Zero-G (20 page)

It feels like we free-fall forever. Like the cable in Carver's hands is attached to nothing.

That doesn't last long. The cable goes taut, snapping so tight I nearly lose my grip on Carver, and then we're swinging, just like Carver did under the claw-arm, only much faster. The train car on the gantry squeals in protest. I force my eyes open, and see the ground rushing towards us. The cable is too long, and if we don't let go at exactly the right second, we're going to slam into it at full speed.

“Now!” I shout. A split second later, five feet above the ground, Carver lets go of the cable.

I twist my body sideways, letting my right shoulder take the impact. As I roll, I do everything I can to keep my legs out of the way, tucking them up. It hurts like hell. I tumble, pummelled by the ground, and then I'm on my feet, adrenaline fizzing in my veins, sharpening everything in my vision.

We've come down a few steps away from the entrance. Carver is getting up, unsteady on his feet. He's actually laughing, although his eyes are still back on that gantry. Mikhail is ordering his men to the ladders, his face in a rictus of fury.

There are others on the floor, running towards us, but they're some distance away. “Time to go,” I say to Carver. I focus the adrenaline rush, my eyes on the big door set into the wall. It's on a roller, way too big for us to push – and right now it's shut tight.

“Where's the door release?” I say.

“Hold them—” Carver says, then stops and tries again, steadying his voice. “Hold them off.”

He sprints away, leaving me pushed up against the door, facing down the approaching Earthers. Six of them – two men and four women. No stingers that I can see, just lengths of pipe, and they're approaching cautiously. One of them has a limp, favouring his right ankle, and one of the women looks barely out of her teens.

Janice Okwembu is nowhere to be seen. Not surprising – she always vanishes whenever the action starts.

I step forward, squaring my shoulders. “The first person to try it gets one of those pipes wedged in their throat. Any takers?”

The group stops, hovering a few steps away. The young woman takes a step forward, her face set. Above and behind her, I can see Mikhail's group racing across the gantry, heading back towards the ladders.

“You think we'd just let you go?” says the woman. She's got one of the pipes, and, as she takes another step forward, she grips it in two hands to steady herself. “After what you did to Jamal's girl?”

I step forward to meet her. She refuses to step back. The others, emboldened by her example, line up on either side of her.

Better hurry, Carver.

The door gives a huge rumble, and begins to move on its rollers behind me. The woman sucks in a breath – like she really, really didn't want to have to do this – then hefts the pipe and swings it at me, in a horizontal sweep. I was looking back towards the door, and only just catch the swing out of the corner of my eye. I dodge back, and the pipe whooshes by me, grazing my chest. The woman curses, tries to bring the pipe back, but I'm already running, with Carver on my heels, out of the door and away.

The Earthers chase us, shouting at us to stop, but we're in the open now – and there's no way they're outpacing a pair of tracers in the open. Their cries grow fainter and fainter behind us. It's impossible to work out where we are – the corridors around us could mark anywhere on the station. It's only when we emerge onto one of the stairwells that I realise we're in New Germany. The Caves are below us, and the Tzevya border is off to our left.

The power's off in the stairwell, and there's that stench again, wafting up from the bottom. We stop on a landing, breathing hard. The light is out, but as we arrive it flickers back on. An old woman is leaning up against the wall, dead eyes locked on the ceiling. Resin has sprouted out of her mouth like an obscene afterbirth, almost gluing her head to the wall.

We look away, and I catch Carver staring at me.

“What?” I say.

He shakes his head, as if banishing unpleasant thoughts. “Where did Anna go? She's not still in there?”

“I don't know. She'll be OK.” I can't say whether this is true or not.

“Right,” he says. “And we need to get back to your psycho doctor anyway.”

I can feel the incisions in my knees throbbing. Part of me is amazed that I'm still whole, that Knox hasn't died yet. “What do we do then?”

“We get him to Apex. We warn them about the Earthers.”

“Do you think Anna was right? That they're behind Resin?”

He shakes his head again “No idea, Ry.”

Without another word, we start running again, pushing our exhausted bodies further, heading back down the ring.

