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Nix followed behind, a barrier for me from the back. When Cyburn reached the top, he motioned for us to keep quiet and then he switched his light on to flood the area.
"It's all clear," he whispered and gestured for us to climb the rest of the way up the ladder to the tunnel overhead. "But we need to be extremely quiet and careful."
I nodded my understanding. Our eyes locked again. There was comfort and protection staring back at me in those dark eyes of Cyburn's that gave me the façade of feeling like I was safe. I knew he genuinelywantedto protect me, but we were outnumbered on an enemy ship. As badly aswewanted to seize control over the Belic's,theywanted to fight to protect it at any cost.
"Which way now?" Cyburn asked Silver, who was still on the communicator device with us. "The navigation on my tablet isn't working. I guess it's frozen because we are deep inside this tunnel."
"Give me a second to pull it up," Silver said.
"You haven't done that yet?" Cyburn asked impatiently.
"The system is lagging," Silver cut in defensively. "Just a moment."
There was a second or two of silence before she spoke again. "Alright, proceed to the left. At the end of the tunnel, you'll come to another hatch. This should lead you out into the main hallway again."
"It's too bad we can't detect whether the Belic will be waiting for us on the other side," Cyburn grumbled. "Something has my system frozen. There is like a hold on it or something."
"All you can do is try," Silver said. The A.I. sounded genuinely optimistic. "Something might be blocking the signal, and it might pop back up any moment."
We reached the end of the tunnel. Sure enough, there was a hatch just as Silver had said there would be. The promise of success could be waiting for us on the other side, or more danger could be lurking near. We wouldn't know until we got to the other side. It was forward or nothing.
My stomach was twisted into knots of angst. Every surface of my skin was broken out into a clammy sweat.
All I could do was hope for the best and keep my faith in Cyburn and Nix… and the rest of their crew that was currently on the ship distracting and killing off as many of the Belic robots as possible.
Cyburn lifted the hatch door with a grunt, but he could only get it about halfway up.
"Give me a hand, here, Nix," he said. "It's too heavy for me to lift on my own."
Nix came to Cyburn's aid and the two of them were able to lift the hatch completely open with another couple of attempts.
The hatch made a squeaking noise as it yielded. Cyburn and Nix exchanged a worried glance with each other. They were breathing hard and looking tense.
All three of us paused a moment, just waiting to see what might happen next. The only sound was the pounding of my heart through my chest and eardrums.
"Alright, it looks like we can make it through to the other side," Cyburn said after the squeaking noise of the hatch door didn't cause any disruption, and after he had craned his neck to peer inside. "There is nothing in there," he confirmed.
This tunnel went straight across, so, we didn't have to do any climbing. Wedidhowever, have to crawl.
"Are you going through?" Silver asked.
"We are trying, now," Cyburn advised. "Nix and I can barely fit, but we're managing."
"Good, let me know when you've reached the other side."
I got on my hands and knees and followed Cyburn. Nix was behind me again.
We crawled through the darkness in silence, but I knew we all had only one thing going through all three of our minds… and that was getting the hell out of here alive and in one piece.
The tunnel was rough on my knees. It was cold and hard and hurt like hell, but it was shorter than the other tunnels we'd had to pass through so far.
When we reached the other side, it took Cyburn and Nix threemoretries to shove the hatch door open.
"It must not have been used in a while," Cyburn said. "It doesn't seem like a heavily trafficked area anyway."
"No, I suppose not," I said, out of breath as we climbed out and stood back up to stretch and gather our bearings. "I suppose that's also good for us."
I pushed my frizzy brown hair off my face. It was matted to my neck and temples because I was sweating so profusely.
