The Darwin Elevator (48 page)

Neil took a chance and rolled across the open doorway. The soldiers reacted too slowly, spraying gunfire after he crossed the opening. Bullets smacked into the floor, walls, and ceiling, filling the air with dust and chunks of debris. Neil grabbed the door and threw it shut.

He moved to lock it, a mistake. As he reached across and grasped the handle, another barrage tore through the thin door, poking dozens of holes in a random pattern across the surface. Two bullets ripped through his arm, leaving similar holes in his coat sleeve. Blood welled at the edges.

Neil shouted through clenched teeth and just managed to lock the door before collapsing against the wall. He tried to put pressure on the wound, only to advance his torment to a whole new level. His entire left arm felt on fire.

More bullets punched holes in the door, or thudded into the thicker wall, failing to puncture it but making no less of a racket.

The console. It’s all that matters now, you fool!

Neil heard his own voice as if it were one of his teachers, shouting at him for some flub in school. The phantom voice managed to break through the pain that clouded his mind. He pushed himself to his feet, gritting his teeth every time his left arm moved. Blood soaked through his shirtsleeve and coat now, pooling on the floor below him. He ignored it.
The console
.

He could hear boots beyond the door—a lot of them. “Bring enough troops to take down an old man, Warthen?” he shouted, forcing his legs to carry him back to the safe. It seemed so far.

The response came swiftly. “We didn’t start this, Mr. Platz, and you know it.”

Not Warthen’s voice. Neil laughed aloud. “What, Alex couldn’t make it? Sent you to do his dirty work, is that it?”

“You can end this now, Neil. Give up.”

“What’s your name, son?”

A pause. “Jarred Larsen.”

Neil reached the console and used his one good hand to type in his passphrase. The screen came alive.

“All right,” Neil said in a raised voice, “I’m coming out. Hold your fire.”

Forced to use just one arm, Neil accessed the information he’d been waiting to share with Tania. He selected the data and pushed it into a terse message, addressed it to her.

Then he opened a new message. He addressed it to Zane. Subject: “If I die.”

“Platz?” Jarred shouted from the other side of the door. “You’ve got three seconds, then we’re coming in.”

Grunting through pain, Neil began to tap out a confession.

“You know what, Larsen?” Neil shouted. “Go fuck yourself. Anyone who enters this room is a dead man.” The empty threat, he hoped, would buy a few extra seconds. He typed as rapidly as one hand would allow. A peace settled over him as he put into words the secret he’d carried for so long. He could only hope Zane would make sense of the cryptic words.

The door kicked in and a soldier dressed in black stormed inside.

Neil kept typing, his burden falling away with each letter, and the soldier reacted as he was trained: He aimed and fired.

In the same instant Neil tapped “send,” the bullet entered his brain through the center of his forehead. He dropped to his knees and fell over on his side, aware but strangely at peace.

He saw their black boots sideways before they started to blur. And blur, and blur, and blur into a void …

Chapter Forty-one

Darwin, Australia

13.FEB.2283

Dazed and numb, Skyler trudged up the silo stairs.

The memory of what had happened below already faded, and he let it. The bizarre sensations of his mind being flayed wide open, the machine pushing him back out while keeping the subhuman … none of it made sense. He wondered if his immunity somehow confused the device, like it had no taste for his kind.

He’d sat down there in the stark silence, looking at the black iris and its alien patterns, assuming the subhuman would reappear, too. Wondering “why not” when it didn’t. He’d even drifted off for a time. A few hours, he guessed, but he had no way to be sure as his watch had stopped working.

He realized he didn’t really care.

The errand Platz had given him seemed comical, in hindsight. He grinned at the idea of explaining to Platz what he’d seen.

Yes, I made it there. Yes, it sounded like a failing jet engine when I arrived, and dead silent when I left. I may have destroyed what I meant to fix, and doomed all of you. But at least I got an alien mind-fuck out of the deal.

Sorry, mate. Next time?

Destroyed the Aura. The possibility made him stop, mid-step. He looked up and tried to imagine a million subhumans waiting for him. Ready to tear him to pieces for dooming them all.

