As luck, fate, coincidental chance or calculated manipulation would have it, Ishni was escorted to the passenger quarters by Tallou.
A split second after the door opened, about of a third of the lights went out.
“I set a timed virus to take down the surveillance and guidance systems,” Tallou spoke quickly, “we have about seven lals before they come back online.”
Ishni chuckled, “so that’s why you were walking at such a funny pace?  Fair enough, what’s the plan?”
“I have the evidence you’ll need to free your people,” he held two small devices up, “one for you, one for my own protection.  Now all we need to do is reach the docking bay and get the dri off this ship.”
I made the diplomatic decision to take one of the devices before telling him, “sorry, but there are other humans on board this ship.  We won’t be leaving without them.”
Shock registered on his face, “no.  No, no.  No, no we don’t have time.  We have to leave.”
“Look,” my voice was fast and frustrated, “we’re taking over this ship, with or without you.  You can either escape on your own or even stay here and say we knocked you out or something.  Or you could help us put these beings away for good.  Just get us to the bridge and we’ll take care of the rest.”
Turning to the others, I twitched my head towards the nearest lift, “with the surveillance down, we might as well all go together.”  I took off at a sprint, listening for oncoming footsteps yet only hearing those of my companions.
Coming to a stop by the doors, Orthus pointed out where the access panel was.
I exerted some energy and pulled it open, carefully feeling for any pressure switches that might set off an alarm or security measure.  The small catch was evident so I was careful to hold the same amount of pressure over it that the panel had.
Desmosa and Orthus came forwards.
There was, what looked like, a small tube into which Desmosa inserted her finger.
She gasped causing me to almost try and snatch her hand back, however before I could, she spoke one word, “living.”
She turned to Orthus, eyes wide, “this ship is a living!”
“Are you sure?” Orthus sounded dubious, “there are no characteristics or markings to indicate this.”
Desmosa nodded vigorously, “it’s been silenced.  There are so many barriers and firewalls around its processors that it basically looks like it’s been caged.”
“Can we free it?” I asked.
Turning her head to face me, Desmosa looked troubled, “it’s all encrypted to respond to the captain’s d.n.a..  We could only do it if  we got him to cooperate.  Even then, there’s no guarantee that it’ll cooperate with us.  Livings don’t really have the same concept of gratitude as the rest of the galaxy.”
“Okay, well what does that mean for us now?”
“I can try to contact it, let it know what we’re trying to do.  It might be able to help us, if it has any access to its own functions left.  Or it could alert the crew to our position and plans.”
I turned to see if Tallou had followed us or not, his head was peering at us around a section of the wall that stuck out not too far behind us.
Painfully aware of the time slipping away, I acted in the quickest way possible.
I pulled him from the safety of his barrier and yanked his towards us through the air, taking the baton from his grasp as he approached.  It the whole thing had been a ploy to get me to expose my abilities, it had been successful.
The shock on his face would have been amusing under any other circumstances.  Eyes aghast and mouth flapping open and close trying to find the words to voice his reaction.
“Not feeling so sluggish any more then?” he settled on saying as I brought him face to face with me.
“This ship is a living,” I did my best to stop my voice from making it a question.
“What?” his eyes widened, I am not sure whether that was due to my severe façade or due to the fact that he was genuinely unaware that the Venanth-Nepha was in actual fact a highly evolved, sentient being.
I offered the baton to Orthus, the others being either telekinetic or trained in martial arts.
“If we wanted to access this ship’s central system from anywhere other than the central part of the ship, where would we need to go?”
He simply started at me.  During the next moment’s silence, his trembling became visual.
Placing him gently on the ground, I softened my voice, “Tallou,” he took a few steps backwards, eyeing me warily, “please, just tell us where to go.  Help us and I swear I’ll protect you.”
I stretched my hand to the side, indicating to Orthus to hand me the baton.
As I held it forwards to the nervous hlorsiené, I prepared to create a barrier between us, in case my judgement was wrong.
For a few moments, he alternated between looking at me and looking at the floor, as though it had the questions and I had the answers.
With a sigh and a shaking hand, he reached forward and took the weapon from me.
