He froze the current crop of nine elevator images and spotted them instantly.
“Thirty-six-oh-six. Gotcha.”
“Bring ’em down,” Hadley said.
Sitterson did so. No relief yet, no sigh of satisfaction. Too much had gone wrong to assume that everything would go right from here.
Every single detail, every single second, had to count.
ELEVEN
Maybe it was the screaming and the thumping against the toughened glass that had vented her terror and calmed her a little. Or maybe she’d just seen so much that there was really no alternative other than to remain calm. Her heart still thrummed faster than usual, but she felt removed from the reality she’d always been a part of and comforted by. Talking boys with Jules, going out for a drink with friends, running each morning around her neighborhood, college, exams, worrying about how she looked and whether she needed a haircut and what shoes to wear to the party next Saturday… this was all from a world so distant to her now that she could barely comprehend it anymore.
Everything that was safe and normal had been blown away, and Dana could not imagine it ever settling down again.
I’ll always know, she thought. This will always be here, whether we get out or not. The puppeteers had their hooks in her now, and even if she did manage to escape she suspected the strings stretched too far for her to break.
Marty was still holding her tight. She looked over his shoulder, and knew that he looked over hers. They had each seen things that the other hadn’t, but she didn’t want to know. Maybe much later, if they survived, when they huddled together in dorm rooms while their new, distant friends enjoyed themselves and lived normal lives… maybe then they’d talk of what they’d seen, and try to make some kind of sense.
But not right now.
The elevator was descending again. The walls visible through the thick glass walls were now rough stone. As they jarred to a halt and a mechanical whirring noise sounded somewhere far away, Dana wondered just how the hell any of this was possible.
Comprehension hit her like a brick.
This was not possible.
And was it really the first time she’d allowed herself to think that?
The door slid open onto a small, metal-lined lobby. Clean, unfurnished, clinical. A guard was aiming a gun at her face. He shifted quickly until he aimed at Marty, and jammed his foot in the door. He wore a black suit, black mask and goggles, and his mouth and nose were enclosed behind very modern-looking breathing apparatus. It gave his voice an electronic taint.
“Out of the elevator!” There was a pause, a quiet moment when everything was held suspended. Then, “Step out of the elevator!”
“Why are you trying to kill us?” Dana asked. It was a helpless, hopeless question, and she imagined him saying, I’m only following orders. But the guard just acted as if he hadn’t heard.
“Step out! Just the girl!”
“Just me?” she asked. Marty’s hand tightened around hers, their fingers interlocking. He squeezed as if to say, No fucking way. She squeezed back.
“Do it!” the guard shouted. He stepped forward, edging into the elevator, and Dana heard Marty shifting slightly behind her.
Something scrabbled across the floor, moved between her feet and grabbed the guard’s foot.
Judah’s arm!
The guard jumped, looked down, and shot at the arm. The explosion was staggering in the enclosed space, and Dana’s hearing was blasted to little more than a faint, distant hum. But she took the moment and used it, and while the guard’s gun was aimed down she shouldered into his chest and drove him back against the metal door jamb.
His head swung up and back and cracked against the metal, and he slid down slowly to lean against the elevator’s side wall.
Marty snatched the gun from the guard’s hand and picked up Judah’s blade.
“Good work, zombie arm!” he shouted, and his voice was fading slowly back in. Dana could see from his pained smile that his hearing had been numbed by the gunshot, as well.
A steady hum was growing. She rubbed at her ears, and it sounded as though she was doing it from the inside.
“Won’t last long!” he shouted. “Come on.”
The small lobby opened out to house seven other elevator doors. Dana shivered as she thought about what might have entered or exited those doors, but they were all closed and silent for now, and the panels above them remained unlit. There was a small, abandoned guard’s station just along from the elevators, and past that a corridor led off to a right-angled turn.
From beyond there, Dana was sure she could hear several sets of heavy footsteps approaching.
Marty pointed that way, then to his ears. She nodded. There was no escape route, other than back into the elevator in which they’d descended… or into a new one. But where the hell might they all lead? she wondered.
Before they could decide which way to go or what to do, a voice came from a speaker built into the wall above the elevators. It was clear and calm, surprisingly intimate. And it started to explain.
“I am The Director,” it said, “and this has gone terribly wrong. I know you can hear me. I want you to listen.”
Marty pressed his finger to his lips, shaking his head slowly. Don’t speak, don’t answer. Maybe this was just another trick. But the voice was soothing in a strange way, and if it could offer any reason why this had happened, there was no way she couldn’t listen.
“You won’t get out of this complex alive,” The Director said. Dana swallowed, chilled by the calmness in her words, but the idea did not surprise her. She’d been thinking it herself. “What I want you to understand,” she continued, “is that you mustn’t try. Because your deaths will avert countless others.”
The heavy footsteps had ceased now, and she could hear the furtive shuffling of people approaching along the corridor. They’d be close soon. Close enough to shoot. But the voice had her pinned like a butterfly to the air, and Marty seemed the same. Their hands tightly linked, they continued to listen.
“You’ve seen horrible things: an army of nightmare creatures. And they are real. But they are nothing compared to… to the alternative.” That was the first kink in her voice.
She’s afraid, Dana thought, and she’s trying not to show it. And that was almost as terrifying as everything else she had seen.
Marty nudged her and pointed along the corridor, where shadows shifted slowly against the wall. Someone was just around the corner.
“You’ve been chosen to be sacrificed for the greater good,” The Director continued, voice firm and confident once again. “Look, it’s an honor. So forgive us… and let us get on with it.”
Marty handed Dana Judah’s blade and hefted the gun, then headed to the empty guard station. She followed close behind. They had maybe seconds in which to act, and much as all she wanted to do was shout—Screw you, Come and get us!—she knew that Marty was thinking straight.
Did they really think that asking them to lay down and die would make them go any easier?
As Dana reached back to close the door behind her, there was a shattering burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets struck the door and pushed it closed, and when the handle clicked up she turned the latch, locking it.
Screaming, shouting, she fell back against Marty, and they huddled together behind the metal door. The top half was glass, but it must have been of the same toughened construction as was used in the elevators. Bullets ricocheted off of it, leaving little more than tiny white impact stars where they struck.