Much like the rest of the station, the foyer smelt of old ammonia astringent and melted electrical wiring; toxins slowly saturating the overstretched air scrubbers. Hernandez hoped Nilsen and Pettersson could find a store of new micromeshes else oxygen would become a bonded item onboard the Riyadh.
Carefully Hernandez crept across the atrium toward one of the four wide corridor exits, the one they’d overrode earlier. Above it the numbers of the districts most closely serviced was indicated in chipped painted stencils and to the side one of several murals that commemorated a Communist party leader in stark block colours and angular lines. The flat eyes of Stalin, Lenin and Khrushchev charted his progress toward the corridor from the various exit points they held dominion over. Hernandez subconsciously pressed himself against the bulkhead, the outer layer of his EVA suit scraping against the plastic walls.
Hernandez breathed a relieved sigh as he left the exposed space of the atrium, the corridor was wide but straight. He would see trouble approaching long before he was trapped. As the burden of dread lifted his steps became freer and gradually heavier as he ascended the passageway. The gentle press of kinetically generated gravity caused his heavy steps to slew in momentary disorientation, his inner ear experienced brief vertigo as he passed the indistinct threshold from the artificially processed gravity at the core to the mechanically processed gravity of the outer ring. He caught himself with a cocky grin and righted his footing as his body warred against the Coriolis effect. For the uninitiated the effect would be stomach churning, like dropping from the top of a rollercoaster while simply walking forward.
The fear and tension that had accompanied him since arriving at the station left Hernandez strung out. For eight hours it had been a distraction from withdrawal, an almost psychological high. Now alone and relaxed he could feel his mind unspooling, the edge lost. It wasn’t a comedown, so much as a physiological and psychological drain, a loss of focus. His EVA suit suddenly felt heavy against his shoulders and constricting, irritating. The emptiness and whiteness of the corridor lacked stimulation, his eyes flickering for want of a focal point. Cool sweat glistened his forehead and grew chill against the constant breeze pulsing from the service corridor, the slackened quiff of his hair adhered to his face, itching his nose.
Hernandez rubbed his eyes and slicked back his hair, tried to remember he was doing this for Tala. One of the few people who saw the real him, not the empty vessel of home. Tala knew him in a way other people didn’t. She would appreciate he had come, alone. Hernandez remembered the drunken and confused night they’d bunked together, he’d never let her know he’d got hung up on it. Couldn’t, it would destroy their friendship. But it didn’t stop his mind from drifting, didn’t prevent each footfall from being tired and angry, the swatch of dim grey bulkheads that indicated the terminus of the corridor growing no closer. He looked at the time readout in his suit, he’d left Nilsen and Pettersson at the reactor sixteen minutes ago.
The first heinous threads of rotten flesh came shortly after, plucking at his olfactory senses and stopping Hernandez in his tracks. He’d smelt death before when he’d visited one of his dealer-friends trailer and found him riddled with bullets. The insides of his tin plate abode sweaty with condensation, the body bloated beneath a carpet of maggots. He tried to remember the man’s name as the smell intensified.
Then he heard the distinct pounding of flesh – fists and palms – against buckling metal, somewhere in the distance. Adrenaline fired through his body like a much needed hit, he hesitated against the rush as his edge returned. For a moment he wondered if it could be Tala or the Captain’s group in trouble, but the fist and palms were too numerous, the low guttural calls too inhuman. The fear redoubled, he back stepped and felt a cold metal cylinder press into the nape of his neck.
“Where are the other two?” A female voice, affected British and vaguely familiar, asked.
Hernandez pressed his eyelids closed, angry at himself for letting his attention slip. How long had she been following him? He felt the gun barrel scrape against the base of his skull, pushing for an answer. He wondered if this was like the last moments of the lives of people he’d known in Tuxtla, the friends of the other Hernandez, the detached Hernandez, friends who’d pushed the wrong people. The guy in the trailer, melting through the thin metal skin of his home. “Fuck you, cono,” was the only answer Hernandez was going to give and waited for the hammer to strike the pin, realizing he’d known it would end this way.
The autumn sun was low in the clear sky, watery and pallid as Katja made her way through the rush hour crowds. Swaddled in furs against the frigid mid December air, thick with condensate. Usually she revelled in the hubbub of the city on a Friday evening and the weekend atmosphere of release. The Christmas lights would soon flicker to life as twilight deepened and she fought the urge to linger. But tonight she had to get home.
As she crossed the Oka river, from the Zarechnaya chast to the Nagornaya chast the crowds began to thin, the busy concrete city left behind against her back as she scaled the gentle hillside. Freed from the clamour, her mind played out what she would say, contemplated how she would deliver the news. Wondered what reaction would be elicited.
She’d been issued her placement. Most of her alumni at the Gorky Medical Institute had plumped for places in big cities, Moscow and Leningrad. Foreign assignments had been forbidden after last semesters defections, the friendship pact with America in tatters. By all accounts, Katja had scored the least desired placement of all despite being an average student. It had been the placement she requested.
The family mansion stood, an orange and white edifice in a suburb of Gorky, leafy in the short summer, set aback from imposing wrought iron gates. In truth it was a maisonette, a mock Petrine Baroque townhouse that had been wrestled from a city aristocrat and divvied up after the revolution. They owned the uppermost floor of the building that overlooked the city, still a much desired symbol of wealth despite the obvious signs of dilapidation. Over the decades the colourful paintwork had chipped and faded and the render showed hairline cracks that widened and grew more ragged with each year. Father always said he would fix it one day, but that day never seemed to come.
The hallway was draughty and dark, the cumbersome communal entrance door shutting with a clatter against the brittle wind. The ground floor neighbours would probably complain again, Katja didn’t really care. Her footsteps rung out as she ascended the scuffed marble staircase, the iron banister ice cold to the touch.
She could hear the radio before she opened the front door, a news reporter spoke with a sombre voice, mother was home early from the car factory again, work tailing off. Katja hoped the scenes of tension from the night before had dissipated as she quietly opened the door and slipped inside their home.