‘Let’s go live,’ said Patrick, shooting her a sidelong look that she couldn’t decipher the meaning of, and moving to the twin ranks of switches that they had exposed in the floor.
‘Sure,’ said Fionne, trying to sound more confident than she felt.
‘You’re sure you didn’t go into the kitchen main?’ he asked her, a patronising smile forming on his face.
Fionne bit back the words that came instinctively to her lips — Fuck off, Patrick! — and simply nodded, turning away so as not to look at him. She heard him clambering down into the floor, his shadow stumbling drunkenly across the walls as he moved his lamp around, trying to cast some light on his work. He flicked the switch.
Click!
Fionne realised that she had been holding her breath. She let it out now, slowly, and turned around. Patrick was sitting on the lip created by the missing floor panel. He dragged the diagnostics machine over so that he could see its readout.
‘Well?’ prompted Fionne after a pause of only a second or so.
‘Ha!’ he said, his face splitting open in a broad grin. It was the first time she had ever seen a genuine smile from him. It actually transformed him into something approaching human.
‘It worked?’ she asked, moving closer to see for herself.
‘Yeah,’ he said, still grinning, turning the heavy box so she could see better. ‘Look!’
Fionne squinted into the non-backlit screen of the machine, squatting down beside Patrick. ‘Well, look at that!’ she exclaimed — and now she felt herself smiling, too. ‘It did work.’
‘Well,’ said Patrick, climbing up out of the pit. ‘At least we can launch the ships now. Whatever Halman has planned, that must be a good thing.’
Chapter Thirty
Lina didn’t waste a second. She pelted after Eli without thinking, right past Rocko, who reacted slowly, dazedly, and made to follow her. Marco cried out behind her, and she yelled at Rocko to stay with him, even though she knew he would be safe now. After all, the danger was in front of her and fleeing down the corridor into the gloom, spattering blood as it went.
Eli had taken a left out of her door, and now he disappeared out of view round the corner at the end of the passage, his feet almost skidding out from under him in his haste. Lina didn’t even think to cry for help. She just knew that she had to stop him before he hurt anybody else. She still hoped, in some desperately optimistic last refuge of her mind, that he could be helped, mended, made well again. But mainly she just wanted to stop him, kill him if she had to. Strangely, these two conflicting plans seemed to gel with perfect logic in her racing mind.
She rounded the corner, putting out one hand to stop herself crashing into the wall. Her life seemed to have become one long helter-skelter dash through the dying bowels of this space station, flying from one surreal disaster to the next.
This new length of passage, lined with more private quarters, was shorter than the previous one and ended in a T-junction. Lina ran to the end as quickly as she could, hoping to see Eli down one of the two branches. But he was gone.
‘Shit!’ she cried, spinning round in place, baffled as to what to do next. The red light seemed to pulse around her, as if she was caught in the beating heart of some immense monster. She stamped one foot in childish frustration. ‘Shit!’
Where had he gone? Which way? Right was the plaza, then the rec area and canteen. Left was more quarters, then stairs up to the machine rooms or down to the warehouse and hangar. She stopped, pinned by indecision.
She looked down, trying to see more blood droplets. To her left was a thumbnail-sized splash of glistening colour on the grimy grey of the floor. The hangar! It had to be. She had no idea what he hoped to achieve by going there — the power was off and he’d be pretty disappointed if he hoped to fly out of here — but suddenly she was sure of it. She started off running again, not noticing that the blood from her own wounded arm had now completely soaked her sleeve.
As she ran past Waine’s quarters, she saw Waine standing in the open doorway, fumbling with the lock. He jumped backwards, eyes wide with surprise, and yelped her name, but Lina was already gone without slowing.
‘Lina!’ Waine yelled again, his voice cracked and wavery, the result of his heavy smoking. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s. . . Eli!. . .’ she yelled back over her shoulder, quite badly out of breath now and already developing a stitch. ‘Get Halman!’ She didn’t think he’d heard her, but she didn’t care. All of her concentration was on her racing feet, her shaky legs, the madman who had tried to kill her son.
‘What?’ called Waine’s voice from behind her, but Lina was already away, rounding the next corner.
Eli was nowhere in sight, but she saw another splotch of blood. He was not only bigger than her, with a longer stride, but he was also fitter, being a regular at the gym. Lina wished she was a little more active herself. Her pace had slowed slightly by the time she reached the steps to the next level, but her determination remained undimmed.
She paused at the head of the stairs, straining to listen over the sound of her own breathing. The descent to the next level was matted with shadows, the stairway tapering off into darkness as if the world just faded away down there. She went down, feeling as if she was descending into a pit, maybe the lair of some unseen wild animal.
She stepped down onto the floor of the warehouse. The long central gangway stretched away in front of her, a red-washed chasm between the shelves. The ceiling was a dark interior sky. Something moved at the far end — a shifting in the shadows, perhaps inferred, perhaps real. She moved along the gangway in a tense half-crouch, feeling the fear piling up on top of her like an increasing weight.
As she went, she glanced from left to right, desperately trying to look down every side-branch, scan every shady alcove of the giant racking. The place was a library of hunched, alien shapes — large pieces of engines and mining equipment under plastic sheeting, piles of substandard flight suits still in their wrapping, disorderly heaps and coils of rope and cable, boxes of bolts and electrical components with their contents spilling out. An enemy could hide anywhere down here. And even though she was pretty certain that Eli had already entered the hangar, she was unable to still the racing of her heart as she moved through that eerie vault, feeling desperately small and alone.
As she neared the hangar door, she noticed for the first time the bright light that emanated from inside. It was a white light — a normal light — which meant that the power was on.
She approached cautiously, her body shuddering with fear, wishing that she had just run to get Ella or Halman, or someone — anyone — but compelled to continue. Why was the power on? Had Eli somehow known? Whether he had known or not, she was sure — sure — that he was here.
When she was almost within touching distance of the hangar door there was a sudden creak from inside its mechanism and it began to close. She’d been right — he was inside.
Without further thought, she ducked under the descending door and into the hangar. As she emerged, flinching and squinting beneath the glare, the door dropped into place behind her with a deep, percussive bang. Trapped! her mind shrieked. Trapped with Him!
She could make out the slumbering hulks of the Kays, lined up like soldiers, and the dead-lifter, parked askew near the central desk, its massive forks like the mandibles of a giant insect. But Eli was nowhere to be seen.