There was no transition. Nothing. One moment, I sunk into the dark ruins of space and the next, I felt suffocated. Something pressed in on me from all sides, and I couldn't feel anything else. A warped voice rang through my dim silence.

    "Initiating Operation Dawn part two in three . . . two . . . one."

    As soon as the syllable left the speaker's lips, a vicious current of power surged through my body. My lips parted to scream as my skin turned to fire, spine arching and legs kicking frantically. Something spilled into my mouth, tasting like rotten eggs. I thrashed against the substance. My hand broke free, flailing in freezing nothingness. Feeling panic tighten my throat at suffocating in whatever this was, I lunged upwards.

    My body broke free, something tugging free of my mouth as I broke the surface. My chest heaved with gasps and I fell onto a freezing floor. Something coated my skin like tar, making it sticky. I felt weak and shaky. What's happened? Where am I?

    Searing, burning pain throbbed in my brain, as if it was on fire. I wedged my eyes open, a faint glow on a silver floor greeting me. The room was metal and sleek, and my brain ached more as my memory finally arrived. The chamber. The capsule . . . My head looked over my shoulder at the capsule I'd been inside. It was still half-full of that slimy substance. The same substance coated my skin. Little flares of pain reminded me that there were still IVs plugged into my limbs.

    Already? Has it been all that time? I was falling asleep seconds ago... I lifted my head, my lungs at last working properly. My body ached, like my limbs were waking up. They prickled. How was I awake? There was no one in sight . . . The Captain was the one who was supposed to wake me up. But I was utterly alone.

    I looked at the capsule to my right. Lines marked the outline of a body, and the dark skin on the foot told me the Captain was still frozen. Why wasn't he awake? And why was I? The only reason I was supposed to be awake was if there was an emergency or if we landed on Z-031. I had no idea if either had happened.

    The slime on my skin tried to stop me from rising, making the ground slippery. My muscles creaked and groaned in protest. I clambered to my feet clumsily, feeling like I hadn't moved in ages. My whole body throbbed, but it was nothing compared to the headache between my eyes. I was astutely aware of my bare body as I stumbled for a screen, pressing my hand against it. It lit up and scanned my hand. "Welcome back, First Officer Autumn."

    "Wherggg." I coughed, hacking out a glob of slime. It was obvious I hadn't used my vocal chords in ages. "Wh-What hap-happened?" My voice scratched itself out of my mouth.

    "Error. Please specify question."

    I grunted, my body shaking as it wanted to rest. I hadn't been standing for thirty seconds, and I felt like I was going to faint. "W-Why am I aw-awake?"

    "Operation Dawn has been initiated."

   "Wh-Why?"

    "The mission has been completed."

    I blinked slowly, wiping slime out of my eyes. It still dripped down my skin. "We ha-have arrived a-at Z-031?"

   "Yes, First Officer Autumn."

   My gaze shifted down as I took that in, heart thudding in my chest. We made it, and I was alive. Normally, I'd want to sit down and take a second, but I shook my head. I had a problem to take care of. Getting over the shock could wait.

   "Wh-Why is the Captain not awake?"

    "Error. Please specify question."

    I narrowed my eyes. "Why did Operation Dawn not wake Captain Silk Thorn?"

    "Error. Please specify question."

   That's weird. I thought fast. "What does Operation Dawn do?"

    "Operation Dawn starts the protocol to wake the Bridge Crew from their cryogenic-sleep," reported the computer. "Beginning with Captain Silk Thorn and finishing with Bridge Officer Allen Bird."

    "Has Operation Dawn been completed?"

    "Yes, First Officer Autumn."

    That's a really bad sign. I'm the only one awake. My eyes slid to the other capsules, dread sinking into my gut. Why was I the only one awake? Had the computer simply not woken them, or had they died? Was I the only Bridge Crewmember able to wake up? My mouth turned dry.

    Wake up, Genevieve. I'm the second-in-command. I'm meant to fix the problem when the Captain can't. I closed my eyes to slow my thoughts. What problem needed to be fixed? I needed the Bridge Crew awake. In order to do that, I needed Captain Thorn.

    "Computer, scan Captain Silk Thorn."