Morgan Knox doesn't know how he gets hold of the syringe. But it's in his hand, his thumb resting on the depressed plunger. It takes all his effort just to remember what he's supposed to do with it.

Tube thoracostomy.
That was it. He's got to drain some of the fluid on his lungs.

Every breath sends a constricting black corona into his vision, and, with each one, the corona gets bigger, narrowing his sight down to a small, bright circle.

He's lying on his back on the surgery floor, holding the syringe up to the light. It's a black shape, the needle appearing to grow before his eyes. He flips the cap off with trembling fingers, then lowers the syringe to his side. He's going to have to punch right through his tunic.

His right index finger feels out a space. There – between the second and third ribs on his right-hand side. He'll be able to get the needle into the pleural space, the area between the lungs, draining off some of the fluid. It'll buy him some time to address the underlying pathology, assuming he can stay awake to do it.

He doesn't know if it'll be enough. But if it doesn't do something, he'll fade away, and he can't allow that. Not while Janice Okwembu is still walking around.

The needle rests against the fabric of his tunic. Knox can't take enough of a breath to prepare for it, so he doesn't bother. He just pushes the needle in, right through the skin.

It's the worst pain he's ever felt in his life, slicing right through his chest cavity and out the other side. He can't scream. He can't do anything. It takes him a moment to get up the strength needed to pull the plunger back, and when he does so, the agony is almost unbearable.

He pulls until the plunger stops, then rips the needle out. There's another feeling now, beyond the pain: a searing stab of cold, right into the centre of his being. It's air, travelling in and out of the tiny hole he made. He holds the syringe up, pushing back against the darkness in his vision. The space in the syringe is filled with greyish-black ooze.

He lets it go, his hand dropping to the floor. He should do it again, withdraw more fluid, but he can't face going through that pain again. He concentrates on getting as much oxygen as he can from the tiny breaths he's able to suck into his lungs.

The corona leaps forward, driving his sight to a hot pinpoint of white light. Then even that vanishes, and Knox is gone.

Julian only just makes it through the doors.

He has to turn sideways, jamming his body into the crack. His one hand – the one not holding the stinger – lashes out at Prakesh. His face is contorted with rage.

Roger's hands enter the crack, wrapping around the frame, trying to push the door back. The motor starts complaining, grinding as it pushes against the obstacle. Julian growls in fury, swinging his arm again, his fingers hooked into claws.

It's impossible not to think of what happened to Oren Darnell. He was crushed by the massive doors leading to the Core, caught between them while trying to chase down Riley. This isn't the same thing: the door and the motor behind it aren't strong enough to do permanent damage to Julian. And, Prakesh can see, it's not enough to hold him either. Julian is pushing through, inch by inch, the growl turning to a groan as he fights through the gap.

Prakash starts to back away. It's only after he's taken a few steps that he remembers that Julian is out of bullets.

The realisation floods through him, an electrical storm crackling through his muscles. Julian wants him? Fine. Prakesh strides towards him, grabs his upper arm and
pulls
.

With a squeal, Julian pops out of the door. Prakesh collapses backwards, and Julian lands on top of him, his skin hot and greasy, stinking of adrenaline. Prakesh sees, with unsettling clarity, the door close on Roger's fingers. He hears a cry of pain, and then the fingers are gone and the door clicks shut.

He tries to push Julian off of him. He's rewarded by Julian's fist driving into the side of his face, cracking against his cheekbone. The world flashes grey. Prakesh is dimly aware of another pain at the back of his skull, where he must have impacted with the floor after Julian hit him. He has just enough time to process this when Julian hits him again.

This time, the man's fist lands right on Prakesh's upper lip, splitting it open. Blood, hot and bitter, coats his tongue.

Julian's hands wrap around Prakesh's neck, thumbs digging into his throat. Julian is shouting – a sound filled with insane fear. Prakesh realises this distantly, almost academically, as if Julian is a plant specimen that has developed an interesting characteristic. Another thought follows it: he can't breathe. Can't get enough oxygen into his lungs. It's important, Prakesh knows it is, but he doesn't know what to do about it. Julian's face is inches from his, spittle flying from his mouth.

