Scene 2 - Girl of Hope II (Skylost Chronicles)

The journey continues for Sage.

Sage hoped to make her way to the lower decks of the ship in quiet, but abandoned the idea when she reached the lateral causeway. The path around the old furniture factories was supposed to be desolate and easy to sneak through, where one could be accompanied by the old scents of dust and wood that hung in the air even so many years after shutdown. But the dozen children who pulled rickshaws filled with scrap metal drowned out the peace.

She had to stand taller and wear a grin, even though all the rushing children paid no direct attention to her. When she performed a cheerful wave, the youth, which looked to be underfed ten-year-olds, perked up and moved faster. She wondered for a moment if they regarded her as their Champion, or if they feared she might be a taskmaster. The cramped causeway was barely large enough for the children and their carts, and she felt bad every time one of them sidestepped in order to squeeze out enough room for her to pass.

The children with their rickshaws rushed by, from the port side with an empty carriage, and back from starboard with a stack of metal pipes and sheets. She aimed to move beyond whatever was keeping them busy, and paced along the causeway until she passed the shelf factory. Then she passed the desk factory. Then she passed the chair factory and the unusual smell of tanning oils that she could never get used to. Half the length of the nineteenth deck, and the children worked without end.

The causeway reached a large garage at the backs of the abandoned table and floor panel factories. It was an unremarkable area of the ship, half the size of the gym, with no equipment or supplies after years of disuse. Except that morning, when a pile of scrap metal laid in the center of the garage, along with a web of wires that networked across the floor from a central point, where a giant mechanical box towered over the one adult in the room.

Sage recognized the man and did her best to hide that she was startled. "Foreman Rogers? Good morning."

The thirty-year-old man with a deep gaze broke his attention away from the mechanical box he inspected. He wore a gray worker's outfit and cradled a large battery canister in his arms while he looked at Sage with an equal amount of badly-hidden shock. "Good. G-good morning." He snapped to attention when he bumped open a panel on the side of the giant box that stood more than a foot over his head. "Did you come down here to volunteer?"

"I wish I had the time!" Sage shuffled sideways, hoping she could avoid the conversation. "But I'm not sure what job you're all up to."

"Better off that way." Rogers winced and ducked sideways when a pair of children raced by with overloaded rickshaws. "No racing!"

Sage worried for a split second when she saw how scared the foreman looked at almost being hit. "Need help with that battery?" She craned her neck to see the top of the mechanical box. "My friend Adriana knows more about generators than I do, but I'm sure I could help lift that."

"No problem here." Rogers strained to lift the chest-sized battery canister into place to slide it into a socket in the generator's side. "Besides, for safety's sake, I need to take care of this one." His face scrunched as if he'd said too much. But his self-review ended when two boys and four girls raced into the room to load up their carts. Fear overcame him when they rushed past. "No racing! No going close to me! You must remember that!"

Sage's pulse chilled at what she was able to put together. There was one source of energy dangerous enough to cause so much concern. "Is that an aethergen canister?"

Rogers' face went grim. "Only a single molecule in this one. But it'll provide a bounty of power for months. Enough for three floors worth of equipment." He chuckled away his nervousness. "Mighty powerful, and mighty dangerous."

Sage shuffled sideways, hoping to break away from the discussion. But her curiosity forced her to keep talking. "Is Captain Hale reinstating the old factories down here? That would be a lot of jobs."

Rogers smirked for a split second before he winced and pushed the canister into the generator. "On the nose. And the jobs start with these kids."

Sage nodded and examined the youth who rushed in and out of the room. "I don't recognize any of them. They're not from the Solvang, are they?"

Rogers shook his head and eased his shoulders to make the final push. "All transfers from around the fleet. New jobs means a need for more people. Expect to see a lot of new faces."

"I wish I had time to meet everyone." Sage fought a small panic attack. She didn't want to say anything about the coin in her pocket.

Rogers grunted before he talked. "Have you heard from the judges about whether or not you're the Champion?"

"Actually, I-" Sage backed away from a speeding rickshaw just in time to keep her feet from being run over.

The racer's opponent, a young boy with a full cart, lost control when he tripped over a tangle of wires near the generator. His cart bounced and swung loose in his grip before the metal frame slammed into the back of Rogers' leg.

