Alicia struggled to her feet, and after doing so, she revealed a deep, bloody gash on her back. It was only a mild discomfort after sitting for so long, but losing the familiar pressure of the tree behind her caused the pain to flare back up to its original intensity. She winced and began feeling lightheaded, biting her lip to shrug it off.
After clearing her head, Alicia glanced at her surroundings to make sure she was alone. After confirming that nothing seemed amiss, she trudged towards the direction that the cruiser landed after its collision.
Her pace was unbearably slow as she struggled to maintain her composure, enduring the excruciating pain from her backside. Stepping over the corpses of the rest of the crew, she snatched whatever was salvageable from their remains and continued heading towards her destination.
From those she had looted, some of them had faces that she recognized, but all were strangers to her. Alicia avoided making friends among Crew A-14 and mostly kept to herself. She didn't feel any need to seek out relationships with others unless there was some benefit to be gained from it. All she did was follow orders and avoided doing anything extraneous or unnecessary. Doing so helped her to remain inconspicuous, allowing her to remain relatively unhindered over her time on Earth.
Although she wasn't friends with these people, it isn't like she was unfamiliar with them. Seeing so many dead without even having the chance to live their lives on Polaris had brought a sense of loss to her heart. Alicia wasn't a religious woman, but nonetheless, she had prayed for these poor souls.
Pausing for a moment, she asked, "Query: Do souls exist?"
「There is insufficient information to answer that query」
Lamenting, she spoke to herself in a melancholic tone, "Even after all our most extraordinary achievements we have yet to respond to this age-old question." Alicia had been instructed through the rigorous schooling system since she was young, being neither exceptionally bright nor mundanely average. She never once even thought to ask these metaphysical questions before, but with death looming over her like a shadow, it seemed as good a time as any.
「Warning! Host has less than one hour before the loss of blood affects motor functions」
"Shit, I'm too slow."
With renewed fervour, Alicia quickened her pace towards the crash site of the cruiser, groaning all the while. As she closed in on her destination, she noticed that the trees and plant life had thickened, as if nature itself was intent on impeding her arrival. Luckily, the ship had left a trail of destruction in its wake, or it would be quite difficult to find it within all this foliage.
After a couple more minutes of pushing past the vegetation, at last, Alicia had found what she was looking for.
In front of her was a massive cruiser that held 450 people at its maximum capacity. The ship is compartmentalized into separate rooms that each had its own purpose. What Alicia wanted was inside of the Medical Bay—one of the most heavily reinforced areas in the entire cruiser.
Tiptoeing around the wreckage, she made her way to the Med Bay, and upon arriving, she faced a large carbon-steel sliding door. A small numeric keypad used to open it was on the right side of the frame. Although the ship was incapacitated, being one of the most important areas on the vessel, it was connected to the reserve power supply.
The issue wasn't getting inside—since all personnel have the access code—but actually obtaining the regenerative fluids, which is only accessible by those with the highest level of clearance.
Before the ship crashed on Polaris, Alicia acquired a single-use Level 4 Clearance card from one of her superiors so that she could fetch something from one of the supply vaults. Before she was able to use it for its intended purpose, the cruiser collided head-on with a mountain range that bordered their drop-zone.
"Seems like Lady Luck had been watching over me," Alicia murmured to herself as she entered the room, pulled the card from her jacket pocket and swiped it onto one of the locked cabinets.
As the cabinet unlocked, a burst of cold air flooded out in a fog-like form. 108 vials of regenerative fluids separated in sets of nine were arranged inside. Each of them contained a luminous blue-green substance that swirled around the tube.
These were premium regenerative fluids that culminated from decades worth of stem-cell research. The low-grade fluids supplied by Alicia's System was only practical for non-life-threatening injuries.
Seizing a vial, she gripped it and drew the medicine up using one of the hypodermic needles that she grabbed from a shelf nearby.
「Warning! Host has less than 10 minutes before the current rate of blood loss severely impairs motor functions」
Alicia sighed with relief, "It seems like I've made it just in time." Using her rudimentary medical training, she pinpointed a vein on her arm and injected the needle.
After the fluids entered her bloodstream, a certain coolness washed over her body. As if she had taken a breath of fresh air, the agony she felt subsided, and the sizeable wound on her back began to close up. The internal bleeding she suffered had stopped, and her organs began repairing themselves.
Yet, her moment of relief was short-lived. A light tone that pinged inside of her head—which signalled a System message—abruptly sounded out, breaking her out of her stupor. The System message flashed red on her HUD, instead of the conventional white.
「Warning! Unregistered Class 4 fluid detected」
「Host has illegally consumed the property of the World Frontier Federation, in violation of Article 76, Clause 11 of the FFC」
「Host will be temporarily restrained until the relevant authorities have arrived to resolve the situation」
"FUCK! They put a tracking virus on these! These rich bastards are too fucking vicious!" Alicia screamed in indignation.
She felt her joints locking up from the paralyzing fluid that flowed throughout her body from her brain stem, which housed the System's bio-chip. Alicia lost all motor control and fell flatly onto her face as her body seized up.
With the metallic taste of blood in her mouth and the dull smell of antiseptics that permeated the air, she laid prone, awaiting her fate.
「Please wait patiently until the relevant personnel have been notified」