“I’ve got to fucking do it, man. Else none of you are getting out. Else these last few days – hell the whole fucking four years has been for nothing.” He would never escape Murmansk-13 with his leg so badly injured, but the struggle was distilled into this one final action. Well, almost one, Oleg made two.
Jamal had to give Tala and Katja their chance, they’d inadvertently sundered the edifice the survivors had built up around the glorified test facility. Jamal wanted them to live.
Hernandez lips were drawn into a thin line, the shadow of a moustache recently shaved away visible. He nodded. “Then we better get going.”
“You might have another problem, Hernandez.” Tala was looking at the grating for the air duct. “It’s about the first cover I’ve seen that isn’t easy access on this junk heap.”
“Ain’t a problem, mi chicha,” Hernandez began turning over his EVA suit, talking as he hunted. “That clever little metal detector that they continue to power on a station without much power. It couldn’t find these bad boys.” From a little recessed pocket at the thigh, Hernandez removed three textured green items and wielded them in the air, reverently. “These are my pride and joy, hardened nylon when you need a tool that won’t end up with you getting fried cohjones.”
Tala smiled a nervous, hopeful smile, Katja looked at Jamal sadly, catching his eye. She retreated behind the near bulkhead. Katja was a smart girl, she wasn’t kidding herself about their chances, least of all his. “I’m going to need a little help, man.”
Jamal leant on Hernandez shoulder, unable to place any weight on his leg. He could feel Hernandez trying to rush him through the corridor, the man’s anxious physical urgency betraying his calm, cocky exterior. When they got to the antechamber bulkhead, Jamal gave himself a moment, limbering up as if about to receive a handoff from the quarterback. The game was down to this play, this moment was his. For everyone who’d believed in him. To defy anyone who hadn’t.
And all he had to do was stand still. Should be easy.
Jamal let himself rock slightly to the side, bracing himself against the lightly textured bars of Tala and Katja’s cell. Diego lingered noncommittally near the front, trying to look somewhere between wanting to help and unable, and oblivious. He was scared. The Captain stared someplace else much like Katja, but with an intense absence. Only Tala seemed willing and able to provide any real support or assistance. That didn’t surprise Jamal.
“I’m going to need a few minutes to get these screws, ese,” Hernandez said, dressed only in off-white long johns mottled with yellowing sweat patches. Hernandez was small but solid, barrel-chested, not completely muscle, but not soft either.
“I’ll give you as long as I can,” Jamal replied, his leg already on fire.
Hernandez placed one foot on a horizontal bar, close to where Jamal braced his arm, then a knee on his near shoulder, Jamal doing his best to boost him up. Hernandez balanced his weight over the bad leg as he tried to shift across, fingers scrabbling against the vent cover, Hernandez’s crotch uncomfortably close to Jamal’s face as he redistributed his mass. “Hey, me and you good friends now, cabron.”
Jamal laughed, the action caused bolts of pain to ripple down his leg. His shoulders sank, almost toppling Hernandez. “Steady, man.”
Jamal grunted in response. Time seemed to slow, Hernandez fidgeting with the screws, the process an interminable moment. His leg felt as if it was tied to a stake and a fire was licking around it, first darkening, then blistering the flesh. The sensation of burning intensified, becoming hotter, the pain threatening unbearable. At some point Jamal began humming a nonsense tune. He tried to remember a song, 6 in the Mornin’ by Ice-T, but couldn’t hold the beat. Then the tune turned into an unending growl.
“You OK down there, cabron?”
The words seemed far away, Jamal didn’t answer. Something tinkled metallically beside him, a screw, how many had that been? He felt something both warm and colder than his skin envelope his hand. He turned and saw Katja looking at him, bleary through agonized tears, her hand over his, her expression soft and sad. Thankful. Jamal felt a lump in his throat.
The vent cover came away distantly. Suddenly the weight was gone, Hernandez passing down the flimsy tin grate before Jamal crumpled to the corridor floor. Pain and nausea overawing him as Katja retreated from the bars. Jamal gagged, then felt blissful numbness saturate everything beneath his knee, he knew he would never feel that leg again. The thought was odd, detached.
“A thought occurs,” began Hernandez, his voice echoing in the little pressed aluminium duct. “Now what?”
Jamal tasted the metallic tang of bile in his mouth. He swallowed. “With enough back pressure, you can push these vent covers away pretty quietly, even when they’re screwed in. The metal is thin and not really designed to take force.
“You have to be quiet though. If the Doctor finds out your gone, well I don’t know what she’ll do,” Jamal admitted, scared for the others more than himself. “Behind the processing desk there’s a conduit, I spied it on the way in. Old habit, not much use to me now. Head downwards, if they flood engineering with the infected then your friends will be in trouble. Bottom of the well down there.”
Hernandez brows knotted. “The infected?” Tor seemed to quail at the word, but remained otherwise insensate.
From the back of the cell, Katja closed her eyes and her features twitched with pain. Once more she was forced to recount a heavily abridged story of Murmansk-13, that an infection had brought the station under quarantine, that those measures had failed under the auspices of the Soviet, that the station had become an ersatz test facility that the Politburo lost interest in and now the infection was on the open market to buyers such as Dr. Smith and her private security consortium.
Jamal watched Hernandez skin blanche as Katja spoke, a couple of times during the retelling Hernandez glanced at his unmoved Captain. The man appeared an empty husk, broken by what he’d seen, what Hernandez may have to face. After a moment, Hernandez sobered. “I just wanted out of here, this shit is grande, ese.”
“Like I said, man, their little experiment is going to kill everyone back home. They’re treating it like a technology they can control…” The words felt heavy, sapping what little he had left and there was something he still had to do. Jamal shrugged, then began pulling himself away from the antechamber, using his fists to lever himself backwards, letting his legs drag uselessly behind.
Hernandez looked at him. “Hey ese, thanks. I think you should keep this, eh?” He pulled the cell key from his long johns and held it out, over the precipice of the duct.
Jamal looked at it, then his legs. “I’ll unburden you, but I don’t think I’ll need it.”
Hernandez tossed him the key, holding his gaze for a moment longer, expression neutral, then re-orientated himself in the tight space of the duct and began pressing against the far grating. Jamal heard the faint sound of thin metal tearing, like someone pushing a knife through an empty Coke can.
Tala watched Jamal backing away. He’d left the key where Hernandez had thrown it. “Where you going?”
“If the Doctor comes back, maybe she thinks she just dropped it, maybe she doesn’t notice the grates or checks the cells,” Jamal paused in his endeavour and shucked his shoulders. He could see in her face, that wasn’t the answer Tala was looking for. “I can’t leave him like that,” Jamal said, gesturing to Oleg. “I want to be the one who deals with him when he turns, and I want the cell locked. I figure, if I’m too weak to finish it… Well, it’s one less infected you guys have to deal with.”