Who could blame them
. Skyler took another tired step, then another.

Sunlight baked the damp grounds of Nightcliff, and a stiff warm breeze came in off the ocean, carrying with it the smell of salt.

Forced to squint in the brightness, Skyler shielded his eyes with one hand and stepped through the same hole he’d created when entering the mansion.

To the south lay Kantro’s plane, still embedded in the side of a low building near the landing pads. The bird listed to one side, and part of one wing lay on the tarmac, bent beyond repair. A crowd of people tugged thick chains over the fuselage, while an old tractor idled nearby, ready to try to yank the wounded aircraft free.

Skyler took in the rest of the scene; the landing pads, the climber port, and the Elevator beyond. No signs remained of the subhuman attack, and for a fleeting instant Skyler thought perhaps he’d been inside the silo for days, not hours.

But a man mopping up blood dispelled that theory. He sloshed water from an old janitor’s bucket onto a red splotch on the ground, and scraped at it with a thick-bristle push broom.

Glancing up, fighting the sun, Skyler followed the cord all the way to its vanishing point in the sky above. Two climbers lazed their way up.

“You okay, mate?” someone asked.

Skyler glanced down and saw a Nightcliff guard standing at the fence, the same fence both he and the subhuman woman had scaled on the way in.

The soldier stood barely taller than a boy of perhaps seventeen, tall enough for Skyler’s needs.

“Yeah,” he croaked. With a cough he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m good.”

The boy scrunched his nose. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in there.”

Skyler walked up to the fence. “Fled in here when the attack came, and I guess I knocked my head. Did I miss the action?”

The kid relaxed a bit. He carried only a baton for a weapon, and his uniform looked hobbled together. Camouflage pants, worn running shoes painted dark gray, and a short-sleeved black shirt. The only piece of his uniform that mattered, though, was the maroon helmet on his head. The name Nera had been stenciled on it.

Nera looked around at the landing yard and shrugged. “I missed it, too. I was on the east wall. What do you do here?”

“Fix stuff,” Skyler managed. “Sinks, toilets. Speaking of, I really need to take a piss.”

“There’s a head in my barracks that works. Follow me?”

“Lead on,” Skyler said.

The kid broke into a jog, heading west and south through the low buildings, and Skyler kept close behind him.

“Never seen you before,” Skyler said, trying to sound casual.

“I just joined up.”

“Really? Seem to know your way around.”

Nera took it as a compliment and relaxed a bit as they entered the barracks. “I learn pretty fast,” he said.

“Seems so.” The barracks were empty. “Not too busy here, eh?”

“Most everyone went up.”

“Why?”

The kid looked at him sideways. “Blackfield’s War,” he said.

A few days and already the conflict had a name. Skyler cringed.

Nera went on. “He’s really taking it to Platz, they say.”

“And you’re stuck here?”

“I just joined up,” he said again. “The vets get first crack, but I’m hoping I’ll get picked. Duty roster gets posted at six-n-six.”

“Ah.”

“Here’s the can,” Nera said. He stopped in front of a door near the back.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Skyler said.

He went inside and found it to be empty. Skyler checked each stall anyway, confirming it. There were three windows high on the wall above a row of poorly maintained sinks. They were all closed, and too small to shimmy through anyway.

He shouted and ran to the door, pushing it open with exaggerated panic.

The young man, who had been leaning against the wall, jerked upright.

“There’s …” Skyler pretended to catch his breath “There’s a man, in the stall. Dead … I think. God, I’m gonna be sick.”

The guard leaned in the door but made no move to enter. “Dead?”

“See for yourself,” Skyler said, panting.

The boy entered the bathroom as if it brimmed with waiting subhumans; his eyes never left the row of stalls. “Which one?” he asked, his voice breaking awkwardly.

“The last,” Skyler said. He moved into the bathroom behind the cautious guard and eased the door closed.

The poor boy, so fixated on the stall, never heard Skyler come up behind him. One swift blow to the back of the head and the kid collapsed.

Skyler couldn’t kill him. The boy seemed innocent enough, just trying to make a better life for himself. Even so, Skyler damn well couldn’t have him alerting anyone, either.

