by Joe Hart
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. I just saw movement coming this way.”
“Get ready.”
She yanked the microdisk from the computer’s side and slid it into her pocket as she rushed to the side of the door opposite Birk.
He met her eyes, and she tried to steady him with an encouraging nod, but fear had invaded her muscles, and she was weak. Too weak to fight someone off.
Footsteps approached from outside the door. Paused. Came closer.
Please be Carson.
The door slid open.
Gillian stepped forward, putting as much weight behind the punch as she could, but checked herself as she saw Ander’s surprised expression.
Birk grabbed the old man around the neck, and he grunted.
“What the hell’s the meaning of this?” Ander asked.
He didn’t have any weapons she could see. Nothing in his hands, and his face was turning an awful shade of puce as Birk squeezed tighter.
“Let him go,” she said, taking a step back.
Birk released the old man and brought his fists up, their intimidating size barely counterweighing the awkward angle he held them at.
“Lord love a duck!” Ander gasped, rubbing his throat and glaring at them. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Do you have any weapons on you, Doctor?” she asked.
“Weapons? What are you talking about?”
“Birk, search him.”
“What—” Ander began, but Birk had already started patting him down, running his hands over the baggy sweater and slacks the physicist wore.
“Don’t feel anything,” Birk said, stepping back.
“Because I don’t have anything! What’s happening? I heard an explosion, and when I looked outside, there was burning shrapnel everywhere. Control told me the EXPX had a malfunction and no one knew where its crew was.”
“How did you find us?” Birk asked, still looming over him.
“I guessed you’d be here.”
Gillian studied him, and after an uncomfortable span, Ander held out his hands, palms up. “What is happening?”
“We think we’ve found the cause of what’s happening to the crew,” Gillian said.
“And?”
“Absolute zero isn’t absolute. There’s still energy loss. We think it’s their memories.”
Ander’s brow crinkled. “Doctor, I really—”
“We don’t have time to discuss it now. We’re leaving. Come with us.”
“Are you insane? Your ship’s gone. What are you talking about?”
The door slid open, startling them all. Carson stood there, his gaze locked on Ander. He held something in one hand that he raised and pointed at the old man.
A handgun.
“Where the hell did you get a gun?” Gillian asked.
“From my room,” he offered, not looking away from Ander. “Have you told him?”
“Some. He’s coming with us.”
“No, I most certainly am not,” Ander said, straightening to his full height. “And I’m disappointed in you, Carson. Firearms are strictly forbidden. The station—”
“The rounds are composite aluminum. Won’t puncture the hull but won’t have any problem with a person.”
“Then stop pointing it at me,” Ander said.
Carson lowered the gun and said to Gillian, “We need to move. Do you have everything?”
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“This is ridiculous. Ludicrous. I have no idea what’s going on here,” Ander said, beginning to follow them into the hall.
“That’s exactly why you should come with us,” Gillian said, reaching out to take the old man’s hand.
He jerked it away and started to say something else when someone stepped out of the elevator ahead of them.
Vernon Figg was dressed in the same uniform he’d been wearing in the biospheres. The stocky man smiled and walked toward them. “There you are!”
Carson leveled the handgun. “Stop there, Dr. Figg.”
The biologist’s smile faltered, and he halted. “Whoa, what’s going on here? Dr. Ander, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Vernon. Trying to speak sense to these people.”
“What are you doing here?” Carson asked.
“Just got here from the surface an hour ago. When the accident happened, I contacted the spheres and had them come up too. I figured that would be protocol in a situation like this.”
“The landers are both here?”
“One is, and the other should be shortly. Why?”
Carson shot Gillian a look. “Just checking. If you could step aside please, Dr. Figg.”
“Sure, geez, was concerned is all. Everyone in control said they didn’t know where you were.” He shuffled to the side, holding his palms out. “Thought I’d help look for you.” He smiled again.
Carson motioned for them to move, and they started walking again, filing past where Vernon stood.
“Commander LeCroix, I would seriously reconsider what you’re doing right now,” Ander said, no longer following them. “This will be the end of your career.”
“I’m sure it is,” Carson said.
“Oh, Commander?” Vernon asked. “I almost forgot. Control said you left this behind. They wanted me to give it to you if I saw you.”
“What is it?” Carson asked, turning toward the biologist.
Vernon dug in his pocket for a moment. “Now where is it?”
Gillian saw the tension in his shoulders, the way he was looking directly at Carson as he brought something shining out of his pocket.
“Carson! Look out!” she screamed, knowing at once it was already too late.
Carson tried to bring the handgun to bear, but Vernon stepped forward, grasping his wrist, the muscles in the bullish man’s forearms rippling.
Vernon’s smile broadened as he swung the scalpel up and across Carson’s throat.
Blood fountained.
It flew in a solid arc, spraying Vernon’s features and painting a dripping swath across the white wall.
Carson stumbled back, the gun falling from his hand. He scrabbled at the open gash in his throat, eyes bulging, futilely trying to stanch the flow.