“There’s a server room about fifteen lals walk down that way,” he nodded his head past me, “but there’s no way well get there before the surveillance systems come back online.  They’ll start the gas before we can even get close.”
“Do you have any more breathing tanks?”
“I only have two on me, any more are kept in requisitions which is much further away.”
“What about the med-bay?” Deia asked.
He shook his head, “they only keep them in one place for this precise reason.”
“Okay,” my mind snapped back to the original plan, “Bernard, Deia, Ishni, I need you to stay in the passenger area.  I’ll lock you in, then the rest of us will get to the server room and wake this living up.  Tallou, how long before the gas starts to effect us?”
With a shrug, he replied, “about twenty lals, at a guess.”
“More than enough.  Could you please give the oxygen canisters to these two,” I indicated to Orthus and Desmosa, “they’re coming with us.”
He handed them over without hesitation.  His willingness to give them up lent proof to the theory that he actually had three on him.
In under a lal, the others were shut into their secure prison, the doors at both ends warped.
We began to run.
Several doors blocked our path, fortunately none were locked.
Upon reaching the third set of doors, the lights began blinking back on.
Moments later and I could taste a change in the air.
Orthus and Desmosa had their canisters in place, ready as soon as the lights came on.
Despite the preventive shot, I could feel an intensely drowsy sensation begin to steal over me.
Shaking it off, I felt beyond the door in front of us.  The was someone on the other side, tense and aware that we were coming.
The split second before the door opened, I sent a wave of energy flying into the room, knocking the grey-feathered pink, that had escorted me in the lift earlier, backwards.  He collided heavily with the wall, baton falling to the ground.
Before he could recover, I pulled the breathing device from his mouth and passed it to Tallou.
Keeping him pinned, I could feel him trying to push back with his own telekinesis.  It was like a single drop of squash trying to flavour a bucket of water, a summer breeze trying to stop a frizbee in flight.
It had no effect.
“Just stop,” the words left my mouth before I was aware that I was saying them.
He relaxed, “so what now?”
I cricked my neck a little, maintaining my composure somehow, “hand over any extra canisters you have and I’m going to be sealing you in one of those cells up ahead,” I nodded forwards.
Letting his hand go, I allowed him to reach into a hidden pocket and remove two more canisters which Orthus relieved him of, passing one to me.
Pausing for a moment, I asked Tallou, “there’re no decoy or poisoned devices are there?”
He was already in the process of opening the nearest cell, “nah, they’re so confident in their abilities, they’ve never needed them.”
“Well, I feel that I may have cured them of their over-confidence,” I raised my eyebrows a little whilst lifting my captive to his feet.
He simply narrowed his eyes and remained silent.
The door slid close behind him with a few taps on the wall.
“It won’t lock,” Desmosa informed me, “it needs clearance from a crew member.”
It took two taps for Tallou to discover that his clearance had been revoked.
Time pressing ever down upon us, I placed my hand over where the seam of the door and proceeded to tear and twist at the components inside until it would no longer open.
“Let’s go,” a tremor threatened to expose my internal panic so I had decided to keep my sentences short. 
Taking down my very first, real opponent was rippling through my body.  The thoughts of what could have happened if I had not been fast enough or had used too much force swirled around my head.  Despite the fact that I had locked him in myself, I could not help but feel that he had another way out of that cell.
Doubts and insecurities clouded me, yet I continued running.  There was too much riding on us successfully reaching the server room for me to pay attention to the anxiety which was fighting to take hold of me and cause me to falter.
Two more doors, yet no more crew members even attempted to accost us.  They would have seen how I subdued that pink and, I assumed, were coming up with a new plan.
The final door came into view before I was really ready for it.
The server room beyond was black.
The lights were off and the doors had been locked remotely.  With their own independent, dedicated power sources, the servers were still online.
The mechanisms that kept the door locked were a lot more intricate than the other doors and a lot thicker.  It was clearly a lot older than the rest of the ship’s décor; a different shade of grey and a hinged opening instead of the usual sideways slide.
One of the techniques that had been drilled into me by Ishni, was to channel the energy into a slim pinpoint.  With the right amount of pressure and speed, in theory, I could use it to slice through anything.