Moving quickly, Skyler swapped outfits with the unconscious kid. He kept his own shoes. Most important, he placed the maroon helmet of a Nightcliff soldier on his own head. It wore tight, but would do.

The fortress was nearly deserted. Other than the crew cleaning up the wrecked plane, Skyler spotted only a few guards. Most were on the wall, attempting to make the contingent appear status quo to outsiders, he assumed.

Skyler hoisted the unconscious kid over one shoulder and went out the back door of the barracks. Once outside he did his best to walk with confidence. Just another body being slogged through the fortress; surely not the first time, or the last.

It took a few minutes for Skyler to find the manhole cover he’d come in through. It took almost an hour of backbreaking, frustrating work to lower Nera down to the tunnel below and move him into the room where all tunnels converged.

The kid seemed pretty bright, so Skyler figured he could find a way out of the sewer when he woke. Hopefully that would be well after Skyler found his way onto a climber. A calculated risk, but he couldn’t think of anything else short of suffocating the poor boy.

He had until six, according to Nera, before the next list of names would be posted. Skyler figured he’d check the list, and if Nera wasn’t on it, he’d find someone who was and take their place. In the meantime, he decided to feign duty. He’d spent time in the military, and he knew that even when you had nothing to do, you had something to do.

Back at the barracks, Skyler grabbed a broom and swept the floor. The menial task cleared his mind, calmed him. He lost himself in it and almost missed the locked chest with ‘Nera’ scrawled on the side at the end of a row of bunks. Skyler found the key in a pocket of his borrowed uniform.

He brushed aside a sense of guilt. Rifling through someone else’s belongings never felt good, but it beat sweeping.

The objects inside reminded him of his own innocent notion of what would be important to bring to boot camp: playing cards, a few odd photos of friends snapped and printed—likely at great expense—in the main bazaar near the center of Darwin, and a worn pencil banded to some partially used graph paper.

Skyler took only a lighter and a half-full pack of foul-smelling cigarettes, leaving the rest as he found it.

Feeling more confident in his disguise, he decided to venture out and learn what he could about the situation in orbit.

He went to the wall. Along the top of that massive barricade he marched a slow patrol, nodding to other guards he passed. Eventually he came to the point that overlooked Ryland Square, just outside the southern gate, where the riots started last month. He traced the path the
Melville
had taken, coming in over the wall, belly full of spoils that would soon be seized.

An eternity had passed since that day. Part of him expected to see the
Melville
parked there, Angus in the cockpit taking that shocking sight in stride.

So odd to be up here, wearing the maroon helmet. He couldn’t dream such a bizarre reversal.

He walked to the edge of the wall and ventured a look over. A crowd had formed around the fortress gate. His heart rate shot up; he was afraid he would get called to quell another riot. Then he realized they were celebrating, not rioting. Amid the sea of people, he saw container after container of food lying along the base of the wall, open to the sea of greedy hands.

Blackfield had pacified the locals, it seemed. Some were chanting his name.

Skyler frowned at that.
What a clever bastard.

At the lookout point above the southern gate, Skyler stopped and offered a cigarette to the soaked guards who stood there, as if presiding over the assembly.

“Look at all of ’em,” one guard said.

“Like pigs at the feeding trough,” said the other. He’d probably been one of them just days earlier.

Skyler tried to play along. “Nothing like a meal to bring people together, eh?”

“Shit,” said the second guard, popping the cigarette between his lips. “Won’t last, not unless the climbers start coming back this direction.”

“Nothing’s coming down?” Skyler asked.

The guard shot a sidelong glance at Skyler. “Only works one direction at a time, mate.”

“Oh yeah. Right.”

The second guard glanced up at the sky, squinting in the bright sun. “Still, the power’s finally stable again. That’ll speed things up.”

Skyler gave a slow nod and staggered away, his mind reeling.

Stable power
.
Had it bloody worked?

He thought back to the silo. Falling with the subhuman, into that … energy. And the deep, irregular hum that had pounded him on the way down. The sound had disappeared when he came back out.