Prakesh can't feel the pressure on his throat any more. He's at the bottom of a deep, dark hole, looking up at a dwindling circle of light.

Something appears in the light, above Julian. No, not something.
Someone.

With the same distant recognition, Prakesh sees that it's Suki. She has a fire extinguisher in her hands, a squat, red cylinder, heavy and rusted. She holds it horizontally, one hand gripping its nozzle assembly, the other holding the base. Prakesh notes all this, and wonders what she plans to do with it. There's no fire, and that's what you use fire extinguishers for …

With a desperate cry, Suki slams the extinguisher down onto Julian's head.

He stops shouting, and the most curious expression crosses his face. Part surprise, part anger. He doesn't look around, not even when Suki hits him again. The second blow turns him into a ragdoll, and he collapses on top of Prakesh, spasming.

The fingers around Prakesh's throat loosen and fall away. Oxygen comes rushing back, and, with it, reality. He shoves Julian off him, and the tech thumps onto the floor.

Suki raises the extinguisher again, tears falling down her face. She's shouting, too, as if Julian's fear fled his body and found a home in hers. Just before she brings the extinguisher down, Prakesh grabs her wrists. He doesn't remember getting off the floor, and the extinguisher bounces off his chest. It hurts.

She tries to shove him aside, tries to bully past him with the extinguisher. He still has hold of her wrists, and he grips them even tighter.

She drops the extinguisher. It lands nozzle first, and shoots out a spurt of white foam as the handle makes contact with the ground. Prakesh lets go of Suki's wrists, more in surprise than anything else. She yelps, then covers her mouth with her hands. Above them, her eyes are enormous.

“It's OK,” Prakesh says. They barely count as words: his throat is a piece of rust-caked metal. His skin feels as if a steel band is locked around his neck, hot and constricting. He tries again. “It's OK, Suki. You're all right.”

She wavers for a moment, then hugs him, burying her face in his shoulder. A part of Prakesh doesn't believe any of this is real. The lights are too bright, every sensation magnified.

“What about the others?” Suki says, her voice muffled in the folds of his lab coat. “Roger? Iko?”

“Trapped. They're not getting out of the Food Lab.” He looks over towards the door, half expecting to see Roger forcing it open with his fingertips. But it's shut tight, the light on the keypad blinking a reassuring red.

Suki pulls apart from him. She opens her mouth to speak, but she's interrupted by the sound of cheering. She and Prakesh turn, and see the other techs charging across the floor towards them.

Prakesh tries to speak, tries to raise his voice. He wants to tell them that it isn't necessary, that any of them would have done the same thing. He wants to point them towards Suki, tell them how she saved him. But as they surround him, as they pound him on the back and reach for his hand, laughing with relief, shouting his name, he wonders if that's true. For the first time in forever, Prakesh Kumar feels like a hero.

Knox has got worse.

I can hear him breathing the moment we enter his surgery. There's a guttural quality to it, like his larynx is falling apart. The dark skin of his face is pallid as a block of tofu, stained with dark drips of Resin. He's managed to crawl halfway into the surgery.

Carver fills up a canteen with water while I examine Knox. I fold my jacket underneath his head – it helps still his ragged breathing a little.

“Here,” Carver says, passing me the sloshing canteen. As I drink deep, he nods to Knox. “We should go. The people I've seen like that … they don't last too long.”

I take a slug of water. “How long?” I say, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. Almost manage it, too.

He shrugs. “An hour. If that.”

“I can't get him another shot of the drugs in an hour. I wouldn't even know where to start.”

“There's plenty in Apex.”

“That's a two-hour run. At least. And that's without having to carry someone. What about the monorail?”

For a moment, Carver's eyes flicker. Then he sighs in frustration. “Not running, last I heard. We could find a train car at the top of the sector, but it could take us most of an hour if there isn't one nearby. And if we don't luck out, we won't have time to do anything else. Is there any way we could get those bombs out of you?”

I shake my head. “He said that if anybody but him tried to take them out, they'd blow.” I suddenly have a picture of a bomb – a big one, a real monster – with all its tangled wires.

“How sure are you?”