I could feel where the bolts were, between the door and the wall’s latch.  Channeling several small pockets of energy into the space was simple.  Focusing them to cut through the metal without catching the airlock seals required a great deal more concentration.
With a tharat, an alive and a hlorsiené watching my back, I could pour all of my attention into the task at hand.
Once through one bolt, I had to stop the energy from flying off and slicing through a different part of the door. It was like trying to catch a ball that I had already thrown.
Sweat began to trickle down my face.  Even with the breathing device protecting me against the gas, I was beginning to run out of my own energy.  My muscles ached and my feet groaned.  My mouth was dry and my stomach churning.
All that kept me going was the thought of a moment to sit down on the other side of that obstacle.
Many times I considered simply tearing the whole thing off of its hinges, however, if we were to get on the good side of the living, we would be best off doing as little damage to the doors that guarded part of its consciousness as possible.
Almost seven lals passed.
I had not properly realized that I was cutting through the final bolt when the last sliver of metal snapped.
The door swung violently inwards causing me to fall sideways from where I had been leaning against it, landing on the ground with a thud.  The bruise upon my upper left arm promised to be large and colourful.
There was a sudden gust as the air rushed past us filling the space for several moments.
The whole room had been vacuum sealed.
I could only hope that breaking the seal without the proper procedures had not done any critical damage.
Bracing my right hand on the ground, I pushed myself up into a sitting position.
Several large, smoothly curved boxes housed a portion of the living’s processors and memory.  Nine of them encircled a tenth that was, at least, twice the size of the others.  Many small lights twinkled across the surface of the matt black material that coated it, most of which were red or orange.  It was those blinking lights that allowed me focus my vision upon the shape of it, so dark the room was.
“Can anyone see in the dark?” I half joked, half hoped.
“You can,” Desmosa replied.
My brows were in the process of furrowing when I realized that she was referring to my eye.
I tapped on my arm and brought up its control program.  It took me only a few moments to locate the night-vision option and activate it.
The room went partially green and I began the search for an access panel.
Desmosa followed suit.  A part of her vision could be altered for low light, which gave her a little better vision in the dark.
Tallou and Orthus set about sealing the door, however, with the bolts cut, they could only push it shut and lean against it.
The panel was on the rear wall.
The inside was lit up enough to been seen by everyone.  Heading back to the door, I swapped places with Orthus and Tallou.
As they headed over to where Desmosa was waiting, I put my back to the door and slid to the floor, legs splayed out in front of me.  Despite the amount that I had used, the stream of energy within me was depleted by less than a fifth.
My physical energy, however, was beginning to wain.  I cursed my inability to have fallen asleep after rejoining the others.  All in all I had been awake for almost a full unit.
In my past life, I would pull constant all-nighters.  I rarely slept well during the week, so at the end of particularly sleepless weeks, I would reset myself.  This would involve sleeping in on Saturday until I woke up naturally, usually between two and four pm.  I would then simply not go to bed until a vaguely reasonable time on the Sunday night.  I could go those thirty-something hours with little more than some light sensitivity towards the end.
Compared to those times, I felt like I would collapse if I allowed myself to weaken for even a moment.
I sat in place contemplating my exhaustion, whilst keeping a constant vigil on the opposite side of the door that I was propped against.
Several lals passed, in which I could hear general murmurings as the others worked on the problem and I fought to keep my eyes open.

Everything went black.
Every inaudible sound that had been humming in the background throughout the ship, stopped.

Into the darkness I called out, “what happened?”
“We’ve done a reboot,” Orthus’s voice called back, “in case of emergency shutdown, the living’s full control is restored to allow it to save itself, in theory.  It should come back online any lal now.”
We waited in silence.
I spotted Tallou feeling his way back towards me.  His path began to swerve off to one side.  “Tallou, to your right,” I stopped him from colliding with one of the smaller servers.  Readjusting his senses, he followed my voice until I had to put my hand out to stop him from colliding with the door, “careful.”
He place one webbed hand upon my shoulder.  I could feel him trembling.
I was about to say something to reassure him, when there came a click from the door behind us.
Scrambling to my feet I gave a tug on the handle.
It was locked.