Most concerning, however, was the large pool of blood on the floor in Pierce's office.
"Blood?" Edward said. "I thought you said you found something strange."
"This deck is sealed," Stellan said, grimacing as he crouched to investigate. "Few people can get here. Blood here is strange because there shouldn't be any infected up here."
"Then what was all that in the lift?"
"I said 'shouldn't'."
The conclusion seemed obvious yet illusive. Pierce had shot someone. Whom? And why? From the irregular way the pool had settled and the smears on the floor, Stellan could tell Pierce had left his victim lying on the deck. When Pierce had gone, this person had gotten back up. The question that perhaps plagued him the most, however, was whether this person had died before it got back up.
"What's that on the wall?" Edward asked.
"Blood spatter."
"What would do that?"
"The exit wound from a gunshot."
Edward jumped at the sudden realization that this blood had not come from a bite, scratch, or tear, as if wounding by gunshot had become more unusual than cannibalism. It revolted him, and Stellan could see the onset of nausea. The pigment flushed out of the flesh that was not bruised and swollen. He swooned, and after momentarily fighting it on his feet, he looked for somewhere to sit. He wobbled toward the chair behind Pierce's desk but didn't make it before he leaned in the corner and retched into a potted fern. With the contents of his stomach evacuated, he collapsed into Pierce's creaky wooden chair, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
"You all right?" Stellan said.
"Fine," Edward said, slouching with his eyes closed. "I just need a minute."
"You got it. While you're back there, maybe you can open some of those drawers. Look for a small black brick."
It wasn't on the desktop where Stellan had last seen it. Pierce must have moved it. He searched the shelves on the far wall, pulling back books to see if he'd hidden it behind one of them. He dug in the trashcan. He looked under the chair. He even checked the fern. They searched Pierce's entire cabin and couldn't find it anywhere. Why would Pierce have hidden it? Perhaps he'd disposed of it. If so, why didn't he tell Stellan before they left medical?
As they stood in Pierce's living room, trying to think creatively about where Pierce could have hidden the brick of alien material, Stellan heard an odd hum. It was higher pitched than the Atlas' air circulation system, and he felt certain it hadn't been there a moment ago.
He followed the sound out into the hallway. It became less muffled and tinnier. He heard a squeal and then the groan of the lift's suspension cable.
The lift was moving.
Stellan ran to the doors and dug his fingers between them, struggling to pry them open.
"Give me a hand," he said, and Edward jumped to his aid. Together, they opened the lift's outer doors, and that's when they heard the moans and shuffling. The lift was rising, and it carried with it a cargo of the dead.
"What are we going to do?" Edward said. "Should we hide in the captain's cabin? We could seal the hatch."
"No," Stellan said. "We'd just be trapped, and there's no telling how long they'd wait out here for us."
Stellan hoped the lift would stop on one of the lower floors. He peered down through the maintenance hatch, which was still open, and he could see several heads rolling and bobbing as if they were on the cusp of falling asleep but would not allow themselves to slip into unconsciousness. He couldn't get an accurate count.
He thought about putting their backs to the far wall and trying to take the mob out as it spilled forward. He knew their chances would diminish with the greater numbers in the lift, but he saw no other choice.
He turned to move Edward into a strategic position, prepared to give him a pep talk, and Stellan found himself once again staring down the barrel of Edward's sidearm.
"What—" Stellan said, and the report from Edward's weapon interrupted him.
The bullet whizzed over Stellan's shoulder and through the open lift doors. The pang of metal against metal was almost as loud as the gunshot itself, and the lift immediately cried out in agony. The cable snapped, and the lift fell before its emergency brakes caught it in the shaft, frozen somewhere on a deck below. The moans and growls of the dead inside professed their displeasure.
Stellan looked toward Edward, amazed.
"I figured we couldn't risk trying to take them all," Edward said with an innocent smile. "Then, before I really knew what I was doing, I was squeezing the trigger."
Stellan looked down the shaft, dumfounded, to ensure it wasn't going anywhere.
"That's called instinct," he said, one of the dead peering up at him through the open maintenance hatch with its mouth agape. "Just one problem. They may not be getting in, but we're not getting out."
Edward looked at him quizzically. "What do you mean?"
"You killed the lift. How are we supposed to get down?"
"The fire escape, of course."
"Fire escape?"
"Yes. When they built the ship, code required an alternate route of egress for every deck in the event that something could block escape from a fire."
Edward scanned the hallway, his eyes working under a furrowed brow.
"There should be one around here somewhere," he said. "Ah!"
He ran past the hatch door to the dead end, the purpose of which Stellan had always questioned.
"They're hidden and sealed, ensuring they won't compromise other decks in the event of depressurization. If the Atlas detected a fire, it would direct the captain here and reveal a control panel and a doorway," Edward said, feeling the wall. "But you can access them manually if you find the right spot."
Edward found a square tile and pushed in on it. It flipped 180 degrees, revealing a touchscreen. He pressed his palm against it, and the wall opened to reveal descending stairs.
"There," Edward said. Stellan gawked at him. "What?"
"You kind of remind me of Rick."
