I close my eyes a split second too late.
The flash jabs hot needles into my retinas. The bang finishes the job, slamming my ears closed, filling them with an awful, high-pitched whine. A spray of water splashes across my face.
It feels like a whole minute before I can open my eyes. When I do, the generator room is exploding around me. I see a worker go down, his head snapping backwards as he takes a bullet. A guard is out of ammo, using his gun like a club, swinging it back and forth as two workers dodge out of range. A generator tips over, sparks flying as it lands on top of a prone guard, pushing her under the surface of the water.
Carver helps me, pulling me to my feet. Somehow, he’s got hold of one of the rifles, and is trying to load it, yanking at the bolt. The mechanism is jammed, stuck halfway. He gives up, swinging it at an approaching guard. The butt takes the man in the face, and he spits a thick gout of blood as he topples sideways, crashing against the wall.
The impact from the hit travels up Carver’s arm, knocking the rifle out of his hands and into the water. I don’t wait for him to retrieve it. I just grab him and go, heading for the corridor. He pulls me back at the last second, just as another volley of bullets explodes past the door.
“We’ll never make it!” he screams. I can barely hear him. Koji appears behind him, hyperventilating, hardly able to stand upright.
He’s right. That corridor is a death trap–a couple of guards hanging back will be able to cut down anyone coming out of here. I cast around for something to use, and that’s when I see the man Carver took down. More importantly, I see what’s on his belt.
A squat cylinder, just like the one that came through the door. What did Koji call it? Flash-bang.
I sprint over to him, skidding onto my knees in the water, grabbing the cylinder. It crosses my mind that the water might have damaged it, but there’s no time to check. We lose nothing by trying.
“Koji!” I shout. I can’t tell how loud my own voice is. It hums in my ears, sounding as if it’s coming through thick padding. He looks over to me, and I toss him the grenade.
He catches it with two hands, almost fumbling it, but then he reaches up and pulls a pin out of the cylinder. He spins around, hurling it underhand into the corridor.
The bang is just as loud, but this time we’re prepared for it, hands over our ears, our eyes closed. And a second after it goes off, Carver and I rocket out of the door.
For a moment, it’s almost like we’re tracers again, running through Outer Earth. I can feel him behind me, hear his feet pounding the metal, like we’re sprinting through a sector with me on point. The corridor is filled with thick smoke, stinking of gunpowder. A guard appears in front of me, on his feet but unsteady. I barely pause as I knock him aside, elbowing him in the ribcage.
“This way!”
It’s Koji, pointing at a turn-off from the corridor. Somehow, he’s managed to stay with us. I’m closest, and I skid to a halt alongside it, quickly peeking my head round. Deserted.
The surviving workers clamber out of the generator room, coughing and blinking. We can’t leave them here–not after everything they’ve been through. I motion them to follow us, and they accept the order without comment. Two of them, I see, have managed to retrieve rifles. I almost ask them to test-fire the guns, check if they work, but decide not to. Last thing we need is someone getting hit with a ricochet in the tight corridors.
We keep moving. There’s no telling how far this little worker rebellion has spread–not without a way to communicate with Prakesh’s group. An alarm is blaring somewhere, harsh and guttural, but there’s no more gunfire. I make Koji take the lead–the bowels of the ship are impossible to figure out, every corridor identical, with the same ribbed walls and recessed doors.
I’d give anything to have Harlan and Eric here. The seaplane could give us a way out. But thinking about them hurts too much, and I make myself stop. Even if they’re alive, they have no way of knowing what’s happening on the ship.
Ahead of us, the corridor opens up into a mezzanine level, with railings on the left. I can see a set of stairs leading down from the railings a few feet into the room, but it’s only when we sprint through the entrance that we see what’s in there.
It’s some kind of storage hangar. Planes–the same as the ones on the ship’s deck–are parked wingtip to wingtip, with their noses angled diagonally towards us. Close-up, they’re enormous, at least fifty feet long, with cockpits like huge eyes. Puddles of old oil and grimy tyre tracks dot the floor beneath them. Huge rolling pallets rest up against the plane wheels.
There’s an enormous roller door on the far wall of the hangar; it’s hard to imagine these planes flying in here, so there must be an elevator platform beyond it, something to get them to the deck. The railing on my left has a thick coating of dust on it, and the whole place looks like it hasn’t been touched in years.
“Over there,” says Koji, pointing. I can make out the opposite end of the hangar, six planes away. It’s identical to ours, with its own mezzanine.
“That get us to the boats?” says one of the workers. It’s the woman who was trying to lock the door–somehow, she survived the assault. Even scored herself a rifle.
