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Then Jere made it through.

"Jere!" Reyna shouted, not even bothering to cover her relief. She ran to him and threw her arms around him. He stumbled into her embrace, but raised his arms to envelope her. "Are you okay?" She asked.

"I'm okay," Jere said, a bit too flatly for Reyna's liking. She pulled out of the hug but kept her hands on his arms.

"What happened?"

He looked at her. She noticed a scrape over his eyebrow, small droplets of blood dripping from it down the side of his face. "Everything, Rey," he replied, his voice sounding hollow. "All at once."

"What do you mean?"

"Everything just... failed. All the equipment, all the instruments, all the systems. They just shut down, or exploded even."

"Exploded?"

Jere nodded. "I have no idea what happened. But whatever it was, it knocked our whole set of shuttle equipment clear on its ass."

"Did anything make it back?"

Jere shook his head. "I doubt it. Everyone saw what was happening and Elena shouted to activate emergency retrieval protocol over comms. So we all began PERS-ing back."

At his words, Reyna's blood ran cold. She turned away from Jere, looking around at all the crew members surrounding her. She stood on that bridge and counted them, one by one. She knew the entire team roster by heart. It was the same team Elena always took with her when she accompanied missions.

Reyna mentally counted each name against the list in her head, ticking each of them off as the PERS beacons activated and her people came home.

She got to the end of the list, and only two names remained.

"Where's Elena?" Reyna asked, looking towards Jere. Jere's sudden attention at her words made Reyna's stomach drop out from under her.

"She's not here?"

Just then, another PERS beacon activated, flickering against the floor as the person came through.

It was not Elena.

"Are you okay?" Reyna asked the crew member when they made it completely through. "What happened?"

"I was..." the crew member started, trying to get it together. "I was away from the team when everything happened, working on the containment enclosures. I... I heard the Captain call for PERS activation, but something wasn't working." The crew member began to tear up, and Reyna bent down, sitting next to them on the floor, reaching out and placing a hand on their shoulder.

"It's okay, you're here now," Reyna remarked. The crew member nodded, taking a shaky breath. "Can you tell me what happened next?" Reyna asked, as Jere joined her on her right, sitting next to her and listening to the crew member's story.

"I called for help. That's when I saw the Captain running to me."

Reyna's heart skipped a beat.

"She came to me and took out her datapad, trying to reconfigure my PERS device on the ground."

"That's our Elena," Jere said.

"She obviously got it to work," Reyna commented.

"She did," the crew member replied. "She told me I was good to go, backed away, and activated her own PERS device. That's when I activated my own and, well, here I am."

Reyna's throat went dry. "You're saying Captain Voss activated her PERS devicebeforeyou?"

"Yes," the crew member responded. "Where is she, by the way? I need to thank her properly."

Reyna felt her world suddenly close in. A black shadow began to cloud her vision, making details disappear. Sounds began to buzz around her, no longer making sense. All she could feel was the sudden presence of Jere holding her tightly again, his hands gripping her shoulders as they sat on the floor.