simon shrugged. “Solar power, I’d assume. Which would mean… it might be possible to get this place functional again. Come on, let’s move on.”

I followed Simon cautiously as he walked in the direction of the sentry guns. He was confident, I was not. Their barrels remained locked onto us until we had passed through the tripod legs holding them upright. At that point they seemingly instantly forgot our existence and rotated like clockwork back towards the direction we had come. 

As we trudged and stomped through the hall in our heavy, thick Mars suits, Simon in front with the flashlight and me tagging behind him with the motion tracker, we came across another human skeleton. This one was in several pieces. Various bones were cracked. The hand had been ripped clean off, and there were several holes in its skull. The area around the remains, the metallic floor and wall, was burnt and singed, with shreds of shrapnel sticking out of the floor, walls and ceiling.

We rounded another corner, only to be startled by a second pair of sentry guns which activated and locked onto our heat signal the second we came within range. To our relief, their ammunition supplies were also barren. 

“ These sentry guns hold hundreds of rounds ,” Jeannie spoke up in obvious disbelief. “ Imagine what it took in order for them to use them all. ”

We chose to ignore her as we stepped past the intimidating machine guns in the same fashion as the previous pair. But it wasn’t long before we had to come to a stop. 

Just ahead of us was a massive blockade, made from chairs, tables, polls, and a bunch of of random metallic objects, all welded together into a tight and rigid hodgepodge. It was at least a couple yards thick and stretched wall to wall and almost all the way to the ceiling, just barely leaving the sign above what was likely a doorway unimpeded. It read, “Control Room”. 

Simon shined his light up and down the makeshift blockade, which reflected much of that light and illuminated random fragments of the hallway. There was a very small, unnatural break in the pile, like a tunnel. Not big enough for any human to fit through but just wide enough so that Simon and I could definitely crawl into it one at a time. 

My brother and I exchanged glances, in which we apparently decided that we were going to try to see what was on the other side.

“ Jeanette, we’re going in ,” Simon said as he began to climb.

“ Be careful ,” she said in a worried tone. “ Both of you .” 

“I appreciate the concern, Jeannie,” I snorted as I began to climb up after my younger brother. 

It wasn’t that difficult a climb, as there were plenty of miscellaneous pieces of metal for us to grab onto and use to hoist ourselves up. In no time we were both near the top, peering nervously through the strange hole that existed in the middle of this heavy duty blockade. Simon used the flashlight to try to see where it led. Whatever was on the other end of the tunnel was unlit. It was very easy to perceive that the tunnel itself had been carved through this blockade in a rush, judging by the jagged points of metal sticking out from all directions. Despite the hastily ripped and sliced edges, there was an impressive precision with how perfectly straight the hole was between our side and the opposite end.

This time, I volunteered to go first. With my tracker still in hand, it was all I could do to make it through this tunnel without dragging my Mars suit against any of the sharp points facing inwards towards us and tearing even the smallest hole. Simon did his best to light up the path ahead of me as he followed. But the diameter of the shaft limiting our abilities to even stand fully upright meant that my backside received the vast majority of the beam of his flashlight. I was panting excessively as we neared the end of the channel, as carefully ensuring the vulnerable parts of my suit weren't punctured was exhausting. 

I finally made it through, followed not too shortly after by Simon. He was panting heavily, arguably hyperventilating, recovering from the long stretch of uncomfortable and stressful travel. “You good?” I asked him.

“ Yeah, ” he replied graciously as I helped him out.

After aggressively readjusting his suit, Simon flashed the beam down towards the floor, maybe ten feet below us. 

Human skeletons were literally piled up from the ground, at least two feet high. It was a large room, with a massive glass table installed in the center. Several screens were mounted on walls all around us. Four desks sat behind the glass table, all coated in dust and decorated only with monitors. 

We climbed down with relative ease, having no choice but to step on human bones with a sickening crunch once we had reached the floor. The room had one way in and out, which was effectively blocked by the huge wall of welded chairs and tables. 

“ My God, ” Simon sighed in horror. “ This was damn-near genocide !”

We attempted to walk over, across, and through this ocean of bones as quietly and respectfully as possible, searching for any more clues. 

As I strutted along, I was thinking back to what Megs told me before takeoff. I was beginning to realize that it wasn’t Simon or any of the others that I was supposed to watch out for, but possibly something much more deadly. 

Eventually, we made it atop the large dusty glass table. We took one more good look around what used to be the “Control Room” but what was now a giant tomb. We were surrounded by death. You could basically taste it. The screams of terror that once filled the room seemed still to faintly echo through it and fill our bodies with unease.

“ The attack must have started in or near the rover garage ,” Simon deduced. “ They probably fended it off out there for a good while, giving the rest of the Marines a chance to set up the sentry guns and weld together that barricade. This was their last stand. ”

“ Last stand against what ?” Jeanette's quivering voice squeaked through our headsets. 

I dusted off part of the table, only to realize that the table was actually a massive flat screen. As I jumped in surprise, the screen suddenly lit up with a faint Navy blue hue. The interface was an enlarged but identical version of the Motherboard system on the Omortson . Or, perhaps more accurately, our Motherboard was a miniature verson of this table. The screen read “OMORTSON MISSION SYSTEMS”, with “Solar Power 23%” in the bottom right corner. 

There was no keyboard, so I tried speaking in a clear and pronounced voice while remaining uncomfortable with raising my volume more than necessary, “give me a system update!”

“ Understood. ” It said back to me in a noticeably robotic female voice. Statistics began appearing on the screen in a list as the computer read them aloud to us: “ Sentry ammunition depleted, light and camera systems shut down in emergency attempt to conserve power, remaining Marines on life scanners: 0. ”

“ Show the most recently saved surveillance feed ,” Simon commanded it impatiently.

The screen suddenly turned into a grainy video playback, much like what we had back on the ship. We could see men and women in suits and in uniforms, dashing about like mad, darting in a panic through the hallways of the station, arming up in different rooms and screaming at each other. Then we turned to the camera inside this room, which showed a tall man who looked like some variation of an officer standing in front the very table we stood on at that moment with a defeated face of despair. He hunched towards the screen, said something to it, and then the entire room suddenly went dark as the lights turned off. In that instant, the whole screen went black. Only the words “Video playback ended” appeared at the center of the table.

“ What is the Omortson Mission directive ?” Simon questioned the computer.

“ To seek out and destroy any and all life forms on Mars. ” 

Neither Simon nor I said anything, as we needed to let all of this sink in. Suddenly, a small, quick beep sound arose from my tracker. I looked down at the motion detector and my eyes widened. “Simon, we’ve got movement,” I said nervously. 

“ Where ?” he gasped. 

I turned my body towards the direction the dots at the edge of my screen were in, like a compass, and pointed at the wall in that direction. 

“ That’s outside the building ,” Simon affirmed, trying to hide from me the fact that his body was shuddering. 

“It’s a real faint signal,” I muttered, suddenly even more conscious than I already was about keeping my voice down. “It’s not very close. But it's definitely there.” There were several dots now, indicating the movement patterns of multiple life forms.

Simon peered at my tracker suspiciously. “ It looks like… they’re just moving in place? ”

Hello was right: within the indications of the small screen of my instrument, the several dots appeared motionless, relative to our position at the very least. “What do we do?” I asked him, in a rare instance of our lives where I actually planned on following his command. 

“ I dunno. They could be survivors. First things first, we need to get out of here, ” he responded, hopping down from the table and landing on a human rib cage with a loud crunch. 

“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said today, Si,” I snarked, following his lead. 

Theodore’s POV

I typed in the code and entered the cockpit, prompting a jump and a gasp from Jeanette. “Oh God, Theo! It’s just you,” she sighed.

I eyed her suspiciously. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh nothing,” she responded, chuckling nervously. “How’s Brittany doing?”

I shrugged. “She seems to be better. She’s resting now. Ellie’s trying to figure out what happened to her.”

“Well, that’s great to hear,” she muttered, immediately refocusing her attention towards the Motherboard monitor.

I stepped, curiously, closer behind her, until I could see over her shoulder the live feed of both Alvin’s and Simon’s helmet cameras. “Holy Hell,” I said with wide eyes. “What happened there?”

“To be perfectly honest, Theodore, we still don’t quite know.”

I was way too confused to let that slip as an explanation. “What’d they find?”

She sighed and sat back down. “It’s gonna take a while to explain, but I’ll do the best I can.”

Simon’s POV

We made it all the way back through the garage and back to our beloved rover with relative ease and speed. As we stepped into our little rover, which was refreshingly the perfect size for us, we allowed it to depressurize the air around us. But I stopped Alvin before he could take his helmet off. “No!” I scolded him.

“ What’s your problem ,” he growled. 

“We’re going to go find out what’s making that movement signal,” I said.

He rolled his eyes at me. “ You’re insane. ” 

“Just get in there and start up the rover,” I barked at him, gesturing towards the rover's cockpit.

He did as I told him, neither of us bothering to buckle in. The signal on the motion tracker was coming from the opposite side of the Omortson HQ as where we had parked. Alvin begrudgingly rolled the rover forward and hugged the walls of the giant building. Without even putting his foot on the acceleration pedal, Alvin maneuvered us all the way around to the far side of the haunted building we had just explored. 

The signal on the detector was got stronger as we neared the far side of the facility. 

Using his motion instrument as a guide, Alvin broke us away from the walls of the condemned structure and began navigating us through a field of giant solar panels that had gone unattended for so long that they were now completely covered in Mars dust. He carefully swerved and weaved around each solar panel that was in our path, as the audible beeping warnings produced by the tracker grew louder and more frequent, indicating we were getting closer.

We finally cleared the abandoned solar field, but we could see nothing ahead of us except for a fast approaching red mountain. Alvin checked the motion tracker in confusion and came to a realization. “ The signal is coming from… inside that mountain ,” he gasped in amazement.

“That’s impossible!” I scolded, double checking the instrument over his shoulder in disbelief.

Alvin slowed us to a stop, parked and shut off the battery-powered engine mere feet away from the base of the impressively imposing red mountain. As we exited the rover, I marvelled at just how miniscule we were compared to the size of the rock. The Martian sunset to our left was beginning to coat the dust-ridden atmosphere in a brown and pink hue. 

I brought the flashlight with me as I approached the foot of the geological formation, with Alvin trudging behind me while staring intensely down at the motion detector, never once daring to blink. “ This can’t be… what could be moving inside of a mountain ?”

I reached the point where the brick red and mud brown rock met and stood atop the dusty ground. Except, to my shock, it didn’t! Perfectly at the foot of the mountain, there was a ditch carved into the dirt that was just wide enough for a chipmunk of our size to crawl into. But the rock of the mountain did not extend all the way to the bottom of the ditch. It instead looked like it had been carved out or dug through, leaving an opening a foot or so high, and several meters long through the entirety of the ditch. “Looks like there may be more inside this mountain than we thought, Alvin,” I mused curiously to him as I dropped to my side and slid my body into the trench.

I crawled underneath the wall of red rock, which was only about a foot or two thick, and stood up on the other end. I was inside the mountain, where besides the small amount of light that seeped through the ditch, it was almost completely pitch black. 

As Alvin rolled in behind me, I could hear static coming through our feed. “Jeanette? Are you getting all of this?” I whispered with a shaky undertone. No reply came except static, as Alvin rose to his feet beside me and brushed the dirt off of his suit. “Jeanette?”

Jeanette’s POV

“What the hell?” I muttered.

Static. There was nothing on the motherboard screen except static. There was nothing coming through the headset except static.

“Simon?” I tried desperately to reach either of them. “Are you guys still with me? Simon?”

“Must be getting some interference,” Theodore suggested.

Obviously, but from what? I tried again, “Simon? Alvin? If anyone can hear me, sound off.”

Simon’s POV

Nothing. No answer. Just static. 

“ Must be getting some interference ,” Alvin said. He then checked the motion tracker, and his voice turned to a whisper. “Simon, the movement is all around us ,”

I froze, as we had not heard a single noise coming from anywhere except each other. I finally got up the courage to turn on my flashlight, and shine it over the top side of the ditch on the inside of the rocky crevice, which was only about waist-high. My older brother and I peered cautiously over the edge, unsure of what we'd see.

The whole place was engulfed in a hazy green fog. It was a half-spherical cave about ten feet high, and a circumference of about three hundred. 

We didn’t see anything moving. All we did see was a cave floor made of gooey red mud that was littered with several dozen small, green-glowing rocks. “ What the hell are those ?” Alvin whispered in astoundment.

I pulled myself out of the ditch, with Alvin following my lead, and shined my beam of light down on the nearest green rock. It looked soft and infirm, almost as if it were made of gelatin, and partially see-through. Inside we could see the unmistakable light squirming of some type of strange creature that resembled an embryo. “I think it's an… egg.”

“ This can't be real ,” Alvin scoffed in a worried, frantic, choked up croak.

My scientific instincts kicked in immediately as my mind began racing. 

“Alvin, take note of the conditions inside of this cave,” I commanded, looking around to make sure there was nothing else about.

“ Why ?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me. 

“Just do it,” I barked.

He rolled his eyes. “ Fine .” He looked down at the motion tracker. “ Oxygen levels 0.9 percent, 99% humidity, temperature 70 degrees Fahrenheit. ” 

“Excellent,” I said, lifting the nearest egg off the ground and cradling it and the mud that was picked up with it against my chest. “Let’s both try to remember that.”

He looked at me with wide eyes, knowing exactly what I was up to. “ Woah, woah, woah! Are you crazy, Si ?”

I walked past him towards the ditch, carefully clutching the egg in my forearms. “This is the only Martian life-form ever recorded in history,” I explained to him. “This is the opportunity that probably no one else will get for decades! I can’t just pass it up.”

“ What if its mother misses it ?” Alvin protested. 

I rolled my eyes. “This cave has almost a hundred eggs. She’ll probably never even notice it’s gone. Now come on! We gotta get this thing back to the ship!”

Chapter Text

Eleanor’s POV

Brittany sat, propped up against the wall behind her, on the firm and uncomfortable medical bay mattress with only a small pillow providing cushion for her lower back.

I stood at the other end of the bed, hand covering my mouth and chin, studying her closely. 

She lifted the plastic shot glass-sized cup bottoms-up into her mouth and pretended to take the final sip of water, even though she had drunk the last of it several minutes ago. “I told you I’m fine, Ellie,” she insisted once again. 

“This is just so unusual,” I grumbled, ignoring her. “You never displayed any of these symptoms while we were going through training.” 

“We had a long journey and I fainted. I’m dehydrated, that’s all.”

That was the thing. She should not have been dehydrated. She had consumed the same water rations, precisely calculated and distributed, as everyone else on board the ship. As a matter of fact, the water rations we had lived on during the voyage were actually greater than what we were provided on a daily basis back at NASA HQ. More food as well. The sleep schedule we had to maintain in order to keep the cockpit manned took a bit of a toll on all of us - but fainting? Unlikely. The stress of witnessing the distrust between Alvin and the rest of us might have triggered the ordeal, but why only now, when that situation had improved? He and Simon were actively working well together! To top it off, she never displayed any symptoms previously of Vasovagal Syncope or anything else that could lead to this outcome. No, it was as if she randomly began requiring an increased ration of food and water the moment we left Earth. Suddenly, an oddly specific but fitting suspicion, possibly a terrifying realization, unwittingly took me over. Her hunger, her cravings, her nausea, her need for extra water. 

“Brit…” I whispered in as comforting a tone as I could muster. “I’m asking you this as a supportive sister.” I reached out and placed my paw softly on her leg and looked her in her eyes. I could see them widen as she likely predicted what I was about to ask her. “Did you and Alvin… do anything before we lifted off?” 

She chuckled nervously. “Do anything? What do you mean?”

I raised an accusatory eyebrow at her. She rapidly looked away to avoid my gaze. “Did you guys have sex is what I mean.”

She snapped her head right back in my direction. “Ellie, I’m not pregnant,” she bluntly asserted.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I pressed. “Did you and Alvin have sex ?”

She took a deep breath and once again looked the other way, as if trying to comprehend everything. Tears began welling in her eyes as she said, “it wasn’t… my proudest moment.” 

I could not help myself but to choke down a gasp. “When?”

“After the last day of training,” she muttered. “With the double shower tokens.” 

I covered my mouth with one hand and placed my other hand on her stomach and caressed it slightly in a loving, soothing pattern. 

“Don’t touch me there!” she snapped, swiping my hand off of her. “I told you, I’m not pregnant!”

“How can you be so sure?” I questioned her, getting annoyed with her denial.

“B-b…” she stuttered. “We were careful.”

“Careful?” I scoffed in disbelief. “How could you even say that? You had sex right before our mission!”

Tears began to flow down her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, I swear it.”

“Well, I don’t have any pregnancy tests on board. But if I did, and you tested positive, then you and I both know what would happen according to protocol.”

She avoided my eyes once again, leading me to deduce that she knew something that I didn’t know.

“What is it?” I questioned her. 

“Nothing.”

I continued to press eye contact, which she seemed hesitant to give me. Obviously, shame was likely a huge factor in her unwillingness to look in my direction. But there seemed to be something else; as if she were hiding something. As it were, I decided to try to procrastinate the end of our little “checkup” to see if I could get some answers. “All we can do in our present situation is to continue monitoring you. If you are pregnant, hopefully you begin to show more definitive signs soon. Something I can diagnose you with a real level of certainty.”

“Are you going to tell the others?” she asked me, trembling.

“I…” my voice drifted off. I was certainly planning to tell the others. Why shouldn't I? They deserved as much of a heads up as I could give them that the mission may be cut short. But then, I understood her fears about the possible chastising and judgement, particularly from Simon. And perhaps worst in her mind, was the idea of Alvin finding out this way. “I won't,” I finally said against my better judgement. “But only if you promise to check in with me at least once per day so I can get a look at you and check for more signs of pregnancy.”

She nodded with a faint gracious smile on her face, wiping a couple tears off her cheek. “It's a deal,” she squeaked.

With that, I sighed and decided I’d give her space. She needed to really think about everything that was going on. 

Jeanette’s POV

The screen was still blank. The headset persisted in loudly blaring annoying static. I worried for their safety, especially Simon’s. Who knew what was happening?

Theodore sat with me, determined to remain glued to that station until we got a signal. “What do you think they’re up to?” he asked me.

I sighed. “Hopefully, they're driving back.”

“True,” he muttered in agreement, nodding. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

I stared out the cockpit windshield, desperately hoping to see the rover casually rolling back towards the ship. God, Theodore was so naive. Always believing in the best possible outcomes, outwardly projecting their incoming manifestations. “These things always work out,” I said, if for no other reason, to assure myself. 

Suddenly, I could see dust being kicked up on the horizon. A muffled, high pitched voice managed to escape through the static in the headset. The rover poked its nose up over a hill in the distance. 

“Simon?” I said emphatically. “Do you read me?” No answer. “Simon? Alvin?”

“ Jeanette? ” I could just barely make out as Simon’s voice. 

“Yes! It’s me!”

“ Jeanette !” This was the unmistakable sound of Alvin's celebratory excitement. “ God damn am I happy to hear your voice !”

“I can only imagine,” I chuckled. “What happened? What did you guys find.”

“ Nothing really, ” Simon said. “ No survivors. ”

The camera feed inside the rover was starting to come back into focus as the vehicle approached in a hurry. “What was the movement that Alvin was picking up?” I asked as the hefty machine pulled right up to the Caesar's base .

“ Couldn’t confirm ,” Simon said. “ Could you open the cargo bay ramp please, Jeannie ?”

I was now looking at the crystal clear security video feed coming in from inside the rover. I could see Alvin in the driver’s seat with Simon standing behind him, gripping onto the chair with white knuckles. But all the way back in the cargo section was a small round object partially hidden by a sheet. I could tell they were purposely covering something in so I zoomed in closer. What I could see of the object was transparent lime green and eerily smooth. 

“What’s that under the blanket, Simon?” I asked in a stern tone.

I watched him subtly bite his lip, as if he had just been caught doing something illegal. I watched his mind race at lightning speed to try to figure out how to talk his way through it. I knew him, and I knew what he looked like when his gears were turning. Alvin, for his part, didn't help with his wide-eyed, worried expression. “It’s nothing,” Simon finally bluntly responded. “Just a rock that we brought back for examination. Looks pretty weird, right?”

