“My surveillance capabilities are functional, but cannot exchange data with my verbal relay system while my neural network is deactivated.”
He remembers, vaguely. Stetson used the analogy of two sides of the brain. When the bridge between the sides is damaged, simple systems go haywire. You might show someone a picture and they can’t say what it is, but they can write it on a piece of paper. It’s convoluted and strange and whoever modeled Belinda after the human brain was a fucking moron.
Bel says, “If you’d like, I can direct you to the nearest video terminal to access my surveillance feed directly.”
The nearest video terminal is on the floor above. The creature might already be heading there in one of the other shafts. How much time has he wasted just floating here? Thirty seconds? Ten minutes? He almost tells Bel to increase the gravity in shafts one and two, but stops himself. The crew will need the shafts in order to reach the panic pod, if they aren’t already there. Or already dead.
He calls everyone. Even the Dandy. Nothing.
There are few options, and the longer he stands here paralyzed, the longer the creature has to move freely around the ship. He can make for the pod, but if the thing sees him, he’s done.
Never sneak around camp before you know the guards’ rounds.
He is not in the camp. He needs to stop thinking about the goddamn camp.
He needs to get his bearings. Concentrate.
He is on level two, at the rear of the ship. What else is back here?
Computer mainframe.
Belinda’s mind.
“Bel. If I reactivate your AI, will your systems realign?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“And you can tell me where the crew is?”
“If they are in view of surveillance systems, yes, Jack.”
“Can you walk me through the process?”
“Of course, Jack.”
Any relief he feels vanishes at the sound of a muffled explosion from the front of the ship.
Chapter 21
Lana has been told that moments of terror feel unreal. When she was a girl, she wanted to be a teacher. Then she became a nurse. She sewed wounded soldiers back together, or tried to. Then she became something of an outlaw working for Jack Kind. That does not feel entirely real, either, she has always felt. As she sprints across the first floor hallway with Hunter in front of her and the Dandy behind, something about the size of a dog in chase, she realizes just how inadequate her understanding of moments like this has been. It is not an intellectual surrealism, but physical. She sees herself from outside. A rat trapped inside a human body, consciousness relegated to some back room with a small window. Death probably feels like this.
They burst through hallway doors and close them. She hears the doors erupt again as the creature—dog, wolf, coyote, something—smashes through. This buys them enough time to reach the forward Zero-G shaft. Hunter leaps and swings around the ladder with grace, and Lana jumps and throws her arms out and crashes into the ladder and knocks the wind out of herself. Hunter grips her by the shirt and screams, “Up!” Someone climbs over her body. Green and orange color. The Dandy, crab-walking up the ladder. Someone else grabs her from behind. Dino. She struggles to jump but can’t get a foothold. Dino and Hunter lift her. She can do nothing but be carried and watch her feet make swimming motions below.
Justin is down there still. Blonde head bobbing, hands reaching out.
Two of Dandy’s men come with him. They turn and scream and one of them jumps with Justin up the shaft. The second stays below, grips the ladder and turns his rifle to the hallway and pulls something from his belt. “Fire in the hole!” someone screams. A brownish-yellowish streak of motion erupts out of the hallway and tackles the man, followed by an explosion that seems to go off more inside Lana’s head than in the shaft. She feels it in her chest. A compression. The air gone. She sees white, then black, then smoke and faces and a fire alarm shrieks and nearby vents suck in the smoke. Somehow she has made it to the third level, just outside the open doors of the panic pod.
Dino and Hunter drag her inside.
Dandy runs past, down the hallway. He comes back.
Two of his men follow. The one with the scar on his cheek, and one with silver hair.
Where is Jack?
She collapses on the floor. She pushes on her chest.
This is called shock. She is hyperventilating.
“Close the door!” someone screams.
“Justin and Jack!”
“They’re gone!”
“Shut the fucking door!”
“It’s coming!”
Hunter does it. Cranks the red lever beside the door, sealing them in just as something clangs against the other side.
Lana counts her breaths. One-two-three-four. Too fast.
Slow down. Calm down. Start again. One. Two. Three.
Her portable vibrates. She reaches for it and then there is a rifle in her face and the man with the silver hair tells her not to move or he will slice her up real real good.
Chapter 22
Bel guides him into a room covered in reflective metal panels. They look like tinfoil. A single word has been scrawled across the central paneclass="underline" MAINFRAME. He touches this panel and it springs open to reveal a crawlspace of twinkling colored light.
He floats inside.
Her mind is a labyrinth. The layout was designed to conserve space, not for ease of access. Endless rows of consoles house vital electronics, all thrumming and hot, which accounts for the steady stream of air blowing across his face. She guides him past the first intersection and through an opening in the ceiling. The thrumming grows in volume. He turns his portable up to hear her voice.
She tells him someone is trying to call him, but this area is blocking the signal. She’ll need to relay any message. He says to do it immediately.
A panicked whisper, full of static: “Where—hell is anyone? Hunter? Unc— Jack? Can anyone f—hear—e?”
It’s Justin.
“Bel, can I respond?”
“Not live. I can relay a recorded message.”
He records one.
A moment later, Justin’s reply comes in. On their way to the pod, Justin got separated from the others. Most of Dandy’s men are dead. Justin is in his quarters, hiding under his bunk. He hears something moving in the hall. He believes he is probably dead too and that he is a ghost and he wants to go home and tell his mother and father that he is sorry, but they were never very easy to get along with, and if they weren’t such hard asses maybe he would have tried harder, but they did the best they could and he forgives them.
Babble of the hopeless.
Jack floats into the final room. He has no idea what he is seeing. Blinking lights and what appear to be motherboards stick sideways out of the walls. He has never been here. This is Stetson’s realm.
Jack sends his last reply, telling Justin to hold tight. He’s not a ghost and everything is going to be alright as soon as Jack fixes things up. It almost sounds true.
“Bel,” he says, “tell me what to do here. And hurry.”
Shouting fills the panic pod. The silver-haired man keeps his rifle pointed at Lana’s head and tells her to press against the wall. Dandy’s makeup runs. White droplets of sweat rain off his chin. Hunter screams for them to all just calm the hell down and put the rifles away. The scarred guy aims at her with less conviction. They are outgunned. They comply. Place their hands on the wall. Dino stays beside Lana, his jaw jutting and veins pulsing, his singed hair giving him a stunned appearance. All the while, the thing in the hallway slams against the door.
“This my ship now,” the Dandy says.