He stood facing the bank of monitors, the explosive charge nestled between the two bottom screens. Here goes …
With a press of his thumb the twenty-second timer started.
“Play with me.”
A raspy, thin whisper from the doorway. In the room. Next to his gun.
The subhuman woman stood there, crouched, coiled, her head tilted to one side like an ape. Her bloodshot eyes were as wide as saucers. “Play,” she repeated.
Skyler eyed the gun. Then her.
Fifteen seconds.
He stepped toward the weapon and the woman mirrored him, jutting sideways a half meter. A grin curled the corners of her mouth.
Ten seconds.
Skyler thought of trying to fight her. No time for it. He thought of feinting for the gun and then running past her. Might work, but she could just as easily tackle him.
Five seconds.
He hesitated.
Four.
Three.
Skyler spun and ran backward, three steps to the cubicle near the giant safe door.
The subhuman laughed and gave chase.
One.
Skyler dove.
Blinding white light enveloped him. The walls shook. No, everything shook. The blast caught his legs as he tumbled like a gymnast over the half wall that fronted the cubicle.
The sound was so loud it shut his ears down. Everything went silent and slow. He had a strange awareness of his rag-doll body flipping over, his feet smacking into the far cubicle wall. To his strange delight, the wall gave way. A temporary surface standing a meter from the room’s physical wall. The panel collapsed, softening the impact to his feet.
Sound returned as a high-pitched whistle, blaring at him from everywhere and nowhere. Lying on the floor under a shower of debris, he covered his ears to no effect; the whistle remained.
Shell-shocked, Skyler pushed himself up onto wobbly legs and surveyed the room. The brick-shaped bomb had done its job, and more. Half the wall had been removed along with the panel of monitors. Through the smoke he could see an adjacent room.
Not a room, he realized, but a hallway, lit from a series of soft yellow lights along its floor.
Skyler staggered through the wreckage on numb feet, tripping twice. He glanced toward where the subhuman had stood, but saw no sign of the creature in the haze. She must have taken the brunt of the blast, and been completely annihilated. Good.
Coughing, he entered the hall.
Skyler had descended more than a hundred steps down the spiral, scaffold staircase that lined the silo, when he realized where he was.
And that he’d left his gun behind.
He stopped and gripped the cold metal rail, taking in his surroundings.
The silo, a perfect circular tube cut from the earth itself, extended fifty meters above him. In the center of the man-made ceiling was a sphincter through which ran the cord of the space elevator, a perfect straight line of black thread so thin he had to squint to trace it. The rickety staircase wound its way around the inner wall of the silo, all the way down.
Down, he looked, following the spiral of the stair, leaning over to follow its path along the pit. He estimated it descended another five hundred meters. A series of red lights, placed at regular intervals along the length of the tube, provided the only illumination.
Skyler leaned over farther and tried to see the bottom, but a thick and misty air concealed whatever lay there. An uneven humming sound drifted up, raspy and constantly shifting pitch like a failing motor.
He decided to go back for his gun, just in case. Two steps in that direction and he froze.
At the top of the stairwell, the subhuman emerged from the same tunnel Skyler entered through. It staggered to the first step and screamed, more at the sight of him than the pain she must be in. Even from this distance, Skyler could see bleeding cuts and scrapes along her entire body. Portions were charred, black skin already cracking.
She had indeed taken the brunt of the explosion. Remarkable that she survived, he thought. More so that she could still walk.
He’d barely finished the thought when she started to come down the steps. Running, cackling with inhuman emotion.
Pure fear gripped Skyler and held his feet firmly where he stood. Every instinct told him to run, not fight. He thought he could defeat the woman in a fight, considering her injuries compared to his own. What he feared was that she didn’t want to fight, she wanted to dive on him, to “play,” and in the process she’d take them both over the railing and to their deaths below.
Yet his body refused to take action. The creature raced around the spiral stairs motivated by emotions so primal and unfiltered that Skyler almost felt jealous.