“That doesn’t look like just a rock,” I scolded.

“ Just drop the ramp, ” Simon said abruptly, growing visibly and audibly frustrated with me.

“You know I can’t do that, Simon,” I retorted. “Whatever that thing is, it looks like it is covered in some sort of bioluminescent algae. NASA code has it written that any possible discovery of alien life must be given a 24 hour quarantine period before it is allowed on board a ship. By bringing that thing onto the rover you may have infected both you and Alvin with something that could kill us!”

“ Okay, Jean, ” he groaned, as if preparing to level with me, “ I believe - well, we believe that that object in our cargo bay is some sort of egg. We found dozens of them inside the mountain by the abandoned base. It is highly likely that this egg is the first discovery of a primitive life form on a planet not named Earth. I understand the procedure, but Jeanette, whatever is in this egg could die within 24 hours if we don’t get it inside the environment chamber ,” Simon pleaded with me.

“I’m not risking the lives of our family for what you may think is an alien egg,” I responded. 

“ Jeanette let us in right now. That’s an order ,” Simon barked impatiently, having clearly given up the notion of negotiation. 

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten, Simon,” I cooed, “but when you’re not on board the Caesar it is actually me who is in command.” In a weird, sick way, there was a part of me that enjoyed the position of power I found myself in. Though I was not happy with Alvin or Simon, and furthermore not happy that I was being forced to keep them outside our ship for such an extended period of time, the fact that I was legally responsible to do so almost felt like sweet, poetic justice.

“ I’m not playing around Jean. This is your last chance to open up the cargo bay before there are repercussions for disobeying orders.”

Sweat was beginning to form all over my body as I didn’t say a word, deep in thought. What a threat. From Simon of all people? It was so odd arguing like this with someone who you truly and openly loved deep down. And I knew he loved me back. Arguments in general? Happened all the time. But over decisions with massive repercussions such as in that case? I had never been in such a precarious spot. It was just so awkward to have to flip that switch and maintain professionalism in a situation where it was absolutely necessary. I had to make the correct choice for the sake of everyone. Not just myself, Brittany, Theodore and Eleanor. Everyone. I supposed that that was why fraternization was normally strictly prohibited on such missions. 

“ Jeanette? Do you read me ?” Simon repeated.

“Yes,” I replied blankly, “I read you. But the answer is no.” 

I had totally forgotten that Theodore was in the cockpit, listening to our conversation. So much so that as he leaned over, unlocked the bridge to the cargo bay and pressed the button to begin dropping it, all I did was stare at him in shock. By the time I had snapped out of my trance and tried to stop him, it was too late. The ramp touched down in front of the rover and Alvin wasted no time recklessly accelerating the bulky vehicle on board. 

I abruptly rose to my feet to look Theo eye to eye. I was taller than him, so really I was forcing him to look up at me. We were within a foot of each others’ faces. I glared down at him with contempt for going behind my back, disobeying an acting-captain’s orders. He stared up at me with a little bit of fear but obviously assuring himself he had done the right thing. He was trying to come across as confident. 

Knowing he’d probably never face consequences for what he did with Simon back in charge, I turned my back to him and stormed out of the cockpit. 

Simon’s POV

Alvin quickly parked the rover and shut down the engine. Before we had even come to a complete stop, however, I was rushing to the back of the vehicle to find the egg. 

It rested where I had left it and where Jeanette had noticed it, in the back corner covered by a thin sheet. The bright green slime glowed through its covering with a sickening pulsation. 

“The cargo bay is depressurizing,” Alvin informed me.

“Good,” I said without looking away from my new obsession. “I think we’re running out of time.”

I picked the egg up as best I could with how heavy it was, keeping it covered as if it were a fragile swaddled baby, and carried it off of the rover with Alvin following closely behind. Without being asked, Alvin pressed the button to open each door for me when necessary. 

When we arrived in the hallway leading to the medical room, we saw that Jeanette and Eleanor had beaten us there. Ellie was wiping her hands with a paper towel, nervously glancing at Alvin and I. Jeanette stood tall and firm, staring me down from across the hallway. 

I approached them and tried to shuffle around them, but Jeanette stubbornly stepped in my way. 

“Simon, we have no idea what’s inside of that egg,” Jeanette pleaded with me.

I ignored her and finally managed to get inside the infirmary, where Brittany was laying down on the bed watching us. “That’s precisely why we need to try to hatch it,” I said. 

Jeanette crossed her arms in frustration and watched, along with the others, as I opened the hatch to the environment chamber, gently placed the egg inside in an upright position, and closed it like a microwave. 

I input the conditions from the cave: 99% humidity, 0.9% Oxygen, 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The chamber buzzed as it started up, and I watched as the conditions inside visibly changed. All of the others stared intently along with me, until it was finished replicating the environment that I had told it to. 

Finally, Alvin broke the silence. “Brit, what happened to ya?”

“Oh,” she murmured from her position in her bed. “I… fainted.”

Alvin’s eyes grew wide. “Are you ok?” he asked in a genuinely concerned voice.

“She’s going to be fine,” Eleanor answered for her, grabbing Alvin by the arm. “But she should get some rest. Come on, let’s give her space.”

With that, I stood up and followed Ellie, Alvin, and Jeanette out of the infirmary and closed the door behind us. Brittany watched us leave, then gently placed her head on the pillow once the door slid closed.

“Alvin,” Eleanor said in a lower voice. “We need to talk.”

“What is it?” Alvin said, raising an eyebrow.

Eleanor looked at Brittany through the clear infirmary window and, even though the room was soundproof, seemed to make certain that Brit wasn’t paying attention to us. She already seemed to be asleep, so Eleanor continued. “I promised her I wouldn't tell any of you guys this yet. And I feel terrible about breaking that promise, but… I believe that you all have the right to know. Especially you, Alvin."

“Just spit it out, Eleanor!” I snapped in a less impatient tone than I truly meant.

She took a deep breath, staring at the floor, and finally murmured, “I think Brittany may be pregnant.”

Alvin bit his lip in embarrassment, looking around at the three pairs of eyes who were staring directly at him. “W-why do you say that?” he choked out.

Eleanor shrugged. “She’s acted bipolar, had mood swings, cravings, has needed extra food and water rations. And now the nausea. But without a pregnancy test I can’t be sure. Simon, Jeanette, could you guys maybe make, like, a makeshift test?”

“No need,” Alvin groaned. “I think, based on a lot of recent events, that it’s time for me to show you guys something. Get Theodore too.”

Brittany’s POV

My dream began with a whoosh that sounded like wind. It was a bright light blur, I couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, everything around me began to come into focus. I was alone, in what appeared to be the cockpit. Outside was a deep red sunset over what appeared to be Mars’ horizon. 

I unbuckled the chair I was strapped to and looked around. “Hello?” I squeaked out, except my voice sounded hollow and echoed. I stood up and left the cockpit. The ship was completely normal, except it was significantly more still and silent than it normally would have been with the running generators keeping the lights on. And I couldn’t see or hear anyone. 

I walked around cautiously, keeping my eyes peeled for the others. My sisters, Alvin, any of them. The infirmary was totally empty. So was the kitchen. Even the engine room and cargo bay. Everything was there that should have been, except for the crew. My family was gone. 

Confused, I went back to the kitchen, fetched myself a bottle, and filled it with water. But when I went to take a sip, the water was gone. It had just… vanished. I sighed and set the bottle down on the table, more confused than ever.

Suddenly, I heard a faint high-pitched wailing noise. I stood up, eager to find someone. I walked out of the kitchen, trying to follow the source of the noise. It was definitely some sort of crying, with some blubbering thrown in here and there. It echoed seemingly aimlessly throughout each corridor I transversed. It was faint, but somehow equally strong. As I walked down the hall towards the sleeping quarters, it got louder and more vibrant, and I finally realized that it sounded like the desperate cry of a baby. 

I trudged cautiously, as the sound was becoming more ominous and flat, and it penetrated my ears like a siren. I turned the corner into the sleeping quarters, where I could see a small round figure on my assigned bed, bundled in white blankets like a taco. It squirmed as much as it could, being strapped onto the bed as it continued to moan and groan and wail. 

I looked around, frowning with an entirely unsure demeanor. “Hello? Is this someone’s baby?”

No one answered my muffled voice. 

Hesitantly, I stepped towards the little guy or girl. Realization was starting to kick in. Constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, I shuffled towards my bed with my hands held tightly to my chest, as if I was afraid the thing would bite. 

Once I was at the side of the bed, I peered down. It was completely covered by the blankets, tightly bundled up for its own comfort. Biting my lip from nervousness, I reached my hand over and tugged on the end of the blanket where I was pretty sure its head was at. It unwrapped itself, allowing me to see the back of its head.

It was furry, almost definitely a chipmunk. 

Suddenly, it stopped crying and was perfectly still. I held my breath, thinking I might have killed it. But then it slowly began to twist around on its own power, turning its head to face me. I immediately noticed that it had my eyes but definitely Alvin’s fur tone. 

We stared at each other for several moments before it opened its mouth. In a muffled, eerily sweet and innocent voice it said, “mama, is that you?”

A lump formed in my throat, and I wasn’t able to say anything in response.

“Mama, please help me,” it squeaked.

I looked at it in confusion. “Wha…”

“Save me, mama!” It screamed, tears forming in its eyes again. “Why won’t you save me!”

Suddenly, the window on the other side of the room shattered. A vacuum of air and oxygen formed, sucking everything loose out the open window. I grabbed onto my bed instinctively and held on tight as I could feel myself being pulled towards the void in the wall. The baby was screaming and wailing as the straps held it in place. 

The wind and force were so powerful that I was beginning to lose my grip. One hand slipped. I tried to pull myself back in but it was no use.

And finally, I woke up. 

My eyes snapped open. My mouth was parched and I was panting heavily. Tears were welling in my eyes at the awful visions my brain had just created to show me and use to torment me in my sleep. 

I sat myself up and looked around. There was no one directly outside the room, nor inside the room. I rotated my body until my feet were dangling off the bed and slid until they touched the cold metallic floor. The sensation was like ice being pressed against my feet, making me hiss and recoil. But after I got over the initial shock, I walked over towards the cabinets to get myself some water, rubbing my temples while dealing with the worst headache I’d had the entire voyage.

Suddenly, there was a sharp scratching sound directly behind my back, which startled me greatly. Instinctively, I turned my whole body around to see where the noise had come from. I couldn’t see anything unusual, as my eyes darted from corner to corner. 

Peeking to my left, where the environment chamber happened to be, gave me such a fright that my blood instantly turned to ice. The glass hatch was shattered, with jagged fragments and shrouds scattered on the floor directly underneath it. Inside, the green egg was in pieces. It had hatched. 

I tried to slow down my breathing, even as my heart rate rose. I still couldn’t see whatever had come out of that egg, but it had to have been inside the infirmary, hiding somewhere. 

Without thinking twice, I sprinted for the door. Time seemed to slow down as I ran; It only took me about two seconds to slam into it shoulder-first, but it felt as though it were two minutes. I pressed the button installed specifically to open and shut the infirmary bay glass door, but it didn’t open. I peered frantically over my shoulder and still didn’t see the Martian. Now panicking, I began to mash the button over and over again to no avail. Whoever had closed it behind them must have locked it without thinking.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself, turning until my back was pressed against the glass door just in time to catch a glimpse of a small reddish-orange blur darting under the bed. 

I held my breath with wide eyes. I could hear that thing panting around under there, squirming, making some kind of noise that sounded like an aggressively loud rumbling tummy. I wondered if he even knew I was in there or where he was. Probably not. 

How was I supposed to get help? The room was soundproof. I wondered if anyone was watching the camera feed up in the cockpit. Suddenly, an idea formed in my head, and it prompted me to slowly step towards the counter on the other side of the room, trying to not alert whatever was under my bed. Without blinking once, I watched the crevice underneath the mattress for any signs of movement as I side shuffled over to my target. Finally, I was there, and I was able to retrieve the ball point pen in my right hand while my left hand continued to clutch the counters tightly.

Now came the tricky part. The camera in the room hung from over the doorway, pointing directly towards the bed. In order to signal someone in the cockpit, that’s where I needed to be. As carefully and quietly as possible, I shuffled my feet towards the center of the room where I could hear that little monster scuffling around. As I got where I was maybe two feet away from the bed, I debated with myself on whether I should just jump onto the mattress from where I stood or get closer and try to climb on silently, but risk him popping his head out from underneath and biting me… or something. 

I decided the first idea was better, as I jumped forward and landed as softly as I could on the firm, uncomfortable pad. The steel bed frame itself creaked in response, prompting a hiss-like threat coming from the creature, but no detectable movement. 

I waited to make absolutely certain that it wasn’t charging at me before turning my attention toward the thin plushy pillow that my head had rested on just moments prior, decorated with a plain white case. Taking the pen and pressing its tip as aggressively as I could into the fabric, I scribbled the letters “HELP” into it as clearly and legibly as I could. When I was finished, I capped the pen and propped the pillow up against the wall at the head of the mattress as perfectly as I could, in order for the camera to get as unimpeded of a view as possible.

But that wasn’t good enough. An idea popped into my head, which was to somehow set off the fire alarm in my room. Curling myself into a ball, holding my knees against my chest, as I could feel the Martian crawling around underneath me, I noted the smoke detector installed in the ceiling directly overhead. I knew some of the medicines in the cabinet were flammable, somehow. I just had to figure out which ones. 

Alvin’s POV

I twisted the key and pulled the cabinet doors wide open so everyone could see. The looks on their faces spelled complete shock, a lot like mine when I had first opened that thing up. Simon, Theodore, Jeanette, and Eleanor all looked as though they couldn’t believe it. The cabinet was still stacked to the top with heavy duty chipmunk-sized guns. 

I crouched down, un-taped the pregnancy test from the bottom of the cabinet, and held it up for Eleanor to see. 

“That’ll do it,” she chuckled nervously.

“When were you planning on telling us about all this?” Simon scolded.

“When it became relevant,” I retorted sarcastically. “Megs warned me to use them against some sort of threat before we left… I think I just realized that you guys aren’t that threat.”

“Look,” Jeanette said, butting in, “all that matters now is what we do with these now that we know.”

“I’ll tell you what we do,” Simon responded sternly. “We lock this cabinet up and make Alvin eat the key!”

“Are you crazy?” Theodore said to his brother in shock.

“I don't know why Megs thought it necessary to put those weapons on board my ship,” Simon said, crossing his arms in his typical snooty way. “But I know that I'll be getting to the bottom of that when we return home. In the meantime, having them here can only lead to trouble… or worse. A better idea would honestly be to bury them.”

“They’re here for our protection,” I protested, gripping my key tightly. “Megs wouldn't have smuggled them with us for no reason. She bragged to us how many times that ‘she's been on twenty-three NASA missions’? How much trouble do you think she went through to get these guns custom built for us, and sneak them on board the Caesar ?”

“They’re nothing but trouble,” Simon bluntly snarled, shaking his head. “Now, I’m giving you an order to lock that cabinet. We’ll talk about how to dispose of that key later.”

Jeanette put a hand on Simon’s shoulder. “No,” she said. “Alvin’s right.”

“Yeah!” Eleanor agreed. 

“Since when is this a democracy?” Simon scoffed at all of us. “Whether you guys like it or not, I am captain of this vessel. And I say we ditch the guns.”

Suddenly, the lights in the cargo flashed to a solid red and a loud siren blared out through the whole ship. Motherboard’s computer voice announced over the loudspeaker, “ FIRE IN… INFIRMARY !”

Without any more arguing, we all sprinted out of the bay towards the medical room where Brittany was staying. 

The whole ship was lit only in a dark red hue, including the hallways, as we charged up the stairs and towards the infirmary. I was leading the way, and I was the first one there. Through the glass window I could see Brittany curled up in a ball on top of the bed as the fire extinguishing sprinklers rained down on the whole room, soaking everything including her. She looked excited to see me but barely moved. 

Eleanor hustled to unlock and open the door, and I was the first one to run in before it was even all the way open. “Brittany!” I exclaimed, rushing to where she sat and jumping onto the bed alongside her.

“Shh!” she scolded me. 

“What is it?” I whispered in confusion as the others stood in the doorway, scanning the area but seeing no fire. 

Brittany pointed towards the environment chamber without making a peep. I followed her finger only to notice that the glass hatch had completely shattered, along with the green egg that I had helped Simon carry on board. My eyes widened and travelled back towards Britt's face. She nodded, shuddering both from the cold water that was drenching the both of us but also from pure fear. Finally, she pointed once more, this time downwards towards the bed. The others watched the entire, cowardly silent exchange between the two of us, as I also pointed downwards and raised an eyebrow at her, as if attempting to confirm what she was trying to tell me. She nodded, widening her eyes and raising her eyebrows right back at me, gritting her teeth. I took a deep breath, exchanged glances with the others standing in the doorway, specifically Simon, and leaned over the side of the mattress to see if I could get a peak.

Then it began to charge. A red, round, bulky, furry creature about a fourth of the size of any of us flew out from underneath the bed and sprinted towards the doorway. The others jumped out of his way with a startle, and he ran right past them without stopping. He turned a corner and kept going the same way we had come from before bursting into the infirmary. 

Without wasting time, we all sprinted up to the cockpit to see where our new passenger was headed. As soon as we were inside, Simon jumped into the navigator’s seat and began flipping through the camera feeds one by one. 

“There!” Jeanette exclaimed as she pointed to the screen. Simon came to a stop on one of the cameras installed in the engine room, where the Martian was walking around on all fours aimlessly. He seemed very confused and distraught. 

Simon used the keyboard to command the camera to follow the creature as he climbed up on top of the circuit board, then on top of one of the motors, and then jumped inside of one of the relatively large pipes near to the ceiling. 

“That’s the air shaft!” Simon exclaimed. “He’s in the air shaft. Jeanette! Lock it up!” 

Jeanette wasted no time in flicking each air shaft valve control switch into the “closed” position. On the screen we could see the entrance to the aluminum pipe pinch until it was completely shut with the mere exception of a pin-sized hole in the center - only a couple of centimeters in diameter.

Simon took a deep sigh of relief. “Oh thank God,” he said. “It can’t last long in there, not with all of that oxygen.”

Meanwhile, I turned my attention to Brittany, whose paws were on her knees and who was still panting from the running we had just done. I held the pregnancy test that was still in my hands up to her eye level. “You need to take this,” I said. “As soon as possible.”

Brittany’s POV

Finally alone in the bathroom, I began to cry. I knew the others were just outside waiting for me, and waiting for the test results, but I didn’t care. I already felt like I had messed up so much. Why did Ellie have to go and tell everyone. I suppose it was an unfair attack, and it was especially unfair of me to ask her to keep it all a secret. But still, she had promised. What if this test came back positive? Would I really be forced to reveal to my family, to Alvin, that I was pregnant in the most embarrassing and distraught way that I could possibly imagine? And on that note, how was I supposed to take care of a kid? Especially with a father like Alvin. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him. But neither of us were ready for that. Not in the slightest.

“I think the three minutes are up now,” Eleanor’s muffled voice penetrated through the bathroom door. 

“I'm coming!” I yelled out to her in an impatient, repugnant tone, wiping away my tears. My words that had escaped my mouth might have seemed a bit harsher than I intended, but I was still angry with her, whether or not I had the right to be.

Finally, I stepped awkwardly out of the bathroom with the test in my hands. Everyone stared at me intently. I didn’t know what the results were yet, as I couldn’t bear to look. Hesitantly, I put one hand over my eyes, and with the other lifted the test high up so everyone could see it. 

The results… were…

Chapter Text

Brittany’s POV

Still covering my eyes, all I could hear were the collective gasps of my family. I lifted a finger just enough to take a peek. 

Two pink lines, one only slightly more faded than the other. The test was positive, and I was pregnant.

I felt the eyes of every crew member drift towards me and rest on my face, cautiously, solemnly, studying my expression, waiting to see how I’d react. I said nothing. I simply covered my mouth from shock, set the test down on the counter next to me, trembling, pulled a chair closer to me and sat down. 