Edward smiled, but before he began his descent down the stairs, Stellan stopped him. The moans of the dead trapped in the shaft behind them rose into the hallway.
"Just one thing before we go any farther," Stellan said. "We agreed no more pointing our weapons at each other."
"I didn't point it at you," Edward said with a smirk. "You were just in the way."
"Fair enough," Stellan said.
The two of them descended into the darkness below. Stellan found some comfort in the knowledge that they were moving into parts of the ship with which at least one of them was familiar.
Seven
Edward seemed to have lost his way.
The fire escape led into a darkened service tunnel. Their links illuminated the walls of metal grating and pipes around them. After a few turns and intersections, Edward spun around and bumped into Stellan. He paused, calculating something in his head. Then he continued on in his original direction.
"Do you know where you're going?" Stellan asked, and Edward promptly shushed him. In the cool glow, Edward placed a finger over his lips and then pointed upward.
Stellan didn't hear anything, and that newfound confidence in Edward waned. He wondered if Edward's mind was regressing, if he was losing his sanity again.
"You have no idea what's in these dark places," Edward whispered.
"And you do?"
"Spend enough time in these tunnels by yourself, and you'll see it. The Atlas' history. It's taken a lot of lives, not all of them rocks."
"People are killing each other, and then they're getting back up. You're worried about ghosts?"
"I'm worried one of them could come out of the darkness," Edward said. "If that's not a ghost, what is? Anyway, I can get us out of here. I'm just not entirely sure where we're going to end up."
A shriek bolted through the narrow passageway, and they stopped. Edward cowered. Stellan pulled his rifle to his shoulder. In the darkness, somewhere not too far off, he thought he heard breathing, but he
couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. He waited. Nothing came.
"These tunnels would be used for evacuation, right?" Stellan whispered. "Why are they so damned hard to navigate? I can't even tell which way is up." The tight quarters and stuffy air had begun to get to them, forming beads of sweat on their brows.
"They would double as an evacuation route, but they mostly serve as maintenance access. If there was a fire or an emergency, the floor would light up and show the way," Edward said.
"Yeah, well I guess they didn't program the Atlas to recognize this kind of emergency," Stellan said.
"The servers are down," Edward reminded him. "I'm sure weird things are happening all over the ship. Everything is probably falling out of sync. Independent systems try to perform their functions, but without the central server, they can't communicate. It's like an orchestra trying to play without a conductor."
The breathing returned. It sounded long and effortless, impossibly deep, as if it were part of the air circulation system. Every few seconds, they heard a short growl unmistakably from a pair of vocal chords. And the breathing occasionally stopped.
"Get up," Stellan said. "We have to keep moving."
"What if it's in front of us?"
"It could also be behind us. We have to keep moving."
They pushed forward cautiously, Edward making use of the stealth tips Stellan had shown him, rolling his feet lightly on the grated floor, heel to toe, heel to toe. The corridors seemed to go on for miles, but in truth, they had gone mere meters. The fear threatened to paralyze them, and it offered their minds the clarity to register every moment in its entirety, stimulating it with the full capacity of their senses.
As they moved, they listened. They realized these maintenance tunnels carried sounds all over the Atlas. Screams they knew were distant darted past them like bullets down a rifle barrel. Wherever they went, turning around bends at crossroads, that breathing followed.
Then Stellan picked up on something else. He stopped Edward, and as if the sounds of the ship were keeping tabs on them, the silence returned. Before they continued, Stellan heard it again, an irregular rattling, not far off.
"Was that you?" Stellan asked.
"I didn't move!"
Stellan spun around with his rifle, the glow from his link illuminating the corridor. It battled the darkness with everything it had. Still, he wished it had more power. He wished he could push the darkness back. Down there, in the tiny veins and capillaries of the Atlas, the darkness surrounded them. It encroached upon them like cold hands, waiting for their lights to go out so it could take them.
The breathing and rattling came again. Closer now.
"What's there!?" Edward said.
"Maybe nothing," Stellan said.
"If it's something?"
"Then it probably isn't good. How much farther?"
"I don't know," Edward said.
"We have to move faster," Stellan said, pushing Edward forward.
The rattling of their own boots on the grating beneath them masked the sounds of anything they might have heard. Their own movements deafened them. In their haste, they betrayed themselves and lost the only sense they had left.
Stellan imagined one of the dead behind him, gaining on them. He felt a tingle on his back, his body's warning mechanism that something was watching. He wanted to turn and fire into the darkness. Even if he hit nothing, his muzzle flashes would reveal glimpses far down the tight corridor.
"I see light up ahead," Edward said, and the hand Stellan had held on Edward's back to keep him moving slid away as Edward moved faster.
Ahead of them, the passageway came to a dead end, but a sliver of light crept under the wall from the other side.
Their boots pounded the grating hard, and Stellan knew, with the way the sounds carried, every madman and walking corpse who shared whichever deck they were on would know they were there and that they were afraid.
Within a few meters of the dead end, they tripped a sensor, which told the door to let them through. It slid to the side slowly. Edward pressed against it anxiously, sliding his body through as soon as he could fit.