    "Scanning." It beeped. "Captain Silk Thorn is in one-hundred-percent health. The Captain is stable."

   "Wake him up."

    "Error. Please specify question."

    I had doubted that would work. If I couldn't wake the Captain with the computer, I'd have to do it myself. It was possible. My training in Florida included how to wake crewmembers without the aid of the computer. I had memorized the process. 

   However, the doctors had warned me to avoid it at all costs. Waking up a frozen individual was a finite process of timing, chemicals, and shocks. If something was a split-second off, or a drop too much, then the person would be damaged in the waking process. Despite having run through waking simulations for hours in Florida, I knew that a human could never perform the process perfectly. The doctors weren't sure of the exact consequences of a manual wake-up, but I was hesitant to risk it.

   My job was to protect the Captain and act as Captain in his absence. He was still here (even if he was unconscious), so the former task remained in action. His safety was my priority. Waking him up manually was not an option. 

   I needed the computer to wake him up instead. The person who knew the computer best was Officer Peterson. He could fix the error, and therefore I'd only have to wake up one person manually. 

    My feet slipped toward his capsule, and I nearly crashed onto the capsule itself. My motor skills were still lacking. Gritting my teeth, I scanned my handprint onto the screen above Officer Peterson's capsule. I recalled the process and started pressing the right buttons. A bright green liquid seeped into the IVs, flowing toward the shape inside the capsule. Another push of a button had the defibrillator stickers warming up.

    I pressed the button that opened the capsule. At last, I selected the last option and a warning popped onto the screen. I backed up, counted carefully, and hit the button. Electricity surged into the capsule, and the body thrashed. I winced, remembering the agony Officer Peterson was now going through. His hand broke free of the slime and he fumbled out, clawing at the tube attached to his lips. It's done.

    I hastily helped him take it off. He gasped in air, a pile of weak person on the floor. He was just as bare and slimy as I was. I hardly cared for the fact that we were both naked as the day we were born, electing to help him clear the slime from his face to open his eyes. The blue color landed on me in alarm, and his lips tried to form words.

   "G-Give it a moment." 

   He nodded shakily at me, looking around the room. He was avoiding looking at me, but he noticed that our capsules were the only empty ones.

   "Wh-Wh-What hap-pened?" He croaked.

    I exhaled. "I don't know. The computer th-thinks it has woken every Bridge Crewmember. I'm the only one that woke up."

    He blinked slowly, his skin pale with dark blue veins webbed under it. I knew I probably looked the same, with pale skin, blue lips, and a bald head. He mulled that over before moving. I watched as he tried to get to his feet and used the capsule to prop himself up. He scanned his hand into the computer screen beside his capsule. It beeped. "Welcome Technical Officer Peterson."

    "Sh-Show me the computer l-log from past three h-hours." Something popped up, and he squinted at it. I watched from nearby, shivering from the cold. After some time, Officer Peterson pulled away and exhaled. "I s-see."

    "Well?"

    "T-There was some un-unknown error. The c-computer is programmed to always put the Captain's life f-first. Since there was an e-error, the backlog programming forced it to sk-skip trying to wake the Captain to y-you. By the time you woke up, the error had kept the co-computer from waking the rest of the Bridge crewme-member."

    Alarm quickly had me snap, "Are they well?"

    "P-Perfectly. I am try-trying to find what we-went wrong." He tapped away on the tablet, focused. In that moment, I noticed his fingernails were halfway gone, reduced to stubs in the nailbed. My gaze found my own nails and confirmed half of mine were gone, too. 

   I chewed the inside of my cheek nervously. So the computer had skipped the Captain for the same reason I had -- to protect him. Something was wrong with the computer or the Patriot.

    After some time, Officer Peterson pulled away with a rough grunt. "I ca-can't figure it o-out without be-being in t-the program room. I t-think the problem is t-that we r-ran out of enough power to charge a crewmember b-back safely, but I can't confirm it."

   "We can't safely navigate the program room without being docked," I replied curtly. "The computer controls too many functions to do this safely."

    Officer Peterson nodded to confirm. I half-turned my head, as if expecting an order from a superior. Finally it occurred to me that I was the commanding officer here. I breathed through my nose. "Get some clothes and meet in the Bridge."