Against Gravity (34 page)

He shook his head, turned back and began walking deeper into the Maze.

Once Kendrick passed through the second shield door he finally began to hear the voices.

The walls and ceiling were still covered with the same rusting pipes, making it harder to suppress a niggling fear that he had never actually left the Maze in the first place. He had forgotten
how absolute the silence could be, and how easily it lent itself to such delusions.

Kendrick stopped and punched the wall next to him, hard. The impact sent shivers through the air around him and it felt as if a spell had been broken. The sound filled the darkness like the
first words of God echoing through an unformed universe.

He had to get rid of his fears, the ghosts and nightmares that still populated his mind. He kept on walking, knowing that the tiniest hesitation might send him running back towards the cave
entrance.

The threads, he noted, were much denser now, almost completely coating the wall surfaces around him. They made crackling sounds under his boots as he walked over them and he stopped a few times,
unsure if he really had seen them moving, their loose ends drifting in the dark like sea anemones sifting for plankton.

When Kendrick reached out and touched the threads the voices became much clearer. It was like tapping into someone’s thoughts, but those of a madman: random fragments of memory chasing
each other like a blizzard of half-formed images, faint intimations of things that he recalled experiencing during his seizures.

Kendrick also detected an anger that threatened to overwhelm his own thoughts, tempered by a sense of childish delight that chilled him to the core.

He broke the contact with the threads and kept on walking till he came to a stairwell and worked his way down. There were light switches at hand, but none of them worked.

On their way here Kendrick and Buddy had wondered whether they would find Los Muertos inside the Maze. Kendrick learned the answer as soon as he reached the Wards.

From a distance the body looked as though it had been there for a relatively short time. It wore the familiar ragtag uniform of a Los Muertos soldier, a crucifix crudely sewn on the jacket. At
first Kendrick wondered if the man was merely sleeping, but as he came closer the smell of putrefaction was evident. The corpse lay with one hand outstretched, as if reaching towards the rifle
lying a metre away. The dead man’s face was turned to one side, his desiccated mouth open in a silent scream, the eyes now reduced to dark pits. He was encased in silver threads as though
he’d been wrapped in the cocoon of some enormous metallic spider.

Kendrick glanced up and, for one terrible moment, felt sure that he could see something hovering in the darkness before it flitted away on fragile wings. He peered around himself for a long
time, listening and watching, but there was nothing more.

Moving on, he found two more corpses. One lay slumped in a corner, while the other had both hands to his face as if he’d been trying to claw his own eyes out.

It was getting harder now for Kendrick to keep the fear at bay, fear of what he might find if he went any further.
If I lose it now, I might never make it back out.

He took the precaution of pulling a pair of heavy gloves out of the backpack and sliding them over his hands before stepping through a door that led into a Ward. The rusting skeletons of beds
stood in uniform rows around him. Most of their mattresses had rotted away, but he could still clearly make out a number painted above the room’s entrance.

He was in Ward Seventeen – or Ward 17b, to be precise: it had been reserved for the male inmates. Ahead of him, the Dissection Door lay open, empty blackness beyond it.

The notion came to Kendrick right then, that something there had been waiting for him to return all these years. He pushed this thought away and stepped through the door.

Not even the teams of researchers and war-crime investigators who had arrived at the Maze immediately following its liberation had managed to penetrate these deepest parts of
the complex. The nanotech infestation had already become too widespread for any further exploration to be possible.

A no-go zone had subsequently been placed around the Maze, and for a while UN forces had patrolled it. But once it became clear how bad things were getting back in the United States, these
troops abandoned the task and left. Sieracki’s soldiers finally emerged from their jungle strongholds, metamorphosing over time into Los Muertos.

Kendrick arrived at a series of ruined elevators, most of them now reduced to gaping shafts. He peered down one to see silver threads lining every surface, the occasional gleam of gold visible
among them. At the corner of his vision, something crawled . . .

He looked down and saw that the fine filaments coating the concrete had broken under his boots. Their loose ends twisted and spasmed with tiny movements.

