by Cross, Amy
“Then we'd better hurry up,” I reply, as I start to climb.
That's easier to say than do, however, and I soon realize that this section of the rocket was definitely not designed for quick or easy access. As I get up into the next section, I'm starting to feel pretty claustrophobic, and I have to admit that I find myself wondering whether I should have paid more attention to Martha's warning. If anything, the space around me is getting narrower, to the extent that I'm worried about getting wedged in here, and all the panels and walls are vibrating heavily. We're basically climbing into the guts of a giant machine, with no guarantee that we won't eventually come to a dead end. What if Maddy was wrong? What if, in her insane desire to get back at Maxwell Carver, she lost her mind?
“It can't be much further!” I call back down to Martha, even though I'm really not certain that I'm correct on that point. “Don't worry! We'll find a way out soon!”
Chapter Nine
Elizabeth
“Elizabeth,” Dad says, his voice shimmering in the air around me as I remain curled in a ball on the floor, “talk to me. Tell me what's happening to you.”
I can't reply.
I can't move my mouth at all.
I can barely even think.
At first, I thought nothing could be worse than living through Joseph's experience while he was killing Maddy Crozier. I tasted her blood, I felt her bones shattering in my mouth, I heard her screams, but at least I was able to tell myself that it wouldn't last forever, that soon she'd be dead. Then everything became a little blurry, but I swear I heard Thomas saying something, and then I saw his sister aiming a gun at me. After that, I felt as if my head had exploded, and I realized that Martha had killed Joseph.
At least, she'd destroyed his body.
His mind is still here.
“I'm not ready to go!” his voice gasps, as I feel his hands reaching through my thoughts. “I have to stop that bastard Carver as well!”
“Please leave me alone,” I whimper, even as I hear Dad still trying to talk to me. “You wanted Maddy! You got her! Now go!”
“They're all going to pay!” he snarls. “I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but I'm going to have to borrow your body again. This'll be the last time, I promise, I'm not even strong enough to stay for long. Now that my own body's gone, I just need to hide out in yours for a little while, just until I've found Carver.”
“No!” I snap, concentrating as hard as I can in an attempt to push him out of my head.
“I'm not asking,” he replies, “I'm telling.”
“No!” I scream, and suddenly I sit up as I find that I'm a bare, bland room.
I look around, but there's no sign of Dad at all. After a moment, I realize that I recognize this room, that it's the same place that I went to back at Pentham while I was infected. I so nearly fell into an abyss of nothingness, but at the very last moment I was saved, and it never occurred to me that I could end up here again. I start getting to my feet, and as I do so I look down and see to my surprise that I actually have both my feet again. I guess, since this isn't really my body, I've gone back to the form that I remember the best.
Hearing someone breathing nearby, I turn and see a middle-aged man standing just a few feet away, staring at me. I don't recognize him, not at first, but then I take a step back as I realize that there's something familiar about this guy's face.
“I need your body, Elizabeth,” he says finally. “Please, don't make me fight any harder than this. It'll drain us both. Just let me take control for a little while, and then I'll be gone forever. I don't have a body to go back to. This is all that's left of me now.”
“Joseph,” I whisper, as I see the far end of the room starting to dissolve into nothingness. “You wanted Maddy, and you got her.”
“I want Carver too,” he replies. “I want everyone who was involved with Project Atherius.”
“My father was involved,” I point out. “Do you want him too?”
“I...”
He hesitates, and it's clear that he knows I won't like the answer.
“This is all your fault,” I continue.
“How can you possibly think that?” he asks.
“Project Atherius was designed as a way of helping people survive a mass extinction event,” I reply, “but I already know you're the one who released the virus. You developed it as part of your work with them, because they wanted a sample of a perfect virus. They thought they could use it to come up with an antidote, to protect themselves, but instead you sent it off into the wild. And you found a way to keep your own mind alive inside the virus. Don't even bother to deny it, Joseph. While you're inside my mind, I can also read some of your own fears. Your own guilt.”
“Why would I feel guilty?”
“About destroying humanity? Just a hunch.”
“If I hadn't done it, somebody else would have. The human race was circling the drain anyway.”
“That's not true!” I say angrily. “We might not be perfect, but there's more good in us than bad! And releasing a killer virus isn't exactly the answer!”
“You're playing for time,” Joseph says, as the room continues to fade around us, and as the void gets closer. “Let me leave you in here for just a short time while I take control and punish Maxwell Carver, and I promise I'll be back before you fall away into oblivion.” He pauses, before stepping toward me. “You know this is the right thing to do, Elizabeth. Carver can't be allowed to get away with all the crimes he's committed. You don't even know the worst things about that man, about the people he's killed and cheated, about the lies he's told, about the way he took a good, decent woman like Madeleine Crozier and twisted her until she was just like him. It's okay, though, because I'm here to make sure that he pays.”
“You're dead,” I reply.
“I've been dead for a year.”
“I want you to get out of my head,” I say firmly. “Now!”
