by D. K. Mok
It was Roman.
A frayed length of cable trailed from the climbing harness around her waist. A pair of broken sunglasses lay on the ground beside her. Chris knelt on the dirt, not knowing where to start—with the leg, twisted at a nauseating angle, or the blood, seeping through Roman’s clothing.
Here. Start here. Blood had crusted around her nostrils and mouth, and as Chris gently removed the helmet from Roman’s head, she saw blood pooling inside. She touched Roman’s face lightly, and the woman’s eyes opened weakly. Brilliant red irises stared back—not a watery, albino red, but hibiscus scarlet flecked with crimson.
“…mir…” choked Roman, struggling for breath.
“It’s okay,” lied Chris, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. “It’s…”
Chris couldn’t continue, a tightness strangling her from inside. The woman’s breathing was ragged, as though fighting to seize each breath, her eyes locked on the ceiling. Luke took Roman’s hand gently.
“Just breathe,” said Luke. “Don’t try to do anything.”
He could feel her hand growing cold in his.
“…mir…promise…” said Roman, gurgling slightly.
An expression of faint panic crossed her face, as though all her regrets were flashing before her, her thoughts chasing all the things she still wanted to do. Luke closed his hands around Roman’s, as though trying to press his own warmth back into her. For a moment, her grip tightened, her fingers winding firmly around his. He held her hands, as though physically holding on could stop the spirit from leaving. But it never did.
Roman’s eyes rolled closed. They knelt in silence, and it felt as though the darkness pressed closer.
“There’s nothing you can do for her,” said Luke, still holding Roman’s hands.
Chris rose to her feet and started walking down the corridor, although her mind was still kneeling in the dirt, staring at the blood.
Keep moving, her body told her, or you’ll end up huddled in the corner, covered in mess.
She could feel the blood still warm on her hands.
Scrub up, don’t stop moving.
It’s almost over.
* * *
The blow sent Emir hurtling backwards down the stairs, crashing hard against every stone step on his way down. He tried to stay balled up protectively but it didn’t seem to help. He saw the ground rise towards him and managed to shoulder-roll backwards onto his feet, the world spinning.
He heard the scream before he saw her fall. It started as a scream of surprise, then turned to horror, then agony. He saw her fall like a shadow against the marble, the tuft of frayed cord swinging from the ceiling. He saw her hit the walkway with a crack and a spatter of red. By the time he released his own rope, the hum had started—
Emir backed away, but Docker was already at the base of the stairs, his fist slamming into Emir’s stomach like a drill. Emir blocked the next blow, but Docker’s leg kicked out, knocking Emir’s knee from under him. Emir had never been much of a fighter—he could run, he could leap, he could scale a castle wall with bare fingers, but fists and blood and breaking bones—that turned you into something else.
She wasn’t screaming anymore, but a thousand shades of pain tore through her eyes. Her fingers dug into his arms as he dragged her to the wall.
“Get her pack,” said Docker.
“Stay with me,” said Emir. “Roman, look at me—”
Her fingers gripped him tighter, her eyes full of desperate imperative.
“Demi—” she choked. “Promise me— Find Demi—”
‘Roman,” said Emir. “You have to—”
He heard the click of a cartridge loading. Emir turned to see Docker aiming the pistol at Roman’s head. Docker leaned over and pulled Emir’s gun from its holster.
“Get her pack,” said Docker softly. “Or, so help me, I’llput her out of her misery right now.”
Emir slammed into the pillar and rebounded, twisting away from Docker’s follow-up hook. Docker raised his gun to Emir’s head.
“You signed up for this,” said Docker. “You finish it. You don’t finish the job, you don’t go home. That’s how it works.”
Emir struggled to catch his breath, blood trickling from his nose and busted lip. His eyes followed the barrel of the gun.
“You’ve been doing this too long,” said Emir. “It’s not normal, it’s not right. It’s not—”
His mind reached back to angry words in a sunny plaza.