The foreman roared in pain and fell backwards. He had almost finished loading the battery, but it fell out and landed partially on his chest while one rounded corner clanked against the rusted floor. The huge battery hissed and a thin trail of steam shot out of its top seam. The deadly hot trickle scorched right through the man's pants and caused him to howl in pain before he fully settled from his fall.

Sage lurched forward, instinctively wanting to rush in, but her better judgment forced her to stand back and assess the situation. She was glad she did when the battery canister rolled off Rogers' chest. Small pools of hot water formed near the foreman's legs, but the device went on to burn his hands and feet on its next couple rotations. She realized it could have been her who was burned had she rushed in.

"Evacuate the room!" Rogers struggled to control the rolling canister as best he could with his reddened, blistered hands. The battery's hiss grew louder and a second jet of steam shot out near the first, burning his arms and hitting him across his cheek and nose. He howled again, but pinned the canister under his body. "Evacuate and seal off the garage! Now!"

The eight children in the room, including the boy who's cart caused the accident, milled in a state of shock until the second order. Then they ran to the door to the lateral causeway without looking back.

Sage approached the foreman with cautious urgency. She made sure she could see Rogers had a secure grip on the battery canister before she moved closer to the danger. She examined him more, and found his eyes were swollen shut from the massive burn on his face. "Is there a way to shut this off?"

Rogers shook his head a little. "It's an aethergen containment breech. You can't shut it off. And you don't have enough time to figure out how to close the emergency lock." He fought a shiver. "This whole room's going to be an inferno. Get out of here!"

Sage maneuvered around the canister and ripped it free from the foreman's weakened hands. It was far heavier than she expected, being almost solid metal to house multiple levels of containment systems.

"The emergency lock is probably busted." Rogers grasped at the air, unable to see. "If the automatic barriers didn't engage, the whole thing is probably damaged. This is the price we pay for messing with aethergen as a fuel." He flung his arms through the air. "Leave. Now!"

Sage dragged the heavy canister toward a mechanic's trench at the edge of the garage. The divots in the metal floor panels and the thick wires caused the device to rattle and bounce as she dragged it past. A pair of steam jets joined the first two and almost scorched her hands.

A disembodied whisper of broken syllables sounded out.

Sage glanced back at Rogers for a moment, but found he was still on the ground, protesting with his arms outstretched. The whispers continued, not from Rogers or from anywhere else in the room, but seemingly from somewhere near her own hands. She continued her charge toward the trench against the mighty weight of the device. When she looked down at it, the whispers grew louder.

"Rifice," the disembodied voice said in a whisper that sounded like a frightened child.

Sage finished the journey across the garage floor and swung the battery into the trench. Another jet of steam emerged and shot out near her gray slipper. The heat was intense, but missed her by inches, enough to keep from burning her feet.

"Sacrifice," the whisper said among its cacophony of broken syllables.

Sage rushed to a nearby control panel on the wall and punched a large, yellow button. A pair of mechanical doors shut over the trench and sealed the accident for the time being. She sighed and regarded her small victory.

The whispers faded and finally went away with the final booming clang of the trench doors.

Rogers was standing when Sage came to his side. He huffed in frustration. "Any last words, dear girl?"

"We're not dying today." Sage wrapped her arms around the foreman and led him toward the causeway door. "I bought us enough time to get out. How well can you walk?"

Rogers limped under Sage's guidance. "Not well." He fumbled to get his swollen toes past a tangle of wires. He groaned and forced his left eye open against the pain of his burned face. "We'll live. Thank you!"

The room heated up to sweltering within the minute it took for the two to cross the garage and reach the causeway door.

"The dangers of aethergen," Rogers said with a chuckle. "And to think, you might have to go down and deal with a raw orb of that terrible stuff." He leaned in to see a control panel on the other side of the doorway, pressing the correct buttons to seal the room. "Which reminds me. Have you heard from the judges yet?"

Sage searched for the best way to avoid lying to the man. "It's like the whole ship is waiting for the league's decision about me."

