Welcome to the sixth of our Conductor logs, where the passengers have to escape the facility:
The shield crackled as the turret continued its sweep, searching the room for any target. We stayed huddled behind the door, occasionally peeking to see if there was any sign of life from Pilot or Gunner.
There wasn’t.
They just lay there. Not moving.
I tried my best to not imagine their faces right now.
Instead, I focused on getting out of here... preferably alive.
I got up first, pulling Driver up after me. We shared a look. We weren’t ready for this, and we have no idea how we could knock down that shield to get further into the facility. On top of that, the counters on our HUDs continued its inexorable drop toward zero.
So, instead of pushing forward, we carefully retraced our steps, grabbing anything not bolted down as we went. I found some rations in a locker, thank the gods, as they’d keep us going for a few more days. Driver was even more successful, finding a wide variety of loot from the various containers and cabinets.
Once we were back out, we retraced our steps from our arrival, two sets of boots tracing the path four had made on the way in. We clambered onto the train, and Driver left me to welcome the three new passengers while he made his way to the cockpit. Before I'd even had time to introduce myself, the train lurched and started moving down the rails.
Our new crewmates were quickly given monikers, Brains was a smart one, and was already looking at the fabricator, working out a way to build a weapon that would knock out the shield we’d seen on the turret, so that we wouldn’t fall into the same trap twice.
The other two took the roles Gunner and Pilot had left behind, taking the names of Shooter and Eyes. We sat down to eat our rations. Despite how uneasy I felt, I explained everything we knew about our situation, the rouge robots, the train's battery, all of it. We even shared a few stories from our time back on Earth, the train barrelling toward an uncertain future.