He took one last look at the room. Probably a good idea to recommend that this cave be sealed. Though he had to wonder: What were the chances of that?
His fatigue, his total exhaustion, along with dozens of wounds small and large, made the idea of getting back to Mars City seem impossible. But then he told himself: I seem to be doing pretty well at the impossible today.
Walking slowly, taking care not to bend in places where it would cause even more excruciating pain, he headed back.
The climb up to the surface almost stopped Kane. Then he remembered that his supply pack came with a utility knife. Not much of a knife, but enough to dig into the soft wall and ground to help pull himself up. And when he saw Mars City, he actually started to hurry.
He opened his radio link. “Okay, Maria. You can organize mop-up in there. No more creatures will be coming. I’m guessing some of them there…may have disappeared.”
No answer. Complete silence.
“Maria? Maria, you getting this?”
He switched to another frequency. “Is anyone picking this up? Come in? What the hell—”
What lay ahead? he wondered. What had happened while he was gone?
He shut the airlock door and waited while the system removed the thin gas of the Martian surface and replaced it with air. He took off the helmet. When the display screen flashed CLEAR FOR REENTRY, Kane opened the door to Mars City.
He would have a long way to go, but at least he was inside.
He tried his radio again: “Is anyone here? Anyone picking this up?”
He walked with the gun barrel pointed down; he’d remember that, the gun down, his guard down. More concerned about the others than himself. “Is there no one on the damn radio?”
He moved down the corridor and came to a T. He turned left, which would lead him past the Marine Command Center and eventually to Mars City Reception.
“Kane! Kane, you there?”
It was Hayden. “General, yes, I’ve just—”
“Yes, we know, Kane. Most of the creatures are gone. Whatever you did worked. Only the infected humans remain. And only a few of them. It’s over. We alerted the Armada. Your radio wasn’t picking us up for some reason.”
Good, Kane thought. It’s over. And there was no need for a Plan B. And he could well imagine what that was.
“Moraetes, sir. Is she—?”
“What, don’t you—”
The Armada was coming. All was good. And sometimes, that’s when bad things can happen.
Kane heard the repetitive shots of a chain gun and saw his lower right leg get blown off. He screamed as blood gushed from the massive wound below his knee.
Through the pain, he saw the crazed lone zombie with its gun, moving closer, ready for another shot. Which was when the zombie was cut down, arms flailing as an incessant rain of shells was fired into it.
Kane closed his eyes. Sleep, he thought.
“Kane, Kane!”
He opened his eyes. A stim needle was sticking out of his arm.
He shifted his gaze, and saw Maria. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“I bandaged the wound. You lost a lot of blood. Going to get you to Reception. They have a med team…going to meet us.”
Then he remembered. He tried to form the words. “My…leg.”
Maria’s eyes, he could see, were wet. She shook her head.
“Nothing left,” said Kane. “I’m all shot up. I’m sorry, so—”
She looked around. “I gotta get you out of here. Not safe. Even with most of the things gone.”
He nodded. She started to pull him up, all that deadweight. “No,” he croaked, “too…heavy.”
“Yeah. I know. Heavy.” She grunted, working her right shoulder under his left arm. When she had him, and could barely carry him down the hallway, she said, “You owe me, Kane. You goddamn owe me….”
And with those last words, he closed his eyes.
EPILOGUE
44
TRANSPORT HUB MARS CITY 27 HOURS LATER
ANDY KIM STOOD CLOSE TO MARIA AS THEY watched the line of wounded being wheeled into the transport shuttle that would bring these marines and civilians back to Earth.
“Not a lot of them,” he said.
She turned to Andy, lost in her own thoughts. “What? What do you mean?”
“Not a lot of wounded. People either got killed or got turned into zombies.”
She nodded.
“That Kane guy—he’s lucky.”
Lucky, she thought? To have his leg blown off? And when he was so close to getting back, to being safe? Of course they can do amazing things with the intelligent prosthetics. Still, for Kane, it would be hard.
