"Are you okay?"
I opened my eyes.
"Am I dead?"
"Not dead enough to rest, no." said Mei, coming into my vision. In the background was large flames that went up tens of meters into the air, and the wreckage from many destroyed houses - already abandoned ones, fortunately. "Get up." she said as she tried to pull me by my arm. "Hurry!"
I excitedly exclaimed, looking up into the sky, "It is that shuttle from before!"
"Where?"
"Over there, towards the skyscraper!"
"Which one, Kagan?"
"That one, the one we did NOT hit on the way down. Look!" I said as I pointed at a building that was partially turned to ash.
"Oh... yes." said Mei.
The shuttle turned on its spotlight and started moving it across the face of the skyscraper, illuminating different areas while slowly orbiting the structure.
"They must looking for something inside." Mei said. "What might be so important?"
"If everyone already evacuated government buildings... some documents perhaps?"
An explosion was heard in the distance. A road vehicle had caught fire, and its battery has blown up. That explosion was enough for me to stop pursuing my train of thoughts.
"Forget about the shuttle and all, we will die from the heat here." I said. "We need shelter. Shielding."
"On the contrary, if we can make ourselves visible to the shuttle, they might help." Mei said. "We can't survive here forever, even if the fire does stop after some time, the atmosphere of the city is leaking into space. We will suffocate."
"You have a point." I said. "Any plans?"
"We need to make ourselves visible to the shuttle pilot." Mei said.
"I don't think so." I said. "We just crashed a godforsaken cruise ship here. If they are not seeing it and approaching to help, they must be blind. I believe that they are currently making a conscious decision to ignore us and keep searching the skyscraper."
"Whatever they are searching for must be of extreme importance." she said. "Come on. We are going into the skyscraper."
"...and hope that we will make it up there in time?"
"Exactly."
Mei got out of the passenger ship through a hole next to the bridge. I followed her. We slid down the side of the ship, guiding and slowing ourselves down using the various grooves and extrusions on the ship's external hull.
"This way." she said. "I can see a good path that won't take us in between giant flames."
Mei and I started running to the entrance of the skyscraper. I was only hoping that there wouldn't be too much debris from the fire on our way.
Suddenly, I heard something from behind. It was a human voice... or was it? I was not entirely sure. I stopped to look behind.
"Do you hear that too, Mei?" I asked.
"No." Mei said, without even asking what kind of thing I could've been hearing. "Come on, walk!"
She pushed me from behind.
"Come on!"
I began running again, into the skyscraper.
"The passengers..." I said.
"No." said Mei. "There is nothing to do."
"Mei." I said. "We commanded that ship and we brought it down here. It is practically our ship now. We are responsible for it and we need to take care of the survivors."
"Kagan, there is literally nothing we can do to help. We have nothing." Mei said. "You always trusted my judgement in these sorts of situations."
While it was true that I trusted -sometimes blindly- the cold blooded judgements of Mei; this time, something was holding me back.
"Mei, the captain leaves the ship last, or goes down with the ship if the situation comes to that."
"Bloody maritime traditions..." Mei sighed. "I'm not sure we are communicating properly here. THERE. IS. NOTHING. YOU. CAN. DO. TO. HELP. Our staying back will be absolutely useless! Do you have no considerations for human life!? Would you really face death just to honor an ancient saying, or even worse, just to satisfy your ego!?"
"MEI!" I yelled with the loudest voice I could acheive. "YES! YES, WHAT IF I WOULD!?"
Mei reflexively took a step back, with fear in her face. It was the first time she was expressing her feelings so deeply with her body language, and it was definitely the first time she was scared of someone merely because they were angry.
Trembling, she took a few more steps back, distancing herself from me. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped.
"Go." I said. "Climb the skyscraper. Don't look back. Don't wait for me."
Mei just stared at me, as if she didn't understand my language. The only clear reaction I could get from her was a slight head movement left and right, indicating a negative response.
"Mei, we are not helping anyone standing here and arguing. You want to escape, then go! Climb to the upper floors! What are you waiting for!?"
She suddenly turned back and ran into the building, leaving me without saying a word. I turned back as well and ran towards the crash site. When I looked at the accident scene carefully, I spotted more people under the debris than I thought were even still travelling with us.
"Help! Help!" an old man was yelling, awaiting help to remove the metal plate crushing his belly. A young guy was screaming incomprehensibly, having lost some of his limbs. A mother was crying, holding the remains of her dead baby in her arms.
I could not watch the scene any further. I just ran towards the closest person I could try to help. There was no way I could get any of these people to permanent safety, but I had already decided to die trying.
Yes, Mei was right and I knew it very well all along.
There was no way out of here. No more spacecraft, no more communications, no more friends to come to help. No one even knew what was going on here in this particular part of the city, because everyone was trying to escape from the city themselves.
This was going to be the end of my adventure. But still, I had energy, and the atmosphere had not thinned out just yet.
"Hrrgghh!"
I started lifting and throwing away fragments to find and rescue people in the debris of the passenger ship. Some other passengers who had survived unscathed came to my aid. Together, probably for about half an hour or so, we could make our last efforts to help the human civilization before dying here by ourselves.