“How much longer?” Lucas asked.
“Twelve minutes or so,” said Rolfe. He had been sweating like a condemned man since they had entered the Sphere, suddenly struggling with a case of claustrophobia for the first time in his life.
“I know. I’m concerned if the fuel will last as well,” he said to Lucas looking for words of encouragement.
None could be given. With each passing moment, Lucas found himself deeper and deeper in a state of panic. “Twelve fucking minutes is a lifetime in this vessel,” he thought.
“What’s going to happen if we don’t make it?” asked one of the scientists in the co-pilot seat.
“I have no fucking clue,” Lucas responded. He did not want to imagine the alternative.
* * *
Nastasia’s black med-pack sat comfortably on one of the bunk beds. Stuffed inside were the lethal gas and the explosive. It was waiting patiently for the proper springing of the timing mechanism to trigger its activation. The tiny digital clock wrapped in a series of anti-detection materials changed its numeric sequence seconds at a time in reverse order.
17:27, 17:26, 17:25…
* * *
Simon choked at the mineral smell that filled the frozen tunnel. He readjusted the Black Ops mask and tried to breathe past it, ignore it, as he followed close behind Max, pressing tight against the icy wall of the dark tunnel. The dim shadows of the men from the elevator were a hundred yards ahead of them, illuminated only by their own suit lights.
They were moving deeper into the labyrinth.
Once again, Max noticed just how different these tunnels were. Here there were cables twisting along the floors and walls, dangling in lazy arcs from the craggy ceiling. Piles of random machinery, rimmed in ice, lay along the walls like the discarded toys of giant children. Some looked damaged; some simply looked abandoned. What is all this for? he asked himself as he bobbed and turned to stay in the shadows, moving closer and closer to the six men and their leader.
He stopped abruptly and motioned Simon to do the same. One of the men ahead of them had turned around. He was walking back toward them.
Max stood flat against one side of the wall, Simon against the other. Simon’s heart pounded in his chest as he buried himself in shadow.
He was past the point of fear. Nothing mattered but finding his father, and if that meant taking lives, then so be it. It was all about life and death now. Everything under the ice was life and death. And he was sure of one thing above all others: I will not be taken captive, he told himself. I am no one’s captive.
The footsteps grew louder as the point lights on the man’s suit approached them. They could hear his mumbled conversation but couldn’t see him until the man stepped out of the darkness barely ten feet away.
He still hadn’t seen them; they were completely hidden by the darkness. His head was down, gazing blindly at the pulverized ice as he concentrated on the voice that was whispering in his helmet.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he said quietly, as if he did not want to be heard by the others deeper in the tunnel. “How can the NAV-beacon on the SO team be at Dragger Pass when the Griffin is down here at the Nest? No one but Drago has a NAV-beacon,” he continued in a frustrated tone, “he would never leave his team.”
Simon and Max exchanged looks, but didn’t dare move as the man listened more to the voice in his ear.
“Because I saw it, you idiot! I just walked past it!”
The voice interrupted him and he shook his head. “Hold on,” he said and started walking again, even closer to them, retracing his steps to the elevator. “How am I supposed to explain this?” he grunted.
Simon saw Max’s shadow detach itself from the tunnel wall to stay close behind the man. Then things happened very quickly.
Somehow the man detected something as Max moved-a subtle sound, a grinding footstep, a shift in the air. He turned suddenly, just as Max lunged forward and drove the butt of his rifle into the man’s rib cage. In the same instant Max seized the man’s neck and broke it. The soldier’s head spun under Max’s hands, and Simon heard a faint sound, like wet wood snapping. The man collapsed in an instant, dead before he hit the ice, and Max fell with him. His rifle whacked against the ice, producing a sound that was louder and sharper than the falling bodies.
What the hell? Simon thought, but he knew Max too well. He knew what he was capable of. And he knew the worst was yet to come.
One of the men farther down the tunnel shouted to the dead soldier, “Colin! What the hell is going on back there?”
It was as if time stood still. Simon felt every millisecond as if it were tangible. He heard more than one pair of footsteps running toward them. For an instant he turned to them, trying to gauge the distance. Then he turned back, Max and the soldier’s body were gone.
Where the fuck did he go? He thought, panic rising in his throat. What-
A shadow appeared out of the dense blackness.
Simon saw a Vector5 assault suit. He saw the flat black helmet. He started to raise his weapon, ready to fire-when the figure raised a gloved finger to his mouth.
Max, he realized. It’s Max. He was hiding the body where they wouldn’t find it. That’s all.
They stepped back into the shadows just as two more soldiers emerged from the darkness and scrambled past them, moving quickly toward the transport elevator. Their helmets moved left and right, right and left, searching for their missing comrade.
As they passed, Simon made a quick motion with his head. Let’s go farther down the tunnel, he indicated, in the direction the men had just come from.
Max nodded. As the two soldiers melted into the darkness, the two friends moved silently in the other direction in pursuit of the men moving deeper in the tunnel.
* * *
One mile left to the encampment.
Keep going, you can do it, Hayden told himself. One foot in front of the other. Almost there. Just. Keep…
It was too much. Hayden finally, without further strength to push forward, let himself stop. His feet had been dragging, his body swaying for the last half mile. He just couldn’t go any farther.
Thirty yards ahead of him, Samantha and Ryan trudged on, concentrating on the last two thousand yards, determined to make it back. Hayden watched them go, getting smaller and smaller in the distance, but he didn’t call out to them.
I just need to rest, he thought and tucked his injured hand even more deeply into his torn ice suit. I’ll catch up somehow…
Samantha and Ryan pushed on without noticing that their friend was unable to follow any longer.
Hayden looked around for a brief moment and found a little uneven undulation in the wall. He hobbled over and saw it was more like a small alcove. “Perfect,” he said and sat down heavily. He leaned back against the icy wall and tried to get a deep breath through the mask. The lights from his helmet drifted as his head nodded. Just close my eyes for a second, he thought.
Chilled tears leaked from beneath his lids. You bastard, he thought, remembering the cheerful face of Andrew. He had met the boy just eight years ago, in the messy confines of his Oxford robotics lab. And now he was gone. Gone.
“You fucking bastard,” he said. He could feel his tears scalding him under the heated mask.
* * *
Back at the encampment, the scientists had worked for hours, packing rations, extra clothing, equipment and instruments-anything worth salvaging-into the storage bins of the MagCycles. That was done now. All they could do was sit, huddled together over a tiny makeshift heater assembled from back-up batteries and an ancient coil. As they watched, the sad little device sputtered, struggling to draw the last remaining ounce of energy from its source, and finally sent out a tiny spurt of gray smoke and died.