“It’s not an occupational health and safety thing,” said Emir, ignoring the metallic taste in his mouth.
Docker was unmoved.
“I gave you a chance to walk away,” said Docker. “You chose to stay. You have to live with the choices you make.”
A desert under violet skies—
“You can change your mind,” said Emir. “If you see it’s wrong, you stop doing it.”
Docker’s eyes were flat, the gun perfectly steady.
“There was a time I thought that, too,” said Docker. “I was wrong.”
16
Chris barely noticed the corridor around her, her entire attention focused on taking one step after another. Luke, meanwhile, was paying attention to both Chris and to the disturbing turn the passageway had taken.
The path was now darkly illuminated, with irregular sconces in the ceiling casting an ominous red glow, as though lava flowed behind the quartz panes. The walls were a deep, earthy red, panelled with grey marble bas-reliefs depicting scenes of carnage. Mutilated corpses demonstrated an array of horrible fates, while images of burning villages and decimated cattle had been etched with an impressive degree of detail. Even more eerie was the way some of the reliefs leaned from the walls like sculptures, an arm hanging out here, a clawing hand there.
Luke could almost imagine them crawling out from the walls to attack them. That would certainly be a feat of engineering. He walked a little closer to Chris, the shifting red light creating the illusion that the sculptures were moving in barely perceptible increments.
“Chris,” said Luke.
He didn’t really have anything to follow this up with, but he felt better saying it. It reminded him that, despite everything, they were still alive, still together. It came as a slight surprise to him that he found this comforting.
They walked wordlessly down the hellish tunnel, past reaching arms and headless torsos, past scenes of war and pestilence, following the path into the heart of the world.
“Is it just me, or is it getting hotter?” said Luke, loosening his woollen coat. “Exactly how far down is the molten core of the Earth?”
“Far deeper than this,” said Chris, her gaze still fixed ahead.
Chris’s thoughts kept returning to scarlet eyes, full of urgent anguish and regret, as though trying to reach someone far away. No one should die alone in distant lands, away from loved ones, without hope, without peace, without closure. No one should be left behind, their final fleeting thoughts turning towards all the things they wished they’d done differently, wondering why, in the end, they were alone.
Chris found her steps automatically slowing, and as she emerged reluctantly from catatonic mode, she saw that the passageway came to an end at a blank wall. There was, however, a narrow stone staircase circling downwards.
“That looks like a good place for an ambush,” said Luke.
Chris stood at the edge of the stairwell, a dim red glow filtering up over spiralling steps.
“So it does,” said Chris, as she began to descend.
Luke followed closely behind, eyes warily probing the darkness below. The steady rumbling which had followed them for the past few hours was now joined by a new sound, like a distant, dull roar, growing louder as they continued downwards. Luke decided there was probably no point in trying to guess what it was, since he doubted there was anything they could do about it unless it happened to be a flock of killer crows who wanted a Hacky Sack.
The staircase finally ended, and Chris and Luke ste
pped onto packed earth the colour of old rust. They stood in a long, grand hall, flanked by tall pillars carved from caramel sandstone. The pillars were engraved with magnificent, swirling designs resembling stylised wings, clouds, and tongues of flame. More impressive, however, were the small jets of orange-blue fire illuminating the room, blazing from short metal pipes protruding from the walls. The pipes lined the walls like torches, cupped in ornate iron brackets. The roaring hiss of the flames reminded Chris of the noise made by a welding torch.
At the far end of the hall, a set of narrow, arched double doors stretched towards the ceiling. The doors had been cut from pomegranate marble, veined in smoky white, and the surface had been left rough and unpolished. Engraved in each door was a tongue of tall flame, flickering in the dull firelight.
“We’re going to have such interesting travel photos,” said Luke.
The shadows in the hall shifted like liquid, and it took them a moment to notice the crumpled figure lying near a side wall. Chris’s heart seemed to stop, and she had a sudden sensation of falling, like when you saw the beginning of an accident you couldn’t stop, and you knew you couldn’t bear what was going to happen next.
