Ghosts

THIRTEEN

Rodger was itching for the right moment to talk to Magnolia, but every time he tried, she raised a finger to her helmet to silence him. It was so quiet inside the tunnels that he could hear himself thinking. The echoey distant screeches were gone now, but Rodger knew that the creatures were still out there, on the prowl for fresh meat. He didn’t like the idea of being on the menu.

He checked the mission clock as he followed Magnolia down the hallway. They had spent forty-five minutes searching the passages for a way into the main facility.

“Are we walking in circles?” he asked.

“No.”

Magnolia swept her flashlight over the muddy footprints marking the floor. He followed a line of tracks onto the ceiling.

“Are those from Sirens?”

She nodded.

In all his dives up to now, Rodger had never seen one of the beasts. He had seen plenty of other creatures, from the rock monsters out west to the almost cute feathered lizards in the south, but the closest he had come to a Siren during other dives was hearing their high-pitched alien wails. He longed to see creatures from the Old World, like the ones he had studied in books.

“Hey, Mags, what do you think elephants were like?”

“Shush, Rodger,” she hissed, whirling on him. “I told you to—”

“What’s that?”

She followed his finger to a door at the end of the hallway, and her scowl turned into a grin.

“Hopefully, our way in,” she said. “Come on, we’ve already wasted enough time.”

He hurried after her but quickly fell behind. When he caught up, she was already kneeling at the edge of the partly open steel door. A video camera was mounted on the wall.

Magnolia shined her beam over the dented, rusted skin of the door. Long vertical scratches ran all the way to the bottom, as if someone had dragged a pitchfork across the surface. The door wasn’t open after all—it was bent off its hinges.

“More Sirens?” he asked.

In Magnolia’s light beam was a dent the size of a melon. It looked as if something massive had head-butted the door.

“I… I don’t think so. I’ve never seen one with claws that could make scratches this deep.”

She stood up, and Rodger’s headlamp caught her face. He tried not to stare at her profile, but even with helmet and visor covering most of her features, she was pretty. She rolled her eyes when she caught him looking, and took a step toward the door.

“No,” Rodger said, putting his hand gently on her shoulder. “I’ll go first.”

For once, Magnolia didn’t argue.

He made sure he had a round chambered before shining his light into the passage. From his position, he couldn’t see much but a flight of stairs on the other side of the unhinged door.

Flattening his body and ducking down, he slipped through the space between the door and the frame. As soon as he was through, he swept his beam down the stairway to a landing covered with metal shelves and crates. A sign hung on the wall there, but he couldn’t make out the faded text.

As he turned and gestured for Magnolia, he saw that I beams had been welded in an X onto the other side of the door. Rodger moved his light over the broken barricade. The bolts that had secured the beams to the concrete were still there, but the metal had snapped from the force of whatever wrenched the door off its hinges. The steel was pocked with bullet holes. Raising his light, he slowly played it over walls bearing the scars of a firefight.

Not a fight. A battle.

Magnolia maneuvered through the opening and looked at the broken beams. “Shit, those were sheared right off!”

“Would take a lot of force to do that,” Rodger said.

A raucous thud echoed below them, rattling the shelves on the landing. Both divers angled their guns down the stairs.

“What the hell was that?” he said under his breath.

“Not a Siren.”

Rodger raised his wrist computer and brought up a map. The archives didn’t have a complete layout of the facility, but if the fragments they had pieced together were correct, then the cryogenics lab—and whatever had made that noise—was directly beneath their feet.

Magnolia bent down and picked up a cartridge casing. “You know what this means, right? There were survivors here.”

“But how long ago?” he said, following her down the stairs.

“No idea, but whatever broke through the door sure made quick work of this barricade.”

As they crept down the stairs, Rodger paused to study the sign above the shelving. floor 99. They rounded the next corner to find another flight of stairs covered in debris. A wall-mounted video camera was angled down over beams, desks, chairs, and shelves scattered across the passage as if a tornado had blown through. Dust floated around them in the glow of their lights. It felt as if they were entering a tomb.

Rodger kept picking his way cautiously down the steps, careful not to snag his suit. The radiation down here was minimal, but they still had the return trip to the Hive to worry about. If he tore his suit, by the time he reached the sick bay on the Hive he would have much bigger problems than abnormal bowel movements.

