by Rob Boffard
Jack swings a wild punch, and Seema deflects it like it wasn’t even there. She moves with practised ease, Jack’s fist sliding along her forearm, then comes at him again, swinging a punch at his solar plexus to drop him. It just misses, Jack twisting out of the way a split second before it hits.
Seema twists mid-movement, and her second strike breaks Jack’s nose. He feels the bridge crunch against her knuckles, the sudden, horrid alarm bell of pain.
From behind Seema, a tinny voice intones, “Reptile formation!”
Something collides with the wall by Jack’s head. Whatever it is, it’s loud, exploding in a cacophony of noisy bleeps, bouncing off the surface. Seema stops, confused, trying to find the source of the noise. Jack doesn’t wait for her to refocus. He takes the chance, rocking onto the balls of his feet, driving a furious uppercut into Seema’s chin.
Seema leans back, more startled than hurt, her hand flying to her face. She almost trips over the noisy object – it’s that stupid action figure, the one Lorinda brought on board. Stupid or not, Jack isn’t going to let the advantage go. He comes off the wall swinging, face twisted in a snarl. In seconds, he and Seema are rolling on the floor, pulled tight together like lovers, scratching and biting and hitting. Jack’s nose gushes blood, spattering the floor and the side of the bar.
It’s the first real fight Jack’s been in.
He’s been punched before, more than once, and he’s even thrown a couple himself, but those fights lasted seconds. They were fuelled by booze, uncoordinated, sloppy, with no real stakes – the kind of fights where you buy the other guy a drink afterwards. This is different. This is terrifying. The flaring agony in his nose might be spurring him on, but it’s not going to last much longer. Seema is tougher, way more experienced, and far better at finding the right places to strike.
Lorinda. She’s his only hope. If she can grab Seema, somehow … but even as the thought occurs, he sees Brendan sprint into view, heading right for the old woman. He tries to shout a warning, and finds he’s got no air left, none at all.
Seema notices, and takes the advantage, jamming an elbow into Jack’s throat. He stumbles off her, gasping, his windpipe feeling like it’s shrunk to a quarter of its usual size. Seema springs to her feet, rushes him, slamming him against the same wall. Back to square one.
Lorinda sees Brendan coming, tries to move. No go. Brendan grabs her by the hair, and Lorinda howls in pain, her hands batting at his arms.
Grimacing, he drags her away, trying to force her back into the bathroom cubicle. Lorinda twists sideways, sliding out of the man’s grip. She totters, unsteady, and Brendan relaxes. Jack sees him shove Lorinda hard, sending her flying across the bar, then turns to help Seema.
What was he thinking? They’re going to kill her, and he’s going to have to watch, knowing this one was his fault. He was the one who let her out, the one who came up with this crazy-ass plan in the first place …
Jack doesn’t have a chance to finish the thought. Seema explodes up from her toes and headbutts him, driving her forehead into his temple. Grey lights flicker at the edge of his vision. He does the only thing he can think to do, lunging forward and snapping his teeth around her earlobe, canines sinking into the flesh. Blood spurts into his mouth. Seema grunts, thumb digging into his cheek, hunting for his eye –
Which is when Brendan screams.
It’s the high-pitched, agonised roar of someone in real pain, and it stops both Seema and Jack cold. Seema’s partner is staggering away from them, hands clutching his face. Blood streams from between his fingers.
And Lorinda … Lorinda is off to one side, face white, shoulders heaving. She’s holding a clenched fist to her chest, blood of her own dripping down her shirt. She’s clutching a much larger chunk of glass – perhaps one they used to chip away at the ice above the bathroom, one of many scattered around the bar from when they broke the pane on the front of the fridge. Brendan is blind, lashing out, still howling.
His hand slips from his face. There’s a flap of skin hanging from his forehead, the blood gushing from it in a torrent. Jack gapes, stunned, amazed at how much there is. Then again: head wounds bleed the most, don’t they? All those blood vessels?