I stared at the floor for several moments, thinking about all of the ways that my life had just changed. Not all of them for the worst. But a lot of them, at least in my mind, for the worst. 

Alvin finally trudged over towards me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders in a somewhat weak attempt to comfort me. In truth, he appeared to be more petrified than I was. I acknowledged him simply by grabbing his left forearm with my hand and rubbing it. He planted a kiss on my cheek, and held it there for several seconds.

“Congratulations you two,” Simon murmured respectfully. 

We both lifted our heads and gazed in his direction, forcing polite, thankful smiles. All of the others nodded. 

“I’m so happy for you two!” Eleanor said with a huge smile on her face and a tear in her eye. 

“Thanks you guys,” Alvin managed to squeak through a shudder.

“Well,” Simon grumbled after a drawn out sigh, “everyone pack up your things. Do preliminary checks on your stations. Get ready for takeoff.”

“Takeoff?” Alvin exclaimed with scrunched eyebrows, eyeing down Simon with pure shock on his face. 

Simon nodded. “We’re going home.”

“Simon, I’m fine, really!” I assured him. “This isn’t going to affect the mission.”

Simon ignored me and began washing his hands. “There will be no discussions, just get ready.” And with that he headed for the exit to the infirmary.

“Simon, I-” I began to stutter at him.

But I was cut off by Jeanette. “I’ll talk to him, you guys stay here.”

Jeanette’s POV

The chipmunk who had captured my heart so long ago only seemed to pick up his pace as I began to follow him through the maze of hallways. “Simon!” I desperately called to him, being rewarded by getting entirely ignored as he continued to speed walk through passages and rooms without so much as looking over his shoulder. The clanking sound of our boots tapping against the steel deck plates echoed as we stepped. I jogged to make up ground and called again, “SIMON!” Still no answer. Finally, fed up with being belittled, I came to a stop, glanced to my left, noticed a large, bright green, circular button that was labeled “OPEN/SHUT”, and I pressed it. The airtight door on the other side of the hallway swiftly slid shut with a whoosh, directly in Simon’s face, forcing him to abruptly come to a stop.

“Ugh, Christ!” he shouted in frustration as he finally turned to face me. “What? What is it?”

I stepped closer to him. “Can’t we talk about this?”

“There’s nothing more to talk about, Jean. I’ve made up my mind.”

“But why? Why do we have to just give up everything? All of the hard work, training and money just because of this?”

He took a deep breath and finally gave me a vulnerable look, as if he was finally prepared to open up to me. “Look, it's not just Brit’s pregnancy,” he admitted in jittery huff. “It’s everything. It’s everything that NASA never told us about. It’s the guns in the cabinet. It’s the giant war station just a few miles away that didn’t even have any survivors. It’s the ugly little bastard that crawled into our air shaft.”

“Well, look,” I rebutted matter-of-factly, waving my open palms downwards, attempting to both calm him and to reason with him, “even if we wanted to take off I’m not sure we could.”

“Why not?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

“I haven’t finished all of the repairs-”

“Like what?” he interrupted impatiently.

I was a little caught off-guard. “Well... for instance the camera feeds are still blind on the B and C engineering decks… the spotlight on one of the landing legs is still busted-”

“No no no,” he interrupted me again, “that’s a bunch of bull shit! We can take off without all that.” He turned his back to me and pressed the button to open the door that I had halted him dead in his tracks with.

“I mean yeah we could ,” I affirmed with a tangible spicy attitude, littered with frustration from his infuriating stubbornness. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

He turned to face me just long enough to snap at me, “look I just wanna get the hell out of here,” before walking off again. “Make sure everyone’s ready to go ASAP!”

I clenched my fists. He never listened to me. Never. In that moment I desperately wanted, more than anything else in the world, a punching bag or something to take my anger out on.

Theodore’s POV

I knew it wasn’t likely that Jeanette could convince Simon that he was wrong. That almost never worked for any of us. If anyone could do it, she could. But nonetheless, the prospect of changing the mind of someone who was so naturally brilliant, and who knew how intelligent he was in comparison to the rest of us, was a tall order. And it was a task that, as we soon found out, she was unable to successfully complete.

So, I was taking final inventory in the kitchen. Which was maybe a little pointless seeing as though we were leaving way ahead of schedule, meaning we still had enough food for nearly a month and a half that only had to last us about two weeks. But it gave me a chance to be by myself. That is, until Jeanette found me. 

She stepped into the kitchen without announcing herself. In fact, she didn’t even make a sound. So when she very suddenly manifested beside me while I was counting the packages of powdered eggs, I gasped and jumped. “Oh, it’s you,” I said in relief. “What’s up, Jean?”

“Nothing,” she said, shrugging. “Quite a day, huh?”

I nodded, wiping the sweat off my forehead from being startled. “Quite a day,” I repeated. 

There was an awkward silence that lasted for several seconds. The normally shy Jeanette, who often struggled to maintain eye contact during most conversations, didn't even blink while staring directly at my face. Her teeth were clinched and she had a slight squint, signs of malice that she barely cared about concealing. Beginning to understand that I was in for an uncomfortable conversation, I simply allowed my gaze to alternate between her arms folded across her chest and her tightly pursed lips, waiting for her to break the silence.

“Do you know if that thing is still alive?” Jeanette finally blurted out, obviously referring to the young Martian. There it was, the inevitable topic that I knew she wanted to yell at me for. Asking whether or not it's alive, as if I’d know. “In the vents?”

“That’s what I heard,” I said, being as helpful as I could pretend to be, while still being short in an attempt to give her as little to grab onto for her fury as possible. “I thought I heard the little bugger scratching around in there a while ago, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Strange,” she purred casually. “How could it be alive still, without Martian air?”

I shook my head, involuntarily rolling my eyes at the amount of my time that was being wasted by being asked questions that I was so obviously underqualified to answer. “You’re asking the wrong guy. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think anyone knows exactly what that thing is capable of.” I began to go back to counting, hoping she’d go away. 

But suddenly, her tone went from casual to maliced and passive-aggressive. “And you’re the one who let him on board,” she spat, smiling down at me with anger in her eyes. 

I sighed. “I guess you could say that.”

“Theodore,” she said, lowering her voice. “When Simon isn’t on board, I’m commanding officer of the Caesar .”

“Oh… right,” I said shrugging passively. “I must have forgotten. Sorry.” That was obviously a lie. And one that I knew would only aggravate her further. But I also was convinced that it was too late to avoid it anyway. Furthermore, I was beginning to develop a defensive mindset myself.

As I predicted, my fib wasn’t good enough for her. I was literally right next to her while she had been arguing with Simon over the comms. I directly heard her remind Simon how the chain of command worked when he stepped away from the ship. “Then you must have also forgotten NASA’s quarantine laws,” she pressed me further.

“No, that I didn’t forget,” I admitted in a groan, knowing Jeanette wasn’t going to just give this up.

“Oh,” she cooed, able to feign her calmness less and less with each passing second, “so you just chose to ignore them, then?”

“Look,” I said, turning to face her, “what would you have done in my shoes? Just let them sit out there? My brothers?”

“You really don’t get it,” she murmured in frustration. “This may come as a shock to you, Theo, but this whole operation is bigger than your personal feelings. If we don’t have order, we don’t have anything.”

“Right,” I said, getting annoyed. “I’ll keep that in mind next time.”

That seemed to be good enough, as she left my sight in disgust. But just before she rounded the corner of the kitchen door, she called, “Theodore… don’t go behind my back again.”

I rolled my eyes without looking at her or even acknowledging her. It’s a good thing you’re not the captain anymore , I thought to myself. I had to internally acknowledge that she was, in fact, technically correct. She was in the right. If she wanted to report me, she'd win the case. I didn't believe that she wanted to report me, especially seeing as though such a report would also incriminate Simon and Alvin. But the three of us had really complicated things by allowing that egg on board. All we could hope for at that point was that the Martian would either suffocate or starve before we made it back to Earth, and that we could dispose of the evidence. At least, that was my hope. I could only pray that Simon was not spiraling down the rabbit hole of scientific curiosity and inspiration that would undoubtedly want to save and to study its corpse.

Simon’s POV

The whole crew was assembled in the cockpit. The rations were all accounted for. The ship was primed and ready for takeoff, despite everyone’s protests. I knew in my heart that I was doing what was right. 

“Is everyone strapped in?” I called over my shoulder. 

“Yes,” Eleanor glumly responded, apparently speaking for everyone. 

“Brittany, inform NASA that we’ll be making an early return,” I solemnly commanded. 

Brittany nodded and began to type into Motherboard unenthusiastically. I could tell she blamed herself for this, very harshly in fact, even though it wasn’t all her fault. 

I took a deep breath. There was a part of me that was extremely disappointed at the wasted opportunity of leaving the planet Mars early. But I wasn’t going to risk the life or health of my brother’s kid just for a mission. Without any more hesitation, I began to punch the launch combinations. Jeanette followed suit by beginning the reactor control rod withdrawal procedure at her desk directly to my left. She intentionally forced me to be aware of how disgruntled she was by humphing aloud and performing each button press and switch operation with an emphasized, angry force.

The ship began to rumble and vibrate as the engines hummed to life. As the motors broke themselves in, I leaned back in my seat, suddenly anxious to be home.

I only wish I could have sped up the process. 

But just as I was about to fire up the Caesar's main boosters, Brittany piped up by exclaiming, “Simon, there’s movement on the ground!”

“Movement?” I called back to her in confusion. “What kind of movement?”

“Like, something’s approaching us down there in a hurry!”

I rolled my eyes and spun around in my chair to see what she was referring to on the motherboard monitor. Everyone watched intently, squinting to see what Brit and I were staring at. The screen was on a feed from an outside camera, directed towards the surface of the planet. 

There it was. It was a pack of about ten or so dirty brown and red creatures, furry and crawling and scrambling around on the ground. They moved with such speed and determination that it was mere moments before they were basically directly underneath the ship. They congregated chaotically near the landing leg that Jeanette had just finished repairing.

Not liking the sight of being surrounded by potentially hostile aliens, I hissed through gritted teeth and scrambled back into my seat. “Shit! Shit!” I exclaimed as I energized the main thrusters.

The atmosphere underneath the ship burst into flames nearly instantaneously, causing the feral Martians to startle, recoil, and retreat if only slightly. They cautiously but aggressively maintained a safe distance just outside of the fire's radius, hissing, snarling, crouching, snapping their jaws towards us. The ship began to lift, slowly, painfully, off the ground. Dust kicked up all around from the powerful thrust of our engines. 

This angered the aliens further. The largest of the herd stood on its two hind legs and let out a blood curdling howl. The moment its front paws reconnected with the surface of the red planet, it broke into a sprint towards the ship, which was by then a few meters above the ground. Once it was almost directly underneath the newly refurbished landing leg, the Martian launched itself upwards, hurling towards the support beam that still dangerously lingered beneath our hull. I only had time to spin around in my seat to attempt an evasive maneuver, before a great big thud rocked us violently to our cores. 

Everyone immediately broke into a lethargic fit of panic. “Where is it?” Eleanor screamed. 

Brittany frantically began to flip through the outside camera feeds. “Found it!” she exclaimed. 

I turned my head to glimpse the motherboard screen. The alien was expertly climbing the metallic tripod leg that it had landed on. Thinking fast, I flipped a switch at my panel which commanded the landing gear to collapse into our hull. We all watched as the leg that the intruder clung onto jolted, forcing a disparaged shriek to erupt from its mouth. It continued to hold on, even as the leg folded and retreated towards the Caesar's outer shell. It only let go the second it got close enough to dig its claws into our hull, using all four of its paws to clasp onto our ship with tenacity. As the landing gear disappeared, the hostile began climbing up the ship.

“Dammit,” I mumbled, eyes intently peeled on the monitor as Brittany followed it upwards with the camera feed. 

The Caesar itself continued to gain altitude, nearly at a height safe enough for me to tip our nose towards the sky. 

“We need to get this thing to fall,” Alvin interjected, as if we were not all already internalizing those same sentiments.

“We will soon,” I assured him.

Suddenly, Jeanette gasped in horror, “that’s the fuel tank!” 

I turned my attention back towards the surveillance of the Martian, who had indeed managed to reach the cylindrical portion of the ship which contained the fuel that we utilized specifically for takeoffs and landings. The disgusting furry beast was using its long, razor-sharp claws to ascend up towards the cockpit. Every spot its claws would pierce the tank, a small hole, or two, or three, was left and a solid stream of rocket fuel would begin to pour out. 

I grimaced and shook my head, unable to do much of anything to prevent what was happening as we watched this thing ravage our ship merely by being attached to it. It looked not much bigger than us, but still terrifying. 

The creature stopped climbing when it finally came across the long flexible pipe that was attached to the top of the tank. Every single one of us knew fully well that that pipe led directly to the engines that were actively the only things keeping us above ground.

The alien sniffed the pipe curiously for a few moments, before suddenly grabbing onto it with one hand.

“No, no, no no!” Alvin begged out loud, as if that thing could hear him through the screen. 

We all witnessed in terror as that beast took a flexible aluminum pipe that had been welded to its home on our fuel tank so well that it had survived deep space, and effortlessly ripped it out of its socket. 

Gas began to spurt out everywhere out there, coming from both the hose-like pipe and the tank itself, erupting like a volcano. The beast was suddenly getting drenched in rocket fuel, especially its face. It let go of the pipe in shock and disgust, attempting to wipe the stuff off of its eyelids with its arm. As every inch of its body was covered in gas, it was unsuccessful in drying its eyes. The furry alien let out a loud, guttural noise that was like a mix between a screech and a hiss as it lost its footing and fell over the edge of the tank, presumably falling all the way to the surface of the red planet.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the engines would give out, so I took action and began the landing procedures. But it was too late. 

Just as the landing legs had begun to stretch back out from their hiding places in our hull, the first engine sputtered pathetically and died. I jerked the stick in the opposite direction, attempting to correct for the lost thrust on that side of the ship, but that actually proved to be an overreaction. The entire ship listed heavily in the direction that I had just yanked her towards as the rest of the engines gave in!

Every member of the crew screamed as the ship began a free fall towards the ground. There was nothing I could do. The tingling sensation only added to the feeling of helplessness. 

The Caesar hit the dusty surface first by just one of its landing legs, snapping it instantly. We began to tip, the vessel creaking desperately as it fell towards the side with a now-destroyed support beam. Brittany shrieked in pure terror. Suddenly, with an ear-piercing crunch, we collided violently with something that managed to keep the Caesar partially upright, but tilted to a significant degree. Our heads snapped every which way imaginable as we crash landed.

Sirens began to ring out throughout the ship instantly. Although we were all recovering from the shock of the hit, I knew we had to act fast. “Brittany, close all airtight doors!”

Brittany looked ready to throw up again, but she held it in long enough to press the emergency button that sealed off and isolated all oxygen losses. But the sirens still didn’t cease until I silenced them manually.

“Jeanette, give me a damage report, stat!” I barked.

She glanced at me in confusion with wide eyes, and then, as if she just remembered where she was, she began to scan her station for alerts. 

I looked out the cockpit window. To our left, the side we were slightly leaning towards, I could definitely make out some sort of tall red cliff. We were at about a 30 degree angle, very fortunate that that crash had not been worse. 

“It’s unable to give me a reading on how much fuel we’ve lost,” Jeanette called, hyperventilating as she spoke, “Landing leg number 3 is toast. There’s a ton of hull breaches on that side of the ship, but they’ve all been contained…” she trailed off. “Can’t really give you any more specifics right now. It’s a bunch of busted cameras, lights, indications… I need time to sort this out.”

I nodded, coming to grips with the realization of how grim the situation was. “Alvin and Jeanette with me,” I suddenly ordered, unbuckling myself and standing while battling with the tilt of the floor. 

Suddenly, we felt a thud come from outside. We all gasped, clenching the nearest solid object tensely. We felt heavy, scratchy footsteps above us. We heard a menacing hiss. Then, out of nowhere, one of those creatures jumped from the roof above our heads onto the nose of the ship in front of us, just outside the window. 

This one was at least twice as large as any of us, and I so feared the damage it could do to us or the Caesar . It spun around to face us through the window, and we could see it was carrying a newborn alien in its mouth, not much bigger than the one we had trapped in our vent system. 

The giant beast strutted forward towards the glass with great confidence, eyeing us down threateningly. I legitimately wondered if this was the end, as it could smash through so easily if it wanted to.

Instead, it stared at us with what looked like hatred in its eyes. I shuddered as its gaze locked onto me. There was no way that alien somehow knew that I was the one who took her egg, was there? Finally, it pointed to the confused cub in its mouth with one claw. Without waiting for a response from us, it looked up towards the sky and pointed directly at the sun. It then turned its attention back to us with another hateful glare and simply held up one of its sharp claws for us to see. 

I got the message loud and clear. Zero confusion. It wanted its baby back. And we had one day to have it ready to be returned to her.

As if wanting to make it absolutely clear that this was a life or death deal for us, she took that one claw that she was holding up and pressed it against the window. As we all instinctively held our breaths, she began to let it slide casually downwards, the unwelcome and disturbing sound akin to nails on a chalkboard, leaving a clear scratch mark as it went, until her paw rested on the Caesar ’s nose once again.

And with that, she turned and jumped off our ship, away from us and out of our sight. The unstable body of the Caesar rocked slightly from the sudden shift in weight, creaking and groaning like an injured animal. The rest of us were left speechless, mouths agape, recovering from the entire ordeal.

Alvin’s POV

“We need to check the damage to the ship,” Simon insisted as we threw on our Mars suits in a hurry. “We need to see with our own eyes… and pray that the damage is repairable.”

I wanted to wait at least a little while until we were sure that that squad of aliens had left us alone, but Simon was probably right that the damage was too urgent.

Brittany remained in the cockpit, as usual, watching us on the camera feeds and listening to our conversations through the headset. 

“How’s the view from there, Brit?” I asked her through my headset, having finally managed to dress myself with every required layer of the Mars suit. “Can you hear us ok?”

“ No, Alvin, I can’t hear you, ” she snapped back sarcastically.

“ Now’s not the time, you two ,” Jeanette interrupted. 

Simon was the last one to get his suit all the way on. “ Let’s hurry this up. ”

The middle chipmunk led the way, followed by Jean, and trailed further by me, down the ladder to the hatches that led out to Mars’ surface. That ladder was made into an even more difficult obstacle than normal, purely by the fact that the angle the ship was resting at forced us to traverse it nearly upside down. It harkened me back to when I had fallen on my ass as the first Earthling to ever touch real Martian soil. 

We exited through the hole in the bottom of the ship one by one, neither of us stumbling or falling despite our reckless urgency. The first thing that caught our eye was that although two of the landing legs seemed to be intact, at least, more or less intact, the one we had landed on first had been completely crushed and looked to be in multiple pieces scattered across the desert. Instead, the upper corner of the ship had propped itself against the giant red cliff that had probably saved our lives. 

We trudged out of the shadow casted by the Caesar to get a better look. 

“ You still getting all this, Brit ?” Jeanette spoke into her headset. 

“ Yeah, I see it .”

“ So far, it looks like we might be able to throw something together and still get out of here ,” Simon observed out loud.

But then we got the big picture. An entire section of the Caesar , on the side which collided with the mountain, had completely collapsed from the impact of the crash landing. The fuel tank had been thoroughly crushed and its contents had spilled everywhere. And all three of us, as well as the three in the cockpit who were watching, knew deep down that the Caesar was never going to leave the planet Mars. 

Eleanor’s POV

As instructed, I had placed a plastic cup of water in front of every single member of our family, including the spot at the table where I was to sit. Simon waited for me to take my seat, before shocking all of us by taking out his cyanide pill and dropping it into his own cup. The water sizzled as the pill dissolved with a bubbly reaction until it had complete disappeared, only making the water slightly murky. 

We all gasped. “No…” I squeaked out through a broken voice, shaking, trembling. “This can’t be it. This can’t be the end.”

Simon sighed. “I’m afraid we don’t have a choice,” he said solemnly. 

“There needs to be another way,” Brittany spoke up defiantly, stubbornly in denial along with me. 