She had asked if she could ship back to Earth, trying not to let General Hayden know that she might have some feelings for the man who had saved Mars City.
But Hayden’s answer was sharp and to the point. No. There was way too much to do up here. As soon as Kane closed the portal at Site 3, the creatures simply vanished except for those once-humans who stumbled around still looking for something to attack.
By now, the surviving space marines were experienced with taking those things down.
But with so much of Mars City a wreck, and with so many miles of corridors to clear, it would be days before they would know they had cleared everywhere. Then there would be the reports, and—Hayden reminded Maria—she, at this point, knew more than almost anyone else here.
She would stay. End of discussion. Oh, there was one perk. She’d be given a promotion. Hayden wasn’t sure exactly what yet, but she should be glad of that.
So, from a distance, she watched them wheel the sleeping Kane into the underbelly of the transport.
“I mean,” Kim said, “that guy there just saved us. He’s like some whacked-out Jesus.”
Jesus with a shotgun, Maria thought. “Yeah, he did save us. And everyone here better goddamn remember that.”
“Hey, easy, Moraetes. I like the guy.”
She smiled. “Okay. Sorry. And you, Andy, you okay?”
“Well, I still hurt when I breathe or move. Other than that, I’m just fine.”
Another smile. It felt good to smile. With all the death, the memorial services to come, the investigations sure to come, best to grab every small smile you can.
After the wounded, others filed into the shuttle—the lucky ones, eager to get off Mars and away from Mars City as soon as possible.
She saw one of the nurses from the infirmary walking with Theo. She had to wonder what all this would do to the boy. Forget the nightmares, the waking up, remembering everything that he had really seen…what would it do to him when he grew up? What would happen when he was home, alone?
She remembered how close he had clung as she brought him back. Clinging tightly to her but nonetheless walking so steadily. Maria had promised she would check up on him back on Earth. Life goes on. Or at least, we hope so.
“Hey, what about the scientist who ran Delta, that Betruger guy? They find him?”
“Nope. Not yet.” Maria shrugged. “Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he got sucked into the place where those things came from.”
She still found it hard to use the word that everyone else had already started using: “hell.”
“Or maybe he’s still here somewhere,” Andy said. “Maybe we’ll find him. I’d like a piece of that maniac.”
Wouldn’t we all, Maria thought. She turned to Kim. “Come on, Andy. Let’s get back to work.”
Kim laughed as he turned away from the transport and started following her. “Work? Work? Is that what you call what we do up here? That’s funny….”
And they walked back to the marine barracks, where the mourning had only begun.
TOMMY KELLIHER’S ESTATE NEWPORT BEACH
Ian Kelliher stood outside the door to his father’s office, which also served as a hospital dayroom armed with all the medical equipment that might be needed to keep his father alive.
He di
dn’t have to come here so quickly but he knew that his father had his own internal UAC spies even though he was fully retired from the company and the board.
So he’d have to tell him everything. About the losses on Mars and the death totals that rose and rose. About the doorway that opened to another world, another universe. About how the Martian civilization from millions of years ago sacrificed itself to stop them. And how what they did had to be done again. About how he had come so close to giving an order that would have left Mars a nuclear wasteland for generations.
About how the lone ex-lieutenant—the disgraced John Kane—nearly single-handedly saved us all.
And then finally…
About the desperate experiments done right at the Palo Alto headquarters…and how something, somehow, had gone wrong. And how no one knew what had happened—or what it meant—yet.
The twin doors to Tommy Kelliher’s office opened. A nurse in bright starched whites looked at Ian and said, “Mr. Kelliher can see you now.”
Ian walked in to tell his father everything.
BALLARD STATION THE MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
Everyone had gone without sleep for over a day now, David knew. And somewhere in the middle of their work, they got the message that it was over on Mars.