“Brendan!” Seema rips herself away, dropping Jack and surging towards the bar, looking as if she can’t decide whether to go for her partner or for Lorinda. Jack crumples, landing on his side, gasping. He reaches out for Seema, not sure what he intends to do – and his hand lands on a length of electrical cable.
It’s running from the dismantled fridge, the one Everett cannibalised to build his heater. Without thinking, Jack gives it a yank, pulling it tight just as Seema’s ankle hits it.
Seema tries to keep her balance, her free foot swinging out. But she’s moving too fast, with too much momentum – and this time it’s her who’s off balance. She goes, twisting sideways as Jack tightens his grip, her arms windmilling. A second later, her neck collides with the edge of the bar.
There’s no crack. No sound of breaking bone. Nothing but a muffled thud. Seema slumps to the floor, her eyes glassy. She twitches once, a single quick spasm, and goes still.
Jack lies prone, breathing hard, his entire face in agony. His nose feels ten times its normal size. Lorinda is trembling, her strength gone, using the bar to prop herself up as she stares at Seema.
“Seems!”
From the far end of the bar, Brendan surges towards them. The gash in his forehead is still flowing. Somehow, he’s managed to clear the blood out of his eyes, which are two bright, furious specks in the red mask of his face.
He grabs a glass on the run, snatching it up with his metal hand, smashing it on the bar. The jagged edges catch the light as he thunders towards Jack.
Chapter 44
Lorinda doesn’t hesitate. She hurls herself into Brendan’s path, trying to block him.
Under normal circumstances, he’d just sweep her aside. But even though she can’t stop him moving, bouncing off him and skidding onto her hands and knees, the hit is just enough to alter his balance. He collides with Seema, going over like a tree falling, spinning, landing on his back. The glass he’s holding shatters against the wall.
Jack might be exhausted, his nose a screaming hellstorm in the centre of his face, but he knows a chance when he sees it. He forces himself to move, clambering on top of Brendan. A memory surfaces of Hec, lying in the hospital bed in São Paulo, tubes everywhere, his face turned away from Jack. Telling him to get out. Telling him to leave.
He leans back as far as he can, then slams a fist into Brendan’s face. Then he does it a second time. He’s roaring, the adrenaline pouring out of him in a torrent of nonsense words as he hits Brendan again and again.
Brendan pulls his arms up, trying to block the blows. At the last second, he changes his mind, slamming his metal hand into the side of Jack’s head. It’s like a nuclear explosion. Jack topples off, landing hard on his shoulder. Brendan kicks out at him, blind, thrashing, uncoordinated.
But Jack is deep in the memory. He’s right there, back in that hospital. He can see the way Hec’s useless legs shape the sheets, hear the beeping of the machines that can’t help him. He can see the little scar below Hec’s ear, from a long-ago arrest. He can hear Hec’s voice. More than that: he can see the life they should have had. Everything they were going to do.
So he climbs on top of Brendan, and he keeps hitting.
He does it three more times before something gets in the way of his arm. He barely looks at what it is, just tries to push past it. But the obstacle won’t move, and when he does look, he sees it’s Lorinda. She’s on her knees, both hands planted on his upper arm, holding with all the strength she has. In that moment, she looks a thousand years old.
“Stop,” she says, her voice husky. “Just … stop.”
He doesn’t want to. But right then, all the strength goes out of him. Brendan coughs, sending up a spray of blood from torn, mushy lips. He’s barely moving.
“Bathroom,�
�� Lorinda says. “Put him … bathroom.”
Brendan is too out of it to fight much, although he almost gets away several times. When they’re at the bathroom door, he lands an elbow into Jack’s stomach that almost finishes him. He uses the last of his energy to shove Brendan into the cubicle. Without waiting for him to recover, he shuts the door, holding it closed. Lorinda is already stacking the boxes, moving with agonising slowness, grimacing as she bends over.
“Hurry,” Jack says, his voice thick. Brendan is already pounding at the door, slamming his bodyweight against it.
After what feels like a whole minute, they manage to get the boxes in front of the door, enough that Brendan’s hits aren’t making much of a difference – and each one is weaker than the last. They’ll need to come up with a long-term solution, but it’s good enough for now.
