The Extinction Trials(15)

Her legs still felt stiff and sluggish, but with each step, they responded better.

In the hallway, she spotted Owen near the airlock, holding Bryce’s thumb to the panel.

The inner hatch opened, and the older man slipped through, pulling Bryce with him. Owen followed, pushing the android over the threshold.

Maya ran as fast as she could. Above, the hallway lights flickered on and off. In that flash of illumination, she saw the two men pulling Bryce’s hand toward the airlock’s outer control panel, preparing to press his thumb to the reader and open the door to the outside, Maya assumed.

“Stop!” Maya yelled.

The lights switched on again and quickly dimmed.

The two men turned to her but didn’t release the android.

When Maya reached the inner hatch, she braced herself on the frame, panting, breath coming out in white puffs of fog. It was cold out here in the hallway—far colder than the observation room. The heated clothes helped, but they were losing the battle against the chill.

Owen and the older man stared at her, still holding Bryce. Owen glanced around at the airlock. It was painted white, like the rest of the facility, with a silver metal bench beside the door and a row of environmental suits and helmets above it. Three pipes crossed the ceiling, each with nozzles hanging down. What he saw seemed to give him pause.

“You can’t go out there,” Maya said, gasping for breath from the exertion.

“Why?” Owen asked.

“We need more information.”

The lights faded to darkness.

“Don’t listen to her,” the older man hissed, his voice disembodied in the blackness. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

The red emergency light flashed on. Owen was staring at her as the older man pulled Bryce’s hand to the control panel for the outer door.

“Why do you think it’s dangerous?” Owen asked, now in darkness again.

“Just… a hunch. Let’s wait. Please, Owen.”

The red light flashed.

The older man pressed Bryce’s hand to the airlock control panel.

A new alarm sounded—a beeping sound. An orange light above the outer hatch came on, and a computerized voice spoke through the speaker. “Airlock opening.”

The inner hatch began closing.

Maya reached out, pressing against it, but the door kept closing.

“Owen!”

The lights snapped out.

Maya expected the hatch to spring back open due to the force she was applying—a safety measure—but it kept closing.

The red emergency light from the hall flashed. Owen was beside Maya, charging toward the closing inner hatch.

It was too late. The hatch was already closed too much for them to walk through.

Owen grabbed her and lunged through the closing doorway, spinning as they tumbled to the floor. She landed on top of him in the hallway, and in the darkness, she heard the hatch seal.

The red emergency light flashed, illuminating Owen’s face staring up at her.

She held his gaze for a moment, both their breath coming out in a fog that mixed together, creating a cloud between them.

A computerized voice pierced the moment. “Outer airlock opened.”

Maya scrambled to her feet and moved to the inner hatch and peered through the narrow window. Opening the outer airlock had turned on some exterior lights. She had expected to see a tunnel of some sort beyond—something human-built. What she saw was a rocky passage, cave-like and natural.

Owen came to stand beside her, their heads close as they both watched through the window.

The older man was marching away without so much as a glance back. Up ahead, where the passage turned, a dim shaft of natural light loomed.

The outer hatch swung closed. The overhead nozzles sprayed a white mist into the airlock.

“Decontamination initiated.”

When the cloud cleared, Maya spotted the man farther down the passage, but he had turned to face them, his eyes wide. He reached up and clutched at his chest, mouth open. He clawed, shaking his head, then fell to the rocky ground, writhing.

Owen glanced at Maya, then back to the window. The man managed to make it back to his hands and knees. He crawled toward the airlock, but he only made it halfway back before collapsing to the ground, unmoving.

Dead.





Chapter Thirteen





For a long moment, Maya and Owen stared at the dead man through the airlock window.

Finally, Owen said, “That was close.”

“Yeah.”

“We should tell the others.”

Maya glanced behind them, down the hallway. “We should. But I want to see what’s beyond the airlock at the end of the corridor first. We need to know what else we have to work with before we regroup.”

“I agree.”

At the airlock, Maya pressed Bryce’s severed thumb into the control panel.

The hatch opened with a click and swung out, allowing her and Owen to slip inside. At the opposite door, Owen pressed Bryce’s other thumb to the panel and a voice came over the speaker.

“Decontamination commencing.”

The entry door swung closed, and a cool mist sprayed from the nozzles on the ceiling.

Unlike the airlock that led to the outside, this chamber had no suits hanging on the wall and no bench.