“No sign of what killed them,” Kasyanov said.
“I think we can rule out heart attack,” Lachance quipped.
Hoop went to the elevator controls and accessed them. They seemed fine, with no warning symbols on the screen and no sign that there were any power problems. The small nuclear generator in one of the other surface buildings was still active, and doing its job well.
“It’s working?” Ripley asked.
“You’re not seriously expecting us to go down in that?” Sneddon said.
“You want to take the stairs?” Hoop asked. There were two emergency escape routes leading out from the mine, a series of rough staircases cast into holes sunk adjacent to the lift pits. Almost five thousand feet deep, and the idea of descending seven thousand steps—five hundred flights—appealed to no one.
“Can’t we at least move them out?” Ripley asked. She and Kasyanov went forward and started shifting the body. Hoop had to help. It didn’t remain in one piece.
With the lift cage to themselves, they all entered, taking care to avoid the corner where the corpse had been. Hoop found it even more disturbing that they couldn’t tell who it was. They had all known the victim, that was for sure. But they didn’t know them anymore.
What had happened struck Hoop all over again. He liked to think he was good at coping with emotional upheaval—he’d left his kids behind, effectively fleeing out here into deep space, and on some levels he had come to terms with why he’d done that—but since the disaster, he had woken sometimes in a cold sweat, dreams of smothering and being eaten alive haunting the shadows of sleep. His dreams of monsters had become so much more real. He thought perhaps he cried out, but no one had ever said anything to him. Maybe because almost everyone was having bad dreams now.
“Hoop?” Ripley said quietly. She was standing beside him, staring with him at the lift’s control panel.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“What are those things, Ripley?”
She shrugged. “You know as much as me.”
He turned to the others. There were no accusing stares, no smirks at his momentary lapse of concentration. They all felt the same.
“We go down to level 4,” he said, “get the power cell, then get out as quickly as we can.”
A few nods. Grim faces. He inspected their make-do weapons, knew that none of them were in the hands of soldiers. They were just as likely to shoot each other.
“Take it easy,” he said softly, to himself as much as anyone else. Then he turned to the control panel and ran a quick diagnostic on the lift. All seemed fine. “Going down.” He touched the button for level 4. The cage juddered a little and the descent began.
Hoop tried to calm himself and prepare for what they might find when the doors opened again, yet his stomach rolled, dizziness hit him, and someone shouted out.
“We’re falling. We’re falling!”
The elevator began to scream.
The old stone farmhouse in northern France, a holiday home for her family for as long as she could remember. She is alone right now, but not lonely. She can never be lonely with her daughter so close.
The silence is disturbed only by the gentle breeze, rustling leaves in the woodland far at the bottom of the garden, whispering in the few scattered trees that grow closer by. The sun blazes, scorching the sky a lighter shade of blue. It’s hot but not uncomfortable—the breeze carries moisture from Ripley’s skin, slick from the sunblock she’s been careful to apply. Birds sing their enigmatic songs.
Far above, a family of buzzards circles lazily, eyeing the landscape for prey.
Amanda runs to her through a freshly harvested field, the crop stubble scratching at her legs, poppies speckling the landscape red, and her smile countering even the heat and glory of the sun. She is giggling, holding aloft a present for her mother. Amanda is such an inquisitive little girl. Often she emerges from the small woodland with snails attached all over her arms and shoulders, small frogs captured in her hands, or an injured bird nursed against her chest.
As her daughter climbs the low wooden fence between garden and field and starts across the lawn, Ripley wonders what she has brought home this time.
Mommy, I found an octopus! the girl shrills.
A blink later and she is on the lawn at Ripley’s feet, shivering and shaking as the long-legged thing curls its tail tighter around her sweet throat, and Ripley is trying to hook her fingers beneath its many legs, prise it off, pull it away from her angel without tearing Amanda’s hair off with it. I’ll cut it, she thinks, but she’s worried that the acid will eat into the ground, and keep on eating.
And then from the woods there comes a series of high-pitched screeches. Shadows fall. The sun retreats, birds fall silent, and the buzzards have disappeared. The garden is suddenly plunged into twilight, and those shadows that have always haunted her emerge from among the trees. They are looking for their child.
It’s mine! Ripley shouts, kneeling and protecting Amanda with her own body. Whatever’s inside her is mine!
The shadows stalk closer. Nothing is beautiful anymore.
“Ripley!” Hoop shouted, nudging her. “Grab on to something!”
She shook her head. The vision had happened in an instant. And then it was gone, leaving only a haunting sensation.
The elevator plunged, screeching against its control framework, throwing sparks that were visible through the cage walls, vibrating violently, shaking her vision so much that everyone and everything around her was a blur.
She heard the thud of weapons hitting the floor and dropped her own, staggering back until she was braced against the wall. But there was nothing to hold onto. And even if there had been, it would have made no difference.
Her stomach seemed to be rising and rolling, and she swallowed down the sudden urge to vomit.
Someone else puked.
Hoop hung onto the long handle set into the wall beside the door, one hand curled through it and the other working at the controls.
“What the hell—?” Baxter shouted.
“I’ve got it!” Hoop cut in. But it was clear to Ripley that he didn’t have it. She edged across to him, afraid that at any moment she and the others would actually lift from the floor and start to float.
We can’t be going that fast, she thought. We’d have struck bottom by now! Five thousand feet, Hoop had said. She turned the figures over, trying to calculate how long they might have at freefall, but—
“There are buffers,” Hoop shouted. “Each level. We’ve passed the first four already, barely felt them. Approaching five…”
Thud!
A heavy vibration passed through the lift, thumping Ripley in the chest.
“We’re not slowing!” she shouted.
“We will!” he responded. “Dampers were fitted over the bottom two levels, in case of—”
“This?”
He looked at her. Beside him she could see a flickering set of figures on the control panel. Their depth approached 2,500 feet, the numbers flipping too fast for her to see.
“It’s one way to test them,” he said.
Ripley felt a flood of emotion. They were helpless, and that was a sensation she hated. In space, there were so many variables that presented countless levels of danger, but usually they were countered by some mechanical, electrical, or psychological means.