Moments later, he dropped the wrench, unable to finish the job. The world about him felt unbearably heavy, and he could do nothing for a time but close his eyes. When he opened them, Ari was there. The man had come to the lab looking for his friend, and here he was. Dominik threw his arms around him, and for a long moment, they comforted one another.
At last, Dominik looked up. “We're never getting out of here, Ari. I was wrong to say we should play along. I was wrong to think they would ever honor what they told us. God help me Ari, I was wrong.”
“You did what you thought was right. So did I. The question is, what are we going to do now?”
As Dominik looked up, he saw something on the other man's face he'd never seen before, not in all the time he'd known him. He saw Ari's tears were not those of sadness, but of anger.
“We have to get out,” his friend whispered.
“We have to get out.”
“How?”
There were no windows in the laboratory, but Dominik could feel his gaze being pulled in the direction of the crater. He could feel it calling to him, its voice whispering in his mind.
A way to control it. That's what they wanted.
“Well,” he said to Ari. “I say we give them what they want.”
7
The twilight grew deeper as Zofia progressed further and further down. Lucja passed out next to her sister, her sleep filled with restless dreams. Zofia herself slept in silence. She remembered nothing of the morning, knowing only that she was prey and all the world around her was her predator. She didn't recognize who it was that held onto her skin or the voices of the men coming in and out of the room. She only knew she wanted to sleep, and when she slept, she wanted to remember her mother. Magdelena had always told her sleep was the magic cure, and that when she woke, she would feel better. But that was not true this day. Each time Zofia wakened, the pain in her head was worse. At one point, she thought she heard her father's voice and lifted the blankets to see if it was him. But she saw only monsters in the room and descended back under the covers, sobbing. When the monsters were gone, she slept again. Even in sleep, she could feel the pain in her chest, the raggedness of her breath. That made her dream of a rhyme she used to say playing Klasy when she was a kid. That had been two years ago. Throw the rock, jump the stone, fall on your bottom, the next one goes! She was not good at jumping on one leg like the other kids, but she'd made it through the game once, jumping on all the squares on one foot and laughing when her friends applauded. The game had been fun even if she wasn't good at it, even if she had been out of breath at the end. Her mother had been so proud of her when she did. She wished she could go back and try it again. She wished her mother were here now to hold her and sing to her and to tell her everything was all right. At least she felt warm in the bed now, just like when her mother used to pick her up from the crib and hold her. She still remembered that. Why didn't more kids remember that? That had been the best, safest feeling in the world, being carried in those arms. Under the blankets, she crawled until she found a shape and pretended it was her mother. She curled up to it, letting one thumb slip into her mouth. She didn't suck her thumb any more, not really (that was for babies), but it felt good to do. She let herself curl up and squeeze that shape, remembering the soft features of her mother and what it felt like to be snuggled around her.
It was there that she died, squeezing her sister's arm, oblivious to the tears of her father and the men clustered around him in the confines of the bunker. It was some hours later, in the middle of the night, before they discovered she had stopped breathing.
Chapter 17: Inferno
1
The discharge from the barrel of the rifle drifted up, mixing with the black smoke around him. Everything was burning now: the oil tanks, the buildings, even The Carrion. The tentacles shriveled in the heat, emitting soft, shrieking sounds as they withered and bled. It wouldn't be long before they were all smoldering, just like them.
Mason lowered the rifle and watched the boat disappear across the horizon. There was nothing else to be done. With both helicopters destroyed, his old compadre had just taken the only means of escape, and he managed to do it with all of his idiot friends in tow. Civies, no less, every goddamned one.
He heard footsteps behind him, and he turned to see Melvin limping across the deck. His pants were torn, a piece of shrapnel embedded in one thigh. “They get away?”
Mason nodded. “Yeah.”
“You hit 'em?”
“I hit the boat. It's damaged, but not enough to stop them.”
“So they got away.” It sounded like a resignation.
“They're going to the island.” How Mason knew, he wasn't sure. Maybe it was the way the boat had turned before he had lost sight of it. Maybe it was the fact that it was damaged and was probably low on fuel. But he thought it was probably the girl. They'd have a fat chance in hell of finding her, but he didn't think AJ could resist being the hero. So he was going to try, and drag the rest of his new friends down with him.
Mason tossed the rifle to his medic. All he had now was the knife, not that it mattered. He had a feeling they'd all be in the water within an hour or two, and the time they had left would not be pleasant. They were asphyxiating. The smoke was roiling in great, black waves from the lower decks, its taste thick and greasy in his mouth.
Two more pairs of boots came thudding across the walk. Peter and Christian stepped from behind the haze, both looking haggard and disjointed. The side of Christian's face was streaming blood, a thousand minute cuts from glass debris stitched across his hairline. Peter was covered in soot. He looked tired, an old man in a young man's body.
“Jin's dead,” he said.
Did those things get him? It was on Mason's lips, but he bit it back. Of course they got him. It was a stupid question, and they didn't have breath to waste on stupid questions. With Jin gone, they had no engineer. No engineer, no pilot, no second in command, and no goddamned way out. CATFUed.
Something cried out from the northwest stairwell. Mason braced himself to put down another blackened figure, but it was only the new kid. He came hopping up the stairs like a madman, the lower half of his body blazing fire. “Help me!” he yelled. “For God's sake, help me!”
Peter and Christian ran to him, the former stripping off his jacket in mid-stride.
“Leave him,” Mason said. He knew how this was going to end, he just had the gift.
“Agh!”
Peter tossed the jacket over Nick and then hammered at the fire with his feet. Christian joined in, both of them stomping furiously. From a distance, they looked like a couple of droogs kicking the shit out of a homeless man. Melvin made a move to help, but Mason snatched his arm. No, he needed Calle right where he was.
At last, the fire dissipated.
Nicholas rolled in pain, and Mason was pretty sure a few of those tolchocks had caught him in the ankle. Doped up or no, those had to hurt like hell. He was a tough kid, Mason would give him that.