“I told you, everyone calls me Vern,” Vernon said, turning his gaze upon the rest of them.
Gillian’s mind was crippled, the sight of Carson’s lifeblood flooding from between his fingers bolting her to the floor. The blood-spattered biologist continued to smile as he approached. Birk pulled her back and stepped in front of her like a shield as she caught movement to the side.
Ander lunged forward, arms outstretched, the movement belying his age.
Vernon received him on the tip of the scalpel.
Gillian saw the short, unbelievably sharp blade slip through the old man’s sweater like a magic trick.
Ander’s breath came out in a moan.
Vernon twisted his hand once. Twice. And yanked the scalpel free.
Ander clutched the wound and tottered backward, his knees unhinging.
Then Birk was in motion.
The big man leaped over the fallen Ander and drove his fist into the side of Vernon’s head.
The biologist saw it coming and slashed wildly, catching Birk on the forearm, but the punch landed solidly.
Vernon staggered back, trying to maintain balance that was no longer there.
He fell to his ass and skidded several inches, the scalpel still clutched in one hand.
And that’s what shocked Gillian into moving. Because they were all dead if she didn’t.
She ran forward, slipped in a pool of blood, and fell beside Carson, who was sitting up against the wall, still holding his throat.
Her hand grasped the handgun, its grip slick crimson.
Vernon was already on his feet, coming toward them.
Gillian brought the handgun up, yanked the trigger.
Nothing happened.
She felt a small but
ton beneath her thumb and pressed it, knowing if it wasn’t the safety, she was dead.
The gun went off, bucking in her hands.
One of the light panels exploded behind Vernon.
She pulled the trigger a second time, and a red flower blossomed on Vernon’s right thigh.
He grunted and fell toward her, scalpel extended at her face.
She fired again, rolling to the side, expecting the slashing touch of the blade any second.
Blood smeared beneath her.
Then Birk was yanking her to her feet.
The biologist was stretched out, arms above his head, scalpel lying a foot from his reaching hand. His head was turned toward her, and she saw that most of his lower jaw was gone. His tongue clicked loudly in the ruined hole of his mouth, and one eye stared at her, blinking furiously.
He twitched once and was still, only the spreading pool of gore moving outward around him.
Gillian felt the gun slip from her hand. It clattered to the floor, the sound muted in the wake of the gunshots.
“Are you all right, Doctor?” Birk asked.
“Yeah, he didn’t get me.”
A gurgling brought her out of the sea of adrenaline coursing through her. Carson was looking at her from where he was propped up. She kneeled beside him, his blood so warm as it soaked through her sodden jumpsuit.
“Oh shit, shit, shit,” she said, reaching out to his neck, which pumped a weak stream of blood from between his fingers. “You’re going to . . .” She couldn’t get herself to say he was going to be okay. And he shook his head anyway, heavy-lidded eyes telling her not to bother.
His mouth opened and closed once without a sound. He licked his lips. “Base . . . level.”
Hot tears sheeted her vision, and she wiped them away. “Okay.”
“S . . . s . . . sorry. W . . . wish diff . . . different.”
“Shhhh, don’t try to talk.”
Carson dropped his hand away from the wound and reached for her.
She grasped his wet palm, squeezed it hard. The blood was done flowing, and his eyes closed halfway.
He clutched her fingers. Then released.
She trembled with silent sobs, everything red and blurred around her.
“Doctor?” Birk said quietly.
Gillian hitched in a breath and glanced to where he squatted beside Ander. The old man’s eyelids were fluttering like butterfly wings.
She gently settled Carson’s hand in his lap and moved across the blood-soaked hallway that looked like something out of a psychotic’s nightmare.
Ander’s eyes tracked her, and he tried to smile. “Getting old.”
“You’re going to be fine, Doctor,” she said, her voice thick. “We’re taking you with us.”
“No. You were right. There’s something very wrong with them. You need to go.”
“We can get you out.”
He shook his head, and a line of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. “Find Orrin. Take him. He’s a good . . . man. Tell him I love him.”
She started to protest again, but he grasped her arm and looked up and to his left. She followed his line of sight, seeing the emergency alarm switch beneath the clear cover.
Ander reached up and flipped the cover open, then let his fingers rest on the switch. “Get away. I can be a distr . . . action.”
She shared a look with Birk, whose face had taken on a gray pallor.
Ander shoved her away. “Go!”
They stood, and she gave the physicist a last look. “Thank you,” she said before they turned away.
Gillian retrieved the pistol and tried not seeing how Carson had slumped farther over, how his sightless eyes stared at them as they passed.
When they reached the elevator the doors opened, and she readied for another fight, but the car was empty.
They stepped inside, and she punched the button for level one. As they began to descend, a shrill alarm blared from the speaker in the ceiling, and a small strobe flashed sickeningly on the wall.
She thought of Carson lying in his own blood, how his hand had felt holding hers before he let go, and her vision swarmed with darkness at its edges. She slumped against the wall, pain radiating out from her shoulder.
