Kendrick learned the answer as soon as he reached the Wards.
From a distance the body looked as though it had been there for a relatively short time. It wore the familiar ragtag uniform of a Los Muertos soldier, a crucifix crudely sewn on the jacket. At first Kendrick wondered if the man was merely sleeping, but as he came closer the smell of putrefaction was evident. The corpse lay with one hand outstretched, as if reaching towards the rifle lying a metre away. The dead man's face was turned to one side, his desiccated mouth open in a silent scream, the eyes now reduced to dark pits. He was encased in silver threads as though he'd been wrapped in the cocoon of some enormous metallic spider.
Kendrick glanced up and, for one terrible moment, felt sure that he could see something hovering in the darkness before it flitted away on fragile wings. He peered around himself for a long time, listening and watching, but there was nothing more.
Moving on, he found two more corpses. One lay slumped in a corner, while the other had both hands to his face as if he'd been trying to claw his own eyes out.
It was getting harder now for Kendrick to keep the fear at bay, fear of what he might find if he went any further. If I lose it now, I might never make it back out.
He took the precaution of pulling a pair of heavy gloves out of the backpack and sliding them over his hands before stepping through a door that led into a Ward. The rusting skeletons of beds stood in uniform rows around him. Most of their mattresses had rotted away, but he could still clearly make out a number painted above the room's entrance.
He was in Ward Seventeen – or Ward 17b, to be precise: it had been reserved for the male inmates. Ahead of him, the Dissection Door lay open, empty blackness beyond it.
The notion came to Kendrick right then, that something there had been waiting for him to return all these years. He pushed this thought away and stepped through the door.
Not even the teams of researchers and war-crime investigators who had arrived at the Maze immediately following its liberation had managed to penetrate these deepest parts of the complex. The nanotech infestation had already become too widespread for any further exploration to be possible.
A no-go zone had subsequently been placed around the Maze, and for a while UN forces had patrolled it. But once it became clear how bad things were getting back in the United States, these troops abandoned the task and left. Sieracki's soldiers finally emerged from their jungle strongholds, metamorphosing over time into Los Muertos.
Kendrick arrived at a series of ruined elevators, most of them now reduced to gaping shafts. He peered down one to see silver threads lining every surface, the occasional gleam of gold visible among them. At the corner of his vision, something crawled…
He looked down and saw that the fine filaments coating the concrete had broken under his boots. Their loose ends twisted and spasmed with tiny movements.
Cold sweat broke out on his brow as some of the threads reached up over the tops of his boots, as if they were seeking out his flesh.
He jerked his foot away, heard a ripping sound, and overbalanced, catching at the side of an elevator shaft with one gloved hand. He spotted shapes darting about far below, black on black, coming closer.
Kendrick ran, eventually finding a stairway. He slammed a half-rusted door shut behind him and kept running. Several seconds later he heard a sound, making him think of a ton of feathers flung against a sheet of steel at high speed. He gulped down air, knowing he was dangerously close to outright panic.
You need to be here, he reminded himself. You're not here just for yourself but for everyone else who was dragged here to die. Think of it that way.
He continued to descend till, stepping through an open shield door, he knew instantly that he had finally reached the lower levels.
This was the place where Kendrick had almost died. Where thousands had died. But something was different, and after a minute he worked out what it was. Down here, many more of the threads that coated the walls were gold-coloured, although the silver ones still predominated.
He pulled off a glove, and somehow found the strength of will to reach out and briefly touch a thick strand of the pale yellow filaments.
Kendrick whirled around, sure that Peter McCowan was standing there.
'Peter?'
His voice seemed to echo for an unusually long time.
This way, he imagined McCowan saying.
He turned to face down one particular corridor.
Suddenly he knew he had to go… that way.
A rusting gun turret still stood on its mount beside a shield door, the filaments that coated it giving it a strange bejewelled look.
Kendrick stepped closer to the large weapon and, as he watched, some of the gold threads glistened noticeably before slowly taking on a distinctly silver hue. As he waited and watched, he saw more of the gold absorbed into the silver all around it.
At that moment, Kendrick realized that he was inside McCowan. The Maze had become Peter McCowan's body, the corridors his arteries. Which left the question of the identity of the silver filaments. Someone or something else – Robert Vincenzo, he was sure – was in the process of eating away at McCowan, like a silver cancer.
Beyond the shield door there came a sound like fluttering wings. Again he caught half-glimpses at the edge of his vision, lost in faraway shadows.
All in your mind.
But what if it was real? Something had killed those soldiers back there.
The fluttering faded and Kendrick found his way to yet another stairwell that led far, far down. Somewhere down there, at the very lowest levels, people had died, some of them his friends.
Robert Vincenzo himself had died, somewhere down there. And Peter McCowan, too.
Summer 2088 (exact date unknown) The Maze
Kendrick searched until he came across the promised cache of provisions and water in a place that he could have sworn had been empty the last time he'd looked there. He stopped and gorged himself, making himself violently sick, even though there was not all that much food. It was in any case mostly freeze-dried protein, dry and tasteless. Enough to keep him alive for a few more days, however.
He allowed himself some fleeting dreams of freedom, of great metal doors sliding open at the wave of a hand, as obedient as well-trained dogs.
Then he gathered up as much as he could of the remaining supplies and found his way back up through the levels.
On reaching one of the shield doors that was open, waiting for his return, a voice sounded from a speaker. 'Leave the food.'
'Who is that?' Kendrick called out, aware how hoarse his own voice had become. 'Where's Sieracki?'
'Drop the supplies or you'll die,' the voice insisted.
Kendrick heard the sound of well-oiled machine parts rotating. A gun turret swivelled towards him and briefly spat bullets. The concrete above his head exploded into fragments that rained down on his shoulders.
He cowered on the ground, abandoning the food and water where they fell.
The voice continued, 'Now, exit, please.'