He glanced at the ceiling. Four miles above, his parents were waiting for him. They seemed impossibly far away. The thought gave him a twinge of dread, but he continued onward. Captain Jordan had entrusted him with a mission, and he wasn’t going to screw it up. He patted the vest pocket containing Magnolia’s gift and the ITC card.

There was a door on the next landing, as well as another sign.

“Floor ninety-eight?” he said. “That can’t be right.”

“If the signs are counting down, we’ve got a long way to go,” Magnolia said. She brought her wrist monitor up. “And we have just over two hours to search this place and get topside.”

“Searching ninety-eight floors will take days.” He shifted his light to the door. An open space stretched as far as the beam would go. Magnolia stepped over a crate to look into the room. The warped and dented door lay on the floor, several feet in. The dust layer covering it suggested that nothing had been inside for some time. But that also meant the chance of finding any survivors was slim.

Their beams danced across the space, falling on lockers at the far end of the room. Space suits hung from hooks, and glass partitions were built against the wall. He recognized the chambers as clean rooms—something like the one they had in the Hive’s launch bay to decontaminate divers returning from the surface.

“Looks like some sort of staging area,” Magnolia said. “You check the lockers. I’ll see if I can get this computer online.”

She hurried over to a hologram computer on a desk across the room. Rodger took his time crossing the space. It was about three times the size of the trading post where his parents had their stall. Carrying his rifle at port arms, he looked at the suits first. They were like those the Hell Divers wore, but with larger helmets and thicker padded layers.

He continued to the wall of lockers and used his glove to wipe off the inside of an open door. A faded picture of a man holding a baby was taped to the metal.

Rodger brushed off the dust and smiled. In the background of the photo was a dense green backdrop of trees. The man who had used this locker had once walked through a forest. A real forest, with real, living trees!

Rodger’s smile evaporated as he realized what the photo meant. If this man had once seen a real forest, then this room hadn’t been used in at least two centuries.

Magnolia waved him toward the wall-mounted monitor. Rodger put the picture back where he had found it, and trotted over to her.

She had brushed off the keyboard and was pecking at the sticky keys. A holographic image of the facility shot up over the desk. Rodger checked the entrance to the room with his rifle before turning back to the three-dimensional image of an underground silo beneath the hilltop. The first few layers were passages tucked under dirt and concrete—the same halls Magnolia and Rodger had been combing for the past hour. One of those hallways veered away from the silo and intersected with a staircase and elevator that went to the top of the bunker they had seen from outside. Another staircase went deep underground to a water treatment plant and a generator room.

“That’s the route Weaver took to look for Pipe,” Rodger said.

“Yup, and we’re here.” She pointed to the silo. “ITC Communal Thirteen. What became known as the Hilltop Bastion. Looks like there are ninety-nine floors after all.”

She typed another command, and the hologram readjusted to show only the silo.

“Shit, the place has a swimming pool, tennis court, shooting range, luxury condos, seed bank, farm…”

“And a cryogenics lab,” Rodger said.

Magnolia pointed at a level a few floors below them and unslung her rifle. “Floor eighty-one. We better get moving.”

“Wait,” Rodger said. He bit the inside of his lip as a cool flood of adrenaline rushed through him. Before the jump, he had promised himself he would take the time to give Magnolia the present he had made for her—and to tell her how he really felt. But that was before he realized they were dropping into a facility full of monsters. Andrew was missing and likely dead, and they were almost twenty floors above their goal.

“What is it?” She looked at him quizzically. “Are you okay? You look, um, weird.”

“Yeah, I’m good. It’s just… never mind. Let’s get moving.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, unexpectedly putting a hand on his arm.

For what?”

“For being such a bitch to you. I appreciate you coming down here to look for me. It means a lot.”

“You’re worth dying for a hundred times,” Rodger said.

Magnolia’s smile bloomed behind her visor, and Rodger thought he might have seen a hint of a blush.

She laughed and said, “Just a hundred times?”

“Okay, a million. But after that, you’re on your own.”

She tilted her head toward the exit. “Let’s go before you have to prove it.”

Jordan had been trying to reassure Katrina for the past hour that they were making the right decision, but she wasn’t saying much. Her avoidance of eye contact told him that she was beyond angry. Something inside her had broken, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

“Katrina,” he whispered. “Please, look at me.”

She glanced at him but then looked away.

Jordan’s hands balled into fists. Why wouldn’t she listen to him?

“It’s no longer a question of whether you want to bring this child into this world, Katrina. We have a duty to the human race. We must do everything we can to ensure that this baby is healthy.”

