Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)(81)

For a little while at least.

A fire axe punctures the vent a few centimeters shy of her head. She flinches away, choking back her scream as the axe punches through the metal again, smashing the grille beside her. She scrambles further along the duct, heels kicking at the floor. Cams outside reveal three afflicted leaping up and clawing at the edges of the broken grille. Grant kicks hard at their fingers, rewarded with grunts of pain. But the axe punctures the vent near her hand and she rolls aside, drawing the pistol and firing blind as she crawls away.

The AI whispers again. Its voice kinda freaks me out a little. Just sayin’.

“Quickly. Go quickly, the drop to Deck 231 is ahead.”

Grant is crawling, half-sobs bubbling behind her teeth, pausing to fire again at the figures now scrambling and hissing through the vent behind her. They call to her; audio is garbled but it sounds like a plea for her to stay. To play? She ignores them anyway, scooting down the incline to Deck 231 on her belly, kicking away the vent’s grille and dropping down into the corridor. Damp hair in her eyes. Breath ragged in her lungs.

“Which way?”

Takes a second for me to realize she’s asking the AI.

“Straight ahead two hundred meters. Left. Then right. There is bulkhead you can seal. Go!”

It’s hard to reconcile the fact she somehow trusts it after all it’s done. But I guess she’s got no choice, right? She’s running for her life now, down the corridor with the haversack bouncing across her shoulders, past body after body, boots squeaking through the red smudges on the floors and up the walls. Cameras down here are in pretty bad shape, but you can still catch a glimpse of the ones chasing her. Twisted, bloody faces. Red underneath their fingernails. Two are limping from new bullet wounds, but they’re still running. They don’t seem to feel pain. Or fear. Just the need to kill.

“Left here.”

She slips in a puddle of gore, nearly loses her footing.

“Turn right.”

She’s whispering to herself as she runs, but I can’t make out the words.

A prayer maybe?

“Here! Here!”

She skids to a halt, slams the heavy bulkhead door shut behind her, spinning the wheel to lock it in place. Damp, hollow thuds hit the metal moments later. Grant fumbles in her haversack, draws out a wrench, jams it into the lock. Frustrated screams get muted by case-hardened steel, but they’re still awful enough to make her shrink back from the door, make me wish I brought a second pair of pants to work today.

“God,” she breathes. “Oh, god …”

“You must be quick. They will find another way in. The envirosuit, Kady. You must go where they cannot follow.”

Grant nods, backs away from the bulkhead, still reverberating from bleeding knuckle impacts on the other side. The AI gives her directions, and she creeps down to a small locker room off the main server arrays. Cams here are fritzing again, audio sounds like it’s underwater. But if you listen hard enough, you can still hear them screaming.

Grant pulls the envirosuit out of the locker, looking it up and down. A glance lets her know it’s too big for her. But not quite big enough …

“How am I supposed to put this on over my hazmat suit?”

“You cannot. You will need to take your hazmat gear off.”

“But that means I’ll be breathing contaminated air.”

“You will need to hold your breath.”

You have to wonder if the AI knows the virus probably doesn’t need oxygen. That the computer’s just trying to keep her going any way it can. You can see it in Grant’s eyes. The question. What’s the point of dodging infection if she’ll likely be dead soon anyway? Why cling to the hope that there’s anything beyond this?

But still, she somehow does. With all the odds against her. With the whole ’verse gone to shit. Still, she readies herself, sucking in a handful of deep, rasping breaths before gulping down a lungful and stripping off her hazmat gear. She fumbles with the envirosuit, dragging it up around her legs. Her cheeks are turning pink as she slips on the gauntlets, slaps the seals into place. Dragging her hair from her eyes, face bright red as she tugs on the helmet, stabbing the suit controls at her chest and purging the contaminated air inside.

She waits, starting to shake now, vainly hoping the virus in the Alexander’s air supply can’t survive without oxygen as long as she can. And finally, with blue lips and fluttering eyelids, finally she engages the oxygen supply, sweet, sweet O2 rushing into her lungs as she sinks to her knees, great heaving gasps shaking her whole frame.

She sits quiet for a while, then. Catches her breath.

Sighs.

“I recognize this level now.” Baby blues peer out through the visor of her bulky helmet. “Deck 231. It’s the level where Ezra planted my codewyrm into your memory core. It’s how I got access to the Copernicus medical records.”

“Yes.”

“This is his suit, isn’t it? The suit he wore to get access through the hull breach?”

“How did you know?”

“It …”

She tries to wipe at her face, and I realize she’s crying.

“Kady?”

“I used to wear his T-shirts to bed all the time.” She shakes her head. “To remind me of him when he wasn’t around. The suit smells like they did.”