Spike.
Then the pain was gone. His thoughts were gone. There was a last titanic wave of fury that almost gave him strength—almost—and then that too was gone, swallowed by the black oblivion of bitter failure.
Who is more courageous—the man who knows no fear, or the man who, overcome by terror, does what he fears most?
AARON LEICESTER
Choices
HARMONY NODE
HYDRA COLLECTIVE
THE EXIT was exactly where the builder’s notes said it would be. Micah watched as Ru inspected the opening, poking and prodding at various cracks and protrusions, seeking an explanation for why they hadn’t seen it before. But there was no secret mechanism to be found, no sign of a pocket that a door might have slid into, nothing but a crudely excavated tunnel, the same kind they’d been trapped in for hours. Yet it hadn’t been there before. Micah was sure of it.
“You sure this leads out?” she asked.
“I’m sure it leads to the edge of the builder’s map. Anything past that point probably isn’t part of the labyrinth. Granted, I’m speculating.”
She nodded, considered the archway in silence for a moment, then said, “Describe it to me.”
He blinked. “Say what?”
She gestured toward the opening. “Describe what you see.”
He looked around the space. “A narrow opening, maybe a meter wide, two meters high. Looks like someone broke through the wall from the other side and just chipped away at what was left until the hole was fairly even.” He pointed to a series of shallow gouges overhead. “Chisel marks there . . . there . . . and there.” He stopped, but she looked like she was waiting for more. “Looks like it leads to another tunnel, maybe parallel to this one. The map says—”
“Not the map,” she said. “What you see.”
“Two kinds of rock. Only one has the pit marks in it. Pretty big hole over there.” He pointed.
“Good,” she murmured. “Good.”
“Because . . . ?”
“It’s exactly what I see.”
“A field test.”
“We need to see if your senses have been altered.”
He was about to say that their adversary was unlikely to bother with illusions as insignificant as chisel marks and rock matrices, but then he remembered Shenshido. Grime had been added to the walls there, and vines added to the vents. So God alone knew what small things might have been changed in the labyrinth, that he and Ru never noticed. “Okay. Good thought. We can do that periodically.”
They gripped their knives and started down the new tunnel, ready for any trouble that might show itself. Ru was also wearing the rings of her garrote looped over two fingers of her left hand like ill-fitting knuckle guards, the razorwire safely retracted into one of them. She had winced when she put them on; clearly her hand was injured, and just as clearly, she had no interest in talking about it. Fair enough. He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about the brief waves of dizziness that came over him, or his fear that the blow to his head might have damaged something inside it. Talking about such things right now would have no practical purpose.
They walked, much longer than they should have had to; the twisting path never led directly to where they needed to go. Damn the people who’d carved out these tunnels, following natural hollows in the rock instead of just blasting straight through. If he and Ru could have walked a straight line to their objective, they’d have been there and back already.
And then, at last, there was a staircase, leading up. Micah felt a spark of hope for the first time in many long hours, and double-checked his map. “I’m not sure about some of these symbols, but I believe this will take us to the surface.”
“Where travel should be more direct, at least.”
“Not to mention flyways.” Hence escape from this wretched place.
The first few stairs were coarse and uneven, and he had to reach out to the wall to keep his balance. But soon those gave way to synthetic steps, perfectly smooth, perfectly spaced, and perfectly identical. It was easier to ascend after that, and within minutes they were at the top landing, standing in front of an airtight hatch with a control panel to one side. It was an emergency seal, designed to isolate this section of the core if life support elsewhere was compromised. The readout offered data on temperature, air pressure, and oxygen content, all currently within acceptable limits. Ru glanced at Micah to see if he was ready, then reached out and triggered the control. The heavy door panels separated and light poured out from between them. After so many hours in dimly lit underground passages, it was nigh on blinding. Micah gripped his knife tightly for the few seconds it took his eyes to adjust, preparing for trouble. But there was none. After a few moments Ru nodded and stepped through, and he followed.
Whatever he had expected, this room wasn’t it. Though perhaps it should have been.
“Describe it,” she said softly.
He drew in a deep breath as he looked around. “A dome-shaped room with a standard geodesic structure, but it’s a patchwork of mismatched panels, like each one was salvaged from a different source. One has a ship’s ID number printed on it.” He pointed to it. “Three doorways, in addition to the one we just came through, two beside ours and one at the far end of the chamber. And on the floor . . .” His expression darkened. “Puddles. Maybe blood.” He pushed the toe of a boot into one of the puddles, smearing it. “Fresh.” He looked at her. “Is that what you’re seeing?”
“What about there?” She pointed to one of the exits. “Can you see the footprints?”
He’d taken them for random smears of blood, but now that he looked more closely he could make out treadmarks in them, leading to that exit. Someone must have bled like the devil on the other side of it. “I see them.”
“And I see the rest of it, just like you described. So far so good. Which way next?”
He consulted the map, and pointed to the isolated door. As they approached, it opened. The smell of food enveloped them, and the noise of a hundred voices—at least. Beyond that was a madness of color and motion, and as Micah crossed the threshold he could only stare, trying to make sense of it.
“Holy shit,” Ru muttered.
It was a market, but not in the normal sense. Oh, there were tables and booths and a few free-standing kiosks, all displaying a wealth of merchandise, people and items packed together so tightly it was a miracle anyone could squeeze between them. But beyond that, he could see glimpses of a station shell that looked like it had been formed by two ships colliding. No, not merely two; Micah saw parts from what must have been half a dozen different vessels, twisted and shattered and then welded together into a madhouse creation. He saw a clothing vendor whose wares were hung on a strip of plasteel from a station’s hull, its climbing rungs twisted outward to form hooks; another shop was tucked into the discarded shell of an engine housing, which itself was welded to a section of passenger seating. The place was a veritable graveyard of ships, vendors exploiting its corpses.