The Darwin Elevator (9 page)

“Thought I’d find you here, fuhkerrrrrr!”

Neil jumped at the slurred, raspy voice.

One of the crew floated in the doorway. The sick one, the one who’d left the game with a stomach problem. His face had an odd red pall. “Mysterious room … seventeen—”

“—is off-limits,” Neil said. “You should be in your quarters.”

The crewman ignored the order. Instead he doubled over and gripped his head in front of the ears, as if trying to tear away some invisible pair of goggles. For a second he drifted free, utterly consumed by pain, his face contorted in anguish.

“Bloody hell, man,” Neil said. “What’s the matter with you?”

The tortured look vanished as quickly as it had arisen. He pushed his way into the room with a queer violence, shouldering Neil out of the way. “Been wondering what secrets you’re hiding in here,” he slurred. “What the point of this bloody station is.”

Before Neil could object, the man collided with the crate of Sonton handguns. The lid came loose and floated open.

“Stay away from that,” Neil said. The words sounded ridiculous, weak.

“The hell?” the man said. He picked up a pistol and studied it, alcohol-fueled confusion plain on his face. “Guns? What … what the fuck, Platz?”

Be calm,
Neil urged himself.
Think
. He shot a glance in the direction Kelly had gone, and found no sign of her.

The man turned. The gun waved casually in one hand. His other hand had gone back to his temple. His fingers probed for relief before drifting lower, scratching along the neck.

Neil noticed the rash.

He froze, unable to believe what he saw right in front of him. It was, frankly, impossible.

The man had SUBS. Of this Neil had no doubt, and it made no sense whatsoever. The crewmen had been stationed here for weeks, no way to have traveled beyond the Aura.

The gun nearly slipped from the man’s hand. He caught it and tightened his grip, all the while waving it about like a toy.

Neil had no idea if the weapon was loaded. “Put it back, friend. You’re ill, you need help.”

“Friend?” The man scratched his cheek and neck with the butt of the weapon, so hard that Neil thought he might draw blood. “You’re my bloody boss, not my friend. What’s all this for, Platz?”

“None of your concern.”

“Bullocks!” the man shouted, enraged now. The disease would amplify his emotions. It would grow worse by the minute until it consumed him.

Something had to be done, and soon.

“Bullocks,” the crewman repeated, a darker tone now. He blinked, stuttered. “Something’s going on here. I should tell someone. The Council … yeah.”

Neil steadied himself. “We need to take you to quarantine. You’re talking nonsense.”

The crewman shook his head, an attempt to focus. His breathing became a husky growl, an animal sound. “I slept … all my time. Clear now, and watered.”

A shadow, along the ceiling, caught Neil’s eye.
No, a ghost.
Kelly
. She’d turned off her light.

“What did you say?” Neil asked. “You make no sense.”

With a heaving cough, the crewman leveled the weapon toward Neil. A shaky aim, but dangerous enough. His mouth twisted into a raw snarl. “‘Hell with you.
Help me, fucker
. Up on your beanstalk …”

Kelly descended from the ceiling in perfect silence, a spider on an invisible web. She landed right behind the babbling man and looked to Neil for his approval to take action.

In the span of a few minutes the disease had almost taken over the man’s mind. He’d likely be dead soon, anyway.

Neil nodded to her.

In a single motion she knocked the gun from the crewman’s hand and brought her arm around his neck. At the same time she pushed off from the wall.

The pair sprawled into the air, a tumbling mass of limbs. With no purchase, the man—the subhuman—could not gain an advantage. Kelly held her arm tight across the creature’s neck.

Neil could only watch, numb with disbelief at the scene before him. A full minute passed before she let go.

The crewman slumped, dead. The limp body drifted into a corner and settled there.

A subhuman,
Neil thought.
In orbit
. A litany of other thoughts blared in his head, but that alone drowned them. A man had contracted the disease in orbit, breathing air sterilized by the Aura—hell, inside the Aura. Something Neil never dreamed would happen, or even could happen. It was, by all rights, impossible.

It occurred to him then that this might be the next Builder event. He had assumed another vessel would arrive, like the last three times.

