Virus (18 page)

Steve wanted to laugh out loud. “Could be Squeak! C’mon!”

Woods shook his pale, sweating face vehemently. “Uh-uh, I’m not goin’ that way. It could be
anything swingin’
loose—”

“I
said,
it could be Squeaky.”

He looked at Everton, but the captain was apparently not going to argue with him. Steve walked through the group, actually feeling their combined tension like an electrical charge. He was scared, too—who wouldn’t be after seeing that
thing
walking around?—but if it was his partner . . .

Hang on, Squeak!

He took the lead and Richie fell in next to him, his knuckles white against the automatic rifle. Steve forced himself to walk slowly as the insistent pounding filled his ears; had he been alone, he would have run for the hatch—but there was no way the others were up for it. Woods was a wreck, Everton was acting increasingly weird—even Richie seemed pretty tight; he’d bought in to Nadia’s story all the way, as had Foster. Steve wasn’t planning on voting till he had more information . . .

They edged forward, the
Volkov
rumbling around them from the storming seas outside. The pounding was coming from a closed hatch up ahead, a small window inset at eye level. As they reached the door, the banging suddenly stopped.

Hiko shone his light through the window and Steve grinned, felt a huge weight lift off of him; he
knew
it!

“It
is
Squeaky,” Hiko said, and the pounding started again as he reached for the latch.

Richie suddenly shouted from behind him, startling them all.

“Don’t open it! Don’t fuckin’ open it!” His voice cracked in fear, his eyes wide and rolling.

Hiko hesitated, and Steve shook his head, amazed and disgusted. Jesus, were they
blind?
Richie had smoked too much weed, gotten paranoid. He pushed Hiko roughly out of the way.

“Move over,” he growled, and threw the latch, so relieved that he almost wanted to cry. He’d been fighting to keep his hopes up, but it had been getting harder, eating him up inside. Everything was different now.

He backed up a step and Squeaky walked out into the corridor, expressionless—and for just a second, Steve felt a cold uncertainty grip him. Why wasn’t he smiling?

He swallowed and backed up another step, the group behind him.

“Squeaky?” Steve’s voice was a whisper.

Squeaky looked at him. “Steve.”

Squeaky’s voice was as blank and unreadable as his face.

Steve’s grin faded, and the coldness crept back. “What’s wrong with you?”

His partner took another step forward. “Nothing. Now.”

Steve saw it then, and felt his mind threaten to rip apart from the horrible wash of emotions that crashed down over him.

Cables ran down Squeaky’s back and off into the dark of the opened hatch. And in the shadows behind him, something else moved.

• 18 •

F
oster stared in horror at the creature that stood in front of them, swaying gently with the motion of the ship. It looked like the engineer, spoke with his voice—but the glassy eyes no longer sparkled with humor or intelligence; the muscles of his—of
its
face were slack, rendering it characterless, devoid of personality. He wasn’t Squeaky, not anymore.

Her shocked gaze traveled to the tall, shadowy figure behind Squeaky—and froze there. What she saw was so impossible that she couldn’t fit her mind around it, couldn’t accept what her eyes were telling her.

Can’t be, no way, doesn’t exist—

Steve’s face was pale and waxy. “What the
fuck
is that?”

“Something
I’ve
never seen before,” Nadia whispered.

The monstrosity was at least seven feet tall, squatting in the darkness like a praying mantis, its four legs a grotesque amalgamation of flesh and metal. Where the head should have been were what appeared to be two human brains, encased in a thick, gelid goo, video lenses and probing beams of light underneath. Foster counted three, four arms, two of them mechanical, two of them torn and tattered and definitely human.

The creature took a strange, sliding step past the Squeaky-thing and ripped through the thick hatch, the squeal of tortured metal finally breaking their stunned immobility.

As one, they raised their weapons and opened fire, backing away as the explosive rounds smacked into tissue and ricocheted off metal. Chunks of flesh were torn from the terrible creature, spattering against the bulkhead as it advanced like a mutant spider, seemingly unharmed by the rain of bullets.

Jesus, what
is
it—

Everton suddenly pushed through them, shoving between Hiko and Richie to get away from the oncoming creature. His panicked gaze was unseeing, his face sweating and flushed. Foster only narrowly missed shooting him as he stumbled past her and collided with Hiko, almost knocking him down.

Like a chain reaction, Woods tripped against Hiko and fell heavily to the floor, the sound lost in the deafening clatter of gunfire. He scrambled backwards, clawing and kicking at the bolted deck to get away, an expression of insane terror on his pallid face.

The creature that had been Squeaky lunged forward, impossibly fast, snatching Woods up as if he weighed nothing and lifting him into the air. The seven foot monster spidered forward and in a single, brutal movement, plunged its mechanical arms into Woods’s flailing body, puncturing his chest and belly with one powerful thrust.
“Woods!”
Everton screamed, but Woods was beyond hearing, his body spasming violently as blood poured from the gaping wounds, gushing down the Squeaky-thing’s arms. Squeaky tossed the broken body effortlessly across the corridor and it slammed into the wall with a sickening wet
smack,
bones snapping as it fell in a bloody, crumpled heap.

The biomechanoid Squeaky turned—

—and looked directly into the barrel of Steve’s shotgun. Steve was trembling, his finger against the trigger. He looked feverish, sick with emotions that Foster couldn’t begin to name as the thing that had been Squeaky cocked its head, staring at him.

Steve lowered the gun and backed away.

As soon as he was clear, the rest of them opened fire again. The biomechanisms advanced towards them, impervious to the thundering rounds that tore into them, leaving smoking black holes in metal threaded tissue.