She placed her hand on her stomach and sighed. “I know, but frankly…”

Jordan folded his arms across his chest. “Go on.”

“After the electrical storm knocked out the rudders and we lost Magnolia, I started thinking about just how fragile things are. Things were good for a while, but it never lasts. We haven’t heard anything from the team on the surface, either.”

“I don’t expect we will,” he said.

Katrina’s eyes shot up. “What do you mean by that?”

“The electrical storm is blocking their comms,” Jordan said, catching himself.

“The clock is ticking. For them, for us—for everyone.”

“The clock’s been ticking for two hundred and sixty years, and we’re still up here,” he said.

“Unless Weaver finds something to save us down there, it’s only a matter of time. Because we’re nearing the end, Leon, and I know you know it.”

She massaged her stomach and looked down as if she could see right through to their unborn child.

“We’re one bad storm or a failed crop away from extinction,” she said.

Jordan shook his head. “We’ve survived this long because men and women like me were able to make the hard decisions. Even when we’re not popular—even when the people hate us and every sacrifice we are forced to make takes with it a piece of our own soul, we have a duty to these people. I thought you understood that.”

Katrina finally looked at him for more than a few seconds. There was obvious contempt in her gaze.

Jordan considered telling her everything, but what good would it do? The only way to prove to her she was wrong was by sending Rodger to uncover the cryogenic chambers. He only hoped it didn’t cost the ship too much in the process. Losing Weaver, Andrew, and Rodger on top of Magnolia was an expensive but ultimately necessary way to prove his point. Their only hope of survival was to stay the course.

“It pains me to see you look at me like that, but someone has to be the bad guy on the ship,” he said. “I’m willing to shoulder that burden if it means the survival of my child.”

“Our child,” she corrected, sounding as though her thoughts were a million miles from him. Her hand moved ceaselessly, rubbing her belly in circles.

“Life will go on, Katrina,” he said. “You just have to trust me. You’re the only person I truly trust on this ship.”

A knock sounded on the hatch.

“We’ll continue this conversation later.” He kissed her on the cheek and stood up. “It’s open.”

Sergeant Jenkins opened the hatch and stepped inside. “Captain, I’ve got Janet Gardner in custody.”

Jordan could feel Katrina glaring at him, but he kept his eyes on Jenkins.

“Thank you, Sergeant. Bring her to the interrogation room. I’ll deal with her myself.”

As soon as Jenkins was gone, Katrina seemed to snap out of her daze. “You arrested Janga?”

“Yes,” Jordan said. He walked to the hatch and grabbed the handle. “Just trust me. That’s all I’ve ever asked from you.”

Katrina straightened her back and threw up a stiff salute. Her eyes had gone cold and hard, and Jordan felt as though a door had been slammed in his face.

“I’m going to deal with something that Captain Ash should have dealt with years ago,” he said. “In the meantime, you have the bridge, Lieutenant.”

Weaver hated being alone, especially on the surface. The days he had spent trekking across Hades after watching his home crash had broken him. For months after he came aboard the Hive, he had slept each night with the lights on and the door open so he could listen to the voices of the passengers in the hallway.

For a man who hated silence and darkness, the Hilltop Bastion was a waking nightmare. The enclosed space was almost completely devoid of sound, as if he were walking in outer space. Sporadic high-pitched shrieks were the only break in the stillness—and the only thing worse than the silence.

Halfway down the next hall, he stopped and considered opening the comm up to Magnolia and Rodger, or even trying to reach Andrew, just to hear a human voice. But he resisted the urge, knowing that it would give away his position to anything hunting him.

The light from his battery unit and his helmet-mounted lamp spread over the passage. He moved out, keeping low and close to the wall. He had yet to see a single door, and the trail of blood had almost disappeared. Andrew’s bleeding had slowed to just a few drops here and there. If he lost the trail, there was no way he would find the man in time to save him—assuming he could be saved at all.

Weaver halted to reconsider his plan. Andrew might already be dead. In fact, given what he knew of the Sirens, it was likely the case. He missed his wife and daughter just as much today as he had ten years ago, when he lost them in the wreck of Ares, but he wasn’t in any hurry to join them.

A small, cowardly part of his soul worried that the darkness after death would be much worse than this, like being trapped underground for all eternity.

Think and focus, Rick. Think and focus.

