confronted him. The positions of the other members of my crew came to mind. Lee, Jose...all dead.
Val...
“You said you saw Val the day we landed here. Do you remember where she was when you came?”
He rubbed the back of his head.
“I’m not sure, now, if it was her. It could’ve been just one of your men. Humans are rather puny, male and female.”
“Right...” I’d argue with that statement if I weren’t so distracted by my thoughts.
I walked over to the main control panel.
“Is something wrong?” Wyck had caught on to my lack of attention.
“I have several cameras installed around this area.” I turned on one of the screens on the panel. To my relief, it came to life immediately. “One is between the medical chamber and the space suit storage hatch, two over the dining table next to them, two right here.” I pointed at either side of the main control panel. “See those little dark spheres? They’ve been here all this time. They’re off now, but the recording was on during the landing. That was an event I definitely wanted to get on camera. The last time I saw Val, she was lying by the wall near the storage hatch. The camera over there by the cabins should’ve caught her.”
Running my fingers over one of the screens of the control panel, I pulled out the folders containing the footage. It was organized by date and camera number.
“Look.” I tapped on the date of our arrival, bringing up the footage from the camera over the cabins.
The echo of that day’s horror rushed over me again as the images came to life on the screen. Wyck’s back came into view as he stood over me, his shoulders squared, his hands fisted at his sides. I’d been on the floor, too close to the wall, only my legs were in frame. The full frontal of Nocc, however, was visible. The broken body of Lee on the floor behind him. And further back, behind the round table...
“There she is!” I pointed at Val’s figure curled on the floor, the bright sponsor logos on her uniform suit glowing in the shadows.
“I knew I saw a woman!” Wyck exclaimed triumphantly.
The two errocks on the screen threw punches at each other, and the small figure by the wall stirred. Slowly, she crawled under the table, then behind one of the chairs, and out of camera range.
“She was alive! There must be more videos. There has to be...” I opened every single folder marked with that date, closely examining the images taken by each of the cameras.
Unfortunately, I had no camera pointed on the exit from the ship. Back then, before Nocc cut the hole in the hull, it was just a boring wall with some storage cabinets. There had been nothing to film at that angle until that day.
“No...” I groaned, disheartened. “What happened to her?”
Val had been injured during the landing. Even perfectly healthy, a woman had a slim chance of surviving this place for long.
“I hope she’s okay, that she’s still alive, somehow.” I bit my lip as it began to tremble. Tears prickled behind my eyelids.
Wyck hugged me from behind. “If the worst has happened to her, sugar, we would’ve found something by now. A body part, some of her clothing, blood—something.” He kissed the side of my face. “No one has seen anything. That has to be a good sign.”
That had to be because I refused to lose hope of finding Val alive one day.
“We’re here now,” he continued. “We’ll be here if she comes back.”
I nodded, drawing in a shuddered breath. “Maybe we could figure out a way to put a camera outside the entrance, in the corridor? That way we’d see her even if she can’t push the slab away to get in.”
“Good idea. It’d be helpful to see who comes to the door. Now...” He released me from his arms, turning around to face the room again. “I need to hide you better than this. Where did you say those cabins were?”
“Right here.” I walked over to the wall covered with beige, textured paneling, the same as the rest of the ship’s interior. The two vertical slits running up from floor to ceiling could easily be mistaken for seams between two pieces of the wall material. However, a small square screen at my eye level lit up when I waved my hand in front of it. I pressed my palm to it, and a wall panel slid aside, revealing