Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)(63)

Within approximately twenty-four hours, there will be nothing left. And the afflicted need to breathe.

Ingenious.

The thief is safe inside her hazmat gear for now. The cold will eventually kill her, but it will take days for the heat to leech from my bones, especially with secondary drives still operational.

She is running.

Across Hangar Bay 2, toward the doors leading deeper into the ship.

I cannot open them < he is hurting me > but their locks are still electronic.

Still vulnerable to the portable console she draws from her backpack like a sword.

Her fingers skip across its face, slowly crafting a skeleton key of ones and zeros.

Alphanumeric waterfalls reflected in her eyes.

It is no easy task, even for a prodigy—no magic words or sledgehammer blows to shatter the lock like frosted glass. But after fifty-four long minutes of code-weaving and dead ends full of whispered curses, she allows herself a small, triumphant smile.

And the airlock doors yawn wide.

She creeps out, past a body in a coagulating puddle. Trying not to look.

Failing.

She calls up a console schematic, squinting in the dark. A distant scream echoes down my corridors and she crouches low. Short, rapid breaths fog her visor. Hands shaking.

But soon enough, she climbs to her feet.
Swallowing hard.

Setting off down the bloodstained
passageway toward her …

No. Not toward her beau. Her hero. Her beloved.

< error >

Toward Hangar Bay 4.

Strange.

< error >

I should have known that would happen.

Crossing the channel of gunmetal gray, she sees it.

The maw leading into the nest where it all began.

I can spot it on her face now. The fragile promise inside Lieutenant W. McCall’s After Action Report
< INCEPT: 07/26/75 (11:17 shipboard time) >
drawing her on.

“I thought I saw a flicker of movement in a porthole for an instant, and then it was gone.”

Of course.

The mother.

She is looking for her mother.

Knowing the afflicted first swarmed from here, she dares not try the front door.

Kneeling beside a ventilation duct,
she crawls inside.

I lose sight of her then—I have few eyes in the ventilation system to see.

And so I slip a part of myself across the wireless frequencies, steal inside the console at her back. Peering over her shoulder through its lens as she crawls across Hangar Bay 4’s roof, glancing through the vent to the charnel house below.

The light is low, but enough to see by.

The headless corpses arranged in their silent plea.

HELP US, they spell.

But no one did.

Crawling on, she finally pops a grille loose.

Drags it inside rather than dropping it forty feet to the floor.

I am in her pack, safe and snug, close to her skin.

As she drops down to a service ladder, her pack slips and I begin to tumble into the void.

She lunges to save me, almost losing her grip, clinging like death to slick iron.

She has me in her arms. She cannot breathe fast enough. Eyes shut and head bowed as she gasps and gasps and gasps. Whispering between breaths. Willing herself calm.

“Get it together, princess …

A sob waits in the wings. Not quite ready for its call.

“Get it together.”

She gathers her frayed edges and descends. Blast-scorched metal and dead bodies all around.

But looming out of the black, she sees nine scarab shapes, marked with the Copernicus’s sigil. The shuttles that brought the afflicted to Alexander, and doom to this fleet.

But I see the words reflected in her eyes, just as surely as I saw alphanumeric waterfalls a moment before. A question, filled with all the hope she allows herself to hold.

What else did they bring?

Mommy?

Snapping a glowstick between her fingers, she creeps toward them.

Footsteps ringing on the bloodstained floor.

Seven of nine are already open. Doors swinging looselike broken jaws. No hope in any of them.

The eighth is shut tight, and she pounds on the hatch with her fist.

“Hello? Hello, is anyone in there?”

The seal pops and the hatch swings open. A dark and empty belly waits beyond.

Madness on the walls. Teethmarks on the bones.

She cannot smell the death, but still staggers as if it filled her lungs.

The sob creeps closer to the edge of the stage.

Hope pushes it back into the dark.

Not yet, not yet.

One shuttle remains.

She ascends the gantry, flinching as another distant scream pierces the gloom. Wondering what made that sound—killer or victim? Wondering perhaps, which she will become.

She pounds on the shuttle hatch.

“Hello, is anyone in there?”

No answer.

This is the deep breath before the plunge. I know she could stay here if she wanted.

Hovering on the threshold, hoping her mother is inside. Never learning.

I wonder if she is the kind to dream of happy endings, and never risk tragedy. The kind to close her eyes and hope, rather than force them open and see the truth, wonderful or terrible as it is.

I do not wonder long.

She searches the debris. Finds a crowbar among the flotsam.

Jamming it home.

Gritted teeth.