“Doctor!” Birk had his arm around her, keeping her upright as everything went black, before the incessant strobe blazed into the back of her brain again.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said, grasping a handle on the wall. In the flashing light, she saw dark dots on the floor and wondered if Vernon had cut her. Then she saw the clean slit across the back of Birk’s forearm, the steady drip falling from his fingertips.
“It is nothing. Doesn’t even hurt,” he said as she reached for his arm.
“Bullshit. You need stitches.”
“I think we are past worrying about stitches,” he said.
He was right. She needed to focus now. The only thing that mattered was getting to one of the landers and getting off the station. Getting back to Carrie alive.
She watched the numbers scroll as they descended.
Level three.
Two.
One.
She took a breath, trying to steady the hand that still clutched Carson’s pistol.
The alarm and strobe stopped along with the elevator’s motion. The screen read level one, but the door didn’t open.
“What’s happening?” she said quietly.
The car jerked into motion. Upward.
“Damn it. They’re bringing us back up.” Gillian looked at the digital display, saw the “Emergency Stop” button, and hammered it.
The car stopped.
“We might only have a minute before they override it. Can you get the doors open?” she asked.
Birk flexed his fingers and jammed them into the seam of the doors. He grunted with effort.
The doors slid apart a half inch. Then his grip faltered, and the gap snapped closed. Birk swore in Swedish and tried again.
The opening reappeared. Widened.
Birk let out a deep cry, and the doors slid fully aside.
And revealed a solid wall.
“Doctor, let’s go.”
Her head snapped down. There was a two-foot opening between the floor of the car and the ceiling of level two. She knelt and looked out into a vacant hallway.
“Hurry, Doctor,” Birk said, pushing her flat to the floor. She eased her legs and lower half out, hanging vulnerably with feet touching nothing. The image of the car starting to move once more came to her, the sensation of being sheared in half so strong she shoved herself free and fell, crumpling hard to the floor.
Birk’s feet appeared, and he slithered free, his shoulders and head sliding out as the car suddenly lurched into motion. He hit the floor beside her, staring wide-eyed as the car’s bottom vanished and the level’s doors closed serenely.
“That would have needed more than stitches,” he said.
“Come on. We need to find Lien and Leo.” She helped him to his feet, and they set off at a trot down the hall, her attention falling on each camera they passed. Any second someone would step from a doorway and try to stop them, and she would have to use the handgun again.
She swallowed bile as they slowed at a corner and peered around it before continuing. At the end of the hall, there was an alcove, a round port mounted in its center. Two people were sprawled at the bay’s mouth, their forms becoming familiar the closer they got.
“Shit. It’s Leo and Lien,” Gillian said, moving faster.
“Doctor—”
“Come on.”
As she neared them, Lien’s head lifted weakly off the floor, and she raised one hand, seeing them approach.
“It’s okay,” Gillian said, stooping beside her, seeing a second too late that the other woman was pointing back the way they’d come.
Birk’s bellow of pain flooded her ears as she tried to turn, tried to bring the gun up, but then every nerve in her body was on fire.
Her muscles spasmed i
n pure agony, and she screamed, the handgun clattering to the floor. She followed it a half second later into darkness.
FORTY-TWO
Muddled sounds.
Frames of pictures Gillian didn’t understand. There was a man’s face pressed to the floor. Close to hers. One of his eyes was open, the other purple and swelled shut. She knew his name. Except the pain was still receding, keeping most of her thought process at bay.
She wanted to go back to sleep. Let the pain go away and try to wake up again.
She wanted a hydro.
Gillian closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the man was gone.
Leo was gone. It had been Leo lying beside her, such terror and sadness in his one good eye.
She tried putting her hands against the floor to push herself up but could barely move.
“Really knocked them the fuck out, Bob,” a voice said somewhere beyond her field of vision.
“That’s what happens when you turn these things up to ten. They’re out for like five minutes.”
“Incapacitato.”
“You just made that up.”
“It’s Italian.”
“Bullshit. Help me here, will you?”
There were echoed grunts. The sound of cloth sliding against something.
Gillian tried rolling herself over but managed to lift her shoulder only an inch off the floor. The last hour was coming back to her out of a fog.
The ship exploding.
Their plan to escape.
Carson’s death.
She grimaced, smelling the drying copper of his blood. Vernon’s blood. Maybe some of Birk’s.
Where was Birk?
She lifted her head and was able to glance around the alcove where she was lying.
Two men stood six feet away. One was dressed in a dark security uniform while the other was wearing a space suit minus the helmet. They were standing beside the round port she’d spotted before. There was a small window set in its top, and the one wearing the dark jumpsuit was looking through it, a half smile on his face. And there was a noise, muted but there. It sounded like someone pleading.
The security guard looking through the window reached out and pressed a button beside the port.
There was a long beep and a high screeching that slowly diminished to nothing.
“Holy shit. That was brutal,” the other man said.
