“Go,” Naomi said, her voice tight with pain, her good hand pointing at the next hatch up the ladder. After they were both through, Anna took a moment to look around at the new deck they were on. It looked like crew areas. Small compartments with flimsy-looking doors. Not a good place to hole up. Naomi flew through the empty air and the dim shadows cast by the emergency lights, and Anna followed as best she could, the feeling of nightmare crawling up her throat.
After they’d passed through the hatch into the next level, Naomi stopped to tap on the small control screen for several seconds. The emergency lights shifted to red, and the panel on the hatch read SECURITY LOCKDOWN.
“She’s not trapped down there,” Anna said. “She can get out through the cargo bay. There’s a hole in the doors.”
“That’s twice now someone has done that,” Naomi replied, pulling herself up the ladder. “Anyway, she’s wearing a salvage mech rig, and she’s in the machine shop. Half the stuff in there is made to cut through ships. She’s not trapped. We are.”
This took Anna by surprise. They’d gotten away. They’d locked a door behind them. That was supposed to end it. The monster isn’t allowed to open doors. It was fuzzy, juvenile thinking, and Anna became less sure that all the drugs had actually passed through her system. “So what do we do?”
“Medical bay,” Naomi said, pointing down a short corridor. “That way.”
That made sense. The frail-looking Belter woman was getting a gray tone to her dark skin that made Anna think of massive blood loss, and the bandage on her shoulder had already soaked through and was throwing off tiny crimson spheres. She took Naomi by the hand and pulled her down the corridor to the medical bay door. It was closed, and the panel next to it flashed the security lockdown message like the deck hatches had. Naomi started pressing it, and Anna waited for the door to slide open. Instead, another, heavier-looking door slid into place over the first, and the panel Naomi was working on went dark.
“Pressure doors,” Naomi said. “Harder to get through.”
“But we’re on this side of them.”
“Yeah.”
“Is there another way in?” Anna asked.
“No. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Anna said. “We need to get you in there. You’re very badly hurt.”
Naomi turned to look at her, frowned as if she’d only really seen Anna for the first time. It was a speculative frown. Anna felt she was being sized up.
“I have two injured men in there. My crew. They’re helpless,” Naomi finally said. “Now they’re as safe as I can make them. So you and I are going to go up to the next deck, get a gun, and make sure she follows us. When she shows up, we’re going to kill her.”
“I don’t—” Anna started.
“Kill. Her. Can you do that?”
“Kill? No. I can’t,” Anna said. It was the truth.
Naomi stared at her for a second longer, then just shrugged with her good hand. “Okay, then, come with me.”
They moved through the next hatch to the deck above. Most of the space was taken up by an airlock and storage lockers. Some of the lockers were large enough to hold vacuum suits and EVA packs. Others were smaller. Naomi opened one of the smaller lockers and pulled out a thick black handgun.
“I’ve never shot anyone either,” she said, pulling the slide back and loading a round. To Anna’s eye the bullet looked like a tiny rocket. “But those two in the med bay are my family, and this is my home.”
“I understand,” Anna said.
“Good, because I can’t have you—” Naomi started, then her eyes rolled up in her head and her body went limp. The gun drifted away from her relaxed hand.
“No no no,” Anna repeated in a sudden wash of panic. She floated over to Naomi and held her wrist. There was still a pulse, but it was faint. She dug through the first aid pack, looking for something to help. One ampule said it was for keeping people from going into shock, so Anna jabbed Naomi with it. She didn’t wake up.
The air in the room began to smell different. Hot, and with the melted plastic odor her damaged taser had given off when it died. A spot of red appeared on the deck hatch, then shifted to yellow, then to white. The girl in the mech, coming for them.
The hatch above them, the one that led forward on the ship, was closed and flashing the lockdown message. Naomi hadn’t told her what the override code was. The airlock was on their level, but it was locked down too.
The deck hatch began to open in lurching increments. Anna could hear Melba panting and cursing as she forced it. And Naomi’s lockdown code hadn’t kept the insane woman out, it had only locked them in.
Anna pulled Naomi’s limp body over to one of the large vacuum suit storage lockers and put her inside, climbing in after her. There was no lock on the door. Between the unconscious woman and the suit, there was hardly enough room for her to close it. She set both of her feet at the corner where the door of the locker met the deck and set the magnets up to full. She felt the suit lock onto the metal, clamping her legs into place and pulling her up close against the locker door.
On the far side, metal shrieked. Something wet brushed against the back of Anna’s neck. Naomi’s hand, limp and bloody. Anna tried not to move, tried not to breathe loudly. The prayer she offered up was hardly more than a confusion of fear and hope.
A locker door slammed open off to her left. Then another one, closer. And then another. Anna wondered where Naomi’s gun had gotten to. It was in the locker somewhere, but there was no light, and she’d have to unlock the magnets on her boots to look for it. She hoped they hadn’t left it outside with the crazy woman. Another locker opened.
The door centimeters from Anna’s face shifted, but didn’t open. The vents and the cracks in the locker door flared the white of a cutting torch, then went dark. A mechanical voice said, “Backup power depleted.” The curse from the other side was pure frustration. It was followed by a series of grunts and thumps: Melba taking the mech rig off. Anna felt a surge of hope.
“Open it,” Melba said. Her voice was low, rough, and bestial.
“No.”
“Open it.”
“You… I can hear that you’re feeling upset,” Anna said, horrified by the words even as she spoke them. “I think we should talk about this if you—”
Melba’s scream was unlike anything Anna had heard before, deep and vicious and wild. If the id had a throat, it would have sounded like that. If the devil spoke.
Something struck the metal door and Anna flinched back. Then another blow. And another. The metal began to bow in, and droplets of blood clung to the vent slits. Her fists, Anna thought. She’s doing this with her hands.
The screaming was wild now, obscene where it wasn’t wordless, and inhuman as a hurricane. The thick metal of the door bent in, the hinges starting to shudder and bend with each new assault. Anna closed her eyes.
The top hinge gave way, shattering.
And then, without warning, silence fell. Anna waited, sure she was being lulled into a trap. No sound came except a small animal gurgle. She could smell the stomach-turning acid stench of fresh vomit. After what felt like hours, she turned off the magnets and pushed the warped and abused door open.
Melba floated curled against the wall, her hands pressed to her belly and her body shuddering.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Bull