“Not until I've made sure that Maxwell Carver is -”
Suddenly I rush forward and try to push him into the void, but he must have been ready for me; he grabs my arms and twists me around, and then he throws me over the edge. At the very last second, he takes hold of my wrists, dangling me above the vast black nothingness that even now is spreading through my mind. I try to pull myself back to safety, but Joseph holds me out further as if he's about to drop me at any second. I struggle again and again, desperately trying to somehow claw my way back onto the only part of this room that still exists, but nothing works. I can feel the void beneath me, yawning and waiting for me to fall, but at least for now Joseph is holding me tight.
“Let go!” I yell.
“That doesn't seem like something you should want me to do right now.”
“What does it matter to you if Maxwell Carver gets away?” I gasp. “You're the one who's to blame for all this!”
“You don't understand anything,” he says darkly.
“I understand what I can feel coming from your own thoughts,” I tell him. “You won't admit that you regret doing it, will you? Creating the virus, then releasing it... You won't admit it, but you know you were wrong, and you also know deep down that you're projecting all your rage and hatred onto other people. Maddy Crozier might have treated you badly, but you're the one who naively fell for every trick she played on you!”
“I'd strongly advise you to shut your mouth right now,” he replies.
“Because you don't like being called out on it all?”
“Because I'm dangling you over the abyss right now, and it's up to me whether you ever get your body back.”
“I didn't make it this far by giving in to monsters!” I say firmly.
“Doesn't this remind you of the moment Bob almost killed you?” he asks, with a faint smile.
“You don't know anything about Bob!” I snap.
“You're not the only one who can read fears, Elizabeth,” he replies. “Barely a week into this crisis, you were almost thrown out the window of your family's apartment buildi
ng. If that had happened, you'd have been spared all this madness, and you might even have been reunited with your dead family. Isn't there a part of you that wishes you'd managed to get all of this over with much sooner? We're all going to die anyway, so why bother clinging to life? Why not just accept the inevitable?”
“Go to hell!”
“I'm tired, Elizabeth,” he says calmly, “and believe it or not, I have no desire to cling to life. I hoped that we could come to an amicable arrangement, but now I can see that you won't accept such an offer. I'm so sorry, Elizabeth, but I'm afraid this is the end of the road for you. Unless you finally want to play nice?”
“I already told you,” I reply. “Go to -”
Before I can finish, he lets go of my wrists. All I can do is scream as I plummet into the void below.
Chapter Ten
Thomas
“Damn it!” I gasp as I finally manage to squeeze through another tight panel. Spilling out into a larger space high up in the rocket, I immediately get to my feet, and after a moment I spot a larger hatch over on the far wall. “Martha!” I yell. “Hurry up! I think we made it!”
Realizing that she's still struggling, I lean down and grab her hand so that I can help her up. She's clearly exhausted, but I guess having only one arm must have made the climb a lot harder for her. I'm starting to think that maybe I should have found a way to force her to wait for me back in the main part of the facility. Still, she manages to get up and join me in this compartment, even if she has to stop to get her breath back.
I look around and see that there are various panels on the wall. Stepping over to take a closer look, I find that they each have labels, although I don't understand the codes that seem to have been used. I open one of the panels, and I'm surprised to find that it contains what looks like a collection of little white tear-dropped shaped objects, each of which is very slightly transparent. Leaning closer, I'm just about able to make out a dark shape inside each one, and I slowly reach inside and touch the side.
“There's something creepy about all of this,” I say as I stroke the edge of what seems like some kind of small cocoon. “Do you think maybe Lucy Hoyle was telling the truth? She seemed to be rambling, but she talked about cells that could survive being in space for a long time. She kept going on about finding a way to let them survive.”
I pause, and then I squint slightly in an attempt to get a better look at whatever is being held in these cocoons.
“What if these are the cells?” I continue. “What if this is how they're planning to transport samples of people into space?”
“And do what with them?” Martha asks, still out of breath.
“Fine a new place for them, maybe?” I turn to her. “I know it sounds crazy, but these people managed to built a rocket, so obviously they've got some pretty high-tech stuff going on.”
“You're letting your imagination run a little wild there,” she replies. “I'm pretty sure you can't just fling stuff into space and hope it happens to land somewhere good. Thomas, the distances for space travel are huge, there's just nothing that could ever survive. Apart from metal and stuff like that, anyway.”
“I was just suggesting a -”
“Keep your feet on the ground.”
“But what if -”
“Keep your feet on the ground,” she says again, more firmly this time. “Seriously. That's always been your problem, Thomas. You let your head get in the clouds, and you forget about what's really going on. If we're gonna have any chance of getting out of here today, I need you to not be fantasizing about spaceships and all that crazy kind of crap. Got it?”
I pause for a moment, and then I shut the little panel.
“You're right,” I reply. “Sorry. I guess I just can't help wondering whether -”
“Thomas.”
“What?”
“You're doing it again.”
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “Feet on the ground. I get it.”
“When we get back to the farm,” she replies, “I'm not going to leave again. Do you know what I miss the most? The smell.”
“The smell?” I pause. “What smell?”