Julie had turned to him and asked, “Guess they’ll want all these scientists back now, hm?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”
Dr. Watanabe’s team from Tokyo had quickly started working on the symbiotic process at the micro level. And Elaina Krasanov worked alongside him, both lost in the work.
The scientific firepower gathered around that one lab table was nothing short of incredible.
That they were about to make a breakthrough so fast, even more so.
“We think we have something,” Krasanov said to David. “We’re tired, and we’ve looked at it a number of times, but Watanabe and his team agree, it’s something.”
David had also gone without sleep, fueling his monitoring of all the teams with as much caffeine as possible. “Let me get Dr. Chao.”
“Certainly.”
David grabbed Julie and they hurried over to the table where Krasanov had been designated spokes-person.
“The interesting thing, a confusing thing, was how the toxic bacteria essentially bonds with the normal organics of the tube worm—or any of the similar creatures of the hydrothermal vents. We watched, we analyzed, but nothing.”
Watanabe raised a finger.
“Yes, then Dr. Watanabe said something that redirected the whole team: What if it isn’t ‘bonding’?”
“Hm?” David said.
“Not a symbiotic relationship at all, but more a merger where they become one. And if they are one, then there aren’t really two systems going on, but one new system—one that we hadn’t seen before.”
David looked at Julie. In all their years of working with the vent samples, it was an idea that hadn’t occurred to them. Maybe because it seemed impossible.
“But for that to happen—”
And Watanabe, certainly the oldest scientist at the station, took a step closer. “Right, impossible.” His English was heavily accented, but understandable. “The—” He said something in Japanese to one of his team, who responded with the English word. “Yes, David, the ‘breakthrough’ ideas often are impossible.”
David had so many questions. “But if the host and parasite become one system, then one of them has their biology taken over, or maybe both?”
Watanabe nodded. His eyes were deep, his face covered with wrinkles. “Yes. Or perhaps something else happens.”
Krasanov continued: “Whatever it is, David, once we looked at it as one unified system, with the new hybrid creature one thing, then everything we’ve seen—everything you’ve seen—made sense. It all fell into place.”
Julie spoke up: “And now…what are the implications?”
Krasanov smiled at her, a look that said none of them had really thought a lot about the implications yet. But: “Oh yes. Those.” A smile. “We can’t even imagine what they are—not yet.”
David nodded. “Good work. All of you. I will let UAC know. But maybe we should all grab some sleep now?”
Watanabe turned away.
“There will be time for sleep…later.”
David and Julie watched as the team turned away…and returned to work.
ABOARD THE MARTIAN TRANSPORT
Kane’s eyes fluttered open. He had remembered them giving him blood, and meds through an IV. And enough painkillers that while he felt a nagging pain from his right leg, it didn’t feel that bad at all….
Just a scratch.
But he knew that if the painkillers ever really wore off, his screams would fill this room.
With difficulty he now turned to look at the room he was in. And he immediately saw that he was in the infirmary of a big ship. Not the battle cruiser itself, but a larger transport than they normally sent. He also could see the beds around him.
Not that many, he thought. Not many survivors. Is this it? he wondered. Or are others on Mars being treated there?
But he had seen the carnage, the bodies. This was it. The lucky few who had survived.
A nurse at a far end of the room moved from bed to bed, the lighting subtle, the room hushed. So many questions he wanted answered. And they would have so many questions for him.
But for now, as Mars receded behind him, John Kane felt the pain start to return. He hit the button that fed the drips of medicine into a vein.
In seconds, he felt the inexorable pull of sleep, blessed sleep.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MATTHEW COSTELLO’S work includes innovative and critically acclaimed novels, games, and television shows. His novel Beneath Still Waters was filmed by Lionsgate in 2007, and his latest original novel is Nowhere. He’s written for PBS, The Disney Channel, The Sci-Fi Channel, and the BBC, among others. He’s scripted dozens of bestselling and award-winning games, including The 7th Guest, Doom 3, and Pirates of the Carribbean: At World’s End. You can learn more at www.mattcostello.com.
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