Two times,
he corrected himself. Even a mental mix-up of the count was something he punished himself for. The Elevator and the disease, that’s what history will say. That line must be towed at all costs. What came before that was his business and his alone.

His focus swerved back toward the present, and the future. He’d been so fixated on the idea that another ship would arrive, it never occurred to him that the next event could simply be a change in the existing circumstances.

The last event, the arrival of a small vessel carrying the seed of the SUBS disease, had forced those who could do so to huddle within the Aura. Neil swallowed bitterly as his mind churned through possibilities.
What if,
he thought,
the last five years have just been a grace period? What if they had meant for us to vacate?

A chill washed over his entire body. Goose bumps sprouted along his back and arms.

He couldn’t bring himself to look away from the corpse, bobbing in the corner, legs cocked in inhuman fashion. “Kelly,” Neil said. “My God, Kelly. How the hell did it get up here?”

Hands grasped his shoulders and shook him. Kelly’s hands—she’d come to him at some point.

“There’s nowhere safe now,” he muttered. “We misunderstood. We’re doomed …”

She slapped him across the face. “Snap out of it,” she hissed.

The sting of pain dispelled the fog in his mind. He managed to focus on her. If anyone else hit him like that, he would have sent them back to Darwin’s slums in a heartbeat.

“Misunderstood what? Were you keeping that thing here?” she asked. “Some kind of damn experiment?”

“No,” he said, incredulous. “Of course not. I have no idea how this happened.”

“It got here somehow,” she said.

“Listen to me,” Neil said. “He’s been here, Kelly. For
weeks
. I assigned the man. This … this can’t happen.”

She faced the floating body, as if seeing it for the first time. The anger on her face turned to dread.

I might have seen this coming,
Neil thought.
If only Tania’s father hadn’t blinded me. Foolish, foolish
. He pushed the memory aside. Nothing but pain lay down that road.

“We should alert the other stations,” Kelly said. “Initiate a lockdown.”

“No,” Neil said. “God, no! There’d be chaos. You were in Darwin when the survivors started pouring in. You saw how people acted.”

“But—”

“What if he’s the only one,” Neil said. His words silenced both of them. “A freak of nature,” he went on. “There’s people immune to the disease, right? Maybe there’s some immune to the Aura.”

“You’re clutching at straws.”

A laugh slipped from his lips. “Let’s bloody hope so, anyway, or we are well and truly damned.”

She took her time to nod. “Then we’ve got to put him out the airlock, before anyone finds out.”

“What?”

“If you don’t want chaos, we can’t have the body of a subhuman found up here.”

“And then?” he asked. “The others will know something’s happened. They’ll search for him—”

She gripped his chin, forced him to see her. “Then we leave. If anyone asks, he left with us. You had other work for him.”

Her words rang true. No matter how vile the business, no other option would work.

He took the lead, moving fast, guiding Kelly and the corpse toward an airlock one level over. The lack of gravity made the task trivial. A strange thing to think about, Neil realized. Murder in zero-g. It sounded like the title of a detective story.

At the inner airlock door, he helped Kelly steady the body, and then entered the access override code. She pushed the body and let it float into the small compartment.

“Did you know him?” she asked.

“Not well,” Neil said. He swung the thick door closed and activated the lock again. “Trevor, I think.”

Override code still in place, Kelly handled the sequence of commands to open the outer airlock door. Neil couldn’t help but watch through the tiny window. In total silence, the black of space came into view. A flash of humidity as air met vacuum. The body jerked and spun, sucked along with the air into the void, slack limbs flopping in grotesque manner. The corpse gained distance with surprising speed.

“I’m too old for this,” he said.

“You and me both.”

Neil forced himself to look away from the porthole. He turned to Kelly and searched for something else to say to her. Nothing came to mind.

Kelly gripped his shoulder. “What’s done is done. Let’s get out of here.”

He grinned, despite the circumstances. Only he knew his past sins. In this he had a co-conspirator, someone to share the burden with. He could draw strength from that.

Chapter Seven

Toyama, Japan

14.JAN.2283

Three thousand meters over the target, the rear cargo door of the aircraft opened and Jake jumped out.