“I'm sure, all right?” I say, anger flaring, thinking of Kev. I force myself to walk away, leaning my hands on the operating table. “Get out of here, Carver. If you stick to the top level, you should get to Apex before—”

“I'm not leaving. Not when you're like this. Not when you're making stupid decisions.”

I stare at him.

“I'm not just talking about this death wish of yours,” he says. When I don't respond, he shakes his head. “The kid, Riley.”

“I am
not
going to have you be angry with me for what happened back there,” I say. “We've got other things to worry about.”

He kicks the leg of the operating table, hard. The bang echoes around the room. His voice follows it, raised in an angry shout. “You almost strangled her!”

I can see the fury building in his face. I'm reminded of how much he keeps hidden away – when I told him about Amira's death last year, he nearly throttled me.

“How could you do something like that?” he says. “She was a
kid
.” He turns away, rubbing the back of his head, his other arm on his hip. It's such an exaggerated posture of frustration that I almost laugh, but then he turns back to me and the look on his face kills the laughter.

“I was
bluffing
,” I say.

“We should have come up with something else. If I'd had two more seconds…”

“We didn't have two seconds.”

“You're out of control. You're not thinking straight, and you're not letting us help you. This whole time, you've been trying to handle everything yourself. Remember what Amira taught us? Crew first, Riley. Dancers over everything.”

“Amira
betrayed us
.”

“And that makes everything she did null and void, does it?” He shakes his head. “You don't get it. Amira was the greatest teacher anybody could ever have, but she went bad, and she went bad because she didn't trust us. She bottled all her feelings up inside, just like you're doing now.”

“I'm not her.” The words are hissed through gritted teeth.

He talks over me. “She took it all on herself. All that responsibility. You're doing the same thing.”

I turn away from him, trying to shut him out. It doesn't work.

“But – no,
listen to me
, Riley – you're not responsible for what happened to Kev. Amira was self-defence. And your father?”

“Shut up, Carver.”

“Nobody should be in that position.”

“
Stop
.”

There are a million things I want to say, and a million more I don't even want to think about. Around us, the station is horribly silent.

“You don't get to send me off and die by yourself,” he says. “Not happening. Not ever.”

And then I'm kissing him. Hard.

My lips land on his with such force that it nearly knocks him over. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull tight. My tongue finds his, slipping past his open lips. It's only when he starts to return the kiss, a shocked second later, that the full knowledge of what I'm doing comes rushing in.

And yet, I can't stop. I don't want to. I know it's wrong, but the need for human contact, the need for something
normal
, is impossibly powerful. It's all I want. I want to bury myself in his arms and forget about everything. I soak up the kiss like water, like I've been wandering thirsty for months.

It's Carver who pulls away. He does it gently, leaving just a hint of warmth on my lips. It takes him a moment to speak. “Riley…” he says.

My cheeks are burning with guilt. All I can think of is Prakesh, lying next to me in our bed in Chengshi, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly parted as he sleeps. I can see the image clearly, as if I'm right there next to him.

I hear Carver suck in a quick intake of breath. My first reaction is to glance at Knox, but he's still out, his chest trembling. When I look back to Carver, I see a strange glint in his eyes.

“Carver, listen, I didn't mean—”

“All right, what if I had this thing?” he says, then stops. “But it's not ready yet,” he mutters, more to himself than to me.

“What?” I ask, more confused than I'm willing to admit. I have to repeat myself before he looks up.

“The station's pretty empty now, right?” he asks.

I think of the thousands killed by Resin, and shudder. “It'll still take us too long to get to Apex.”

“No, no, listen: anybody left alive – they aren't going to be hanging around in the corridors, are they?”

“Probably not, but what difference does it make?”

“It's perfect,” he says. “I should have thought of this ages ago. Sorry about that.”

He jerks a thumb at Knox. “Can you pick him up and bring him to the main corridor? I need to go and check on something.”

I try to make sense of everything he just said, and come up with nothing. Carver doesn't wait for my response; he's already heading for the doors.

“Carver, wait up,” I say. I only just manage to catch him before he runs into the passage. “
Carver
.”

“We need to get him to Apex in under an hour, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So I might have a way to do that.” He starts to move again, stops. “Only: we might die.”

