Chapter Four

30 minutes later

Maria cautiously walked up the steps of her old friend’s mansion with her shear at the ready, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She noticed the door was still open and carefully entered the building. She looked around and saw that Quasar was still upstairs, being quieter than usual.

“He’s sleeping? Should make this a hundred times easier.” She said as she made her way up the stairs, still being careful. The stairs creaked slightly under her weight as she made it to the top of them and she made her way to Quasar’s office. When she entered, she noticed that his computer was still open and on.

She quietly snuck towards it and began to frantically search through it for any traces of her work. She opened his file container and saw it right there on the top of all of the other files. She moved the cursor on top of it and double clicked to open it, but she gasped. It was empty. Completely empty.

“I saw you coming from a mile away.” Quasar said as he walked inside of the room. Maria tried to grab her Shear from the desk, but Quasar quickly raised his pistol and shot her in the shoulder. Maria grunted before she backed into the glass window behind the desk. “You're not as silent as you think you are, Mrs. Salvador. Creeping down my stairs, and then setting fire to your lab? You’re as subtle as an Inter-stellar Locomotive.”

“You lied to me.” Maria spat through her teeth. Quasar’s expression changed from anger to sympathy before his gaze hardened again.

“It was necessary. I have plans for this sector, and the future of the galaxy as a whole.” He said as he steadied his aim at Maria. “Now, do you want to join me? Or do you want to die?” Maria didn’t even take a second to think on that offer. She wouldn’t listen to Quasar now, not after he just shot her.

Maria glared at him, and gripped his pistol harder. She looked down at her shear still on his desk, and her gaze went to the window behind her. That’s when an idea popped into her head. She slowly inched forward, and Quasar aimed.

“You know, Quasar, you’re a prick. A grade “A” prick, but you’re not all bad.” Maria said.

“And what have I done that’s good?” He asked her. Maria smiled.

“Have a shitty window placement.” She said as she quickly grabbed her shear and threw it at him. Quasar shot his pistol before his shoulder was impaled. The stray bullet hit the window and shattered the glass. Maria took a deep breath before jumping through it and rolling on the ground. She looked back up to the window and cursed at herself before rising to her feet and continued to run. “Damn it. I gotta get that equation outta his hands.” She said to herself.

She ran towards her ship, and a sign caught the corner of her eye. She looked at it and noticed it was a directory. The arrow pointing to the right led to the docking bay, where her ship was. The arrow pointing in the opposite direction was led to-

“The Allom containment facility.” Maria said with a gasp. That’s when a thought crossed her mind. When Allom is under extreme pressure it can detonate causing a gravitational disturbance to one of a black hole. If Maria could pressurize it just enough she could cause Apollo to be ripped apart and- No! What was she thinking? She didn’t have any way to-

“Mrs. Salvador?” Maria jumped at a new voice. She looked around for its source before finding that her phone was on and Apollo was projecting his face onto it. “Why is Mr. Quasar asking for me to report your location?”

Maria grabbed her phone out of her pocket and stared at the project of Apollo. Could she really ask this of the A.I.? Then, the lesson she learned all those years ago echoed through her mind. Salvadors don’t do thing because they want to-

“We do them out of necessity.” She whispered to herself. “Apollo, can you do something for me?”

“What is it?” He asked.

“I need you to pressurize the Allom containment facility.” Apollo’s digital eyes widened at that announcement. She wanted him to do what?! His purpose was to keep everyone on Apollo alive. He couldn’t do that. “Apollo, I know you were programmed to keep everyone here safe, but if you don’t...bad people will do some very bad things.”

Apollo looked at one of the only residents he could legitimately call a friend. Her pleading eyes and desperate voice made it hard to deny her, and, for whatever reason, for once he felt a gut feeling. He didn’t have one, but he felt it. He knew he could trust her.

“Alright, but promise me something?”

“I’ve been making a lot of promises today.” She stated through a teary laugh.

“Promise me that you’ll be back. And we can do math again, that was really fun.” Maria smiled at the plant-wide A.I..

“Sure, Apollo. We can do all the math we want.” She said. Apollo nodded his projection before alarms could be heard in the direction of the Allom. “That’s my que?”

“Yep!” Apollo said before a holographic path illuminated Maria’s pathway to her ship. “Goodbye, Maria.”

“Hey, Apollo, this isn’t goodbye. Think of it as...see you later, alligator.”

“What’s an alligator?” Apollo asked. Maria chuckled while standing and moving towards her ship.

“I’ll tell you after we save the galaxy.” Maria said as she turned off her phone and ran towards her ship. As she loaded onto it and revved up the engines, she heard a giant boom and her ship feeling like it was leaning forward. The Allom was activating. She engaged the thrusters and pulled off the planet's surface and used a large amount of fuel to dash forward and make it out of the planet’s artificial gravity range. “Yes!”

She turned on her ship’s back camera to see what the planet looked like and watched in horror as a giant white ball of Allom engulfed a fourth of Apollo and sucked in more and more. Then, it jetted out the debris causing the debris to come hurtling at Maria’s ship. She gripped onto the steering and tried to move out of the way, but a piece of debris hit her engines and froze her in place.

“No!” She exclaimed as she banged on the steering and tried to get it working. As she tried to get it to work, a giant piece of debris approached the cockpit. Maria looked to her right and her eyes widened as she saw the piece heading straight for her. She braced for impact before a bright blue light surrounded her and her ship and slowly pulled her upwards towards its source.

After what felt like hours, she felt gravity settle back onto her as she was pulled into the light’s source.

“Must’ve been a tractor beam.” Maria thought to herself. She walked towards her ship’s exit and opened it to be greeted to an entire landing bay’s worth of men with rifles.

“Mrs. Salvador!” A man in the back said. “Welcome to the den of the commission."

30 minutes later

“-Now, you’re about to be..disposed of.” One of the commission members told her. Maria was tied down to the floor and struggled against her restraints. “Quasar’s dead with the equation, and you’ve proven to be too problematic. So, we regret to inform you, you’re services are being discontinued.”

“Go ahead and kill me!” Maria exclaimed. The commission members all looked at each other before laughing. “What’s funny?”

“You just cost us intergalactic domination. You don't get death.” One of the members said. “Bring in the device!” When he said that, an armed guard walked in with a remote and an empty metal frame filled with wires and metal bars. 

He positioned the frame behind Maria before handing the remote to the commission. Maria watched as he pressed a button and the frame behind her began to glow a bright and eerie white glow. The guard walked over to her and pressed a button on his arm that released her bindings. She tried to run but he grabbed onto her arm tightly and she caught a glimpse of his tag: Kelden.

“Go ahead and throw her in.” The commission ordered. The guard moved her towards the portal and Maria struggled.

“Bye. Bye. Salvador.” One of the commission members said as Maria’s vision was engulfed in white.

The End. Or it was.