“This ship isn’t repairable,” Jeanette retorted, surprisingly impatiently, agreeing with Simon. “Not with the means that we have. And there are no ships on Earth that have been built to make it this far to rescue us. Our present situation is… that we’re just waiting around to starve to death.”

“And that’s assuming those Martians randomly decide to leave us alone,” Simon added to the hopeless mood.

Jeanette sighed. “Right,” she muttered as she also pulled out her suicide pill and dropped it into her water.

“Alvin,” Theodore murmured in a desperately pleading, defeated tone, turning to his older brother, “help us out here. Tell them they’re overreacting.”

Alvin stared at him for a few moments as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

Tears began to well up in Theo’s eyes. “Tell me it’s going to be ok.”

Alvin allowed his gaze to drift downwards towards the floor, then reluctantly pulled out his pill. “I’m sorry, Theo,” he whispered in a cracked and mournful voice. “This isn’t one of those times where everything just turns out ok. Not everything in life can be like that. And I see that now.” And with that, he dropped his cyanide pill into the water, watching it dissolve with dread. 

And that seemed to be the moment where it became real for the rest of us. At least for me. So many emotions ran through my body as the three of us followed our brothers and sister. Regret, sorrow, anger, fear of death. 

“I can’t believe I’m going to be ending my own life…” Brittany began, just before she burst into an uncontrollable sob. “Just… just before I was going to be a mother.”

Alvin’s eyes also began to tear up, as did everyone else’s. Alvin grabbed the paw of his counterpart lovingly and supportively. “You would’ve been the greatest mother in the world,” Alvin said. “...And an even greater wife.”

Brittany stopped crying just long enough to look into Alvin’s eyes and to assure herself that he was being genuine. 

“We’ll do it together,” Simon said, taking his cup in one hand. His other hand was shoved mournfully in his pocket. We all followed suit, watching him carefully, as if our one last goal in life was to ensure that we would all kick the bucket in the same exact moment. “On the count of three. One…” Alvin and Brittany locked hands, prompting Theodore to grab onto my hand and squeeze it tight. I also saw Simon take Jeanette’s hand. “Two…” we all glanced longingly around the table, giving each other one last goodbye, in a way. “Th-”

“Wait!” I interrupted. “I have an idea!” 

Everyone took a huge sigh of relief, and then looked my way with gleaning hope in their eyes. 

“That war station you guys found, that whole operation… it must have come here by at least one ship, right?”

Simon considered this, stroking his chin then retorted in a downtrodden grumble, “yeah, but we have no idea where it is.” Then suddenly his eyes widened.

“There’s a ship somewhere on this planet that transported all of those marines down here,” I continued in excitement. “We know it has to be here, because the computer clearly said there were no survivors.”

“But where?” Jeanette piped up skeptically.

“Who cares?” Theodore said. “We need to find it!”

“And then what?” Jean snapped at him. “That ship is human sized, remember? And the systems are all different and we probably wouldn’t be able to pilot the thing anyway.” 

“And before we even go through any of that,” Simon interjected, “we need to return that mother’s baby to her and hope that she spares our lives.”

We all looked unsure of ourselves. Finally, I broke the silence by saying, “our orders were to only use these suicide pills if there was absolutely no hope of survival. We have hope. It’s just a little, but it’s there. We can’t just give up on ourselves.” And with that I picked up my cup and poured it out on the kitchen floor, completely washing away any hope I had of a quick and painless death.

Alvin took one look at Brittany then followed my lead. Then he took Brittany’s cup for her and emptied her water directly on top of his own spill. Theodore enthusiastically emptied his own cup, knowing that this at least meant that he’d live for a little while longer.

Simon and Jeanette knew that at this point there was no going back. Still unsure, they finally emptied their cyanide water onto the floor. 

Chapter Text

Alvin’s POV

A father. Oh God. I was known for being a selfish, immature child. Even now, as someone who would technically be considered an adult. There wasn't a single cell in my body that genuinely felt grown up. And yet, I was now going to be expected to take care of a baby. And beyond that, a kid, a mini-me! Or, otherwise, and perhaps more terrifying, a mini Brittany. Looking at this as a screw-up would have been unfair, cowardly, and even disgusting. Or, at least, that was what I assured myself in response to every iteration of such thoughts intruding into my mind. Of course I was happy that I was going to help bring a life into this world… I just didn’t envision it happening so soon. 

At least I could be thankful that it would be with the right girl. The girl of my dreams. No matter what happened or how bad things got, I’d never leave Brit. 

Not that it probably mattered, anyway. We had a long, uphill battle ahead of us if we were going to get home safely, and we needed a lot of breaks to go our way.

“These are the blueprints of the air systems,” Simon stated matter-of-factly to his entire crew as he unrolled a large sheet of paper, which was imprinted with what appeared to be an incomprehensible maze of ventilation ducts, over the crew's mess table. At the very least, I found it to be incomprehensible. Had I studied this system to pass a test at NASA HQ? Yes. Did I brain-dump nearly every piece of information that I had crammed into my mind the moment I passed that same test? Also, yes.

All five of the rest of us hunched over the steel table, squinting, providing my brother our intensive attention, wholeheartedly doing our best to follow along with Simon's explanations, with varying degrees of success.

“The access openings in the system are located here… here, here, and… here,” he pointed at the area in the engine room where we had originally trapped that little Martian bastard, then dragged his finger across the entirety of the parchment until it rested on the section of the drawing that depicted the trash compartment segment of the system. “This one, way over here, is in the garbage room, directly next to the airlock. I think if we open this door, which leads to the airlock, and then open up the exit in the garbage room, we could force him inside, then shut both doors. We’ll trap him in the airlock and then open the outer door to let him outside.”

The rest of us exchanged unsure glances. For some, like Jeanette, it was likely due mostly to the difficulty of accomplishing this plan. For myself and, judging by the obviously confused expressions on the faces of Brittany and Theodore, it was more from complete bewilderment. 

“Look,” Simon sighed, scratching the back of his neck, “I know it’s a long-shot… but it’s our best bet. Unless someone else has another idea?”

“I just have one question,” Jeanette softly croaked with all of the confidence of a seven-year-old boy preparing to ask his parents for a new video game. “How are we going to get this thing to go all the way through the ventilation system and into the garbage room on its own? If it has a sense of smell, I find it unlikely that it would willingly travel in that direction, unless it felt like it had absolutely no other choice.”

“This is where Alvin’s gun stash comes in,” my brother replied, grinning and gesturing in my direction.

He locked eyes with me and watched as I raised a surprised and mildly suspicious eyebrow at him, while the others around the table did the same. Eleanor bit her lip, as if finally sensing and diagnosing the crux of Simon's plan.

Sensing the lingering confusion and hesitation amongst his peers, so tangible you could have cut the silent air in the crew's mess with a knife, “The Smart One” shrugged and mused, “most animals flee from the sound of gunfire, do they not?” After glancing about the room at each of us to ensure we had no objections to his theory, he continued, “one of us chases it through the vent system firing blanks. That simple.”

“I’m not volunteering for that,” Theodore said. “No way. You all saw how strong those things were.”

“This one’s just a little baby, Theo,” I grumbled, staring at the floor, nodding, as the spirit of this scheme began to ring clear to me, if not the specificities or the details. “I’ll do it.”

Brittany put her hand on my shoulder and shot me a petrified, heartbroken look that might have well said in plain, outspoken English, “please don’t.”

“No,” Simon softly but firmly refuted, shaking his head. “I brought this creature on board. And the safety of my crew is my first responsibility as Captain. I’ll do it.”

“I’m the Field Operations Officer,” I retorted, squinting at him and folding my arms across my chest. “It’s my responsibility.”

“Alvin,” Simon said, lowering his voice to a soft, gentle hum, “you and I both know that that title is just an excuse for you to be here.”

This prompted a brief glint of genuine but nervous chuckles out of every ‘munk present, including me.

“Besides, you have more to take care of than just yourself,” he argued, “you have Brittany. You have your kid. Or, future kid, I suppose. But the point remains, your well-being is more important now than it ever has been before.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jeanette gulp down her emotions, allow her posture to sink into a sulk, and let her eyes drift glumly to the floor. However, I decided Simon was right, so I nodded and wrapped my hand around Brittany’s waist in defeat. 

“It’s settled, then,” Simon announced, noticeably only half confident - at best - in the path forward. “I’m going to need a revolver. And a flashlight.”

Simon’s POV

The engine room was hauntingly silent, and the angle that the ship rested at, propped up by the side of a mountain, made the atmosphere feel excruciatingly nauseating. Alvin was down there with me to see me into the air duct entrance. 

“Got everything?” he asked me in a melancholy tone.

“Let me see,” I muttered, shifting through the items that I was carrying. “Revolver, check. Flashlight, check. Headset?”

Alvin handed me the extra headset that he had brought along. I flipped it to channel one and fitted it to my head snugly, knowing that there was a fair chance that the security of that headband against my noggin may soon save my life. I pulled the microphone downwards until it was inches away from my mouth and muttered, “testing, one-two one-two.

My brother likewise flicked his microphone downwards and muttered, “Yeah, pretty sure it’s working. Brit, can you hear us up there?”

“A-ffirm-a-tive,” came the chipette's glum but sarcastically overemphasized answer from her sitting position in the cockpit, in front of the motherboard screen. Because there were no cameras inside of the air vents, the monitor for the Caesar's central computing apparatus had loaded a giant blueprint of the air system. Jeanette and I had worked together to install and triangulate every single motion tracker on board, including the one Alvin had used earlier in the abandoned NASA structure. Then, we updated the blueprint program with a live feed of any living beings detected within their combined radius. That data was fed live into Motherboard's air vent blueprint diagram, which meant that not only would Brittany have the ability to follow my movements and guide me, but she’d also be able to let me know precisely where the alien was if I could get him to even flinch. 

I nervously climbed upon a large, lagged, sturdy pipe belonging to our main steam system, brushing the dust off my lap as I rose to my feet directly beside the sealed shut vent shaft entrance. Nervously chewing on the corner of my lip, my eyes scanned and examined the ingress carefully. Its curved floor laid just below my chest, imposing and uninviting in its offputting stillness. I lifted my flashlight upwards, pointed it directly towards the access point, illuminated it. The beam of light tranced sporadically in random directions as I was unable to contain my muscles from nervously shaking. My normal pace of breathing began feeling inadequate through mild trembling. Just the idea of the cramped, dark, filthy, disorientating maze of pipes that I was soon to be finding myself navigating was enough to put me on edge. The knowledge that a mysterious and potentially dangerous creature was inside awaiting me only heightened my anxiety. It was like a rat; not likely dangerous in a life threatening sense, but plausibly capable of delivering a painful bite and a possible carrier of some unknown disease, and therefore not desirable to be in close contact with if one could help it. The fingers of my other hand subconsciously gripped my firearm tightly as if they felt moments away from needing to use it, despite the fact that the weapon was only loaded with blanks. It was then that I began to question my own decision to not use live ammunition, but I blinked those doubts away in the wake of not wanting to risk accidentally blasting a hole into our hull.

“Hey,” Alvin softly whispered behind me, actually causing me to startle and tense from the break in silence. “I’ll see you on the other side, bro.”

I peered down at my brother over my shoulder, and exchanged a warm smile with him, genuinely appreciative of his words of encouragement.

“Simon,” Brittany spoke to me through the headset, “everything’s set up and ready to go.”

“Alright,” I croaked, taking a deep breath. “I’m ready. Open the air duct.”

I could faintly hear the sound of the oldest chipette typing a command into the keyboard in front of her. Then, after a lengthy, anticipatory moment, the metallic covering of the vent access slid open with a rusty screeching sound that made me grit my teeth. I shone my light inside the pipe, illuminating what was otherwise a pitch-black tunnel made out of aluminum. There was no Martian, at least not as far as I could see down to the corner several feet away. 

I set the flashlight down inside of the air duct, then did the same with my gun, intentionally directing both tools away from myself as I did. I then got my nerves together, placed both of my palms against the grimy metal inside of the vent and hoisted myself up, making as little noise as possible. I rested on one knee as I grabbed the light and firearm, then rapidly aimed both down the long tube of air shaft before me. Tasting the stale, warm, dust-filled atmosphere inside, the pure silence - the way that the background machinery noise from outside seemed to be drowned to a dull hum within the vent- sent shivers down my spine as I took a faint step away from the ledge and away from one of the few existing penetrations between that system and the rest of the ship. 

Glancing over my shoulder and making reassuring eye contact with my brother, who was watching me enter safely from the ground, I murmured, “Ok, Brit. Close the sliders.” 

It wasn’t long before the aluminum dampers slid shut behind me with a screechy, rusty clank, locking me inside the ventilation system, alone, and depriving my eyes of any semblance of light that did not originate from the device in my hand. I took one deep breath, suddenly remembering that I was extremely claustrophobic. The diameter of the pipe wasn’t quite tall enough for me to stand straight up, meaning I was going to be forced to crouch in order to get around.

“You picking up his signal yet?” I asked in a hushed but impatient whisper, attempting to get comfortable while both locking my knees in a partially bent position and hunching over, curving my spine as my shoulders, neck and the back of my head rested against the roof of the shaft.

“No sign of him,” Brittany responded. “He might be sleeping.” I could suddenly hear a high pitched beep notification ring through from the chipette's end of the line. “That’s your signal,” she confirmed to me, as if anticipating that I might have clenched my muscles in that split second from fear. “You just appeared on my screen.”

“Okay,” I exhaled, “notify me the second you see him.”

There was no answer.

“Brittany, you read me?” I hissed, demanding a confirmation. There was not a chance in hell that I was going to allow a drop in communication during this mission for any reason whatsoever.

“Yeah, I read you, Simon,” she groaned, though I could hear the faintest sign of one of her signature defiant chuckles. “Relax. You’re going to be fine.”

I nodded, realizing that she was right and that I needed to keep my nerves under control. 

With the light in my left hand still beaming down the pipe and my defensively useless gun in the other, I pressed forward, still crouching with permanently bent knees. The metal surface seven feet upstream of me reflected my light back in my direction, blindingly bright, as I tried to awkwardly shuffle towards it. Each of my footsteps made undesired noises; clanks, scratches, creaks, groans, thuds from the relatively thin, welded metallic sheets bending outwardly underneath my weight. Walking got more and more strenuous on my leg and back muscles as I pushed onward. By the time I reached the corner, which redirected the air vent sharply to my right at a ninety degree angle, they were already aching, convincing me to drop to my hands and knees out of the necessity for rest. 

I cautiously poked my flashlight around the bend, down another long, intersecting hallway of metal, then peeked my head around to possibly catch a glimpse of my alien friend. 

This stretch of the ventilation system seemed to go on forever, as my light barely even appeared to kiss the opposite end. After grumbling to myself about how little I was looking forward to the lengthy hike in a terribly uncomfortable position, I forced myself onto my feet and began to move again. Painfully, I trudged through the metallic tunnel with increasing disregard for how much noise I was making. Each step generated a protruding and echoing “thonk” and each breath I took was becoming heavy. I was desperate - thirsty, even - for air that wasn’t thick, hot, and polluted with dust mites. My throat was beginning to become itchy and irritated. Sweat was forming and dribbling down my face, drenching my clothes and fur, stinging my eyes if I failed to wipe it off my brow for more than a couple seconds. 

I soon came across an intersecting leg of air piping directly to my left, which I anticipated because I knew the layout of the system by heart. Panting, twisting and stretching my aching lower back. I carefully shone the flashlight into the passage that I had just stumbled across, gritting my teeth as I awaited a possible violent reaction from the baby Martian, but none came. It seemed to me to be as still and lifeless as everything I had encountered thus far.

Suddenly, I heard another beep through the headset. “Wha-? What the fuck?” came Brittany's confused mutter. “This can’t be right.”

“What is it?” I whispered, stiffening like a statue, my blood thinning at the ambiguity and ominousness of her words.

“According to this signal, there’s something in there that’s a little bit bigger than you are. Like, this thing is almost twice as big as you are.”

“It can’t be the Martian,” I snapped at her, cursing myself in my own head for not setting up the tracking equipment properly. “It’s only been alive for thirty-six hours!”

“Whatever I'm reading, it's huge,” she insisted, genuine fear dripping from her mouth and into my ears. “Be careful, Simon.”

I took a deep breath, beginning to tremble, despite all of my instincts and scientific knowledge telling me that what the oldest but, self-admittedly, not the brightest chipette was seeing was inaccurate. Despite my inner voice desperately trying to convince myself that the creature locked inside that ventilation system with me was not a true threat. “Okay,” I exhaled through gritted teeth, doing my best to feign calmness and confidence, “where is he?”

“Umm… keep going in the direction you were going.”

I shone my light down the tunnel in the direction that I had been walking through and began to press on. “Alright,” I affirmed, “I'm traveling in my original direction.”

“You’re going to come to a six-way intersection soon,” Brittany croaked, directing me.

My body ached, particularly my back, neck, and legs, but the adrenaline jolted my muscles into survival mode and pushed me beyond what otherwise would have been my breaking point. I was so very sick of being constricted within that aluminum tube with a diameter that was, generously, three quarters of my height. Panting hard, suit sticking to the fur on my body due to the sweat, I eventually stumbled into a spherical, metallic bubble that had six tunnels of pipe connecting to it in all horizontal directions. It was like being inside an aluminum ball, a cold, rigid, six-legged spider. Each of the six protrusions of passageways had varied lengths of uninterrupted shaft before branching off or bending out of sight. 

“Shit!” Brittany exclaimed in a tone that was sounding more and more panicked. “Simon, you’re going to need to hold your position, please. His signal just died.”

I grumbled in frustration as I began to turn about, flashing my light down every single stretch of pipe that I was surrounded by, inching myself defensively towards the center of the intersection. I would illuminate one stretch of ventilation shaft, hold the beam in that direction with an unsteady, shaky hand for a few moments, then redirect my vision to a different pathway. I repeated this process several times with all six directions of concern, not seeing or hearing even the faintest sign of the alien. “Is his signal back yet?” I asked Brittany in a hushed whisper, continuing to spin around with my beam of light, examining each of the six possible avenues with which the Martian could sneak up on me carefully. I raised my firearm in front of me, aiming it parallel to the flashlight. 

“Not yet. No sign of him.”

But in that moment, I got a sign of him. The blood-chilling, protruding sound of one of the Martian's angry hisses echoed into the round little aluminum bubble that I stood inside of. And, yes, he sounded significantly bigger than the last time I had seen him. Practically hyperventilating, I briefly scanned each of the six legs of piping that surrounded me with my flashlight. No visual on him. But then, another hiss, followed by the scratchy, banging sounds of what I believed to be his footsteps. I spun around in place once again, following my beam, glancing down each shaft. He was nowhere to be seen. I waited for a few seconds, hoping to hear a beep that meant the signal had returned, but no such thing reached my ear drums. Shutting my eyes, bracing myself for the recoil and the ear-piercing noise that I was about to inflict upon myself, I pointed my revolver down a random pipeway and pulled the trigger. A blinding flash and a deafening bang, along with a kick-back that managed to take me by surprise despite the fact that I anticipated it, made me stumble backwards.

As the ringing in my ears slowly began to fade away, I suddenly heard the beep in my headset once again. “Oh my God,” Brittany gasped. 

Another beep.

“What is it?” I nudged her, suddenly frozen in my tracks from fear, but still managing to feel a slight bit of frustration from how she was continuously forgetting to actually communicate to me what she was seeing.

“He-he’s right behind you!”

Another beep. 

“Simon, he’s coming right for you!”

“Right behind me?” I repeated, dazed, confused, annoyed, and in that moment… coming to the heart-pounding realization that I had completely lost track of which of the six shafts I had actually entered the intersection through. I had forgotten which direction I had come from! Completely and totally disoriented. “Wha- what do you mean?” 

Another beep. 

As if on cue, I was startled by some scratchy, heavy pawsteps. But I couldn’t definitively determine, due to the extreme echo within the hub that I helplessly occupied, where they were coming from in relation to myself. 

Beep. 

My breathing turned into frenzied gasps for air as I began to spin all around, desperately trying to figure out where the Martian was. Desperately hoping to catch him approaching me. The loud, undisguised and seemingly clumsy but powerful pawsteps were getting faster and more aggressive.

