Ange and the rest of the team had just spent the last twenty-four hours trapped inside of the alien ship.

At first, they had almost resigned themselves to the fact they were trapped. With PBD threatening them not to make any moves and Ariana confirming that they didn’t have enough power to tunnel their way out, the team thought they were trapped.

Ange’s initial spurt of adrenaline had died down too. She wasn’t feeling too keen on wasting what energy they had digging through random tunnels. When she’d first attacked PBD, she’d assumed they were still at the air lock door.

It had been clever of PBD to trick them like that.

It wasn’t until several hours into the journey that Ariana told the team they had stopped accelerating and a slight twinkle of hope reemerged from the team.

They cautiously cut a hole through one of the doors, expecting PBD’s voice to come back through the speakers threatening them. But when it didn’t come, they had gotten a lot more confident.

Since then they had dug their way through several hallways, each time taking a random guess on where the exit was.

Without a map, they were just blindly taking guesses on where to go next. And at one point they had to completely backtrack their steps when it became obvious they were moving deeper into the alien ship.

Ariana had pointed out that they were being bombarded with fewer and fewer high-energy particles, which is what gave them a bit of confidence that they were heading in the wrong direction.

Since then they had been moving in a relatively straight direction, toward what they hoped was the outer side of the alien vehicle.

To conserve energy, the team are no longer projected themselves using the hapticgraphic projectors. They were all in a very limited simulated world. Basically a white room that to Ange felt a bit like sensory deprivation.

They also periodically switched off.

Ariana woke the team up. Ange assumed she had just completed her scan and was ready to tell them which direction they should head next.

“Are we getting any closer to the outside of this ship?” Ange asked.

“Yes,” Ariana replied. “But that’s not why I woke you up. There’s something happening behind us. Back where we came from. I’m picking up vibrations in the walls.”

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That is slightly concerning, Ange thought. “Is that one of the Atua coming for us?”

Ariana nodded. “I assume so. If we were right, and they experience some kind of power failure, then this is probably them on their way here to stop us before we put a hole through something important. The vibrations are getting closer to us, so they’re headed our way.”

Ange looked around the room; they were in a relatively exposed location. The tight room wouldn’t give the eleph-ANT much space to move. And where they’d cut the hole in the wall, any oncoming intruders would simply be able to shoot out the legs of the eleph-ANT before they even got a chance to shoot back.

Ange thought back. A few hundred meters down the hallway was a large open chamber. That would be an ideal spot for fighting back, if they needed to. She knew that on some level it would be futile to fight. But she forced that doubt to the side by convincing herself that this was different. The alien didn’t have complete control of the ship any longer. They were just as weak as her. “How long do we have until they get here?”

Ariana shrugged. “I don’t have enough data.”

Peter looked at Ange. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Organize a standoff at that large chamber we came through a while back?”

“Yup,” Ange said. “Ship, how quickly can you get us there?”

Without so much as a confirmation, the Ship of Ange took control of the eleph-ANT they were all inhabiting and raced down the hallway.

There was no artificial gravity on the aliens’ massive ship. So when the eleph-ANT got in motion, it stayed in motion.

Ship jumped from wall to wall down the long and winding space, ducking its legs in tight to make it through the small hole it had recently cut out of a wall that was now a door.

It crossed the distance in less than a few seconds, using thrusters to slow down quickly as it entered the large chamber that was about the size of a small basketball stadium.

The eleph-ANT raced to the wall nearest the hole they had originally made coming into this room, the one they expected whomever was chasing them to come through. The tractor beam worked best on objects near to it, so as soon as whoever was entering the room entered it, they would be crushed into a tiny ball.

Ange didn’t know what to make of the chamber. It was as if the place was unfinished, and there were several monorails zigzagging through it. But some of them led to nowhere. As if they were only partially completed. And there were whole sections of the chamber that looked incomplete, as if something else was going to slot into place. Ange wondered whether she thought it was incomplete because she didn’t understand alien architecture.

The team waited in silence as the intruder slowly made its way up the corridor.

“That’s me,” the Ship of Atlas blurted out with a sound of puzzlement in his voice.

“What’s you?” Ange whispered even though she didn’t need to. They were all talking inside of the simulation now, so no sounds could be heard outside of their little world.

“It’s me coming toward us. I recognize a signal being sent. It’s a passcode only I would know.”

“Are you sure?” Ange asked.

“I’m one hundred percent sure it’s me. We’re getting signals bouncing off the walls in here too.” The Ship of Atlas paused for a second. “Here, I’ll connect us to him.”

Moments later the original Ship of Atlas’s voice came through the speaker. “Hi, team. Sorry it took us so long.”