“Didn't you ever notice how our family's land had its own smell? I never noticed it anywhere else.”
“Yeah,” I reply, nodding. “I noticed it. I mentioned it to Joe once, and he laughed at me.”
“That's all I want now,” she continues. “To live on our land, with our land's smell. So don't worry, I understand how you get lost in your own thoughts now and again. Believe me, I'm constantly thinking about the farm, but I just keep telling myself that we'll get back there one day.” She sighs. “But to get back there, it would appear that we first have to go through this rocket and out again, which means...” She nods past me. “Do you want to lead the way?”
Clambering over to the hatch, I quickly get it open, and I find that we've reached another bridge that links the rocket to the main part of the building. There's an opening at the other end of the bridge, with nothing to block our way. At least, nothing I can see, although I can't help watching for a moment in case there's some kind of hidden danger. Then again, the main part of the facility didn't seem to be that secure on the inside, and they didn't even have cameras everywhere. I figure the chances of hidden laser beams must be pretty low.
“I think it worked,” I say, turning back to Martha. “Maddy's idea, I mean. It looks like we can get in this way.”
“Great,” she replies, getting to her feet even though she clearly need to rest a little longer. “What fabulous news.”
“We can wait a few minutes.”
“I'm fine.” She winces as she says those words, but I know there's no way she's going to admit that she's feeling awful. “Let's just get this over with, okay?”
There's still blood caked all around the wound on her shoulder, but at least she doesn't seem to be actively bleeding anymore. After everything she's been through, she seems to have the attitude that she just wants to carry on regardless of any injuries, and I guess that's pretty cool.
I look out again across the bridge. There's no sign of anything to stop us, but I still can't help worrying that this all seems way too easy. Then again, we can't exactly just sit here and wait to see what happens, so I slowly climb out of the hatch and onto the bridge, which wobbles slightly. This particular bridge is pretty flimsy, and when I look over the side I can't help but feel a shiver in my chest as I see a steep drop all the way back down into the bowels of the facility. I can't even see the bottom from here, but it must be at least four hundred feet below, maybe even more.
Looking up, I see that we're still not at the top of the rocket. By my reckoning, we're probably no more than about two-thirds of the way.
The bridge wobbles and rattles slightly as Martha climbs out to join me.
“So what's the plan?” she asks. “Storm the place, find your pal Elizabeth and extract her from whatever trouble she's in, then maybe kill the bad guy just for good measure and finally walk away to safety as the entire Project Atherius place explodes in a big fireball?”
I turn to her.
“That's the optimistic version,” she adds. “The pessimistic version is that we get ourselves killed but, hey, we've come this far so we might as well keep going. And Edgewaters are pretty tough, right?”
“Sure,” I reply, even though I'm not feeling too optimistic right now. “Let's -”
Suddenly I spot movement out of the corner of my eye, and I turn just in time to see Edward Doncaster – or Maxwell Carver, as he's apparently called around here – stepping into view. He walks over to a panel, and he doesn't seem to have spotted us, but I signal for Martha to step back.
“What's he doing?” she whispers.
“Something sucky, no doubt,” I reply.
“Sucky? Thomas, people in action movies don't use words like sucky.”
Ignoring her, I watch as Doncaster continues to work at the panel. His hands are moving fast, and it's pretty clear that he knows e
xactly what he's doing. This guy is the brains of the whole operation, and it's obvious that his work has been building up to this moment for quite a while. He makes some more adjustments to something, and then he turns and walks away, quickly disappearing out of sight.
“He didn't see us,” Martha whispers. “Did he?”
“I don't think so.”
“That's something of a miracle,” she mutters. “Still, it shows that we need to be more careful. Let's just get in, get your friend, and get out.”
“How many shots do you have left in that gun?”
“No idea.”
“Can't you -”
“And I don't know how to check,” she adds. “I'm worried that if I try, I might somehow break the damn thing. Thomas, right now I think we have to rely on a little luck, okay? If we wait until we're sure of what we're doing, we're never gonna get anywhere.”
I know she's right, even if deep down I'm convinced that sooner rather than later our luck has to run out. It's hard to believe that Edward Doncaster didn't notice us at all, but then I guess he's probably a little preoccupied. I watch for a moment longer, and then I take a step forward.
Suddenly Doncaster steps into view in the doorway, staring straight at us. I instantly freeze, but for a moment I have no idea what to do. Martha bumps into me from behind, and I quickly realize that right now we're easy targets.
“Okay,” I stammer, trying to stay calm, “now what do we -”
I barely have time to react before Doncaster raises a gun and fires, and the bullet hits the bridge just a few feet from me as Martha and I scramble desperately back through the hatch and into the rocket.
Chapter Eleven
Elizabeth
Gasping, I sit up as I feel my heart pounding hard in my chest.
“It's okay!” Dad says, tossing something aside as he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Elizabeth, listen to me! Everything's fine!”
Looking at him, I feel momentarily dazed, and then I remember what happened just a few seconds ago. I was trapped in my own mind, and Joseph was dangling me over the void, and then he let go and I was going to fall, but then...
