Yazmin had been sitting silently at the table through-out the entire meeting. She hadn't been paying full attention, even trying to ignore the raised voices as she prodded a processing unit from Benji's cryo-tank. In her mechanical hand, she held a black soddering pin, currently connecting a wire to one of the micro-processors. From what she had gathered from the machine, the particular processing unit was what regulating temperature control. As long as that piece was in place and working, the tank would maintain a freezing temperature. However, the burst pipe inside his tank had done a little bit of damage to the part, but it was nothing unfixable.
On her head was a
black monocular headset from the storage area that hyper-magnified what she was looking at. She pressed a button on the side to zoom the lenses out to minimum distance. She slid them to the top of her head and observed the small unit. Her attention was pulled to the argument as Rend began shouting at Tahlia, who would have none of his attitude.
Rend proceeded to look at Yazmin with a look of disgusting, verbally noting the disgust he found in her mechanical arm. She looked at him, dumbfounded by his words. What on earth had she ever done to him?! Well, what had she done to his company that he was
aware of? The young woman's brow creased, and she was about to say something when Tahlia took over.
The gun came soon after. Tahlia dodged the first bullet and forced his arm towards the left - towards Yazmin. She dropped to the floor just as the second shot was fired, but found that it missed her. Memories of gunshots and explosions flashed through her mind. In actual time, it only happened in half a second, but Yaz felt as though she was transported for hours back to the day she'd been rescued by a special forces team from the people that had kidnapped her.
When the moment of shock passed, and Yazmin realized she was still on the Artemis, she registered Tahlia, beating Rend to the ground. She was going to kill him.
"Tahlia, stop!" She yelled. She wanted to physically stop her, but she was half the size any of them. She was relieved when Owen stepped in, forcing Tahlia off of Rend. The old man might have been a terrible person, but he didn't need to die.
Owen turned and shouted for someone to find Benji. Yazmin placed her arm on the floor, moving to do the same with her mechanical limb. She found that the mechanical arm seized up and contracted, then went stiff for a moment. She looked to her forearm, where she saw one of the wires had been hit, presumably by one of the bullets. She swore under her breath, but pushed herself up with her flesh arm. She stood and ran into the hallway. She wasn't very fast, but she went as fast as she could to reach the cockpit. She found the intercom microphone and pressed the button to talk.
"Benji, you've got to come back! Rend could die if you don't help him! You're the only one who knows how!" She waited a moment, breathing slightly labored, then added.
"I know you're scared, Benji, but we need your help! We can't do this without you!"