Someone turned on a flashlight and the panicked crowd calmed to a murmurat the sound of a commanding voice. It was Holloway, emerging from the corner he tried hiding in, stepping up to organize the frightened rabble.

“Stay calm folks! Help’s on the way!”

Widlow stood close by with three of his guards. One of them found an object (a crate or some such thing) for Holloway to stand on.

He mounted the makeshift pedestal to speak. “Everything’s fine. We just need to know if anyone’s been hurt. Raise your hand if you're injured.” An elderly woman nearby Holloway was clutching her wrist. He dropped down and went to her. “You okay, darlin’?”

“I’m fine.”

He gently took her arm. “Bull puckey. You got yourself a sprain sweetheart. Widlow, have one of your fellas find some first aid supplies. Here darlin’, you stand by these strapping young men.”

She smiled. “If you insist.”

He climbed back onto the crate. “Anyone else hurt? Don’t be shy.”

A few others came forward, all with minor injuries.

“Is that it? Nobody’s about to go into labor or anything? Allright. Here’s the plan folks…”

A massive creaking sound came with the buckling of the whole plaza, stirring the crowd to panic.

Holloway jumped down from his crate and went to Widlow and his men. “We need to keep these people calm, or we’re gonna be dealing with worse injuries than what these people here got.”

“Barnes,” Widlow barked.

The largest of his guards, a pale faced wan with a hairless scalp, drew a compact sidearm from inside his jacket and fired upwards. No round discharged, and the noise worked well to silence the crowd.

“Keep them calm,” Holloway said, pointing at Widlow who took his place on the crate. Holloway fought through the crowd to the far wall and looked out the window.

The crowd formed a circle around Widlow, seemingly charmed by his authoritative instructions. He did a fair job of making sure families were together and the older ones were attended to. Meanwhile Holloway looked outside with a look of awe.

“The whole ship’s changed,” he said, then turned, surprise on his face as one has when they expect to see another person and find they were conversing with an empty room.

He pulled his datacomm, a new device Sam had bought from a shop before the ship went dark and still. It seemed every kiosk in the plaza was selling them. Sam and Holloway were dubious, and each bought one to take apart and examine. Sam had mentioned that paranoia was the real fluid pumped from his heart. Then the ship spoke and the lights went out, followed by a strange quiet, like sound had been dampened in everybody’s ears. Same faded into the darkness then, likely due to that paranoia running through his veins.

Holloway pressed his face close to the window and tried to peer around its edges. “The whole thing’s… It’s…”

He looked again at his datacomm, punching up the life signs detector application. The thin crystal wafer glowed blue, then red and Holloway shook his head in frustration. “You,” he said to the smaller of Widlow’s guards.

She came, wearing a face cut like gemstones at hard edges.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“What’s your name?”

“Sonya.” She nodded quickly and a flash of tied gold hair showed from under her cap.

She was as tall as Holloway, and while thin, looked just as strong.

“Sonya. I need to figure out what in Sam Hill’s goin’ on. All the doors are closed, so I need you to make sure the panel I’m about to crawl under stays open. Got it?”

“I’ll have to clear it with Mr. Widlow, sir.”

“You do that.”

It seemed Widlow heard her, or at least guessed what was happening, as he came over to them and told Sonya to follow any of Holloway’s instructions.

The plaza buckled again, this time to an even loader noise that persisted. Outside the window, Albion’s new huddled wing shape changed again. The “wings” were spreading, or at least the two or three Holloway could see were.

“Damn it!” Holloway ran to a conjoining wall and dropped to the ground, swiftly prying loose a large panel with tool he deftly produced from his rear pocket. His feet then vanished and he was crawling like a rat through a conspicuously spacious (and sturdy) air duct.

The duct rose steeply after several feet, then straight upward. Somehow Holloway kept moving; pressing his feet and hands on either side of its walls or using his belt as a rope.

His scurrying ended at a horizontal discharge which he slipped through eel-like, catching himself on the floor and rolling silently into a ball.

Holloway had wormed his way to a narrow hallway lined with doorways to utility closets. He hurried to the inmost end of the hall and felt around the wall, first along the edges and working his way in. When he found no panels to remove, he turned to his datacomm.

“Holly,” he said.

A hologram of a slender female face with large eyes and dark hair wound above her head emerged from the device. “Hi Josh,” it said.

“Audrey, I need a way out of here.”

“The whole ship is locked down, darling. I’ll need a few seconds.”

“Make it fast, Sugar. I got a whole mess of people ready to panic. I gotta find some news for them, pronto.”

“You could always spin something for them. You’re a sly devil, afterall.”

“Yeah, well, I kinda wanna know what’s goin’ on myself.”

The hologram laughed. “Well, why didn’t you just ask?”

“You can find that out?”

“I’m tapped into Albion’s governing minds. I can find out anything. Well, almost anything.”

“Well, what the hell’s happening then?”

A holographic hand appeared for it to rest its chin on. Its eyes, large and dark, batted their ample eyelashes. “Tit for tat?”

“Tit first, Sugar. What’s happening to our ship?”

“Do you remember how you described my eyelashes when you selected me for your interface?”

“Yeah. What’s that got to do with the ship shuttin’ down?”

“That’s just it, Joshua. It’s not shutting down. It’s changing.”

He grinned. “Like a butterfly.”

“Exactly, darling.”

“Well what’s it changing into?”

Another hand appeared and the hologram shrugged.

“Allright. As long as folks are safe, that should do.”

“So we’re just going to go back to the plaza and miss all the fun?”

He lowered his head, darkening his look. “What fun?”

“Well, there’s something very suspicious happening just a few blocks away.”

“Give me details.”

“It involves a gathering of unregistered exos.”

“Unregistered exos? Can you get me out of here?”

“Joshua!” The hologram projected a dramatically offended look.

He stood for a moment in thought. “Allright, Miss Golightly. Lead the way.”