Rogers limped away from the sealed doorway to begin a slow trek through the causeway. "They'll let you know soon enough. I'll bet they name you Champion." He grunted in a mixture of thought and pain when he declined Sage's offer to help him walk. "You're a strong young woman. The league is right to use volleyball to find Champions. You're fit, agile, and know how to take control in an instant. I can't say the same for the other little ones in the fleet."

A pair of children lingered in the causeway ahead. They perked to attention when they spotted Rogers and Sage.

Rogers pointed a blistered hand at the youth. "You two, go to the comm station on Deck Seventeen and call for a hazard team to clean up this mess."

The children bowed in response, then scooted through the narrow passageway, their tiny feet echoing against the metal.

Rogers forced his left eye open a little more to return Sage's stare. "Don't be so concerned. The kids got to safety. I'm fine." He chuckled and grunted in thought. "Of course, safe and fine are relative. Look where we are." He raised his burned face to gaze at the low ceiling panels of the causeway. "Some people used to say the Void is nothing but the Earth's ghost, and we're trapped inside it."

"That's ridiculous." Sage grinned at the absurdity of the idea. "Everyone knows the Void is an alternate universe with its own physics."

Rogers shifted and he let out a painful wheeze. "Is that what they teach you in the classrooms?" He limped along without help, adapting to the situation with each step. "The Cypress War was fought because so few people believed what you call common knowledge."

Sage did her best to quell her anger. "The Cypress War was started by people who couldn't face the fact Earth was lost. They wanted desperately to build a portal to a world that was gone."

Rogers opened his left eye all the way, save for a puffy eyelid. "The classroom facts you've been taught? Probably as bogus as the ghost beliefs. I'm sure you've heard the theory that there are multiple Earths out there, and the Void is nothing more than the empty veil between them."

"Of course I've heard of that theory." Sage wanted to leave the foreman be, knowing that he was safe. "As long as we're throwing out odd beliefs, I've also heard the theory that this is the surface of another planet, or the one that says the Void is actually Earth after a disaster transformed it."

Rogers huffed and shook his head. "I wasn't old enough to fight in the Cypress War, but I'm old enough to remember walking on Earth. And I'm certain this Void, this terrible place, is in no way a planet. Especially not Earth."

A long moment of uneasy quiet passed as the two glared at each other.

"I didn't mean to insult your beliefs," Sage said. "I'm sorry." She wondered which of the wild theories the foreman believed in, but didn't care to push the conversation into offense.

Rogers nodded. His face turned a deeper red in the interim, almost giving him a furious look. "Likewise."

The foreman used his wrist to pat the girl on the shoulder. "You'll probably be the next Champion. So you'll have to go down there to retrieve more aethergen. Just so we have the needed fuel to keep living. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing here, our way of life depends on Champions like you. So thank you, for saving me and for your future duties in protecting us all."

"You needed help. It was the only choice." Sage again wanted to sidestep to avoid the conversation. After seeing how dangerous a microscopic particle of the material could be, she wanted to push her Champion duties out of mind for as long as she could.

"Helping people isn't the only choice." Rogers waved a hand out to the causeway as he approached a stairwell. "The others chose to watch or run, as people usually do. Your choice was to help even though you could've been killed. You're a good person. So good it's a problem."

Sage furrowed her brow in confusion. While she wanted to escape the situation, she didn't like the insinuation that she was a nuisance.

Rogers huffed in thought before he placed his hand on a stairwell. "People don't just wander down here. You're up to something. I'm up to something, too. There's about to be an investigation. You don't want to get caught up in it. And I don't feel like digging into what you're up to. So let's do each other a favor and go on as if we never crossed paths."

Sage nodded in cold silence. Panic overtook the back of her mind as she considered what type of operation was going on.

Rogers went up the first steps of the stairwell. "You probably weren't going to admit to anyone you came down to the abandoned decks. So this is one more thing to omit. Enjoy wherever you're going."

"May your recovery be quick." Sage went on the downward steps of the stairwell.

Rogers chuckled. "As bad as the burns are, they're the least of my worries. I get to have some long talks with Vice Captain Okawa."

Sage patted the coin in her pocket as she continued her journey to the lower decks. The cold echo of the stairwell was somehow lonely and comforting at the same time.