Lorinda takes a step back, shoulders heaving. Her eyes meet Jack’s, and he can’t believe the look she gives him: a mix of pity, confusion and anger.
Jack stands, swaying, then slumps down against the wall. He reaches up to touch his nose, gets three-quarters of the way there, then thinks better of it.
“Fug,” he says.
Lorinda looks back over at Seema, still sprawled across the floor by the bar. “Do you think she’s …”
Jack blinks hard, several times. “Dunno. Baybe. Didn’t bean to …”
Didn’t mean to … what? He can’t finish the sentence. The last few minutes are a blur. Lorinda makes a sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She leans against the side of the bar, shoulders shaking.
There’s a lot that Jack wants to say. He wants to tell her how sorry he is, that he was an asshole, that he should never have gone along with Brendan and Seema. He wants to say that he knows he screwed up, that he’ll do better. That he’ll be better. He can’t even work out how to start.
His broken nose is volcanic, and other parts of his body are starting to make their pain known. His left cheek. His stomach. His ankle, which got twisted somehow during the fight, and which is throbbing with an insistent ache. The skin on his knuckles hangs in bloody shreds.
They’ve got to let the people in astronautics know what happened. That Brendan and Seema aren’t a problem any more. Jack runs through the sequence of events in his mind, desperate to impose some kind of order on things. They can’t get through to astronautics from the bar; he or Lorinda will have to go back upstairs to the main deck, head down to the rear, then convince the others to open the trapdoor. Somehow.
He swallows, thick, glutinous blood dripping down his throat. His shirt is coated in it. “Ubstairs,” he says. “Let eb’r’body out. S’OK.”
“Oh, so you can just … so you can go in and torture him? Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Doh.” No. Doesn’t she understand? Even the thought of trying to torture someone now makes him want to throw up. Again, that urge to tell her everything, that he went too far, that he let things get out of hand. Again, he has no idea how to start. In the bathroom, Brendan is moaning.
“I’ll stay here. Go dell ’em wud ’appened.”
The old woman looks like she’s going to collapse. With an effort of will, she pushes herself off the bar, standing on shaky legs. “What about her?” she says, pointing at Seema.
Jack struggles to understand what she means. What are they supposed to do? Cut her and see if she bleeds? Hold a mirror to her mouth? Where the hell are they going to get a mirror? What are they even doing here?
Pulse. I should check to see if she’s got a pulse. But he can’t bring himself to touch her. Even the thought of doing it …
Jesus. What a mess.
“I god it,” he says. “I’ll check she’s … you know. You go ub.”
After a beat, Lorinda makes her way to the stairs. Jack shuts his eyes, trying not to think about his smashed nose. The reality of the situation is coming down on him. Seema out cold – no, almost certainly dead. Brendan locked in the bathroom. But, of course, they’ll have to let him out sometime, because he’s going to need treatment. For a minute, Jack wants to leave him in there. Let him suffer. But his anger is gone, drained away.
And where are they, after all this insanity? Right where they started. No closer to figuring out why any of this has happened to them, or what they’re going to do about it. They’re still drifting, still in a ship with almost zero chance of survival.
Jack leans his head back. The single thought going round and round in his mind, the hornets buzzing worse than ever, is that he waited. It was only when he found that Brendan and Seema were Roses that he actually acted. He tells himself that he would have done something, eventually, but it’s horseshit. He only acted because it suddenly meant something to him, not because he was doing the right thing. He only fought back because he suddenly had skin in the game.
He opens his eyes, looks around the freezing bar. The floor is speckled with blood, already turning dry and tacky. Above the airlock door, Jack can just see the light coming in from the cockpit, through the open hatch. Blankets and boxes and food containers lie scattered everywhere.
“Fug,” he says.
Chapter 45
Corey hasn’t told anybody what he saw on Malik’s holocam.
