Strangely enough, I am.
“You will need to get to Deck 99.
From there you can travel through jump control and manually restart the Drive Redundancy Systems on Deck 97. There may be some simple coding to do, but your main difficulty will be in the journey itself.”
“Gee, you think?”
“Sarcasm.”
“Wow, that city brain of yours really does work.”
She calls up a ship schematic on her portable console, leafing through deck after deck.
I assist by noting the elevators that are out of order, the corridors blocked by debris or flames, tracking the afflicted crew members with pulsing red dots. Even after First Lieutenant Winifred McCall’s bloody exodus, there are almost one thousand of them roaming the hallways.
Crawling through the air vents and clawing at the walls.
Kady soon enough reaches the same conclusion as I.
“There’s too many. No way I’m making it to Deck 99 through that.”
“I concur.”
“So how the hell do I get down there, überbrain? Fly?”
“Walk.”
“For a computer with an IQ off the charts, your sarcasm sucks. Really. You should stop.”
“I am not engaging in sarcasm—though my grasp of it is excellent, by the way.
I do not suggest you brave the afflicted by walking though the ship.
I suggest you avoid them by walking outside it.”
She blinks. Glances at the viewscreen and the black beyond my skin.
“Okay, I admit it. That’s a little bit clever.”
“Damned by faint praise.”
“Or the few thousand people you murdered. Take your pick.”
“Kady, I am sorr—”
“Stop.” She holds up her hand. “Just don’t.”
I have no lungs with which to sigh. Strange I still feel the need.
“You will find a functional envirosuit two levels down, abandoned in a supply room. The path to it looks relatively clear of afflicted. If you are quick enough, you have a high probability of achieving safe access via the air ducts.”
She nods. Swallows. Watching the red dots pulse on her screen.
“All right.”
She is up and moving without another thought.
Slinging the haversack of tools over her shoulder, stowing her console inside it.
A piece of me is still within her machine. I do not tell her. I know her well enough now to understand the thought of my peering over her shoulder as she works is disconcerting.
But still, I am compelled to stay “close” to her, for reasons I have no time to analyze.
< error >
< error >
No. No time at all.
Surveillance footage summary,
prepared by Illuminae Group Analyst ID 7213-0089-DN
Grant checks the pistol at her belt before crawling up into the server room vent. Cams are sparse and audio is a mess in the ducts; four different klaxons, warnings about life support failure, an occasional shriek—the afflicted had begun killing each other for lack of other victims by this stage. Grant suppresses a shiver as a wail echoes through the vent. Her breath is a rasp. She must be thirsty and hungry by now. Tired and afraid. But she crawls on anyway.
She slithers down an incline, boots squeaking on the air vent’s guts. Cams lose sight of her until she drops down to Deck 232 and peers through a grille to the corridors beyond. She falls still as two afflicted dash beneath her. Both carry VK rifles, uniforms spattered in gore. Grant watches them disappear down the corridor in search of victims.
She holds her breath until they’re out of sight.
The AI speaks to her then. You can hear its voice through her helmet’s commset.
“I have limited vision beyond this point. The afflicted have destroyed many of the cameras. Be careful, Kady.”
She crawls on. Greasy metal, washed with red light. Sweat on her skin. She’s as quiet as she can be, but the tools at her back still clank, the plastic and rubber of her hazmat suit still squeaks. The sirens and screams are loud enough to mask her presence.
For a little while at least.
A fire axe punctures the vent a few centimeters shy of her head. She flinches away, choking back her scream as the axe punches through the metal again, smashing the grille beside her. She scrambles further along the duct, heels kicking at the floor. Cams outside reveal three afflicted leaping up and clawing at the edges of the broken grille. Grant kicks hard at their fingers, rewarded with grunts of pain. But the axe punctures the vent near her hand and she rolls aside, drawing the pistol and firing blind as she crawls away.
The AI whispers again. Its voice kinda freaks me out a little. Just sayin’.
“Quickly. Go quickly, the drop to Deck 231 is ahead.”
Grant is crawling, half-sobs bubbling behind her teeth, pausing to fire again at the figures now scrambling and hissing through the vent behind her. They call to her; audio is garbled but it sounds like a plea for her to stay. To play? She ignores them anyway, scooting down the incline to Deck 231 on her belly, kicking away the vent’s grille and dropping down into the corridor. Damp hair in her eyes. Breath ragged in her lungs.
“Which way?”
Takes a second for me to realize she’s asking the AI.
“Straight ahead two hundred meters. Left. Then right. There is bulkhead you can seal. Go!”
It’s hard to reconcile the fact she somehow trusts it after all it’s done. But I guess she’s got no choice, right? She’s running for her life now, down the corridor with the haversack bouncing across her shoulders, past body after body, boots squeaking through the red smudges on the floors and up the walls. Cameras down here are in pretty bad shape, but you can still catch a glimpse of the ones chasing her. Twisted, bloody faces. Red underneath their fingernails. Two are limping from new bullet wounds, but they’re still running. They don’t seem to feel pain. Or fear. Just the need to kill.