‘Ella’s team?’ suggested Lina uncertainly. ‘Or Si’s?’
‘I guess,’ he replied. ‘Almost too faint for them, I thought. Anyway, it’s gone now.’ They stood silently for a moment, oppressed by the darkness of the passage. Open, deserted doorways lined the walls around them and the metal panels of the corridor were crusted with ice. Lina, Halman, Waine and Theo stood for a moment, exchanging warning looks, their suit-lights turning the world around them to black and white, like some terrible dream sequence. The passage shuddered suddenly, dislodging powdered ice from the ceiling. It fell around them like snow.
Lina wiped her visor with one sleeve, clearing it. ‘Mass driver,’ she whispered, unsure of why she was whispering.
Halman nodded, towering over her. ‘Do you hear me, Ella?’ he asked into his mic. ‘Si?’
Their replies were clearly audible, if muddied somewhat by the radio.
‘Did you hear anyone else on this channel?’ Halman asked.
Ella’s voice said, quite understandably through the static, ‘No, Boss.’
‘Nope,’ said Si.
‘Are you at the prison yet, Ella?’ asked Halman.
‘Not yet. Something wrong?’
‘No,’ said Halman. ‘Don’t worry about it. But keep your ears open. I could have sworn somebody else was on this channel for a moment there.’
‘Okay, sure, I’ll. . .’ replied Ella, the tail-end of her answer tattered by interference.
‘Will do,’ said Si, slightly more clearly.
Halman visibly steeled himself. ‘Let’s continue,’ he said to Lina and the others, his jaw set determinedly.
Onwards through that surreal cavern of white ice, grey metal and thick black shadow. Lina felt the blood rushing in her ears, swarming through her veins, throbbing within her hammering heart. Where had the invader — Ronnie Carver — gone? Was he around the next corner? Within one of the rooms that led off this corridor, maybe lying in wait for them, cradling the plasma cutter? Even worse, maybe he had doubled back, got behind the teams somehow as they fanned out, made his way back to the offices where Marco waited for her to return. She didn’t think that last was likely — and he’d have quite a fight on his hands if he tried to breach the dorms — but her mind kept suggesting it as a possibility all the same. She was glad that someone was on guard inside the makeshift airlock. Marco, she swore to herself, I am coming back from this. But it didn’t sound that convincing, even to her. Death had proven itself to be easily obtainable of late. It seemed to be everywhere she went.
They rounded a corner where somebody had deserted a huge pile of rubberised pipework, presumably in the scramble to vacate the main body of the station. They stepped over its snakelike coils carefully, concerned that they might slip and damage their suits. Such an accident could easily prove fatal in this environment. A tiny rip in the fabric, or a knock to the famously unreliable control units could result in a rapid, unpleasant demise. Lina stepped cautiously through the pile, her boots feeling uncomfortably heavy on her feet, her calf muscles aching from walking in them. The laser pistol felt flimsy and inadequate in her hand. She had never even held a gun before. She’d never even struck anybody in anger before this nightmare, let alone shot them.
They continued to the end of the corridor, following those jinks and jags that the designers of Macao had felt necessary to incorporate into its construction, checking into the deserted living quarters that they passed. Each of these showed them a little sneak preview of somebody else’s life: a half-eaten apple left on a table, now frozen solid; two pairs of slippers arranged beside a door — his and hers; an unmade bed; a framed photograph of Aitama’s yellowed plains, its glass crusted with frost; a thousand relics of a time, not so long ago, when this frozen, empty space had been their home. A little twinge of sadness went through her, but it was only the merest spark beside the fear and trepidation that dominated her thoughts.
The notion of actually taking a Kay and returning to that dark and hulking rock where Eli had secreted their shuttle filled her with a chilling dread that increased in magnitude with every step she took towards the hangar. She wondered if she had been insane to volunteer. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever arrived at that decision. She felt as if the intrinsic, inherent bond that joined mother to son like an unseen umbilical, was stretching, weakening, fading, as she picked her way deeper into the bowels of the station’s corpse.
They had long-since lost radio contact with Amy Stone, who had been left in charge back at the dorms. The construction of Macao virtually denied the use of internal radio altogether, and it hadn’t taken long for Amy to become inaudible as they ventured out, barring the occasional freak burst of signal here and there, which offered barely coherent snatches of speech and fizzing static that hurt the ears. Marco might as well have been on another planet. Lina felt a wetness developing in her eyes, and she blinked it away, unable to put a hand to her helmeted face, trying to clear her mind of all but the job at hand. Focus, she told herself. Focus, and come back from this. You cannot afford the luxury of screwing up and getting killed. Nor the luxury of crying like a little girl.
‘Lina, you want to go back?’ asked Theo, appearing at her elbow as they neared the steps down to the hangar level. He was smiling a small, concerned smile.
‘No,’ she said, a little offended. She affected looking into one of the rooms they passed in order to avoid his scrutiny.
‘It’s going to be okay, Lina,’ Theo said. Waine shouldered his way past them and stood at the top of the steps, peering down into the darkness below.
‘Sure,’ said Lina, blinking her eyes to clear them and treating Theo to what she hoped was an encouraging smile. Judging from his expression, it missed the mark somewhat. ‘I’m just a bit jumpy.’
‘Come on,’ called Halman softly, beckoning them onwards.
They descended the steps carefully, mindful of the slipperiness of the surface, gripping the hand-rail as they went, half expecting Ronnie Carver to peel away from the shadows and fall on them at any moment. Had he really killed Eli, as suggested by the fingers around his neck? Oddly, Lina didn’t seem to feel anything at all about that possibility. She supposed that she had already mourned Eli — the Eli whom she had known for so long — once it had become clear that the old Eli was gone, replaced by some drug-addicted psychopath. And now, if that new Eli really was dead, then what concern was it of hers? He hadn’t been her Eli any more by that point — he had been some sort of monster. It’ll eat you up, Lina! her mind sang. It had eaten him up in the end, she supposed, thinking of the shadow in the belt.
And what was that shadow? She thought she had almost seen it in the belt when she had been in pursuit of the ISL. But had she? She had seen it first in a dream, after Sal’s death. Maybe she had just imagined it in the belt. She suspected that it was simply an embodiment of her own fear. But a nagging, doubting little corner of her mind kept wanting to tell her that it was something real, tangible, maybe even evil. Who knew for sure? She hadn’t mentioned the shadow to Halman or the others, maybe for fear that acknowledging it would cement its reality, somehow give it substance. Whatever it was, she had agreed to go out there again. She shook her head, wondering at her own recklessness.
At the bottom of the steps, the passage continued straight for some fifteen metres, flanked by storage cupboards and tiny utility rooms, before angling to the left into the main part of the warehouse. They moved along in a fearful huddle, treading carefully. The airless space was eerily silent, a collage of grey and black. A water leak in the ceiling had formed stalactites of ice that stretched down to the floor like giant fangs, and the group unconsciously stepped around them as if afraid of being bitten. Lina’s boots slipped in the puddle of ice and she went painfully to one knee, cursing under her breath. Theo helped her to her feet again, lifting her by the arm as if she were of no weight at all. His compact body was obviously stronger than it looked. She thanked him and they continued.