Finally, in a state of distress and anxious recklessness, I lifted the revolver up so that its barrel aimed parallel to my flashlight, and directed both devices down a random stretch of pipe. I fired the gun, then quickly spun, readjusted, and turned towards an adjacent branch and did the same, repeating until I had fired blanks precariously towards the vicinity of five of the six shafts in a last-ditch attempt to scare the Martian away. I attempted a sixth before literally feeling my heart drop into my stomach as I realized that I had used my final round.

The steps were so obviously and gut-wrenchingly close by then and they didn’t stop. I felt one hundred percent confident, in that moment, that the alien not only knew where I was but that he was most definitely coming right for me. 

“SIMON GET OUT OF THERE!” Brittany begged me in a panicked screech.

It was time to make a life-or-death decision. I quickly took a random guess as to which of the six shafts was safest, scrambled haphazardly to its entrance, tripped and stumbled over the welded lip, picked myself up and began a reckless sprint, still forced to hunch over, twisting my body and my flashlight to glance periodically back in the direction of the spherical bubble from whence I came. 

My eyes and my guiding light sporadically alternated between the direction my legs were carrying me, and the direction that I was fleeing from. Back and forth. The far end of the duct reflected the brightness of my beam back to me with no sign of the Martian. Back and forth. I reached my flashlight over my shoulder and peered behind me one more time. In my exasperated sprint, the unstable beam showed only the fading image of the six-way hubbed intersection that I had just escaped from. No alien.

I spun the flashlight back around so that it shone in the direction that I was scurrying towards. 

In a flashlight of red and brown fur, blood-thirsty eyes, and razor sharp claws and teeth, a vicious impact stopped me dead in my tracks and knocked me onto my backside.

Brittany’s POV

All five of us stared at the monitor, jaws agape in disbelief, as the two green dots representing Simon and the Martian violently collided and conjoined. All we could hear was a big “thud” followed by a “crunch” as Simon’s headset was flung off his head, landing inconspicuously several feet behind him. I covered my mouth in shock, my heart pounding, seemingly choking the breath out of my body. All we could hear were the muffled and echoed screams from Simon, as well as some hissing and other sickening noises that indicated that a struggle was ongoing. 

“Oh my God,” I whimpered, trembling.

Suddenly, one of the dots sped away from the other towards the six-way intersection. It was obviously Simon’s, as it was the smaller of the two. Our eyes followed the primal, non-descript symbol that represented the chipmunk as it darted away as quickly as his legs could probably carry him within those cramped pipes. He came to an abrupt halt with a thud in the intersection, followed by a blood-curdling, echoed scream, alerting the Martian, who instantaneously responded by beginning to creep towards him. 

“No!” Jeanette gasped in horror, spastically adjusting her body position between covering her eyes, looking away, and watching the screen again. She continuously muttered under her breath as tears dampened the fur beneath her eyes, “come on, get up! Get out of there! You can do it! Please…”

Simon seemingly picked himself up and began stumbling down the pipe that led towards the garbage room, which he originally was supposed to chase the Martian towards in the first place. Our eyes momentarily lit up as there was newfound hope, but Simon wasn’t going nearly as fast as he definitely could have. 

“Something's wrong,” I gravely announced in the midst of nervously biting my nails. “It's like he's hurt - like he's limping, or something.” 

“Eleanor, be ready,” Alvin commanded, leaning in towards the youngest chipette but not turning his gaze away from the monitor. 

Eleanor said nothing, watching the motherboard screen intently with her hands folded over her mouth in prayer. 

The Martian was picking up speed, furiously chasing behind Simon, obviously tracking his direction by the sound of his footsteps. Our captain was trudging through the shaft, likely propelling himself with all four of his limbs, so quickly that he slammed head-first into solid aluminum when he came to a T-shaped fork in his path. In a panic, he shook off his daze and turned left. Another lucky guess. Seconds later, the Martian made the same mistake and similarly collided with the vent wall at full speed. This caused a banging noise that was so excessively loud and protrusive, we could literally hear it from within the cockpit. There was an angry hiss as the beast stayed put for a while, seemingly nursing his pain and recovering from a concussed state, allowing Simon to put some distance between the two. 

He was painstakingly coming down the home stretch. Just around the next and final corner was the open exit that led to the garbage room. He could probably see the light. In fact, he could probably smell it.

Suddenly, the Martian began to move again. It sprinted in Simon’s direction in a fit of rage, closing the gap between them at a terrifyingly impressive rate. We all held our breaths, and I held my hand directly on top of the button that controlled the position of the exit dampers. Almost there…

The two dots were almost on top of each other. At the last second, Simon’s symbol rounded the corner out the exit and disappeared from the monitor. I slammed my fist on the button. The Martian tried to round the corner but was very suddenly and violently halted with a thud against the now-closed vent covering shutter. It screamed and hollered in agonized and furious rage, scratching and beating at the aluminum that dared attempt to contain it.

Wasting no time, I switched the screen to the camera feed in the garbage room. Simon laid there, on the ground near the center of the compartment, surrounded by trash and random bits of rubbish. Panting, wheezing, contorted in an unnatural body position. It was difficult to tell with how fuzzy the camera feed was, but he didn’t look to be in very great shape. 

Eleanor’s POV

Theodore and I frantically rushed into the infirmary to get it prepared, although for what, precisely, we weren’t quite sure. One thing we did know: this was going to be way different than taking care of Brittany.

“Theo, pull out the operation table!” I assertively commanded, feeling every ounce of panic that my body could possibly contain, but managing to not unnecessarily raise my voice.

The youngest chipmunk quickly and obediently removed the folded up padded table from beside the medicine cabinet and unlatched the mechanisms that locked it in its position, knowing that it could be a life or death situation for his brother. 

I retrieved the pain-numbing drugs, the anesthetics, the antibiotics, the rubbing alcohol, the bandages, the stitch-wire and needles, and the operation tools and set them on the unimpressive, unfolded operation table that Theodore had set up for me. 

Just as I felt as though I was as prepared as possible given the circumstances, my body betrayed me with an overwhelming wave of uncontrollable shaking. My limbs, chest, head, vibrating in anticipation of the impending moment where I would have someone's life in my hands. The life of a chipmunk who I deeply cared about; the chipmunk that my sister loved, the older brother of the chipmunk that I loved. I had only enough time to inhale and exhale briefly in a futile attempt to calm my nerves before Alvin, Brittany, and Jeanette came charging through the infirmary door, carrying Simon between them.

“Set him on the table!” I barked at them. 

Theodore helped them gently set Simon onto his back, face up on the padded surface, and this was when I got my first real look at him. His left eye had a giant claw-sized bloody gash through it. His right arm was badly bruised and dislocated, with the shoulder having multiple jagged and imprecise punctures in them which appeared to me to be bite marks from a creature with extraordinarily powerful jaw strength. His left leg had obviously been crushed and broken somewhere, as it was swollen and bent outwardly. 

“He had passed out by the time we got to him,” Jeanette informed me, panting with her hands on her knees.

And add a probable concussion to that list, I thought to myself grimly. 

“Okay,” I squeaked, grabbing an empty shot needle and some pain medication. I filled up the container to the brim with the pain meds and stuck the needle into a vein in Simon’s one good arm. 

“That was a lot…” Jeanette protested in a worried tone, grimacing from her discomfort with blood and needles, as if she knew my job better than me. I really shouldn't have been as annoyed as I was by Jeanette's interjection. She was only worried for Simon's safety. But one thing that I could not afford to entertain was a worried girlfriend that seemingly felt the need to question any of my decisions in the middle of an intense, life-threatening operation.

“I know,” I snapped at her. “He's going to need every drop.”

Chapter Text

Eleanor’s POV

I so wished that I had access to something - anything - that could just put Simon under completely, because it felt like the pain medication had barely had an effect. I began by sprinkling disinfectant onto all of his open wounds, including the gashed eye. This forced semi-conscious hisses and screams of pain to erupt from Simon’s lips, each more desperate and pitiful than the last, which entailed him struggling and thrashing his arms about for a few seconds before slipping back into motionlessness. 

Next, I set about relocating his arm. I forced his elbow into a ninety degree angle and wrapped one of our NASA-issued, cheap, rough, white hand towellettes around it. Grabbing the cloth with both hands, I lifted my gaze up and to my left, towards a horrified and visibly nauseous Alvin, Theo, Brittany, and Jeanette, and calmly requested that they “hold him down.”

They all did as I asked, rushing to his side, carefully grabbing his torso, shoulder, any portions of his body where there was no apparent damage to his flesh or bone, and using their weight to press him against the makeshift operation table. 

I glanced up at all of them once more and counted down in a hushed, anticipatory whisper: “three… two… one…”

I yanked upwards on the towel, snapping his arm back into its socket with a disgusting crunch noise. 

His entire body came alive by violently thrashing, struggling beneath our grasps. Yelping, gasping through gritted teeth as if drawing his last breath. It was all we could do to prevent his outburst from further physically injuring himself as he screeched in agony. When he finally calmed down and rested his head back on the table, we all exhaled a sigh of relief.

But the relief soon faded. “We have to set his broken leg,” I glumly admitted, pursing my lips, shaking my head. “He’s really not gonna like this.”

“Set it with what?” Jeanette gasped with wide, dumbfounded eyes.

“Some sort of metal brace,” I responded in a grumble without breaking my trance of staring directly at the poor chipmunk’s disfigured limb. “Anything.”

Theodore, who had been originally placed in charge of inventory back at NASA HQ, quickly began digging through a box that was preemptively stashed underneath the table. After a couple of seconds, he stood back up with what had the appearance of a piece of steel bar stock, approximately the length of a human-sized tooth pick, in his hands.

“Perfect,” I hummed, grabbing it from him with a forced but genuinely grateful smile. Gently, I pressed the rod against the outside of Simon’s broken leg, which, in and of itself, made him wince in pain. “Alvin,” I anxiously murmured, “hold this here.”

“Alright,” he timidly choked out, assisting me by doing as he was told.

I bent over, knelt down, and grabbed the roll of duct tape that had been knocked off the table in the heat of Simon's unconscious reactions to his own treatment. Ripped the courtesy tab, plus an extra few inches, off the roll. Stuck the loose end at the top of Simon’s thigh, on the inwards portion of his quad near his groin area, careful so as to not illicit another violent outburst. The break looked like it was around the mid-shin section, bending the lower part of his leg, including his ankle and foot, very slightly but grossly, unnaturally outward. I lifted his thigh just a few inches off the table, making sure to keep it pressed against the brace, and began to wrap the tape tightly around it. 

After twelve or so laps around his leg by the roll of adhesive, I used my teeth to cut the tape and end the stream, using my index finger to ensure a sealed, firm, snug fit around his quad. I then started another wrap of tape at his knee, making sure the brace kept tight to his leg. When I finished the second round of tape and bit it off, I glance up and met Alvin's queasy, worried gaze. “This is going to be the really bad one,” I warned him solemnly.

He sighed and nodded, grabbing his brother's ankle and holding it to the brace.

I stuck the end of my tape right over the midsection of his shin where it looked like the break was. Took a deep breath to ready myself. Then, forced his leg straight with a frighteningly loud, sickening, crunch that made me squint and grit my teeth. 

“AAAGGHH!” Simon screamed so loud that he began to choke on his own tongue, flailed his limbs and head about wildly for a few seconds, then drifted back into insentience. Motionless, peaceful as he ever had been. 

I wasted no time, determined to not allow these precious few moments to pass where he would not remember the horrific sensations that I was putting him through. The roll of tape furiously travelled around and around his calf at approximately the location of his break. Alvin begrudgingly maintained his composure, suffering emotionally through keeping the bar stock pressed flat across Simon's limb all the way up to the hip. He would sporadically grimace and turn his head away as random murmurs and whimpers occasionally escaped from Simon’s unconscious mouth, provoked by the sudden, sharp jolts of pain.

After what felt like eternity, I finally finished and bit off the last stream of duct tape.

Everyone in the room, with the exception of myself, exhaled a relieved sigh, almost as if they thought it was over. 

“I’m not done yet,” I grumbled, instantly receiving visible confirmation that I had bursted their bubbles. They each exchanged exhausted, crestfallen glances.

Jeanette, unsurprisingly, appeared the most distressed of the bunch. Obsessively blinking back tears, gulping down the excess liquid forming in the back of her throat from her runny sinuses. Fear and guilt plastered across her face. I could practically hear the inner dialogue raging within the recesses of her mind every time I touched Simon in a way that prompted any sort of negative reaction. Every time, her eyes would dart back and forth. Her facial expression would adjust several times. It always ended by transforming from internalized rage to a calmer frown, as she managed to spin the borderline hateful rhetoric towards me in her mind into a more reasonable and hopeful tone. Her initial reaction, every time I touched her lover in such a way as to prompt even so much as a wince from his lips, was to despise me. But it was all necessary. She knew that, deep down. She understood that what I was doing had to be done to help him.

I turned my attention to my patient’s bad eye. A giant gash ran entirely through it, centerline, from the upper end of his top eyelid to near the bottom of the lower one. The eyelids themselves, sliced in half, flapping freely in all directions, rendered effectively useless. I pulled a small flashlight out of the tiny box beneath the table, and spread the fragments of skin that previously protected Simon's pupils apart, to the best of my ability, without causing further tearing. This was the part that I was dreading the most. It was something about eyes. Gagging, I choked back the powerful urge to vomit, clicked the button on the back of my light and shone it upon the wound. There was basically no pupil remaining. What was still there was damaged and fragmented beyond repair. Whatever had hit him in this area, be it tooth or claw, had successfully removed chunks which were vital to the organ’s function. A hollowed out, useless shell of an eyeball was all that was left.

“Shit,” I grumbled under my breath. Shaking my head, sighing, pursing my lips, cursing my own helplessness, I glumly announced to everyone present, “I can’t save his eye. It’s gone.”

This made Jeanette burst into tears. Brittany tried, mostly in vein, to comfort her, pulling her into her arms as the broken chipette sobbed into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, guys,” I solemnly whimpered. “There’s literally nothing I can do.”

“It’s ok, Ellie,” Jean managed to sniffle as she choked down her hysteria. “Do what you have to do.”

I bit my lip, examining my patient's face as if trying to convince myself that there was any alternative at all to what I was planning. “I’m gonna have to remove it altogether,” I finally announced, barely even able to maintain my own composure as I did. 

The others despondently bowed their heads, no doubt picturing the sickening surprise that our Captain would be in for when he woke up.

Without wasting more time, I grabbed the precision knife off the table beside me. “I need everyone to hold him down again,” I murmured through gritted teeth, thoroughly dejected, dreading the task that laid before me.

Everyone grabbed a part of Simon’s body and seemed ready to resist his impending thrashing and struggling. They all turned their heads away from the unconscious chipmunks head, nausea and sorrow plastered on their faces, not being able to bring themselves to bear witness to what was about to happen. Oh, how I envied them. That they could just simply… look away from this. They could help me, and reassure themselves later on in life that they did help me. And they didn't even have to watch. That wasn't an option for myself. I gulped at the premonition of the traumatically horrendous sights and sounds that, I was fully aware, I was soon to be etching into my own memory, steadied my trembling hand, and spread the fragmented remains of Simon’s eyelid once again, ready to begin the operation.

Brittany’s POV

Every one of us watched Simon’s motionless body through the infirmary window. Despaired, minds racing, and, through our rage, somehow, finding the need for vengeance and victory flowing through our hearts. He rested on the same bed that I had been in just earlier that day, a blood soaked bandage over his now-empty eye socket. 

Eleanor wiped the nervous sweat off her brow, looking exhausted and overwhelmingly nauseated.

Simon’s brothers wore intense expressions of guilt and anguish. I knew that Alvin was wishing that it had been him instead of his younger brother. Not that it was a fair load of blame for him to place upon himself; it wasn't. But I understood him better than he understood himself, in a way. I could read his face, his emotions, and there was not a shred of doubt in my mind that consciously wrecking his soul with his own regret was exactly what he was doing.

I wished I could have thought of a way to make him feel better. That’s what a girlfriend is supposed to be able to do. But I could come up with nothing.

Jeanette had a stone cold look on her face. Her arms folded across her chest. Her lips pursed. Her eyebrows furled. Her right eye… twitching, furiously. As if so many emotions were coursing through her mind that she couldn't process, yet she also couldn’t entertain or enlighten us regarding a single one of them. “We don’t have time to just sit around and wait,” she humphed, suddenly, breaking our solemn and respectful silence. “Meeting in the cockpit, right now.”

“Meeting about what?” I croaked, being in just a slight bewilderment as to how she could possibly already be demanding anything of us in some pseudo military manner, only moments after Simon had been brought so close to death in front of our eyes.

“There’s still a pack of angry Martians out there,” she reminded us, turning her entire body away towards the hatch that led to the main hallway and strutting furiously in that direction. “And they’ll be back… soon.”

Jeanette’s POV

Only minutes later, we had all gathered in the control room, sitting in a semi-circle in our designated seats, our chairs turned towards each other. The other four exchanged confused, uncertain glances with one another, as if trying to either reassure themselves that there was still hope, or that I was not a crazy, soulless bitch. Or perhaps, that was just my own anxiety and self-doubt speaking to me. Regardless, the difference in the cockpit seating arrangement was immediately plain to everyone present. And that one difference was that I had taken a seat in Simon’s old captain chair in the very center. There were numerous reasons that I did this - or, at least, that I convinced myself that I had done it - mainly being that I wanted to set the example for everyone on that ship to step up and pull the weight of someone who was incapacitated. I wanted all of them, my siblings and their boyfriends, to be better than they were before in the more intelligent chipmunk’s absence. Furthermore, I needed to place a finger of control and leadership on the group. I could sense the fabric of our crew spiraling and unwinding at the edges without a single word on the matter being uttered to me. They were scared. They were hopeless. They were stranded without a prayer to be lifted off this planet, and they were without a leader. By NASA protocol, whatever that counted for at that point, I was supposed to be the next “man” up. What, exactly, that meant to me, I wasn’t quite certain. Truth be told, this was not a comfortable feeling for me. There was never a single time in my life that I had ever desired to speak in front of a group of people, let alone to lead them, to give them orders. Sweat timidly and subtly formed underneath my fur just thinking about it. Taking control was not my forte. At least, not taking control of people. My siblings and the boys knew that, but I needed them to buy into this. If I was not able to overcome my crippling fear of commanding a room, as was expected by the organization that we technically worked for, the chaos left in the wake of Simon's absence would erode all hope of our escape from that planet.

I cleared my throat to bring the meeting to order. Once everyone had given me their undivided attention, I spoke: “Okay, as we are all very well aware, Simon will not be available to lead us for the time being,” I cautiously hummed under my breath, only capable of actually looking into the eyes of my peers periodically. Noticing my own pathetic demeanor, I raised my volume, drastically increasing the level of confidence that I was projecting towards them, “while he is unconscious, I will be taking up his role, his responsibilities, and… his authority.” These things pained me so greatly to utter. As if Simon were just some random, barely noticeable supervisor that had gone on vacation. But I had to downplay his situation - and theirs - to revive their wills. The moment I allowed myself emotions to overcome my words would be the moment those same words would lose all of their value to the others in the room.

Theodore scoffed at me, allowing me to notice that he was tearing up just a little bit, presumably at the recent memory of his brother beaten and torn to shreds on an infirmary bed. For that reason, out of respect and understanding, I chose to ignore him. 

“Unless someone has a better idea,” I asserted in a weary grumble while rubbing the side of my forehead with my left index finger, staring at the deck plate beneath us in deep thought, “I say that we continue with Simon’s plan, and… try to bait that fucking thing into the garbage chute.”

This caused Brittany, in turn, to nervously scoff at me with tears beginning to flow down her cheeks. “What?” she abruptly and very loudly questioned me in a disbelieving chuckle. “And go back into those air shafts with that thing? No… no, no n-no! You are out of your mind!”

“I’m open to other suggestions,” I stated in a low growl, folding my arms in front of me and leaning back in my chair.