At least the woman could move.
Then she fell, tumbling down a few steps before hitting the outer wall in a violent stop.
As the subhuman clawed her way back to a stand, Skyler found the will to flee. He turned and took one step, then another. Soon he jogged, then ran, clanging down the metal stairs as his initial fear receded.
Countless steps blurred together. The humming noise grew ever louder as he went. He felt dizzy from the winding path, sure he would slip as the subhuman had. If that happened he would roll a long, long way before his inertia died out. Against every instinct he had, Skyler slowed down to a manageable pace. He glanced up and saw the woman on the spiral directly above him, still chasing, and gaining ground.
She fell again. He heard her yelp and sputter, then settle into a deep moan. A worse fall than the previous one. Skyler halted his progress and took the opportunity to catch his breath.
The air here, thick and warm, made the simple task of sucking in a breath a conscious effort. His clothing dripped with sweat. More than anything in the world, he wanted a sip of cold water.
At the railing he leaned over again. The strange, jerky hum from the depths of the pit was loud enough now to make him want to cover his ears. He’d descended to roughly the halfway point and could now make out shapes in the moist air below. The Elevator cord went straight down into the heart of a dish-shaped floor. The dark material, fanned out like the iris shutter of a camera lens, looked like nothing Skyler had ever seen before. Pure matte black, with geometric patterns laced through—
Something slammed into him, lifted him. The woman.
Skyler shouted his surprise. He made a mad grasp for the rail and missed, and then he was falling. He twirled around, the warm air growing hotter, rushing past him with ferocious speed.
He heard fluttery laughter, close by. The subhuman, flailing through the air above him. They would both die, he thought, in this dark pit that no one knew about.
Then the laughter became overwhelmed by the hum, deep and terrifying. Sputtering and shifting all the time. It came from below, from the dish-shaped iris that now raced toward him.
Some perverse corner of Skyler’s mind wanted to see the Builders’ construction material close up. He spun around. Maybe he could discern some detail before splattering his brains across it.
To his shock the iris pulsed open at the last instant. He sailed right past it with a whoosh. The subhuman did, too.
A bright light waited below, and as he fell into it time began to slow, until he felt suspended in midair.He felt as if every dream he’d ever had, everything he’d ever seen or smelled or tasted or touched or heard, suddenly became available for leisurely review. As if every last neuron in his brain had opened and presented its contents. He found he could focus on all of it at once, and yet any specific memory or sensation he tried to access refused to come forward.
Skyler took it all in with a serenity like none he’d ever known. He felt warm and weightless, as if in a bath. Everything glowed, electrified. Part of him knew the sensation should overwhelm him, and yet he found it merely curious.
I’ve died, he thought. It’s not so bad.
Then the images fell away from him. He floated, then flew, upward, thrown by some unseen force until he shot above the glowing hole. The iris snapped shut again below him and he fell to it.
With a skull-shaking thud he collapsed on to the cold, hard surface. A corner of his mind registered the fine angular patterns seemingly etched into the surface. Interlaced lines of varying depth, like veins in a leaf if not for their perfect straight lines and right-angle corners. Then his vision blurred, mind once again wallowed in a confused swarm of pain from the impact.
Skyler rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. Everything swam and skewed in front of him. He blinked, rubbed at his eyes. Not dead after all.
Reality began to assert itself. Slowly his vision returned to normal. He stood on the alien floor, the iris closed tight at his feet. The stairwell ended on the wall of the access shaft, a meter above him.
The humming sound had vanished.
In fact, Skyler could hear nothing but his own breathing and the occasional twang of vibration that rippled along the Elevator cord.
In a sudden panic Skyler whirled around, checking behind him, then left and right, for the subhuman. But he was utterly alone.
She’d vanished. Pulled in and consumed by the Aura generator.