The group backed up the corridor, still firing.

Nadia turned and ran. Foster shot a look back, saw that she was at a security hatch not far away, her tied hands raised to the keypad.

Whatever you’re doing, hurry!

The biomechanoid showed no sign of stopping. Squeaky’s upper body was riddled with seeping wounds, flaps of skin torn from his face and neck, and still it walked forward, arms raised as if to express fellowship. That was somehow the worst of all—that it looked like Squeaky with his hands held up in supplication as they mercilessly blasted away at him.

Nadia was shouting over the deafening gunfire, standing at the door that she’d opened. Everton was the first there, followed by Richie and Hiko, both of them still firing. Steve waited for Foster to back to the door, then hustled both her and Nadia through the hatch before piling in behind them.

Steve pushed the vaultlike door shut and slammed down the manual latch. He fell against it, breathing heavily, his eyes wide and glassy with shock.

Foster went to him immediately, realizing that however awful it had been for them, it had been worse for Steve; Woods was dead, killed by a thing that had been Steve’s partner and closest friend.

“That wasn’t Squeaky, Steve,” she said softly. “I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t him.”

Steve closed his eyes and Foster looked away, wondering how long it would be before Squeaky or his aberrant sidekick came knocking at the door—and how long they could hold out against any creature that bullets couldn’t kill.

Nadia studied what the intelligence had done to the communications room, filled with an exhausted nostalgia for that last morning. It seemed like years had passed since she’d sat here, gloating over her chess game with Lonya. She’d been surrounded by her peers, doing her work in a safe and sane world that she understood—before the last transmission from MIR had come and taken it all away.

Some of the lights were on, exposing remnants of that terrible morning. The radio equipment was smashed, but many of the computer screens were still intact; they flashed now with biological diagrams and electrical schematics that were alien even to her. She could see the burn scars on the consoles, the stains of blood on the floor. Alexi had been drinking his Earl Grey, sitting where Everton now sat . . .

She realized that Captain Everton was staring at her with an expression of pure malice—but she could see also that he finally believed.

Wonderful. He is convinced, now that the proof of it has killed another of his crew—and he acts as if the fault is mine. What’s
wrong
with him?

Hiko limped to one of the workstations and frowned over at her. “Where are we?”

“Communications room,” she said.

Richie wheeled around excitedly. “The communications room, we can call for help!”

He went to the crushed console of the transmitters, picking up a handful of ripped circuitry and looking up, surprised.

“This is trashed. Who did this?”

“I did,” said Nadia tiredly.

He scowled at her. “The radios on the bridge were trashed—did you do that, too?”

Nadia realized that they hadn’t had time to consider everything, to understand the nature of the intelligence; in spite of her impatience, she kept her voice low and controlled.

“I destroyed every transmitter on this ship; if it transmitted on, it can surely transmit off. To another ship, an island . . . anywhere.”

Richie ignored her, began prodding the ripped circuitry, and she looked at the others, wondering if they fully understood what she was telling them. Everton had stood and was pacing, his jaw clenched, his mind elsewhere; Hiko watched data scroll across the monitor screens. Steve still leaned against the thick door, staring off into space—only Foster was watching her, the woman’s mouth set in a thin line as she nodded slowly.

She is perhaps the smartest of them, that one; she’s afraid, but she listens—

There was a burst of static and Nadia’s heart plummeted into her gut. She whipped around, saw Richie with his personal radio unit out and open, wires hooked to the circuitry of the transmitter board.

“You didn’t smash this—Mayday, Mayday!”

“No, don’t!” Nadia cried, struggling to her feet—

—and a burst of gunfire exploded through the room, the transmitter blown into smoking pieces.

“Damn, what the hell—” Richie started, and they all turned, shocked—and saw Everton standing there, his pistol drawn, a desperate, triumphant grin on his hateful face.

“ ’Fraid I can’t let you do that, Richie,” he said.

Nadia was surprised, didn’t think he’d been listening to her; perhaps he wasn’t as ignorant as she’d thought.

“Captain, are you out of your fucking
mind?”
Richie asked, incredulous.

Everton’s gaze darted around the room wildly. “I’m not going to let another ship salvage this vessel!”

They all stared at him, a long moment of silence heavy with dawning comprehension. Nadia understood finally, why he’d been so willfully obstinate, so set against allowing that she might be telling the truth.

He means to claim this ship as derelict! And he can’t do that if there is anyone aboard. Anyone
sane
aboard . . .

Foster was closest to the captain, and as the rest of them sat or stood in the room, still digesting the pointless, greedy motivation of their leader—

—Foster swung, smacking Everton square on the jaw. He was knocked down by the force of her blow, his revolver skipping across the floor.

“You’re no longer in charge,” she said coldly.

Everton looked up pleadingly at the other men, one hand pressed to his face. “You going to let her get away with that?”

They stared back at him in silence, and Nadia felt a shaking relief as she studied their grim faces, saw the anger in their weary gazes. He was fighting for money; they were fighting for their lives.

Foster turned away, came to her, and quickly untied the wrapped wire that encircled her wrists. Nadia blew out slowly, rubbing at the marks. Perhaps they had a chance now; they knew what they were up against and Everton would be ignored—

BANG!

Nadia jumped up, startled. A heavy shelf next to the hatch went over, crashed to the floor as a huge impact outside shook the entire room. A dent had appeared in the thick metal of the security door.

The intelligence wanted them. And judging from the incredible force of its single blow, they had very little time before it succeeded.