“Quickest way,” Koji says, resting his hand on the railing. “Once we get there, we need to—”
The bullet ricochets off the railing next to his hand, burying itself in the wall. Another goes wide, pinging off the wall below us. The workers scatter. The woman with the rifle tries to fire back, then hurls it away when nothing happens.
I can see figures running across the floor, using the planes as cover. There’s nowhere for us to hide–not up here, exposed, with nothing but railings between us and guards. Carver and I share a split-second glance, then in one movement, he and I hurdle the railing, bringing our legs up to our chests. We land on the closest wing with an enormous bang, hitting it so hard that the plane rocks in place, tilting on its three wheels.
They want to use the planes as cover? Then so will we.
The jump to the wing wasn’t high enough to need a roll. I take a second to catch my balance, centring myself on the metal surface. Then I take off, sprinting up the plane’s body. There was no time to explain what we were doing to Koji and the other workers. I look back over my shoulder, and, as I do so, I hear the voice in my mind again, speaking the same words it did when Harlan and I were hanging off that cliff near Whitehorse. Leave them. They’ll just slow you down.
But Koji has already jumped, crashing onto the wing, sending shock waves through the metal. Two of the others follow. I keep moving, pushing into a full sprint, leaping over the plane’s body. The gap between the first and the second plane is no more than five feet, and I land easily, momentum carrying me forward. I see a guard, his face hidden by the body of his rifle, and only just leap across to the third plane when he fires.
The bullet passes above me, but I can’t stop myself ducking. The movement pushes me off balance, and it happens right when I hurdle the plane’s body. I land awkwardly, try to correct it, nearly manage, and then my feet tangle and I crash onto my side onto the third plane’s wing.
At the last second, I turn my body so I’m sliding feet first. It’s just enough. I tuck my body as I come off the wing, rolling, smacking my shoulder on the floor. But the momentum’s on my side now, and I use it, angling my body forward as I come up to my feet, going from a roll to a sprint in half a second. Somewhere, deep inside me, my heart is pounding hard enough to shatter my ribcage.
Another gunshot. No telling where the round went, or where any of the others are. I start zigzagging–it slows me down, but that’s better than a bullet in the back. There aren’t any guards on the floor in front of me, and I don’t dare risk looking over my shoulder.
I spread the zigzag, sprinting between cover on the floor, using the tool pallets and wheel struts as cover. I’m at the fifth plane when one of the guards, smarter than the others or maybe just more controlled, gets a real bead on me.
He must have been tracking my movements, looking for where I’m going to be instead of where I am. I dive, skidding on my stomach across the floor into cover, just as the space above me fills itself with gunfire.
“Riley!”
Carver has made it to the other end of the hangar. He’s got hold of one of the wheeled pallets, and is pushing it towards me, using it as mobile cover. I flatten myself to the floor, crawling towards him. We meet at the edge of the fifth plane, and I squirm into position behind the box. There’s no telling where Koji is–he could be on the planes, or he could be bleeding out somewhere.
“I’ll go left, you go right,” I say to Carver. “Now!”
Open floor. Gunfire. Shouts. Stairs. Railings. Mezzanines. Stumbling. Almost falling. Running. Koji has made it–he’s standing in the door, waving us in. I get there half a second before Carver, skidding into the passage, and then Koji slams the door shut. He and Carver spin the valve, locking it tight.
The noise from the plane hangar vanishes, replaced by the thrumming sound of the ship. Carver leans against the wall, breathing hard. Koji looks like he’s about to throw up–his face is ash-grey.
“What about the others?” Carver asks.
He shakes his head, and Carver kicks the corridor wall in a fury.
The corridor we’re in is wider than the others. It’s a hub, with several other passages branching off from it. The choking smell of gunpowder has made it out here, and I can see dust motes caught in the light from the bulbs in the ceiling.
“We need to keep moving,” I say, turning to go. “We don’t know if they can open the door from the other—”
The guard is fifteen feet away, calm and ready, squinting down the barrel of a rifle. It’s pointing right at me, and I can see him starting to squeeze the trigger.
I can’t close the distance between us. Not fifteen feet, not before he squeezes the trigger. I don’t have a single thing I could use as a weapon.
Then I see Prakesh, sprinting out of one of the side passages.
He’s wearing a ragged pair of overalls, identical to Carver’s, and there’s blood streaming down his face from a cut below his eye. He looks exhausted and terrified but in that instant I don’t care because he’s alive.
I see him look towards me, see the disbelief on his face, see his mouth start to form words.
I see the guard’s surprise, see him swing his gun around, hunting for the movement.
I don’t see him pull the trigger. But I hear the shot. And I see Prakesh stumble, his hands reaching out towards me. Then he’s on the ground and I can see blood and all I can do is scream.