“I have one,” the chipette in the suit with pink trim snapped, seemingly ready to coax the entire crew into mutiny, “I say that we abandon this ship,” she plainly retorted, in a significantly more calm tone than I would have expected from a female chipmunk of her demeanor who had been crying as much as she had. “I say that we blow it to Kingdom Come and we… I don’t know, we take our chances in the rover and try to find that human-sized craft that can get us off this planet!”

With a faint grin on my face inspired by her blissful ignorance, I leaned in towards her and explained in what was barely more than a whisper, “the rover only holds enough oxygen - for the six of us - for about twenty hours. That would be enough for us to maybe reach the NASA site, but not much beyond that.” Suddenly, a light bulb moment occurred in my head; that Brittany, although completely accidentally, might have been right. Those abandoned NASA buildings, full of oxygen, breathable air, solar panels that were possibly even still functional. It all still existed to the best of our knowledge, hopefully within driving distance of the ship that carried all of those Marines all the way here from Earth.

“I don’t care about any of this shit,” Alvin interrupted my epiphany with a hiss, completely and totally frustrated, his arms crossed, grimacing, fuming as if he was on the brink of charging into the air vents himself in that very moment. “That thing in those pipes cut my brother’s eye out. Broke his leg. Bit him! Dislocated his shoulder!”

There was a sense of agreement about the room with Alvin’s bitter resentment; head nods, murmurings of “yeah” and “that’s right”.

All of the support only goaded Alvin along his bloodthirsty thought trail, encouraging him to shout, “all I know is, we have to kill it. That’s all I care about.”

“Okay,” I calmly conceded, speaking in a lower, level-headed mumble, “so let’s talk about killing it…”

Alvin immediately interjected with, “he’s in the vents right above us, right now-”

“Will you listen to me, Alvin?” I shouted, tiring of his arrogance, his self-indulgence, his impunity, and his defiance, not just in that moment but dating back to literally the day that I had met him.

He continued to grumble unintelligibly about how important it was that we kill the Martian, and how easy it would be to corner him, despite my lashing out.

Therefore, I took my raised, desperate voice to the maximum volume that I could muster, and shrieked at him from the top of my lungs, “SHUT UP!”

The entire cockpit, including Alvin, fell silent, with the oldest chipmunk even gesturing towards me with an open palm as he squinted at me with a spiteful scowl, as if he were allowing me the open floor to speak.

“He’s using the air vents to get around…” I stated matter-of-factly, eliciting an immediate, grumbled protestation from everyone else in the room. But no one grumbled louder than Alvin, whom I could hear claiming that we all already knew what I had just said. “It’s the only way!” I exclaimed, glaring daggers out of the corner of my eye towards the oldest chipmunk, sitting in his designated chair to my right. “No matter what we decide to do afterwards, our best hope for survival is to be in the best graces of that Martian's mother that we possibly can be.”

“Fuck his mother,” Alvin, understandably but annoyingly, interrupted in protest. “And fuck her little bastard kid. Fuck that entire… colony, or whatever it’s called. I wouldn’t give a damn if we eradicated their entire disgusting race.”

I was absolutely flabbergasted by the irrational responses around the room to Alvin’s little monologue. Brittany And Eleanor nodded along with every word in agreement to him, not once opening their pursed lips. Everyone’s face, along with their begrudging eyes, stayed glued in the direction of the floor. Theodore did not make any intentional movements, seeming to almost be so out of it that he had no idea nor any care in the world about what any of us were saying. He was, dare I say it, emotionless. Not crying, not angry. Only a traumatized trembling of his limbs and head, paired with a loud, raspy, shaky breathing pattern provided any signs that he were even alive.

“Look at all of you,” I chastised them, shaking my head in disbelief. “Four tiny chipmunks on a hostile world, ready to go to war with the entire planet of Mars.” My sarcastic shaming seemed to enlighten Eleanor and Brittany, if only a little, but most definitely got under Alvin’s skin.

Suddenly, the Motherboard screen next to Brittany lit up with a loud “DING”. She turned her chair to face the monitor and examined the new notification.

“What does it say, Brit?” Alvin asked her. 

“It says…” the chipette murmured before trailing off, then gasped in pure shock. “Video message from NASA headquarters!”

The other four of us instantly jumped up and out of our seats and crowded around Brittany and the computer screen anxiously. “Play it,” I commanded her, as if she needed my approval. I was so desperately hoping that it was a message from Dave, or anything that could lift our spirits even if only just a little bit. 

Brittany clicked on the link. The screen faded into a pitch black loading screen, then very abruptly came to life in the form of Tom Butler’s face with a plain white wall in the background. The man who was in charge of this entire mission had an extremely faint - almost unnoticeable - cocky grin on his face as he seemingly stared at us through his camera. After a few tense, unsure moments, he began to speak:

“You guys gave us a pretty good scare… for a few seconds there, we thought you guys would actually manage to make it back into orbit.”

Every one of us in the cockpit exchanged confused, uneasy glances, obviously cautiously petrified of his meaning behind those words.

“I know you guys have a lot of questions right now… so, seeing as though none of you will ever set foot on Earth again, we came to an agreement as an organization it was only humane to answer some of them.”

A giant pit formed in my stomach from the way he so confidently and smoothly cooed that condescending phrase. None of us blinked or looked away. 

“First and foremost: yes, we knew about the Martians. We first discovered traces of them through the Hovell Telescope years ago. That was and still is classified information, but a contact mission was approved nonetheless. The Omortson, which you guys, fortunately for us, and unfortunately for you six, stumbled across. For the record, that ship was carrying over 100 men and women, the majority of whom were Marines. Trained killers. They… regrettably lasted only a couple days. Fifty-one hours, forty-three minutes, and nine seconds, to be precise. They’re all dead now, if that was still somehow a question in your minds. Every one of them.”

It was absolutely disturbing and downright disgusting how little Butler seemed to care about the deaths of the crewmembers - of the service members - that he so casually referred to. Or, for that matter, how blatant that he made it that he did not care about our own lives.

“This brings us to why we needed you. Well, you see, the man who occupied the presidency at the time believed that in order to convince congress to approve an invasion of the planet you currently find yourself on, he would need popular public support. And by invasion, of course, I do not mean more ground troops. The safest and most reasonable way to exterminate an entire species on a foreign planet would be to do so from the comfort of our homes, utilizing the most highly technologically advanced remote satellite weaponry that we have developed as a nation. Weaponry so powerful and capable and convenient, that it is simply too expensive to mass produce and manage to simultaneously hide from the American people. Therefore, the conclusion that we came to… was that we must showcase the Martians’ terrifying destructive potential. Alas, the disaster with the Marine mission had to remain confidential. The families of the fallen had all already been notified that their loved ones had been killed in the Middle East. Revealing the truth - that the federal government had approved and oversaw a manned, armed mission to Mars - without any approval or knowledge of the general public would have been… unpopular. That is where you six enter the picture. The cheapest possible way to land Earthlings on the Red Planet also simultaneously happened to include a group of adored teenaged pop stars. Let’s face the uncomfortable truth for a moment here; none of you were producing hits anymore. With that being said, each and every one of you were beloved, nostalgic names. Names that were guaranteed to enrage and radicalize the American people, should you happen to be murdered in cold blood during a peaceful expedition to Mars.”

We all continued to stare at the screen, listening with our mouths agape in crestfallen disbelief.

“It’s unlikely that any of you truly know what you’re dealing with, so allow me to illuminate and educate you on your predicament. They - the Martians - can withstand almost any conditions you subject them to. Their senses are perfectly evolved and attuned for hunting. Their bodies are dense, heavy, muscular, but also agile and explosive. They do not subject themselves to emotions or… delusions of morality. All they know is kill, eat, reproduce. More akin to a deadly virus than any remotely comparable mammal or reptile on Earth. And the more they reproduce, the more perfect they get. That’s really what you’re dealing with, here: a perfect organism. Perfectly bred killers. And, sad to say for you six, there are, at a minimum, six hundred and forty of them that we are aware of currently inhabiting the territory nearby your ship.”

You could hear a pin drop in the room as Butler paused to clear his throat.

“I only wish for you to pass on from this life knowing that your deaths will provide excellent footage for the propaganda films that are being edited as we speak. I hope that gives you comfort, in some way. I doubt it does, but it’s the best reconciliation that I can offer you. Believe me, I do feel a great deal of shame and sadness for lying to you in the way that we did. I just hope that you can appreciate the fact that we are being honest with you now.”

“This can’t be real,” Theodore whimpered, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Butler said enthusiastically, a legitimately cheerful and encouraging smile slowly spreading across his face, forcing the rest of us to perk our ears out of curiosity. “We have no way of knowing exactly how many of you are still alive by the time you are getting this. But although I can’t lie to you about your chances, if it makes you feel any better… you have my sympathies.” And with that his slight grin grew as he seemingly eyed us down menacingly through the screen, as if he were some soulless, heartless robot that was somehow gaining joy from the knowledge that he had successfully tricked us, paraded us around the nation, and transported us to certain death, dangling us like pieces of raw meat over an alligator pit. 

Having finally had enough, Brittany ended the video. “There’s no way there’s much truth to any of that,” she spat, almost assuring herself more than any of us. “Butler’s gone off the deep end. We all agreed from the get-go that he was a little sketchy.”

After thinking it over for a second, I finally spoke out in a slow, clear tone to ensure that my command would be both detected and understood, “Motherboard… what is our mission directive?”

The computer took a second to calibrate, at least indicating that it heard me. I had had the mission directive, which Megs emphasized to us on a daily basis during our training, committed to memory. It went: “To reach, to observe, and to explore the planet Mars. To break new ground, to make history. Safety of the crew is first priority. Safety of ship is second priority. Completion of objectives is third priority.”

Finally, Motherboard loaded its answer to my question. She read aloud to us in her artificially generated voice as the text appeared on the screen: “To make contact with hostile Martian species, and to record all events. Violence and destruction of equipment expected. All crewmembers are expendable.”

“Crew members expendable?” Eleanor gasped in shock.

“Violence and destruction expected?” Alvin echoed in apparent, visible rage, his fists balled tightly to the point that his knuckles were white. “What happened to ‘safety of the crew is the first priority’, you bitch?”

To our surprise, Motherboard quickly answered him. “I repeat. Lives of the crewmembers are expendable.”

And that was enough for us. We knew then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we had been set up on a suicide mission. We had been flown off to die for a propaganda film. A series of propaganda films, even, judging by what we had just heard. We felt even more alone, more disparaged than we had felt before.

“Well,” I finally spoke up, nodding my head as if working myself back up into some semblance of can-do work ethic. A vein effort that failed entirely. “NASA wasn’t going to be any help to us anyway. We’re going to have to get ourselves out of this.”

“Yeah, right,” Theodore mumbled.

“Quiet, Theo,” I snapped, glaring him down whilst he did all he could to avoid my gaze, like the beta in a pack of dogs submitting to the alpha. I could tell the whole group felt severely hopeless in that moment, and I didn't need anyone exasperating such a mood. “I have an idea. We can all get out of this just fine. We’ve been in tough spots before.”

This caused Theodore to finally look up at me, tears beginning to well up in his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right? You’re acting like this is just another day at work. Like Brittany just got a black eye on picture day, or like Simon just got a swirlie at school. Simon’s unconscious on a table and he just lost an eye!”

“Shut up, Theodore,” I threatened him once again, prompting Eleanor to wince, grit her teeth, ball her fists subconsciously. Ready to step in and defend her man, but for some reason holding herself back. Perhaps she was waiting for things to escalate just a bit further.

Theodore, meanwhile, continued his fit of growing hysteria. “Why? What’s the point anymore? We’re done!”

“Shut it!” I hissed.

“We’re screwed! It’s all over!” 

I was greatly surprised at the sudden lashing out by the youngest chipmunk, as was everybody else, judging by their wide eyes and shocked, slacked jaws. “You’re going to have to get a hold of yourself, Theodore!” I shouted in a firm but calm voice, “because like it or not… we need you.”

Theodore scanned the room and seemingly only then noticed the others, who had been watching us with concerned expressions. His face softened a touch, a glow of red from embarrassed blushing protruded the fur on his tear-soaked cheeks. Panting, he hesitantly sat down and rested his chin on his closed knuckles facing away from me with a grunt, but didn’t say another word. 

“Good,” I said, “now, as I mentioned, I’ve got a plan that could save us. All six of us. But we’re going to need all hands on deck, especially with Simon down. We all made a commitment, by emptying our poisoned water cups on the floor, that we would fight with every breath in our bodies to survive. I wish to stand by that, not just for ourselves but for Dave. Who’s with me?”

Not a single reaction from the lot of them. From Brittany, I received blank, exhausted, emotionless stares. From Eleanor and Alvin, hardened, frustrated, resistant glares. Not quite looks of opposition or hostility but definitely on the fringe of that realm. Better than Theodore, at least, who kept his eyes pointed in the direction opposite of me, refusing to even look in my direction.

“Here’s what I propose we do,” I continued, hoping, still, that I might win them over, “we move on from Simon’s plan, and we instead attempt an abridged version of Brittany’s idea.” This elicited the exact perks of ears and gleaming of eyes from each of them that I anticipated. “We blow the ship, and take our chances in the rover.”

Alvin was the first to respond, “as long as that means killing it, then I’m-”

“Obviously, that means killing it,” I interjected with an annoyed, impatient hiss. I was grateful that he was at least showing some signs of support, or, at least, a lack of insolence. But oh, was I so very sick of hearing him repeat his one desire that he, in that moment, had in the entire universe.

A few moments of awkward silence transpired, where the others were either too weary to insert their questions or opinions, or just wanted someone else to be the first to do so. I, meanwhile, intentionally and patiently waited for one of them to audibly react in literally any way at all. Finally, Eleanor chirped, “so… I hope one of you at least has some details worked out on what exactly we all need to do.”

The blank, unyielding stare that I shot back in her direction was more because I desperately wanted to force her to elaborate on her statement than because I was legitimately confused. I wanted her to say, out loud, something that indisputably sounded as though she was also on board with the idea.

My feigned befuddlement resulted in pretty much exactly the type of phrase that I was hoping to hear from her: “this ship isn’t just… going to blow itself up.”

“Hmm,” I cooed, nodding, pretending to think for a moment despite the fact that I did indeed, for the most part, have the entire rest of the night for each of us already scheduled out in my mind very precisely. “First things first, we need to fortify the rover,” I finally mused, turning my attention to the oldest chipmunk. “Alvin, this will be your responsibility. I need armor on that thing. As much as possible. Welded on, strapped on, glued on, a mixture of all three, I don’t care how you do it. Just do whatever you can to make it difficult to penetrate and attack.”

“Woah woah woah!” Alvin interrupted, waving his hands in front of his face defensively. “I have less than one night to do all this? All by myself?”

“Not at all,” I corrected him. “We’re all going to pitch in. You’re just in charge.” Before he could protest further, which I could tell he wanted to do by how quickly he opened his mouth while angrily squinting at me, I continued, “and, I also need you to weaponize the vehicle as well. However you can, given your time constrictions. A mounted gun on its roof would be a bare minimum that I’m hoping for, along with any firearms and ammunition that we can provide space for inside. But anything additional would greatly increase each of our chances of surviving the day tomorrow. You’re going to need to get creative… and significantly more technically savvy than you probably have ever had to be in your life, in order to be successful with all of this. Unfortunately, I probably won’t have much time tonight to provide you any guidance for any of it, but we’re counting on you.”

Alvin nodded, groaning, realization slowly dawning on him that it was going to be a long night. “Right,” he grumbled, his eyes resting on the floor, at first, as he blatantly encouraged himself into a cooperative mindset, before they lifted back upwards to lock onto mine. “I’m on it.”

“Thank you.” I turned my attention to his green-clad brother. “Theo,” I said, “you need to load the rover with enough food to last us at least two weeks.”

“You mean normal rations or stretched rations?”

“Stretched rations. We don’t have that much space.”

He nodded but still did not look my way. “Got it.”

“Eleanor, make sure you pack any essential medical supplies. Especially things that you’ll need for Simon.”

My younger sister acknowledged me only with a glum, broken nod, as if she were just one singular unfortunate event away from accepting defeat. Which was a terrifying brink to consider for any one of us. 

“And Brittany, you’re going to stick with me and help me rig this ship to explode remotely.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” she asked me with a croak, obviously a little intimidated and taken aback by the tasking that I had given her.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her with a gentle, reassuring smile on my face as I finally rose onto my feet and picked myself out of the Captain’s chair. “I’ll tell you what to do. Just follow my lead. For everybody in this room; once you’ve completed whatever job you’ve been assigned, I need you to immediately pivot to helping out Alvin with the rover.”

Theodore’s POV

The Sun was beginning to slowly, painstakingly, force itself to creep up over the edge of the dusty red Martian horizon. Not slowly enough.

After a full night of work, the rover had taken on an entirely new aesthetic. Alvin and I had welded a makeshift plow onto the front of the vehicle with thick aluminum that had been melted down from various pieces of equipment, along with miscellaneous pieces of junk, on board the Caesar. The sides and back end of the rover now boasted spikes, guard rails, barbs, bumpers, all crafted using literally whatever metallic objects that we could get our hands on throughout the ship, melded strategically onto what we perceived to be the weakest areas of the machine. The eight wheels, the cockpit window, and the side doors were of the highest priority. A firearm being mounted upon the roof was deemed impractical as we began to realize that we were running out of time. My older brother, throughout the process, did more than just work with his hands, and more than just masterfully piece together metals with one of our two welding tools that we had on board; he was a conductor, an artist, directing those of us that found the time to help him with, what seemed to be, a vivid vision in mind. Inspired partially by the battle rovers that he had found in the old NASA station and partially by, if I had to guess, the “Mad Max” films. Alvin may not have been overly pleased with the final product, but the discolored hodgepodge of dirty, grimey, intimidating protective devices haphazardly welded onto an already sturdy vehicle sure reminded me of “Mad Max”. 

The funny thing was, I had never actually seen any of those movies from beginning to end. But I knew my older brother loved them because I would always find him and Eleanor forcing Brittany to sit through them in the living room, much to her dismay.

I helped the other four carry Simon, still unconscious on a fold-up table, all the way from the infirmary to the cargo bay and into the rover through its two-layered air-tight doors. It was difficult enough to make room for him in a vehicle that seemed packed to the top with weapons, ammunition, freeze-dried food, medical supplies and other tools such as flashlights and motion trackers. 

Eventually, however, we did manage to set him down onto an area of the floor within the rover where few objects impeded our ability to keep him flat, then strapped him down using seatbelts which Brittany had removed from the chairs in the cockpit. We knew very well that we were in for a bumpy ride. 

Throughout the night, I had the time and the peace of mind to reflect on my behavior in the cockpit. It was really not defendable how I reacted to the revelation that we were sent on this mission with the specific purpose of dying on camera. I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that Alvin and Brittany saw me like that. Even more embarrassed that Eleanor saw me like that; how awkward and disturbed she must have felt. And Jeanette having to corral me back into sanity… all four of them were probably terrified that I was about to completely go off the deep end and mentally abandon them for good, right when things were turning especially dire. Right when they needed my help more than ever.

As I finalized my food and water stockpile inside of our getaway machine, Jeanette busied herself by examining our entire supply collection as if to double check our work. Both of us wore a communication headset, knowing that, at any minute, Brittany, whose sole job at that point was to monitor the ship’s external cameras, would warn us of approaching Martians. 

Only Simon’s insentient self was inside the rover with us, so I decided to break the ice. “Is the ship ready to blow?” I nervously croaked, already knowing the answer as I had earlier overheard her telling Brittany that she no longer needed her help. Brittany wouldn’t have even been sitting alone in the cockpit at that very moment unless the Caesar was already rigged to explode.

“Hopefully,” she muttered, not even looking at me, or removing her attention at all from the small pile of handguns which rested just beside Eleanor’s pile of gauze and disinfectant. “There’s just so many variables. Any number of things could go wrong.”

I didn’t say anything at first. Not really knowing how to segue into it, I was frank with her. “Look, Jean, I’m sorry for-”

“Don’t apologize,” she interrupted me, pretending to keep her focus on counting the objects of that same pile for a third time. “You were traumatized and you reacted. We’re all going through a lot right now so everyone understands. Just move on and do your best.”

