The scream, raw and piercing, hung in the suffocating darkness. It was followed by a chorus of panicked gasps, then a rising tide of murmurs, a desperate scramble for phones that now felt like useless bricks in their hands. Kavi, still clutching his tablet, its screen a dead black, felt a cold dread seep into his bones. This wasn't a glitch. This wasn't a simulation.
"Hello? Is anyone there?" a voice, thin and reedy, called out. It was Chelsea "Chelz" Harris, the former Bachelorette runner-up, her usual confident tone replaced by a tremor. "This isn't funny anymore!"
A few emergency lights, powered by what Kavi knew were finite, unreliable batteries, flickered on, casting an eerie, sickly green glow across the deck. Faces, once vibrant with party energy, were now pale and distorted, eyes wide with dawning terror. The music, the laughter, the curated poses – all gone, replaced by the chilling silence of a ship truly adrift.
"My phone's dead!" someone wailed. "No signal!"
"Mine too!" another echoed.
Kavi knew why. The surge had fried the satellite dish. Communication was gone. They were a luxurious, floating coffin, cut off from the world.
He pushed through the bewildered crowd, his voice tight with urgency. "Everyone, listen! The central AI is offline. Arkangel Prime is down. That means… all systems are locked. Power, communications, food distribution – it's all compromised." He tried to sound calm, authoritative, but his voice cracked on "compromised."
A few girls stared at him blankly. Others just continued to prod their dead phones.
Then, a girl near the railing, her face glistening with sweat, began to shake violently. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed, hitting the deck with a sickening thud. A collective shriek erupted.
"She's having a seizure!" Lili Zhang, the tantric priestess, was suddenly by the girl's side, her calm demeanor a stark contrast to the rising panic. "It's the heat! The oxygen system is failing!"
Kavi's internal alarm bells screamed. He'd seen the schematics. The ship's environmental controls were entirely AI-managed. Without Arkangel Prime, the air recycling and temperature regulation would quickly degrade. They weren't just without power; they were slowly suffocating.
"The food rations," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else, pulling up a mental image of the ship's inventory. "The AI managed the distribution. Without it… we have about seven days of emergency rations, if we're lucky. And water… the desalination plant needs power."
His words, spoken with the desperate clarity of a STEM student facing a real-world problem, finally cut through the influencers' daze. Seven days. The number hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
"Seven days?!" Pepper Knox shrieked, her eyes wide. She looked around wildly, then suddenly lunged towards a nearby emergency locker, tearing it open. Inside were neatly stacked, vacuum-sealed ration bars. She grabbed a handful, ripping open the first one with her teeth and devouring it in a few frantic bites. "Just in case!" she mumbled, crumbs flying.
Sloan Vega, always the first to adapt, stepped forward. Her usual serene expression had hardened into something sharp and calculating. She surveyed the panicked faces, her gaze sweeping over Kavi, then Pepper.
"Alright, ladies," Sloan's voice, though low, cut through the rising hysteria with surprising authority. "This is not a drill. The intern here seems to know what he's talking about." She gave Kavi a dismissive glance, then turned back to the crowd. "We need a plan. We need to conserve. And we need to figure out how to get off this glorified sardine can." Her eyes, usually soft and ethereal for her "womb energy" brand, were now cold and assessing. She was already seizing control.
As the hours dragged on, the initial shock gave way to a creeping, pervasive fear. The ship groaned and swayed with the ocean's rhythm, a constant reminder of their isolation. Attempts to manually deploy the emergency beacon failed; the system was completely fried. Kavi, now reluctantly elevated to the role of "technical expert," was bombarded with questions he couldn't answer.
"Can't you just… reboot it?"
"Isn't there a manual override?"
"My charger isn't working! How am I supposed to post my last moments?"
By nightfall, the grim reality had fully settled. The air grew thick and humid. The emergency lights cast long, dancing shadows that made the familiar luxury of the ship feel menacing. The girls huddled together, some weeping quietly, others staring blankly at the dark ocean outside. Pepper, having eaten half a dozen ration bars, was now curled in a fetal position, muttering to herself. Lili sat in the center of a small circle, leading a low, rhythmic chant, trying to find spiritual solace in the face of oblivion.
They were going to die. And they all knew it.