The mission was screwed, no denying that. No one could have survived down here, and he didn’t buy the fairy tale about cryogenic chambers housing any survivors. He pulled out his coin to flip it. Would anyone blame him if he abandoned the search for Andrew and cut their losses while he still could? Jordan would probably give him a goddamn medal.

But Weaver wasn’t one to leave a man behind. Ever since X fell back to the surface of Hades, Weaver had made a promise to do everything he could to get all the divers home, no matter whose team they were on.

He put the coin away. Lifting his rifle, he continued into the darkness. The beam from his helmet illuminated a path that seemed to stretch on and on. He walked for several minutes until he saw what could be the outline of a door.

Weaver slowed as he approached, listening hard. The city was crawling with monsters, from the massive carnivorous plants to the Sirens, and he had a feeling even worse things lurked in this facility.

When he got to the door, he looked at his wrist monitor. His location was directly under the hill, but there were no details to show him what was on the other side.

He took a knee and brushed the dust off the ground. Tracks ran up and down the hallway, but the drops of blood stopped here.

Weaver stood and slung his rifle over his back. He drew his pistol and slowly pulled back the slide. The round clicked into the chamber. He winced at the noise and waited for a response.

The vacuum of silence remained undisturbed.

He grabbed the door handle. It felt loose. Bending down, he saw that it was already open. Claw marks covered the frame.

He was on the right track.

Okay, old man, let’s see if you still got it.

He took a breath and slowly pulled the door open onto a stairwell landing. With his gun up, he stepped inside and angled the barrel up the flight above. Then he moved around the corner of the stairway and looked down. Up or down? This time, he was going to have to use the coin. He was reaching for it when the speaker in his helmet crackled.

“Angel One, this is Raptor Three. Do you copy? Over.”

The sound of another human voice was reassuring and terrifying at the same time. He reminded himself that it would be difficult for the creatures to hear the voices from inside sealed helmets. Several seconds passed as he listened, but the monsters never came.

“Roger that, Raptor Three,” he said quietly.

“Commander, have you found Andrew yet?”

“Negative, Raptor Three. I just found a door that leads to a staircase.”

There was a short pause, followed by white noise.

“Angel One, if you are where I think you are, then down leads to a water treatment plant and a generator room. The backup power is still on over here. I found a hologram terminal and a map.”

“What’s above me?” Weaver asked.

“I think that’s the lookout post we saw on our way in. Might be a command room; I don’t know. Maybe a comms station.”

“Good thinking. Have you found anything else?”

“So far, there’s no evidence of survivors, but we did find something…” Magnolia paused again. “Something big was here, sir. Hard to say when. Most everything is covered in dust, but someone did put up one hell of a fight to keep whatever it was out. We’re heading deeper belowground to find the lab.”

“Roger that, Raptor Three. Stay sharp. I’m going to keep looking for Apollo One. Good luck. Over.”

“Good luck, sir. Over and out.”

Weaver flicked his light up the stairs and found muddy tracks, but no blood trail. He went back to the landing to check the descending flight of stairs. Specks of red dotted the treads. He unslung his rifle and raised both guns into the darkness.

The beam from his helmet shifted across a stairwell as he made his way down into the black abyss. His cautious footfalls made little noise, but it was his battery pack that worried him most. The beasts couldn’t see the light, but they were drawn to energy sources. One of the reasons the divers had such a hard time getting power cells for the ship was that Sirens tended to nest near the storage facilities.

The stairs led him deeper into the earth. With every step, he felt a growing sensation of being watched.

He turned and played his light over the walls.

Nothing.

The farther he descended, the stronger the sensation became. Something, or someone, was here with him. He could feel a presence.

Weaver reminded himself that he had enough firepower to kill a small army of Sirens. He passed three more landings before he finally saw a sign that read water treatment plant.

Magnolia’s map was right. He crossed the landing and was starting to walk around the corner when he felt the slightest draft of air rustle his right pant leg.

Weaver whirled and trained both guns back up the stairs. The gray walls and ceiling were clear. No Sirens prowling about.

He put his back against the wall and leaned left to peer around the corner. At the next landing, the double doors to the water treatment plant were wide open.

He moved back to the safety of the wall, trying to control his pounding heart, and the thought occurred to him that perhaps he was getting too old for this.

He licked the salty sweat off his mustache and holstered his pistol. Firing from the hip wasn’t going to save anyone down here. Calculated shots were the way to go.