I nodded, gulping down my pride. She was angry with me, still. Of course she would be. I would have been angry at me. But I was grateful, at least, that I had an avenue to slowly but naturally move on from the scene that I had caused.

Suddenly, Brittany’s urgent yell blared through our communication headsets, causing us both to wince. “They’re coming! A whole horde of Martians! Headed this way!”

Adrenaline filled my entire body as the rest of the crew began scrambling from their various locations throughout the Caesar towards the cargo bay. As they arrived, Alvin first assisted Eleanor and then, a few seconds later, Brittany into the rover. All five of us took our places in the vehicle and settled, mentally preparing ourselves for our escape attempt. Alvin recklessly threw himself into the driver’s seat and buckled in. Jeanette stood behind him, knees slightly bent, prepared to crouch out of sight when the time was right. The rest of us sat on the benches in the rear section, next to where Simon laid. Weapons in each of our hands, loaded, safeties off, which we, admittedly, didn’t actually know how to use properly. 

This could be it. This could be our last sunrise.

Chapter Text

Jeanette’s POV

We sat, soaking in our own utter dread and anticipation. The horde of Martians was so massive that the steps they took in a marching unison, approaching the wreck of the Caesar, were audible not only from within the cargo bay, but within the rover inside of the cargo bay. The hissing, growling, screeching grew louder, more prevalent with each passing second. With Motherboard still inside the cockpit, we had no way to gain a visual on the invading animals, but their nearby presence was unmistakable. Their intention, their purpose; easy to theorize. To retrieve the new member of their species from our captivity or to wipe us out trying. Perhaps, our deaths were within the scope of their plans regardless of our cooperation with turning the young alien over. Whether to eat us or simply for putting them through the trouble of trekking all the way through the Martian desert. The soft patter of their tread, the imposing guttural noises irrefutably signaling their discontent, grew ever louder. They advanced towards our ship with patient determination.

“Everybody just keep calm,” I warned my crew under my breath. “And be ready for a fight, if it comes to that.” My faux confidence was betrayed by my trembling limbs, by the sweat collecting at the base of my fur, as I hunched behind the driver's seat, my face cautiously hovering directly adjacent to the left side of Alvin's head to the point that my breath likely tickled his ear. 

Every one of us were draped in the full assemblage of our Mars survival suits, save only for the helmets, which rested either safely in our arms or at least within reach, in case anything should necessitate a quick exit from the rover. Simon was the only chipmunk wearing his helmet preemptively, for obvious reasons. 

The imposing sounds of the massive army of Martians grew more prevalent by the second as they drew nearer. The sight of our ship, still incapacitated, resting against the rust-red mountain face in the dusty valley, like a critically wounded prey animal, seemed only to make their voices and their reactions more violent and threatening. Hisses, gnashing of teeth, howling into the wind, the scrape of their claws against dirt and stone. The fact that we could hear it all, though faintly, cowering inside of our rover… a pit formed inside of my stomach. Goosebumps festered across my skin.

The rover itself was inconspicuously tucked away in the far side of the hold compartment behind a messy collection of scrap, stacks of toolboxes, and various items of food and medical supplies that were not practical to load on board the vehicle. It wasn't fully hidden, but, hopefully, we were successful in our bid to make it unremarkable and subtle enough within our rushed timelines. 

“Everyone stay low and don’t make a peep,” Alvin warned everybody through gritted teeth in a tone barely above a whisper.

Feeling the pace and ferocity of my heartbeat quickening, I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, exhaled, leaned in closer to Alvin's ear. “It’s almost time.”

A few moments later, the sound of the marching horde came to an impressively abrupt stop. Every muscle in my body clinched. Where were they?

Suddenly, a violent scream erupted from outside the ship. So loud, so bloodthirsty, it made each of us instinctively duck, wince, nurse our ears. A scream that was instantly recognizable as coming from the queen herself. She was announcing her arrival to us in a way that seemed intentionally threatening.

Knowing that the moment of truth had come, I leaned over Alvin's shoulder and pressed the button which controlled the drop-down cargo bay ramp. With a violent, explosive gust that rocked and vibrated our ship, every molecule of air exited the Caesar the moment there was so much as a crack in the hull. All sealed doors on board had been intentionally left fully open in preparation for this. The yellow emergency lights began flashing overhead as the concurrent siren blared its deafening warning. The temperature and air pressure surrounding us rapidly dropped. The oxygen levels plummeted to near zero. The rover's windshield grew a thin layer of frost, which cracked and sizzled. The metallic innards of the Caesar became a barren, frozen, deathly tundra. There was no going back anymore; like Cortez after discovering the new world, we had, in effect, burnt our vessel to a crisp. With a great deal of luck, we were soon to do it for real.

No Martians were visible from our vantage point, but as the tip of the ramp groaned and creaked downwards towards the surface of the red planet, the imposing volume of their visceral reactions confirmed that they were near. 

As soon as it impacted the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust that instantly was dispersed and carried away by the wind, a pronounced, agitated hiss from the queen prompted her minions to begin flooding the ramp and climbing up into the cargo bay. Dozens swarmed inside, pushing, shoving, trampling past each other haphazardly as if expecting to be rewarded for their individual successes in killing us and finding their captured young one. The vast majority largely ignored the hold area, to include the vehicle that we were hiding inside of, and simply charged straight through into the passageway leading towards the rest of the Caesar's spaces. Some briefly paused on their way, taking the opportunity to sniff the air inquisitively, perhaps lift their heads and torsos by standing up on their hind legs and scanning the erratically messy storage room. None investigated much further, nor discovered us.

*Music Fades In* (Click here)

As the ship's warning system continued to screech in agony and periodically brighten our surroundings with its seizure-inducing yellow lights, and as Martians continued to thrust themselves inside and scamper past our field of vision, the temperature inside the rover, which remained de-energized to aid us in avoiding detection, steadily lowered to uncomfortable and borderline painful levels. 

The hideous creatures with tanned red scruffy fur, extraordinarily sharp teeth and claws, and black, beady, lifeless eyes continued rushing up the ramp and into the ship for nearly a full minute. We waited patiently and silently, hidden within the thin walls of the rover, behind the nondescript pile of rubbish. Finally, the stream of Martians trickled to a stop, with the final one to enter lingering beside the hatch that led to the same connecting passageway that each of its brethren intruded through. They had all undoubtedly forced themselves into various compartments within the ship, searching with an unrelenting ferocity for us as well as the queen’s offspring. The sounds of the scraping, clanking, and tearing of metal, the feeling of the ship rocking and shaking like an animal being eaten alive from the inside, were all confirmation of this. It would not be long before they found him, or us, for that matter.

Alvin turned his head to glance at me, impatiently goading me into giving him the order to commence our plan. But I hesitated, watching the lone Martian who remained in the cargo bay not ten feet from us, who held his spot by the doorway as if standing guard. I hoped to watch him abandon his post and join the others in their destructive quest. But he held steady. It was remarkable, as if he had had this specific task somehow communicated, and he actually possessed the cognitive ability necessary to follow the command. But that was not the time to ponder a groundbreaking natural phenomena.

Who knew how much longer the scavenger hunt would keep the dozens of aliens occupied, before one of them thought to inspect our true hiding spot? No, I decided, further hesitation would be a death sentence to each of us. Alvin raised his eyebrows at me, demanding that I give him the word, the frigid temperature causing him to shudder. I leaned in closer to him, my teeth chattering, and whispered, “n-now.”

Alvin straightened his head and his posture, now facing forward, studied his control panel briefly, drew in a deep breath, and exhaled through puckered lips so forcefully that steam ejected towards the cockpit window in a manner that appeared similar to the second-hand smoke of a cigarette. “Let's rock,” he muttered under his breath.

He wasted no further time pressing and holding the ignition button. The rover's battery kickstarted as its systems hummed to life in a painfully slow fashion. Lights, heating, screens, and instrumentation energized before our eyes. I had hoped that the noise and the flashing would not alert the nearby Martian as the final processes of the vehicle's startup concluded. Unfortunately, my hopes were quickly dimmed.

The creature, who snapped his head in our direction the second electrons began flowing through our electrical systems, stood on his hind legs, reared back his ugly head, and belched out the most rattling, vicious, raspy howl that I had ever heard. No doubt, he was attempting to alert his tribe mates of our location. 

Our heartbeats skipped into irregular patterns. The breathing of everyone within the confines of our rover quickened as its drive train finally indicated that it was ready for throttle. Alvin frantically put her into gear immediately before his right foot stomped the acceleration paddle into the floor. The instant torque of the electric engine abruptly lurched the rover forwards, sending all of its unsecured contents - namely, myself - flying backwards. I was able to catch myself, somehow, and regain my balance, only for the rover's two front tires to reach the descending slope of the cargo bay ramp. The forward end of the vehicle jolted downward, sending my uncoordinated self stumbling forward until my shoulder collided with the back of Alvin's driver seat. Perhaps, strapping myself in might have been a good idea, after all.

But there was no time to dwell on my mistakes. The rover skidded down the ramp with the lone witnessing Martian chasing us from behind with reckless abandon. Alvin did not ease on the gas, even as the front tires and the undercarriage of the cockpit collided and scraped against the surface of Mars. Dirt and debris were flung all around. Our necks snapped back and forth as the spring-loaded suspension jolted the fillings within our bodies. After rocking and drifting for a moment, with the oldest chipmunk’s well-timed maneuvering of the steering wheel, the rover stabilized in its course. The Martian sprinting to catch us from the rear launched himself from the top of the ramp with his claws bared. Fortunately, he overshot us. The alien’s front-left paw swiped the roof of the rover, but slipped with an awful screeching sound as he was sent tumbling into the dirt beside us, being left behind in a cloud of dust to gingerly tend to his brand new wounds.

Alvin lifted his right foot, causing our vehicle to quickly lose speed. The Martians had us surrounded; approximately fifty of the wretched creatures sat in anticipatory pouncing positions in a semi-circle formation, effectively blockading the only way in or out of the valley. Still several meters away, they posed no immediate threat. But the queen was easily discernible from the others, standing dead center, directly across from us, towering over the rest of her horde both in physical size and demeanor. She glared into our eyes through the windshield with tangible hatred, surrounded by her loyal pawns. 

As the rover continued to coast to a slower velocity, I leaned forward until my chest rested on the back of Alvin’s seat, and gestured with my left hand towards the center of the horde. “You think we could break through there?” I called into his ear, ensuring he could hear me over the rattling noise of the rover and its contents being tossed about by the roughness of our path.

“Worth a shot!” he answered emphatically, not taking his eyes off the road for a second. “Unless you wanted to ask them nicely to move?”

I shot him a disenchanted glare, which he received about a second later where he, after hearing no verbal response, glanced over his shoulders and locked eyes with me.

He cleared his throat with a chuckle and grumbled, “that’s what I figured.”

He slammed the gas pedal once again, launching us forward with a sickening acceleration, keeping the rover aimed directly at the queen. Despite the speed and power of the vehicle, the queen didn’t flinch, but instead stared us down as we charged towards her. The Martians surrounding her maintained their backs hunched, their hind legs bent, their teeth bared, their chops licked, as if desperate for the signal to attack. Alvin gritted his teeth as the rover’s velocity quickened. My muscles clenched. It was difficult to predict exactly what effect and what outcome this collision would have. The oldest Seville’s right foot never released, his resolve never folded, as the rover picked up speed, and we drew nearer and nearer to the furious army. The aliens steadily conjoined and creeped inwards towards their queen as we approached. At the last possible moment, her subordinate, who was directly adjacent to her left shoulder, leaped into our path to sacrifice himself and take the worst of the blow for her. This was the opening we needed, as Alvin jerked the steering wheel to the right and led us full throttle into the newly formed gap in the wall of Martians. 

The horde converged onto us with an impressive and terrifying ferocity, closing our window quicker than we could have anticipated. The first creature to collide with us threw its shoulder and the crown of its head into the layered protective bar of steel which Theodore had welded into the starboard side of our vehicle, attempting to reach out and latch onto the hull of our cabin with its claws. The impact jolted us greatly in the left direction, and forced a surprised squeal out of Brittany’s mouth. However, the alien failed to grasp the body of our vehicle. It managed to gain a hold on the metal bar for a few moments, where it painfully and desperately clasped on for dear life as its hind legs and right hip were dragged against the harsh terrain of the red planet by the momentum of the rover, before its arm strength finally gave in, and the alien lost its grip and went tumbling underneath our wheels. The excruciating yelps and shrieks of pain, the sounds of its bones crunching beneath our weight, were audible to us within the vehicle even as trampling the beast caused us to violently rock. Before the cabin or cockpit stabilized, yet another Martian launched himself towards us from an unseen position in front of and to the left of our field of view. It was as if he literally appeared from nowhere, giving Alvin no time whatsoever to react before he crashed into the windshield with a deafening snap that made our hearts skip a beat. As it skidded down onto and, soon thereafter, beneath our makeshift plow bumper, it left behind a long, jagged crack in the glass which extended all the way from the top of the window down to directly in front of the driver’s face. That animal, much like the previous one, was similarly sucked under and crushed beneath the rover’s tires. I clutched onto Alvin’s seat as our heads snapped in all directions. And had I not, I likely would have been flung into the ceiling. 

Just when we thought we were in the clear, the entire rover shook with a thud as a dreadful clang and a grinding scrape noise originated from the top of our roof. The queen had dove and landed on top of us. She was clutching into the steel frame armor reinforcing the rear end of the roof of the cabin with her talons, screeching furiously, intent to not allow us to escape.

It was now or never. I retrieved the keypad from my pocket, which I had manually reprogrammed and connected to the motherboard computer on the Caesar, from my pocket. With shaking, frantic fingers, I typed the code “1972” and pressed “Confirm”.

This began a chain of events within the reactor compartment of our doomed space ship which, the second I had lit the fuse, were reversible only by an act of God. The code that I had input into my makeshift remote, it sent the signal to the Motherboard to override the reactor control safeguards. With the coolant lines isolated from the core and the pressure relief valves gagged shut, the control rods began to slowly and steadily rise out of the reactor. Inside the vessel, the chain of millions of fissions per second sparked millions more, only accelerating at an exponential rate as the Boron rods were withdrawn farther and farther out of the Uranium pallets within. The temperature of the water began to rise, from just above two hundred degrees to, eventually, nearing one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. As the water temperature rose, so too did the pressure inside of the core; two thousand pounds per square inch… twenty five hundred, three thousand. Very much akin to a kettle with no vent to allow the hissing of steam to alert one that their tea is ready. A pressure cooker. At any moment, the titanium walls of the core would finally give in and fracture, nearly instantaneously releasing all of its contents - the hundreds of gallons of superheated, contaminated vapor water, solid chunks of melted uranium - all of it. Brittany had expertly and strategically spread, throughout the rest of the interior of the reactor compartment, literally all of the remaining rocket booster fuel that we had had onboard. She had doused pipes, valves, pumps, deck plates, all nooks and crannies alike with the highly flammable liquid. Rocket fuel has a flash point of approximately one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit - a number well below the temperature of the innards of the reactor at that very moment.

Alvin’s POV

The initial force of the jet fuel catching flame blew the cockpit clean off of the Caesar as if it were the white head of a pimple. Less than a split second later, the explosion began methodically travelling down the body of the ship, systematically blowing apart every section, until there was nothing left. Debris flying through the air and landing scattered throughout the valley was all that remained of the vessel that brought us to that desolate planet, as the lone surviving landing leg toppled over into the ground and found itself half-buried in dust. Steel, electronics, glass, Uranium pellets, were all launched into oblivion, crashing back into the surface at random locations and dangerous velocity. Every Martian who had forced themselves on board were blown to bits, becoming charred corpses and body parts, likewise being scattered into and around the mountain side. Every Martian, including, undoubtedly, the newborn offspring who was the focus of their entire mission.

The Queen peaked over her shoulder at the destruction behind her and yelped in horror. She leaped off of the back of the rover’s roof in a panic and began sprinting towards the flames that were still consuming the few disfigured remnants of our old ship. 

I didn’t dare stop the rover. I didn’t even look back. All five of us knew that there was nothing living left. Her child, and all of her minions that had been inside the Caesar were dead. Dead as doornails. Their bodies had been disrespectfully turned to ash. 

This was confirmed a few moments later when, even as we sped away from the scene as fast as our vehicle could carry us, an angry, hate-filled, grief-stricken screech erupted behind us. It was the Queen once again. It was as though she was calling to us that there would be no more deals. No more parlays. No more negotiation. No more delays. That there would be no saving us. No mercy. That if she got her paws on us again, she would kill us. 

The aliens that originally made up her blockade attempted to chase after us - and they kept up, for a while - but after several minutes, exhaustion apparently caught up with them, and they each consecutively halted and keeled over, choking up their breath, watching as we left behind in the Mars rover hauling itself at full speed. 

*Music Fades Out*

There was a lingering tension within the confines of our vehicle, even as the final Martian disappeared over the horizon. It wasn’t until nearly a full minute afterwards that everyone inside finally began to ease up. Our faces, once hardened and molded into thousand-yard-stares, now daring to glance about the cabin and ensure everybody else was unharmed, including Simon. We had put a great deal of distance between ourselves and the queen and what was left of her army. 

“Is everyone okay?” Jeanette finally called out towards the main section of the rover, towards the benches, where Theodore, Eleanor, and Brittany were still strapped in.

No one said a word, which, I hoped, meant that they were all physically in good condition but still mentally recovering.

“What about the supplies?” the chipette in the space suit with the purple trim pressed. 

I could see in the overhead mirror that the huge stash of food and ammo had been tousled about a tad, having had its restraints tested by an absolute thrashing in all directions during our escape. 

“Theo, could you make sure nothing’s too damaged?” Jean murmured as she hunched over, removed Simon’s helmet, and pressed her index and middle finger against the side of his neck. Eleanor rose from her bench seat and joined her sister by her side. 

Brittany, likewise, unbuckled herself, stood up on her feet, grabbed onto the hull of the rover for support as we rolled through the rough terrain, trudged up behind me, threw her arms around my chest as soon as she was within range. The sudden, unexpected weight of her body being thrust upon me actually caused me some pain and distress, especially given how focused I was on navigating us. “Are you okay?” I asked her in a soft whimper, clenching my jaw through my discomfort.

“No,” she responded bluntly in a low growl. “How far are we from the station?”

“Not far. Are you hurt?” I asked her, concerned for not only her health but the baby's as well.

“No,” she sighed, frowning, a look of stern worry overtaking her face, her eyes darting about for a few long seconds as if she were pondering a dark reality, before she finally took her right hand and clutched the bottom of her core with a wince. “My stomach hurts.”

My eyes widened as I immediately understood the fear that she was referring to. “How bad?”

She looked me in the eyes, shot me a reassuring smile and cooed, “the baby’s fine, I think. I’m pretty sure it’s just a tummy ache.”

I grabbed her hand with my right hand, keeping my left hand on the wheel and one eye peeled on the rugged dusty trail before us and our vehicle. 

“Nothing’s damaged, Jean,” Theodore exclaimed in elation. 

“Simon looks fine, too,” Jeanette breathed a sigh of relief before standing upright and turning her attention forward, towards myself. “Are we being followed?”

I whispered in Brittany’s ear, “could you check radar for me?”

She nodded and let go of my hand, turning towards the navigation screen to my left as I led us through a deep, plateauing crevice within the surface of the Red Planet.

“I don’t see anything,” she called over her shoulder. 

“Good,” Jean replied. 

“We’re coming up on the Marine Base,” I announced with a faint grin; one eerily reminiscent of the facial expression that I would traditionally wear when planning something I should not have been planning. As if I had just won something. 

You could practically feel the collective feelings of relief radiating off of every conscious chipmunk inside the cabin, despite the fact that we were not yet in the clear. I, for one, wasn’t letting up on the gas. Who knew how much time we had at that point to break into that base, revive its systems, set up, hide? There were still far too many obstacles yet to be overcome for us to allow ourselves to relax. 

