surging through Kendrick's mind.
'The question is, can we still get it open? The electronics might be shot.' Buddy shone his torch across the surface of the door.
'Damn,' he exclaimed, jerking his hand away.
'More threads?' asked Kendrick.
'Yeah.' Buddy's face was pale, even in the darkness.
Kendrick reached out and touched the shield door's rusting metal. Nothing happened, although he was surprised to detect a faint glimmer of current. Then he slid his hands across the surface and sensed something shift subtly, deep within the metal.
Something inside him reached out and twisted.
The door rumbled, filling the humid air with an appalling groaning sound. At first it looked as though this entrance had been too long neglected to function any more and all their efforts would come to nothing. But then it creaked again and slowly, slowly began to slide open. Then it stopped, leaving a sliver of space barely wide enough for one man at a time to slip through.
'Okay,' said Buddy. 'I'm going to die underground.' He shrugged. 'Suits me.'
The two men worked their way through the gap to find themselves in a near-absolute darkness that brought back unpleasant memories for them both.
Kendrick looked around him. It was almost as if he'd never been away, or as though the whole complex had become indelibly stamped into every cell of his brain. He shivered, only partly because it was cooler behind the shield door.
'Like a haunted house,' said Buddy, coming to stand beside him. 'Have you seen how there's these other threads – gold ones – as well?'
Kendrick nodded, and reached out to one stretching along a wall. As soon as he touched it, he felt again that strong sensation of being watched. But, although it seemed deeply irrational, the gold threads felt somehow friendlier.
He turned, suddenly half-expecting to see Peter McCowan standing there just behind him. He almost imagined he could smell the man's warm, beery breath – but he saw only Buddy.
'Okay,' said Buddy. 'What now?'
'Might as well keep moving,' Kendrick replied, and they set off.
Several minutes later, Kendrick noticed that Buddy was behaving oddly.
The shield door was now far behind them, but with their augmentations they could see well enough. The sense of being watched only grew more intense the deeper into the tunnel they went. At first Kendrick dismissed this as merely his own nerves playing up. But in truth this did seem like a haunted place, just as Buddy had said, full of the spirits and the memories of the dead.
'I remember when they tried to cordon off this whole area,' said Buddy. Kendrick knew that he was referring to the nanotech infestation.
'I remember.' They'd seen the first intimations of that when they'd escaped the Maze. 'For something so dangerous, you wouldn't expect it to look so – I don't know.' He shook his head. 'So beautiful, I guess.'
Buddy laughed harshly. 'It isn't what it looks like that matters. It's what it can do to us. This was a bad idea.'
'Take it easy there, Buddy. Are you feeling okay?'
Buddy stared at him, his face pale and sweating. 'No, I keep… I keep hearing things, like… oh fuck, like whispering.'
Kendrick could hear nothing and saw only the empty corridor, silent and dark ahead. 'Can you make out any words?' he asked carefully.
'No.' Buddy put his head back and yelled, letting loose a series of expletives that rattled down the corridor and echoed for long seconds afterwards.
'Buddy-'
'I can't go on.' Buddy shook his head, as if a swarm of wasps were buzzing around it. His breathing was rapid and ragged. 'I just can't.'
'What is it?'
'It's just… I can't. Not beyond this point. Something won't let me, Kendrick. Let's turn back. You'll have to think of something else.'
'Look, we're almost at the end of this section. Try going a little further, see how you are then. It's probably only nerves,' Kendrick assured him.
Just ahead of them rose another shield door, barely visible in the murk. It stood half-open, and the heart of the Maze lay beyond.
Buddy shook his head, sounding more reluctant with every passing second. 'I can't, Kendrick, I swear. I don't have any choice in this matter. If I take one more step, I'll die, or…' He started to retch, leaning over, his hands on his knees. Kendrick could see that he was shivering badly.
Then Buddy looked up. 'I'm heading back.'
'I can't go back myself, Buddy. Wait for me at the stream, by the cave mouth. Stay hidden. I won't be long.'
'If I go any further, I'm going to die,' Buddy repeated, looking at Kendrick with an expression that said So will you, if you go any further.
'Go back,' he urged Buddy. 'Go back and wait for me.'
The other man didn't need any more prompting. 'Good luck,' he whispered, and handed Kendrick his wand, the map of the Maze still displayed on its screen. 'Keep it. I've got another one back at the 'copter. If anyone appears while I'm waiting and I have to take off, this way we can make sure we stay in contact.' He also gave Kendrick the backpack. It still contained most of their water and the torch.
Then Buddy turned and moved as fast as he could back towards the entrance and the fading light beyond. Kendrick watched him go, cold dread filling his stomach.
He shook his head, turned back and began walking deeper into the Maze.
Once Kendrick passed through the second shield door he finally began to hear the voices.
The walls and ceiling were still covered with the same rusting pipes, making it harder to suppress a niggling fear that he had never actually left the Maze in the first place. He had forgotten how absolute the silence could be, and how easily it lent itself to such delusions.
Kendrick stopped and punched the wall next to him, hard. The impact sent shivers through the air around him and it felt as if a spell had been broken. The sound filled the darkness like the first words of God echoing through an unformed universe.
He had to get rid of his fears, the ghosts and nightmares that still populated his mind. He kept on walking, knowing that the tiniest hesitation might send him running back towards the cave entrance.
The threads, he noted, were much denser now, almost completely coating the wall surfaces around him. They made crackling sounds under his boots as he walked over them and he stopped a few times, unsure if he really had seen them moving, their loose ends drifting in the dark like sea anemones sifting for plankton.
When Kendrick reached out and touched the threads the voices became much clearer. It was like tapping into someone's thoughts, but those of a madman: random fragments of memory chasing each other like a blizzard of half-formed images, faint intimations of things that he recalled experiencing during his seizures.
Kendrick also detected an anger that threatened to overwhelm his own thoughts, tempered by a sense of childish delight that chilled him to the core.
He broke the contact with the threads and kept on walking till he came to a stairwell and worked his way down. There were light switches at hand, but none of them worked.
On their way here Kendrick and Buddy had wondered whether they would find Los Muertos inside the Maze.