The sun, just cresting the eastern horizon, cast the cloud tops below in a deep red.

Skyler watched until the sniper vanished into the nebulous puffs. Satisfied, he picked up a handheld microphone that hung on the wall and pressed it to his mouth. “He’s out, Angus. Slow circles, engines off.”

“Copy,” the pilot replied through a speaker on the wall. The engine noise faded a second later, until only the rush of wind could be heard. Skyler punched the large red button that controlled the ramp. Hydraulics wheezed as the thick metal door closed.

“Sixty seconds,” he said, and set to work strapping on his parachute.

Samantha leaned against the cabin wall, chewing at a fingernail. She’d put her gear on more than an hour ago. A camouflage outfit of gray and white, insulated for winter climates, black combat boots, and her favorite sawed-off shotgun strapped across her chest.

Skyler caught her attention and motioned toward Takai.
Help him out,
he mouthed. She rolled her eyes and began to inspect the engineer’s equipment.

“That parachute has seen better days,” Skyler said to her, noting the frayed stitching along an edge.

“The whole world has seen better days, Sky.”

Takai tried to look, but Sam held him facing forward. “Not funny,” he said.

Skyler took a closer look at the yellowed material. “Maybe we should drop on a nylon factory, fix these up.”

“Or,” Sam said, “a paratrooper base? The Brits were big into that.”

“Even better. Hell, we might find some Guinness.”

She grinned at him and he returned the smile. For a fleeting instant it felt like things used to be, when they were equals.

Jake’s voice came over the speaker. “I’m on the ground. No activity here; it’s safe to drop.”

However safe it might be, he’s whispering,
Skyler noted. “Angus,” he said into the mic, “are we back over the target?”

“Thirty seconds,” he responded.

Skyler made sure his primary weapon, a small machine gun, was securely fastened to his chest. He double-checked his pistol as well, holstered on his thigh. Satisfied, he punched the red button on the inner wall and the cargo door opened once again.

Wind screamed outside. A few kilometers to the southeast, Skyler could see a pair of snowy peaks jutting up through the cloud layer.

He looked at Sam. Her blue eyes were luminous in the dark cabin. Her serious expression said she was ready.

Takai’s face said the opposite. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he fumbled with the pistol Jake had loaned him. Skyler carefully crossed to him, helped him stow the weapon properly, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “You okay?”

Takai managed a smile. “I prefer home, fixing things.”

“You’ll be fine,” Skyler said. “Stick with Sam.”

“Stick with Skyler,” Sam shouted over the wind. “That was the deal.”

Skyler hoped she’d forget that detail. “That’s what I meant. Stick with me.”

With a running start, Samantha jumped out the back of the
Melville
. In an instant she vanished into the clouds.

Takai stood frozen in place, staring at the puffy red-gray wall. Skyler began to worry that he would have to push the little man, but Takai closed his eyes and followed Sam’s example.

Satisfied, Skyler took the two steps to the end of the ramp and kept going, into the howling wind.

It whipped his hair and clothing with a fury. He tumbled over, facing up, and saw the
Melville
receding above him. Angus had already started to bank, beginning his circular holding pattern.

Skyler rolled over just in time to punch through the clouds.

Far below, Japan rushed toward him.

He steered toward Sam’s and Takai’s parachutes, both black blotches on the ground below. They had both landed well by the look of it, in a flat clearing that probably used to serve as parking for the observatory complex. Maple and pine trees covered a landscape dotted white by snow.

As he hit the ground, Skyler’s foot slipped on a patch of ice and he went down. Waist-high weeds scratched at his face as he fell to one side, black mass of his chute collapsing around him.

“I see you,” Jake said over the helmet comm. “Nice landing, Sky.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied. The chilled air of the descent had numbed his fingers, his nose. On the ground the air hung still, cold and silent.

“No movement at all,” Jake said. “I think this place is dead.”

Skyler worked frantically to untangle himself. “Roger. Keep us posted.”

Clouds kept the rising sun largely hidden, casting the surroundings in muted shades of gray and brown, broken occasionally by patches of snow.