But not me, he thought. It rejected me. As if I didn’t … fit.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Anchor Station
12.FEB.2283
Ten minutes into Tania’s jog through the quiet, curved hall of Black Level, the emergency alarm wailed.
The pulsing screech of the alarm ripped her from a hard-won state of meditation. She took an awkward step, and tripped. Her palms burned on the carpet as she tried to break her fall.
“Can I get no peace?” she muttered to herself.
She saw no smoke in either direction, felt no rush of escaping air. No immediate danger, then, and the revelation only increased a sense of dread. Memories of the subhuman outbreak weeks earlier flashed through her mind.
She scanned the curving hallway and spotted an access corridor to Gray Level nearby. A quick run and she reached it, and found the connecting bulkheads still open. Interlevel access would be blocked during decompression or fire. A security situation, however, required the opposite—the guards on duty needed unfettered access.
All the official guards were locked in their quarters, except a few who had been convincing in their willingness to join the Platz side in this conflict.
Tania turned and raced back to her quarters. A few other researchers were poking their heads from darkened rooms, eyes bleary and confused. She ignored their questions and reached her door, where she found Natalie knocking on it.
“There you are,” Natalie said. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve no idea, let’s find out.” Tania unlocked the door and rushed inside, leaving it open behind her. Natalie followed her in.
The terminal on the desk chirped loudly before Tania even reached it. She flicked the monitor on as she sat down, then tapped the keyboard to answer the call.
“I’m here,” she said.
From the other end of the connection she heard shouting, confusion. Battle. The screen indicated the call was originating from the storage area on Red Level, all the way at the other end of the station.
“… through the airlocks …” A garbled voice was full of panic. “… can’t stop …”
“Slow down,” Tania said. “I can’t understand you.”
She heard a series of shouts and rustling, then a loud click. The connection went dead.
The alarm stopped, too.
Tania tried to reestablish the connection, but it failed with an error. She tried the security desk to no avail.
“Fighting … my God, Nat, there’s fighting.”
“We’re mutineers,” Natalie said. “What did you expect—”
“I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
“The feeling is mutual, hon.”
The room fell silent as Tania struggled to think of a plan. She felt Natalie’s expectant gaze. Everyone on the station would be thinking the same thing, awaiting her orders. Watching how she handled herself. Pinning their hopes on her. For better or worse, Tania had become the leader of their little rogue nation.
Tania thought of the island of Hawaii, trees and birds and insects. Not the hell they’d landed in, but the idyllic version she’d glimpsed from above. She’d give anything to be there, far from this sterile place, this situation—
“We should get to Green Level,” Natalie said. Her steady voice like the tug of gravity.
“Yes,” Tania said. “You’re right. The comm is dead. We should find Karl—”
“No.” Natalie gripped her shoulder. “The lab. We need to suspend our program. Encrypt the data. Secure it.”
“Then what?”
“Hide somewhere. Wait for this to be resolved.”
Tania shook her head. “That would look great on my leadership résumé.”
“‘Strong aptitude in avoidance and stealth techniques.’”
“Very funny,” Tania said.
Tania led the way, creeping along the wall, eyes glued to the “horizon” of the hall, which curved up and out of view about one hundred meters ahead. They encountered nothing but silent halls along the way, a fact that made Tania all the more concerned.
Upon reaching the door to the computer lab, Natalie stepped ahead of her, key card ready. “I’ve got it,” she said. The door clicked open and she stepped aside.
Tania pushed the door open to a dark room, allowing light from the door to spill in. A thousand blinking pin lights from the numerous terminals floated in the blackness like stars. She rushed inside and heard Natalie follow.
At the back of the lab she ducked inside the private research room, went straight to the terminal, and unlocked the screen with her passphrase.
The monitors began to come to life.
“I left the hall door open,” Natalie said, and dashed back toward the front entrance. “Be right back!”
Tania started to tell her not to bother, but everything about their situation vanished from her mind when the giant displays on the wall came to life.