Cold sweat broke out on his brow as some of the threads
reached up
over the tops of his boots, as if they were seeking out his flesh.

He jerked his foot away, heard a ripping sound, and overbalanced, catching at the side of an elevator shaft with one gloved hand. He spotted shapes darting about far below, black on black,
coming closer.

Kendrick ran, eventually finding a stairway. He slammed a half-rusted door shut behind him and kept running. Several seconds later he heard a sound, making him think of a ton of feathers flung
against a sheet of steel at high speed. He gulped down air, knowing he was dangerously close to outright panic.

You need to be here,
he reminded himself.
You’re not here just for yourself, but for everyone else who was dragged here to die. Think of it that way.

He continued to descend till, stepping through an open shield door, he knew instantly that he had finally reached the lower levels.

This was the place where Kendrick had almost died. Where thousands
had
died. But something was different, and after a minute he worked out what it was. Down here, many more of the threads
that coated the walls were gold-coloured, although the silver ones still predominated.

He pulled off a glove, and somehow found the strength of will to reach out and briefly touch a thick strand of the pale yellow filaments.

Kendrick whirled around, sure that Peter McCowan was standing there.

“Peter?”

His voice seemed to echo for an unusually long time.

This way
, he imagined McCowan saying.

He turned to face down one particular corridor.

Suddenly he knew he had to go . . . that way.

A rusting gun turret still stood on its mount beside a shield door, the filaments that coated it giving it a strange bejewelled look.

Kendrick stepped closer to the large weapon and, as he watched, some of the gold threads glistened noticeably before slowly taking on a distinctly silver hue. As he waited and watched, he saw
more of the gold absorbed into the silver all around it.

At that moment, Kendrick realized that he was
inside
McCowan. The Maze had become Peter McCowan’s body, the corridors his arteries. Which left the question of the identity of the
silver filaments. Someone or something else – Robert Vincenzo, he was sure – was in the process of eating away at McCowan, like a silver cancer.

Beyond the shield door there came a sound like fluttering wings. Again he caught half-glimpses at the edge of his vision, lost in faraway shadows.

All in your mind
.

But what if it was real?
Something
had killed those soldiers back there.

The fluttering faded and Kendrick found his way to yet another stairwell that led far, far down. Somewhere down there, at the very lowest levels, people had died, some of them his friends.

Robert Vincenzo himself had died, somewhere down there. And Peter McCowan, too.

Summer 2088 (exact date unknown)
The Maze

Kendrick searched until he came across the promised cache of provisions and water in a place that he could have sworn had been empty the last time he’d looked there.
He stopped and gorged himself, making himself violently sick, even though there was not all that much food. It was in any case mostly freeze-dried protein, dry and tasteless. Enough to keep him
alive for a few more days, however.

He allowed himself some fleeting dreams of freedom, of great metal doors sliding open at the wave of a hand, as obedient as well-trained dogs.

Then he gathered up as much as he could of the remaining supplies and found his way back up through the levels.

On reaching one of the shield doors that was open, waiting for his return, a voice sounded from a speaker. “Leave the food.”

“Who is that?” Kendrick called out, aware how hoarse his own voice had become. “Where’s Sieracki?”

“Drop the supplies or you’ll die,” the voice insisted.

Kendrick heard the sound of well-oiled machine parts rotating. A gun turret swivelled towards him and briefly spat bullets. The concrete above his head exploded into fragments that rained down
on his shoulders.

He cowered on the ground, abandoning the food and water where they fell.

The voice continued, “Now, exit, please.”

“I remember what happened when the Dissection Door went crazy.” McCowan scratched at his chin. “I didn’t attribute too much to it at the time. Not a lot
of the stuff here works too well, apart from the guns.”

Buddy shook his head. “No, I felt it, too.
We
did something to make that happen.”

Kendrick nodded agreement. “If we could make that door open, what about the shield doors? Could we do the same with them?”

McCowan laughed. “Talk all you like, but I still don’t see you having too much luck getting out of here.”