Stellan followed, watching the opening with his rifle. It closed again, and Stellan lowered his weapon. They found light. The corridor they found themselves in revealed all of its corners. They were safe.
"We made it!" Edward declared.
Behind him, the Atlas chirped, and the wall split open. The lift they'd dropped from above hung cockeyed and in between their deck and the deck below. A chorus of surprised moans crescendoed. Sickly arms with gaping wounds and ragged clothing lashed out and grabbed Edward's legs like whips, dragging him to the deck. He cried out in panic and dropped the weapon he so awkwardly held. Stellan dove, but there were too many, pulling Edward too fast.
By the time Stellan interlocked fingers with Edward, they were already biting into his legs. Edward's screams mingled with the dead's cries of pleasure and eagerness as ones in the back pushed the ones up front out of the way to get their share of the meal.
Stellan leaped to his feet, still pulling with all his might.
"Don't let them get me!" Edward screamed, and Stellan thought about how he pitied Edward. He was good at his job. He was good with machines and fixing things, but it hadn't registered that he was already gone one way or another.
Until then, Stellan hadn't thought of it either. The dead had won that match before it started.
Stellan stopped struggling then. He stopped trying to pull Edward out of the jaws of the dead and held him as still as he could. He gazed into Edward's eyes and saw the fear from the realization of what was about to happen.
"I'm sorry," Stellan said.
He let Edward go.
The dead pulled him into the lift, focusing all their attention on him, pouring all of their rage and malice onto him, and extracting their bloody delight.
Edward's screams meant he was still alive, and it meant Stellan could grant him mercy.
He edged as close as he needed, took aim with his rifle, and silenced the man he'd saved in vain. No matter whom he saved, death always won in the end. The will to survive and to save others was nothing but vanity. Never mind that he would not have made it this far without Edward, as fruitless as their endeavor had been.
When Edward was gone, the dead lost interest in him. They looked at Stellan with predatory eyes and moved toward him slowly, stalking him. He counted at least fifteen. He thought briefly that he stood a chance of filling the hole with bodies to keep them from pursuing him.
He dropped five of them before they began to climb out of the lift.
That was when Stellan turned his back on them and ran, and it seemed, wherever he went, the dead followed.
Chapter 11: The Dead Collect Debts
One
For most of the time Stellan was gone, Pierce thought about two things. His mind dwelled on them, digging like fingers into damp soil.
First, he thought about how nothing ever seemed to go as planned. He'd cover all the angles, think everything through, but he always missed something and would have to improvise. Actually, he enjoyed the challenge; however, just for once, with so much at stake, he wished things would be simple. He wished the solution would be obvious and that he could just walk out that door and make it happen.
Pierce looked to the sidearm he held affectionately, wishing the solution to their problems were as simple and pure as firing a bullet.
Second, he thought about how he would have killed someone for a glass of whiskey. He wanted to feel the fumes dance in his nostrils and prick his lips. He wanted it to make him feel warm again. The loss of control had made him feel cold, and if he couldn't have the heat of a foolproof plan, the excitement of the acquisition of power, he wanted the warmth of whiskey in his belly. He wanted to breathe fire.
"Where are they?" Arlo said, cracking his knuckles and pacing around the room. "They should have been back by now." The young man had grown increasingly restless after his fat
her left, and little of Arlo's apprehension materialized on his face. Arlo wasn't joking around anymore, and that was a bad sign. At this point, Pierce knew nothing he could say would calm Arlo down. All Pierce could do was wait and hope the pilot didn't erupt. It was a side of Arlo he'd always known was there, though he'd never seen it beyond shadows and silhouettes. He had no way of telling what would happen.
"Captain, maybe we should go after them, you know?" Arlo said. "After all, you wanted to go hours ago."
"We wait," Pierce said. He couldn't remember the last time he felt so inexplicably calm. Even through the frustration of lingering failure, he found a solid foundation. It was true he'd wanted to leave hours ago, and in fact, he'd been furious. But something inside of him knew there was nothing he could do and simply defaulted to a relaxed state. Until Stellan got back, they could do nothing, and he never doubted his friend would return.
"I hate to be the realist here," Floyd said, his arms crossing over his belly, "because I know none of you want to hear it. Hell, I don't want to say it. But what if they're not coming back?"
"Don't say that!" Wendy cried from the corner.
"They're coming back," Margo said definitively.
"They're just hung up somewhere is all," Arlo said.
"Enough!" Pierce said, quieting the rising panic. They were all ready to explode.
"All I'm saying is we can't stay here forever," Floyd said.
Their denial proved that, in truth, they all doubted. Their words persisted and reinforced their resistance to the idea that Stellan and Edward had perished. Pierce had considered his friend would not return, but he honestly couldn't believe it. He sensed something similar in Daelen, as well.
As plain as her face was, it held a blank puzzle. She simply gazed at the door with indifference, not a hint of worry, concern, or anxiety, as if she knew without a doubt that it would open.
In her, he found the strength to believe, even if it was unrealistic, even if it was a delusion. In her, he found hope, and he was thankful. Pierce knew Daelen was a wonderful woman, but he knew then why Stellan had married her. She made everything all right.
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