I guided the rover sharply around the corner of the ledge to our right, revealing the massive, imposing, ransacked War Headquarters that Simon and I had explored days ago. As we approached, the other passengers gathered behind me to stare through the windshield, admire, gawk at the abandoned, run down structures. The Marine base still stood tall through the nasty Martian weather; the dusty winds, the sandstorms, the fierce dirty red clouds. The American flag was still flying, though it seemed only to be hanging on by a few threads. Solar panels covered in ash and dust were still scattered throughout the surrounding area. I only began to brake when we closed in on the garage. Our rover slowed to a stop just outside the entrance - the same towering door that my brother and I had utilized before. 

I put the vehicle in park somewhat recklessly, recoiling and cringing as I felt as though I had nearly damaged the stick. Peaked over my shoulder at Jean, lazily motioned up and to the right, towards the keypad outside, above our heads, attached to the building’s wall directly adjacent to the door.

She leaned forward and strained her neck to glimpse it. “Password one, seven, three, eight?” she chirped.

“Correct,” I grumbled. “I need someone to go out there and punch it in. We gotta get this door open, fast.”

Eleanor's POV

“I need someone to go out there and open the door!” Jeanette's call echoed into the cabin where the remaining four of us sat anxiously.

I glanced around and very quickly deciphered that the “someone” would have to be me. Brittany was pregnant. Theodore was… not the most capable of physically demanding tasks. Simon still laid incapacitated, where we left him, strapped into the floor of the rover. I sighed, unbuckled the seatbelt from around my waist, grabbed my helmet, tucked it under my left arm, rose to my feet, and announced, “I got it.”

My older sister gave me a waving gesture towards herself, inviting me to join her in the cockpit. I obliged as Brittany and Theo watched me shuffle past them with worry plastered on their faces. But none of them said a word of protest before I joined the middle chipette up forward. I placed my hand on her shoulder as she turned her back to me, hunched over, and tilted her head upwards. I followed suit, and likewise followed her gaze up the structure’s wall, taking quite a while to finally realize that she was staring at a grey keypad bolted about six feet high.

“Up there?” I groaned.

“Yep,” she murmured.

“The code’s seventeen thirty-eight,” Alvin snapped, “we need to hurry.”

“He's right,” Jeanette sighed, nodding, turning her head to look me in the eyes. “Who knows how far behind us the Martians are.”

I gave her an understanding but disgruntled nod and twisted my helmet around my cranium, creating an airtight seal. The vacuum-like whoosh blew my fur out of place. I took one deep inhale, then an exhale, enjoying how similar my breathing sounded to Darth Vader.

Without saying another word, I turned, trudged back into the rover's main cabin, towards the decompression chamber of the rover, a compartment built into the right side of the vehicle, big enough only for maybe three of us to fit at once. As I passed Theodore, I shot him a little wink, getting a nervous but cute smile in return. After entering the claustrophobic decompression chamber, and ensuring that I dogged shut the sealed door behind me, I pressed a single fist-sized green button, prompting the entire compartment to erupt in steam as the atmospheric conditions inside equalized with those of the hostile world outside. 

That was, as I found out the moment I opened the outer hatch, except for the damned wind. A sandstorm was beginning to pick up, and it was about as gradual as it was gentle. Which is to say, it was neither of those things in the slightest. What it was, potentially, was well-timed. A storm of the caliber that appeared to be carrying directly towards us, which I was able to glimpse on the horizon, had the potential to fully conceal the rover's tracks. It could be a good thing, I remarked to myself, so long as we all made it inside the abandoned NASA building beside us before being swept away. I found it difficult to stand up straight, with the harsh breeze steadily picking up in speed and intensity. Solid chunks of rock, sand and dirt whizzed past me. Some of the particles did not miss, flinging into my suit and glass helmet with nerve-wracking impacts. 

I peered upwards at the grey panel above me. It was as if it were teasing me, daring me to attempt to operate it. It was way too tall for me to reach, being designed for humans. Perhaps I possessed the plyometrics to jump high enough to grasp onto its top ledge? Worth a shot. I bent my knees, squatting as low as I could manage given the confines of my suit, then leapt upwards with the maximum power that I could muster. I made it to the bottom lip of the pad, but was unable to get a grip, then came crashing back to the ground. My feet hit the soft dirt first, but I was unable to keep myself from falling onto my bottom. 

Grumbling to myself in pain, I picked myself up and brushed the damp grind off of my rear end. I might have made it, if not for the restrictive suit I wore. But I was not about to let that deter me; I had a backup plan. As the force of the howling impending storm picked up all around me, blowing small rocks and sand particles into the glass of my helmet, I climbed onto the front-right tire of the rover. After standing straight up, I was just barely able to peek inside the vehicle's cockpit through the windshield, catching a glimpse of Alvin and Jeanette staring back at me.

I gave them both an over-emphasized, sarcastic smile and waved as my sister quickly fastened a headset around her messy bun. “Ellie,” she hissed, holding the microphone too close to her mouth. “Are you okay? Are you going to be able to do this or does Alvin need to get out there?”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head in annoyance. “I'm fine. I swear to God, if Alvin takes one step outside of that rover to help me, I will fucking bury both of you.”

“What?” Jeanette gasped in confusion.

At least my little quip earned a chuckle from the oldest chipmunk. A delightful reaction which I barely caught out of the corner of my eye as I grabbed a hold of a steel spike that he had welded onto the outer body of the rover, and used it to hoist myself upwards. Regardless, I ignored both of them as I utilized the multitude of makeshift defenses to climb onto the roof of the cockpit. They watched me until I disappeared from their line of sight. Sweat trickled down my forehead and into my eyes, the hike onto the top of our vehicle being more strenuous than I expected. 

The increasing wind shook and rocked the rover, causing it to vibrate. The cloud of sand picked up by the storm was beginning to envelop us. The sun was gradually being blotted out, turning the atmosphere into a dark brown hue. 

I hunched over, placed my hands on my knees, panting, allowing myself a few moments to catch my breath, while I stared at my target. The panel was now close to level with my eye-line. The gap I would have to jump to reach it was only a few feet; I'd have swallowed my pride and asked Alvin to readjust the position of the rover if I thought it at all necessary. I stood up, took a couple steps backwards, gave myself a running start, launched myself off the very edge of the windshield. My paws instinctively reached forward to brace and catch myself as I flew through the air, until I collided with a wham into the keypad. My stomach landed on its top ledge, instantly knocking the wind out of me. Despite the pain and my inability to breathe, I managed to grasp onto it with both of my front paws and keep myself from plummeting back down. To prevent myself from creating a second butt print in the Martian soil. 

I simply hung there, gasping and choking, eyes locked onto the dusty digital screen right in front of my face. After regaining my breath, I scanned the numerical digit buttons, and came to an embarrassing realization. Fuck, I thought to myself, what was the combination? I cursed myself for not taking the time to truly commit it to memory.

Suddenly, as if he had read my mind, I heard Alvin's smug voice ring through my helmet. “Seventeen… thirty-eight, Ellie.”

“I knew that,” I snapped at him in a low growl.

With sweat dampening nearly every strand of my fur, I used one hand and both feet to painstakingly punch and kick each button with as much force as I could create from my position. 1-7-3-8. Finally, after another deep breath, I pressed enter. 

The garage entrance began to slide open upwards, retracting into the roof with a rattling rustiness that caused me to involuntarily cringe. Alvin wasted no time in gunning the acceleration paddle of the rover and bringing it to a skidding stop inside. I released my grip on the panel and dropped down, failing in my goal to not imprint my ass into the dirt for a second time.

The jolting revelation of the garage door automatically reversing its direction and grinding back downwards motivated me to shoot back up onto my feet. I sprinted inside and did not stop moving my feet until I was directly beside the parked rover, only to realize I had more than twenty seconds to spare and that my haste was more than unnecessary.

However, eventually, the sliding door did clamp shut with a rickety, screeching thud. The brutal winds of the sandstorm became an eerie, hollowed, seemingly distant echo. The sounds of the debris battering against the structure were the only prevalent signs remaining that there was any storm at all.

Theodore’s POV

As Alvin threw the rover into park, I dared to glance down at my other brother's motionless body. The bloody bandage wrapped around his empty eye socket made me shutter. The rover’s engines hummed for a moment longer until they were shut off. Alvin unbuckled himself before both he and Jeanette made their way back to us. 

Together, my brother and I lifted the stretcher that Simon was resting on. I carried the end where his head laid while Alvin bore the weight of his legs and feet. Both of us immediately strained to maintain our grips. The girls, Jeanette and Brittany, were the first to pass through the decompression chamber and exit the vehicle, while my brothers and I were last to step foot onto the cold, sturdy, uninviting garage floor. Eleanor was just outside waiting for us, absolutely coated in red dirt.

“Where to now?” I asked in a hushed but urgent whisper. 

“We need to get to the control room,” Jean’s muffled, staticky voice responded through the speakers of my headset. Her eyes darted about the darkest corners of the massive room, drifting between the rugged human-sized war rovers and the skeletons that littered the ground.

Alvin nodded and humphed, “this way.” He pushed the cot forwards, towards an inconspicuous steel hatch, forcing me - still carrying my other brother's upper half - to strut backwards and keep pace so as to not trip over myself and fall. “And be careful,” he abruptly warned each of us.

The ever-confident chipmunk led me with his eyes and subtle head nods up a short flight of stairs. At the top: a hatch, dogged shut, with several labeled warning lights installed in the overhead. “Inner Door OPEN”, “Air Lock Pressurized”, “Chamber Transition In Progress”, “Seal Engaged”. None of which were lit. The dogging mechanism itself, being designed not only for human use but primarily for highly trained and fit military members, took a lengthy and difficult combined effort between the three girls to unlock. Even the process and teamwork required for myself and Alvin to maneuver ourselves, as well as Simon, over the lip of the knee knocker, in order to just enter the chamber, proved difficult. Once inside, there was an absolutely crestfallen look on each of the chipettes’ faces upon realization that they would have to repeat the same process. Not only to shut the outer door through which we had just passed, but again, momentarily, for the inner door. The girls’ reactions likely would have sent Alvin into a hysterical laughing fit under less dire circumstances. 

Upon the girls apparently deciding, as a group, that the outer hatch was fully shut and sealed, each of us individually took an unspoken note of the fact that no light bulb even flickered to confirm the validity of that belief. However, no hint of indecision, nor sounds of protest escaped from anyone's lips. The only conscious one amongst us who likely understood the full consequences of attempting to use that decompression chamber without a proper seal was Jeanette. If she felt comfortable giving it a try, that was good enough for me, personally.

Truth be told, I was surprised that the chamber worked at all with the run-down, tattered, wrecked condition of the station as a whole. And it did work, as far as my untrained eye could tell, confirmed by the atmospheric readings on our suits, after the vapor and depressurization waves subsided. Brittany took it upon herself to read them aloud to us, despite the fact that we each had the ability to scan them ourselves. “Twenty point seven percent oxygen… seventy-seven point four percent nitrogen… humidity thirty-one percent…” she trailed off a moment longer than between her previous readings, chuckled, and finally said, “temperature is negative ten degrees Fahrenheit.”

“I'll keep my helmet on, for now,” I whined as the three girls went to work on the inner hatch.

“Well, we won't have a choice but to take Simon's helmet off in the near future,” Jeanette groaned and strained between full body efforts to pry the dog free. I was confused by this statement, at first. But then, I remembered that, while the rest of us had only fitted our helmets around our heads moments before exiting the rover, Simon had been sucking down his own oxygen supply, literally, from the moment the Martians had approached the Caesar. “Hopefully, the storm dissipates. Soon.”

They eventually sprung the inner door and cracked it open. Eleanor finished the job by giving it a mighty push, swinging it wide, each centimeter causing its hinges to creak and moan in pain, revealing the hauntingly still, cold, ransacked passageway on the other side. It was dark, grey, gloomy. Dust bunnies half the size of a chipmunk floated aimlessly through the air, calmly flying in all directions, having been unsettled and propelled by the sudden gust caused by the opening of the hatch. With myself and Simon’s head still leading the way, we lifted him up over the knee knocker and shuffled down a flight of three metallic stairs. We paused at the bottom and waited, stewing in a growing soreness and discomfort from carrying our brother between us, for the chipettes to successfully complete the dogging process for a fourth time. The moment the inner hatch was shut and locked, they joined us, and we each trudged into the hallway. Surrounded both on our left and our right by giant green lockers, with paint that was severely faded and chipped. 

“They each belonged to one of the soldiers,” Alvin murmured matter-of-factly, as if he weren't stating the obvious.

“They couldn’t have known what they were up against,” Brittany whimpered in dumbfounded sadness, her gaze constantly, woefully bouncing between the hazy forest green wall of lockers on either side of us. 

“At least they were sent here to actually win,” Jeanette grumbled, rolling her eyes as she flicked on her flashlight and directed its beam towards our path directly down the hall. “Unlike us.”

As we neared the T-shaped fork at the end of the passageway, Alvin nodded his head at me and said, “Now take a right at this corner up here.”

“My right or your right?” I asked him, already exhausted, my backpedaling degrading into a pitiful backwards shuffling. My aching shoulders slumped from the pain as I entered the intersection.

“My right.”

“Oh, oka-” but the sudden, unexpected snappy movement in the corner of my eye, accompanied by a robotic whirring of gears, made me yelp out loud and nearly jump out of my skin. In my panic, I completely lost my grip on the stretcher, and Simon’s head came crashing down to the ground. His helmet thudded and cracked slightly behind his left ear. Heart pounding, hyperventilating, my eyes widened as they darted between my brother, lying helplessly on the cold steel floor, and the cause of my startle, just around the corner to my left. Two massive grey turrets automatically followed Simon with their barrels on his descent to the ground, lingered there for a moment, then re-fixated themselves onto me. The guns had not shot at me, but I was in utter shock regardless as it fully dawned on me that I had dropped my brother. I moved with a panicked frenzy to attempt to pick Simon up off the floor, as Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor rushed to my side.

Alvin carefully set down his own end of the cot, allowing our brother's feet to lightly tap the ground, glaring at me with furled eyebrows and legitimate disgust and fury. “Oh, God Theodore!” he scolded me, spreading his arms in a crystal clear what the fuck gesture.

Jeanette and Eleanor both knelt over to examine Simon and ensure he was still okay, while I kept both of my paws sheepishly covering my mouth. After examining his helmet, Jean determined that it was still air tight. Eleanor could only hope that the fall hadn’t made his concussion any worse. 

“Those are automatic sentry bullets,” Jeanette murmured at me, finally standing upright, before turning to face me and look me in the eyes. “They’re out of ammunition, just for future reference.”

I gulped and nodded apologetically, and we moved on. 

Alvin continued to lead us through the maze of hallways and compartments towards the control room. He never once stopped squinting at me with pure malice. I did what I could to avoid eye contact with him, or to acknowledge his disdain at all, keeping my gaze in any direction but his face at all times. I understood he was angry; it was a stupid mistake, dropping Simon, no matter how scared I was. But there was no harm done, so long as his helmet held up, so I wished he'd cut me some slack. After several more turns and maneuvers, the oldest of us chipmunks growled at me, “take a right up here. Your right. There are some more sentry guns there, so don’t get scared and drop our brother again.”

I glared at him and responded only with, “got it. Thanks.”

Truth be told, even as we passed by the second wave of creepy, menacing, automatic turrets, the biggest risk to Simon's head was not my fear but my absolute exhaustion. My back and hamstrings ached, my core and biceps were on fire. Sweat soaked my fur and skin to the point that I felt… mushy within my suit. But I shuffled onwards, peering over my shoulder periodically to get some sense of bearing or to predict our route to minimize the number of times I would have to bear Alvin's annoyed and impatient directions. If I were being honest with myself, I was too embarrassed to admit to him that my body was beginning to fail and that I needed a break, or too scared of his potential reaction.

It wasn’t that much longer - despite how much longer it felt, to me, at least - before we had arrived at the foot of the blockade that Alvin and Jeanette had been speaking to us about. And boy, did they reference it a lot. As if they were trying to encourage us by constantly reminding us that they knew where we were going. The blockade itself was a giant hodgepodge of a wall, made up of various welded-together metallic objects, including chairs, tables, poles, wires, and an impressively disjointed collection of random junk metal and rummage.

“Up there,” Alvin sighed, lazily pointing with his index finger towards what appeared to be a relatively small hole, haphazardly cut into the blockade, near the very top. “That’s the tunnel that the Martians carved through the wall. That’s how we'll get inside.”

“How are we supposed to get Simon all the way up there?” I exclaimed in protest, simply dying at the mere thought of carrying the weight of another chipmunk up the absolute mountain of steel and aluminum garbage that laid before me. 

“Oh relax,” Jeanette hushed me, not being able to help herself but to giggle at my very obviously petrified facial expression. “We’ll all help out. We just have to climb and keep him steady.” 

She said that as if it would be some easy, run-of-the-mill task. I rolled my eyes as Alvin and I stepped in unison towards the base of the wall. We came to rest momentarily, directly beside a piece of iron bar stock, angled upwards, that made up a small part of the lower support section of that pile of monstrosity. Following my brother's verbal direction, as well as my own impaired ability to see where I was placing my feet, I began to gradually ascend up the hill. Slowly, both my back and knees tirelessly bent, making sure to keep Simon’s stretcher as level as possible. Alvin followed closely, keeping his end of the cot above his head. The others climbed behind and beneath us, supporting our unconscious brother only periodically, whenever they were in a decent position, placing a hand underneath his stretcher. It was rare that more than one of them got a grasp or a push in at a time, and rarer still that these meager attempts eased the efforts of myself and Alvin in the slightest. 

Progress, true progress, felt impossibly slow in this manner. And painful. And dreadfully dangerous. One little, unfortunate slip, or misstep, and both me and Simon would plummet to our probable deaths. But we did, after what felt like hours for my mind, and days for my body, manage to reach the top. The relief and elation nearly caused me to collapse on the spot. My aching muscles and joints felt on the verge of giving in. Sweat was literally beginning to pool inside of the boot portions of my suit. 

I might have actually dropped, were it not for the solemn realization that my toiling was far from over.

Jeanette was the first to step into the tunnel, leading the way with her flashlight. Alvin was next, this time preceding me, so as to ensure that, on our way down the blockade, Simon's head would remain tilted up. I, naturally, followed directly behind my brothers. I simultaneously lifted my soggy feet and crouched, hunched over, using my outstretched arms to keep the cot from tipping while I maneuvered it and myself inside the uneven burrow. Every muscle in my body was burning relentlessly and fiercely. This was by far the worst part.

Eleanor, followed closely by Brittany, took up the rear of our group.

The hole was just wide and tall enough for us to carefully trudge through, so long as we kept our knees and backs bent. And it wasn’t smooth. Quite the opposite, as there were dozens of jagged edges sticking out at us from all directions. Jeanette would occasionally warn us as she passed them. The texture made sense, as the tunnel was literally created by a ragtag team of feral beasts that had cut through the entire blockade of steel, likely in a rush, literally with only their teeth and claws. We had to be extremely careful. Not only with Simon, but with our own body positions, so as to ensure that we did not accidentally poke a hole in our own Mars suits. The frigid temperature inside the station had caused the metallic surfaces that we were wiggling through to frost over with slick ice, making the endeavor all the more perilous.

“Now Theo,” Alvin muttered to me, still visibly out of patience, moaning and panting from the immense labor that we were experiencing together, “at the other end of this tunnel, you’re going to see that the floor is totally overflowing with skeletons.”

“Okay?” I grumbled, raising an eyebrow at him.

He seemed to pick up the pace, either from frustration or simply to spite me. “So don’t drop Simon.”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up, Alvin.”

But finally, we did come to the end of the tunnel. And nothing could have really prepared me for what was down beneath us. Bones, human bones, were literally stacked on top of each other, spread all across the floor. It was a relatively small room, but it looked like at least three score people had lost their lives in there. At the very center of the compartment was a massive, dark, dusty glass table.

“That’s what we need to get to,” Jeanette announced, pointing at the giant table with one hand while keeping her other hand on her knee, breathing heavily. As if it had been her that had just gone through the worst of that hell. “That’s the main computer interface. It should give us an idea of what the statuses are of the systems of this entire base.”

And with that, Alvin and I lost no time in beginning our exhausting, trying descent downwards, as we were both obviously anxious to be able to set Simon's heavy ass down.