Chris took a step forward.
“Chris—” Luke grabbed her arm.
The figure suddenly shifted, struggling to rise to its knees. It looked up, almost unrecognisable. Emir’s face was matted with blood, both trickling from a scrape on his forehead and running from his nose and a split lip.
“Go!” said Emir, his voice raspy.
“Where am—” began Chris.
“Chris!” Luke pulled on Chris’s arm as a shadow solidified behind Emir, one gun aimed at Emir, the other at Chris and Luke.
“Stay right there,” said Docker, eyes glowing dully.
Flames rippled along the walls, and the air stirred like a heatwave blowing in from the desert. Chris and Luke stood side by side, glaring across the hall at Docker. Shadows washed around the room, and it briefly occurred to Chris that the soft lighting would be quite flattering if everyone wasn’t sweating like a cheese in a microwave.
“So, we meet again,” said Chris.
“I’m going to make this very easy for you,” said Docker. “You’re a scientist, of sorts, so you know what your options are. If you choose not to co-operate, you, your priest friend, and Emir will all be dead within the next twenty seconds. Or you can do exactly as I say, without question, without hesitation. Those are your only two choices. What’ll it be?”
“Chris, don’t—” Emir called.
Without warning, a shot rang through the hall, and Emir stared at Docker in shock. Chris gasped and saw Emir turn towards her in alarm, realising that it wasn’t the barrel aimed at him that was smoking. Chris turned to Luke, who was staring ahead, perfectly still and wide eyed—whether from anger or shock, it was hard to tell. She watched as a thin hairline of bright red slowly crawled across his cheekbone, and a single drop of blood swelled at the edge of the cut.
“I’m a very good shot,” said Docker.
There was an almost audible ticking as Chris, Luke and Emir quickly calculated their chances of overpowering Docker before he killed them all. Docker, perfectly calm and composed, had clearly already performed these calculations. Chris’s thoughts spun like moths in a whirlwind, and she forced herself to focus on the evidence before her. Heroics were well and good if you were the heroic type, but too many people had died today. There were only so many things you could scrape off your lab coat before you just couldn’t put on that coat anymore.
“What do you want?” Chris’s voice was flat.
Docker shifted his position slightly, keeping Chris and Luke in gunsight.
“Open the doors,” said Docker.
Exchanging a look of apprehension, Chris and Luke walked slowly towards the far end of the hall. Carved pillars loomed on either side, depicting rivers and skies of fire.
“I hope you figured out the flaming sword,” whispered Chris.
“I solved the last one,” muttered Luke.
But I’m the one who took one for the team. Burning flesh?”
“I just took a bullet,” replied Luke.
“I’ve seen paper-cuts worse than that,” said Chris, hoping that Luke couldn’t hear the shake in her voice.
The marble doors soon rose before them like a red monolith, and Chris touched the rough surface tentatively. It felt warm against her skin. Unpleasantly warm.
“In primary school, firefighters talked about doors like this,” whispered Chris.
Luke’s gaze traced the stylised banner of flame on each door.
“Man must show humility,” muttered Luke. “Accept his own weakness, accept the teachings of the Lord…”
“That sounds like rolling—”
“None of it sounds remotely like rolling,” snapped Luke. “Can you even do a forward roll, let alone acro—”
There was a sudden bang, and Chris slammed into the doors with a startled grunt. She stared at the graze on her right shoulder, clamping her hand over the wound as blood started to seep into her shirt. She glared at Docker, a wisp of smoke trailing from his raised gun.
“I’m not going to keep prompting you,” said Docker.
“Maybe we can make him waste all his bullets,” whispered Chris.
“I can still hear you,” said Docker.
Chris turned to see Luke pushing against the double doors, his palms flat against the rough marble, head down as his feet braced against the dirt floor. Chris pressed her good arm against the door, her feet scraping troughs in the dirt. The doors resisted, and she could feel the pressure of something pushing back from the other side.