He almost has, a dozen times. But every time he opened his mouth, he yanked the words back. In any case, the sound of Jack fighting Seema and Brendan was echoing through the wall from the bar, and Malik was on his feet, ignoring Corey, along with everyone else. Even when the noises stopped, he couldn’t get the words out – and now, he finds he doesn’t want to. The burning urge to tell everyone right away was cooled off by a single, overpowering thought.
He can’t mess this up.
He knows what he saw, but convincing everybody else might not be so easy. And if he is wrong, it’ll just make everything worse. Because what he saw … it’s crazy. It changes everything.
The prisoner. He’s the key. But down in astronautics, Corey couldn’t figure out what to say. The man was over on the other side of the room, and Corey couldn’t talk to him without the others hearing. Mal doesn’t know, either – after the noises stopped, Corey told him that he was just blown away by how crazy the video was. There was a second where he was sure his brother wasn’t going to buy it, but he did, and by then his attention was focused on what might be happening on the other side of the wall.
It took Lorinda nearly half an hour to persuade Hannah, Anita and Everett that it was safe for them to come out, that she wasn’t being held with a knife at her throat, forced to talk to them. In the end, they came up with an elaborate procedure involving Everett lifting the trapdoor up a little, making sure there was no one else around, then heading out himself to investigate, Hannah shutting the hatch behind him.
They’d agreed a word he’d shout if it was all clear – Wilder, Anita’s maiden name. “If I shout anything else,” he’d told them, “you lock that door shut, you hear?”
As soon as Corey’s dad headed out, the big cat had made its return. He remembers begging for more meds, although he can’t be sure if that actually happened, or was just in his mind.
There was some discussion about whether they should move him or not. His mom wanted him on the main deck – he could hear her voice getting louder as she argued for it, shouting down Hannah and Lorinda, and eventually they decided to move him.
He didn’t remember much after that. They gave him some more meds, the pills tasting like stale pee, and then he was being lifted. He was shaking, freezing cold and dripping sweat at the same time, unable to move, barely able to think. What he saw on the holo might have happened in a dream.
In the end, he’s not even sure how they did it. He could feel his dad’s arms around him, and hear Hannah’s guiding voice, stretched tripwire-tight. With every movement, the pain skyrocketed to unbelievable levels. At some point, he passed out, and when he came to, he was back on the main deck, along with everyone else.
Now he’s lying across the seats. There’s something under his head – a b
alled-up jacket, the zipper digging into his neck. Another covers the lower half of his body. The big cat has retreated, a little.
He raises his head, blinking, to see the prisoner. The man is cuffed to one of the armrests, and his ankles, Corey sees, have been bound with tape. There’s more wrapped around the handcuffs themselves – Hannah taking no chances this time. God knows how they got him up there, or why they decided to move him again.
Corey meets his gaze for a split second, then looks away. There was something about the prisoner he needs to tell everyone, something important, but right now his mind is way too fuzzy. He can’t hold onto it.
Lorinda is a few seats down from Corey, bundled up in the other blanket. She’s fast asleep, her head dipped onto her chest. Beyond her, Hannah is tending to Jack, dabbing at his nose. No Seema, or Brendan. He tries to figure out where they are, and can’t do it. Can’t even remember why they were up here and the rest of them were down in the –
“Honey.” His mom is sitting just behind him, and he jumps as she rests a hand on his shoulder. “Try stay still, OK?”
Corey twists his head to look at her and is rewarded by a painful rumble from his leg. His mom sees the expression on his face, and tightens her grip. “No, don’t move. I don’t want to give you too many meds right away – there were a few more in the kit, but we need to make them last. Can you hang on for me?”
“Where’s … Dad?” Corey manages.
“Uh …” She shakes her head for a second, her eyes closed, as if only just remembering. “Downstairs, with Malik. He’s working on his heating thing for the water.”
Malik. A memory ghosts into the back of Corey’s mind.
“How did …” He fumbles the words, trying to figure out how to say it: why Jack is on their side now, what happened up here.
His mom strokes his shoulder. He can feel her presence next to him, warm and full, and right now it’s all he wants. He closes his eyes. The cat is very, very far away, far enough for him to escape, to sleep, just for a few minutes …