“
Might?
”

“It's no more than a ten per cent chance. Twenty, tops.”

“Excuse me?”

“But I think it'll work. Almost positive.”

“Carver, now would be a great time to tell me what's going on.”

Every second we stand still seems to make him more anxious. “OK, you remember I told you I was working on something big?”

A dim memory surfaces, of our conversation following Mikhail's arrest. “Sort of. Why?”

“Well, this is it. The thing that's big.”

Without another word, he bolts.

“Get him to the main corridor,” he shouts over his shoulder. “I won't be long.”

“Carver!”

But he's gone.

With nothing else to do, I head back into the operating theatre. When I first woke up here, it was clean and ordered – Knox's perfect little world. But it's a mess now, with bottles and medical supplies scattered across the floor.

My mind keeps coming back to the kiss. Every time it does, I push it away. I can deal with it later. I have to. If I give it any attention right now, I'll collapse completely.

It takes me a few minutes to work out how to move Knox. I find myself wondering if it's even safe to move him, if that'll just add to what Resin is doing to his lungs, but it's not like I have an option.

He's my height, but he's heavy. It's impossible not to think of the expression
dead weight
. I have to psych myself up into hoisting him, getting my arms under his and linking my hands across his chest. He moans as I lift him up, and a thin streak of black drool trickles down his chin. I almost let him go, desperate for the slime not to touch my hands, but I force myself to hold on. My legs protest as I drag him out of the room, and his rubber-soled shoes screech as I drag them across the floor, his legs bouncing whenever he hits the edge of a metal plate.

If I wasn't so exhausted, if my neck wasn't starting to hurt from looking back over my shoulder to see where I was going all the time, this would almost be funny.

Somehow, I manage to get through the corridors surrounding the operating theatre. By the time I reach one of the larger corridors, my entire body has become a conductor for pain, a magnet for it. Aches and stinging and a needling itch in the back of my knees.

I drop Knox, and he groans again as his head thumps off the metal. The corridor is deserted. No Carver.

I sit up against the corridor wall, relishing the chance to let my body do nothing for a few minutes, keeping an ear out for any sounds. If the Earthers come, I want to be ready. But outside of the rumble of the station, the only sound is that of a flickering light further down the corridor, the filament buzzing and clicking. After a few moments, it sputters out, leaving that section in darkness.

Knox isn't the only reason to get to Apex quickly. If the Earthers get to the ship dock, if we can't get the people in Apex to mount a defence, they'll overwhelm the remaining stompers, and take the
Shinso
. I still don't know how Okwembu, and her knowledge of old operating systems, is going to help them. If we can't defend the dock, it won't matter.

There's a sound. One I can't place. I open my eyes.

It's a rumbling – distant and dull, like a mythical creature at the bottom of a cave. Is it the Earthers? I bend down to grab Knox and drag him to a hiding place, but then I stop. The rumbling isn't human. It sounds almost like a monorail car. But that's not possible – there's no monorail down here.

The rumble gets louder, revealing details of itself, unfolding into a high-pitched, whining growl. It's not static – it ebbs and flows, revving like …

Like an engine.

Carver
.

The blackness further down the corridor is obliterated by a blinding white light as
something
comes round a corner.

The rumble becomes deafening, and it changes to a squeal as the light rushes towards us. Gaping, I flatten myself against the corridor wall. If this isn't Carver, then my life is about to get even more complicated than it is already.

Just as the light seems like it'll swallow us, it swings round, revealing what's behind it. The roar cuts off, grinding back to a low rumble as whatever it is skids to a halt, turning sideways in the corridor. It's Carver, and he's on top of a machine so strange that I have to focus to take it all in.

It has to be seven feet from front to back, with four black wheels. They're huge, each of them a foot and a half across, bracketing a crazy collection of piping and wires and cables, jumbled together like a child's puzzle. At the centre of it all, a massive, grooved steel block. A pipe shooting out of the back spits black blurts of smoke.

Carver straddles the body, his legs splayed out alongside him. His hands are gripping a control stick. He's grinning like a madman.

He shouts over the rumble of the engine: “Like I said. I was working on something big.”