If Andrew was below, Weaver had to be stealthy. He pulled the sound suppressor from his cargo pocket and screwed it onto the end of his rifle. Next, he reached up and clicked off his headlamp. Darkness shrouded the stairwell. The blue light emitted by his battery pack gave him only a few feet of visibility, and even then he couldn’t see much but shapes. He bumped on his night vision, but nothing happened.

Son of a bitch.

He tried a second and a third time.

A soft breeze hit his arm as he reached up for his helmet. His hand froze in midair. Was he imagining things, or was there a draft inside the passage? And if so, where was it coming from?

A snuffling came from his left. Then overhead. Another sniff came from the upper right corner of the stairwell.

Weaver closed his eyes and prepared to fight for his life. His heart was thumping like an air hammer. Could the monsters hear that?

He backed away, clicking on his headlamp in the process. Stealth didn’t matter now. They knew where he was. The beam crossed over the cracked gray ceiling. A second pass didn’t reveal any living thing.

Was he having auditory hallucinations?

Weaver was taking another step backward when the cracks in the ceiling suddenly shifted. His light captured a sinewy creature with gray skin skittering away. Falling onto his butt, he swung the rifle up by reflex. The thing, whatever it was, vanished around the corner.

For several moments, Weaver stayed on his backside, rifle shouldered and finger on the trigger. He had never encountered a creature with a camouflage response on any of his dives, but he had learned something about the monsters on the surface: where there was one, there were probably more.

He drew no comfort from having been right all along. Something had been watching him, and it was still here. He could feel it by the prickling hairs on the back of his neck.

He pushed himself up with one hand and held the rifle in the other. In quick movements, he scanned the walls, stairs, and ceiling.

Every crack in the concrete became a clawed limb in his mind, every broken hunk a mouth. He resisted the urge to unload his magazine in a wide arc.

His options were limited. He could run back up the stairs and abandon Andrew, or he could fight his way down to the water treatment plant.

In the end, there was only one choice.

X wasn’t the only man Weaver had left behind during his long career as a Hell Diver. Over a decade ago, on a dive to Hades, he had abandoned one of his teammates. Jones had been dead, or at least close to it, from what Weaver had seen, but the decision had haunted him ever since. Andrew was probably past saving, but Weaver couldn’t leave him down here if there was even a chance he still breathed.

Running back to the surface would make Weaver worse than a coward. He would betray the oath he had taken as a Hell Diver.

He made his way across the landing, stopping at the corner. Putting his back to the stair wall, he peeked around the side. The beam from his headlamp captured a skeletal gray figure the size of a six-year-old child, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

He ducked back around the stair wall and pressed his shoulders against the concrete, taking in a long breath. Risking another look, he shined his light on the floor beside the monster. The thing still didn’t move. It stood on two peg legs, its webbed feet splayed for balance. Its bony back was turned to him.

Did it think it was hidden?

The beast was one of the most bizarre things he had ever seen, and he had seen his share of strange sights. It had three legs—two in back and one in front—and a torso that tapered to a narrow midsection, like an hourglass. Feathers sprouted from its round head, turning to shaggy fur on the rest of its body, but the oddest part of all was the stemlike growth on its forehead, which supported a single eyeball the size of an apple. The eye turned toward him, blinking in the light, then quickly swiveled away.

His first instinct was to shoot, but this thing didn’t seem to be violent like the Sirens. A hard moment passed before he finally got up the nerve to step around the corner.

The creature remained frozen, almost blending in with the shadows. Past the beast, Weaver could see inside the water treatment plant. He tilted his headlamp for a better view, revealing a network of platforms and bridges over dozens of pools filled to the brim with liquid. The plant was many times larger than the one on the Hive.

As he played the light back and forth, something let out a scream. It was an unusual noise for a Siren, and Weaver wondered if there might be something even worse living in the plant. He cupped his hand over the light when he heard footsteps slapping toward him.

Weaver raised the rifle and pulled his hand away from the light just as the odd creature jumped to the ceiling above him. There it hung, tilting its feathery face at him. Beaklike jaws slowly opened and closed as if tasting the air.

The creature’s eye focused on him for a fleeting moment before the stem curved back over its head to look at the treatment plant, and the same odd scream echoed through the room.

In a flash of gray, the beast darted up the stairwell.

The high-pitched shriek of a Siren rang out. It was then Weaver realized that the first scream hadn’t been from a monster at all. It had been Andrew.