Don’t let it be something gross, thought Chris.
With a growl of effort, Chris and Luke slowly pushed the marble doors open a crack, and a brilliant glow of orange light broke through. The marble doors suddenly drew open with a hollow, sucking noise, leaving Chris and Luke standing off-balance in the glowing doorway.
“Down! Down!” Chris screamed, grabbing Luke and throwing them both to one side.
The sucking noise continued for only a second more before there was a moment of eerie silence, followed by a thundering roar. A fireball erupted from the arched doorway, rolling out into the hall like an incendiary burp. As the tongue of fire lashed out over Chris and Luke, Docker stepped briskly behind a nearby pillar while Emir curled up, covering his head with his arms. An intense, scorching heat filled the room, and Chris could smell singed hair.
As she started to wonder how long it would take for human flesh to bake, the roar began to fade. The tails of flame retreated through the marble archway, and after a moment Luke raised his head warily.
“Do you think that was the flaming sword?” asked Chris. “Because that was almost rolling.”
“Actually,” said Luke, staring through the archway. “I think those are the flaming swords.”
Chris looked through the darkly swirling doorway, the air distorted by a rippling haze of heat. She could make out fluid, moving shapes, blurry tangles of orange, blue, and grey. As her eyes followed the movement, she could discern patterns and arcs, the nebulous shapes finally resolving into distinct objects.
Inside the chamber, some kind of machinery covered the walls, bristling with large metal pipes belching long jets of flame. Massive whips of fire swirled like the trails of competitive ribbon dancers. The pipes were set on complicated metal contraptions reminiscent of massive wagon wheels. The wheels and mechanisms rotated in erratic patterns, sending spinning tongues of flame lashing through the room. If the chamber had a far side, it was obscured by curtains of fire.
“There must be an enormous deposit of natural gas nearby,” said Chris in awe. “They’ve harnessed it to drip-feed like some kind of fountain of fire.”
Luke felt something inside him sink just slightly. He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. It wasn’t as though he had really expected the doors to swing open, revealing the Archangel Gabriel sitting at a card tab
le playing solitaire, his sword of flame propped up in an umbrella stand. Still, any man who hoped for an angel and got gas was bound to be disappointed.
“Come back. Slowly,” commanded Docker, his gaze quickly taking in the blazing room.
Chris and Luke walked back towards Docker. As they approached, his expression remained calm and unreadable. He would have made a killer poker player, probably quite literally.
“Stop there,” said Docker.
Docker flicked his gaze towards Luke.
“You. Turn around, hands behind your back,” said Docker, keeping one gun trained squarely on Chris.
Luke glanced at the gun, then reluctantly turned around. As he stiffly held his hands behind him, his expression could have put someone in cryostasis. In a series of precise, rapid movements, Docker kicked a loop of rope from the floor, holstered his gun and caught the rope in one hand, while keeping his other gun locked on Chris. In a smooth, one-handed motion, Docker folded a complicated knot tightly around Luke’s wrists, doing things with his fingers and teeth that Chris couldn’t do with both hands and an assistant.
“Now sit over there, facing the wall,” said Docker, pulling out his second gun and training it on Emir.
As Luke sat down awkwardly, Chris was filled with a brittle tension, suddenly aware of their vulnerability. Three shots were all it would take, and no one would ever know what had happened to them.
Chris looked over at Docker, his demeanour a model of control and precision. Nothing trembled, nothing fluttered with anxiety or excitement, nothing shone with fear or hope. Meanwhile, Chris felt as though her skin were about to split open like a chrysalis from all the thoughts and feeling writhing inside.
Docker caught her gaze, and held it.
…eyes shining under star-spattered skies…
“Emir, be so good as to give the lady your fire hazard gear,” he ordered, keeping one gun on Chris and the other on Emir.
Emir struggled to sit up, and Chris twitched to move.