“Maybe that’s why they locked us down here,” Kendrick replied bitterly. “They’d be mad to let any of us leave here alive.”

Peter McCowan had been summoned the next day.

The voice over the speakers was a different one again. Just before it clicked off, Kendrick thought he heard shouting or screams in the background.

He’d gone back to squatting by one of the shield doors. McCowan reappeared a little while later, and for more than an hour just sat staring hollowly into the darkness.

Kendrick waited to see what the other man would do. If McCowan refused to enter the killing levels, he probably wouldn’t last more than another day or two. Like the rest of them, his torn
clothing hung on his emaciated frame like rags on a scarecrow. His eyes were bright even in the darkness, like jewels in the eye sockets of a cadaver.

McCowan’s name was called for the last time. A few seconds later Kendrick’s name was also called. McCowan’s eyes glinted in the dark as his gaze fixed on Kendrick’s. Then
he got up and walked away.

“Ken?”

Kendrick forced himself to turn slowly. McCowan stood only a short distance away, at the far end of a storage area like the one that Robert Vincenzo had died in.

Kendrick noticed that the other man wasn’t carrying a knife.

McCowan’s gaze fell to the long blade grasped in Kendrick’s own hand. He shook his head ruefully. “So, you going to use that thing on me?”

Kendrick opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a kind of stutter. Then he shook his head, as if he could as easily shake loose the confusion and near-delirium that plagued
him.

Then he started to laugh until tears rolled down his face, and this laughter transformed into a violent, racking sobbing that sucked up every last remaining dreg of energy left within him. He
sank down onto the cold, hard concrete, clutching his head in his hands, while the knife clattered down beside him.

Kendrick felt a hand drop onto his shoulder. “I guess you know the rules better than I do now,” McCowan said. “That raises a couple of questions.”

“Peter—”

“We’re not doing this,” McCowan said firmly. “Right?”

Kendrick nodded. “I’ve been thinking that there
must
be some way out of here,” he said at length.

“Well, you’ve not yet had any success trying to magic those doors open. Look, if I’m going out, I can think of ways better than doing so for Sieracki’s personal
entertainment.”

“Sieracki is dead.”

McCowan cocked his head quizzically. “What makes you say that?”

“You can hear it whenever they summon people in. It’s different voices. They sound . . . out of control, I think. This has nothing to do with testing military technology, not any
more. It’s about killing us, in the most sadistic way possible.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I didn’t get a chance to explore even a tenth of this place the first time I was here. And if things are falling apart up above us, then maybe there’s somewhere they
can’t see us, or find us. Or perhaps there are weapons we can use against them.”

“I heard stories about what happens to people who don’t do what they’re told once they’re down here.”

“You mean gas?”

“That’s what I heard. You can’t run away from gas.”

“Maybe so, but if we don’t find some way out, we’re going to die one way or the other.”

McCowan nodded. “Listen, before we do anything else, I want to ask you this. That knife you had in your hand a few minutes ago – were you really going to use it on me?”

Kendrick felt his face grow hot, and looked away while McCowan continued. “I’m not playing this game, Ken. No matter what the consequences may be.”

Kendrick nodded slowly. “If we can’t find a way out, they’ll gas us both.”

McCowan shrugged. “We’re dead men anyway, aren’t we?”

They searched, together or separately, calling out to each other through the infinite darkness. A tentative map of the lower levels was now beginning to grow in
Kendrick’s mind, but they found no secret entrances, no bolt-holes in which they could hide away from the soldiers who controlled the Maze. Kendrick felt a frustration burning in him: it
would take too long to explore the lower levels thoroughly.

At one point, he heard Peter McCowan’s voice echoing through the corridors, calling his name.

“I found something.” McCowan grinned when Kendrick found him in what looked as though it had once been an office complex, a maze within the Maze, a warren of cubbyholes and empty
rooms stacked with mouldering paperwork. A long green metal case lay open at his feet. The contraption of rubber and glass in his hands was a gas mask.