'I remember what happened when the Dissection Door went crazy.' McCowan scratched at his chin. 'I didn't attribute too much to it at the time. Not a lot of the stuff here works too well, apart from the guns.'
Buddy shook his head. 'No, I felt it, too. We did something to make that happen.'
Kendrick nodded agreement. 'If we could make that door open, what about the shield doors? Could we do the same with them?'
McCowan laughed. 'Talk all you like, but I still don't see you having too much luck getting out of here.'
'Maybe that's why they locked us down here,' Kendrick replied bitterly. 'They'd be mad to let any of us leave here alive.'
Peter McCowan had been summoned the next day.
The voice over the speakers was a different one again. Just before it clicked off, Kendrick thought he heard shouting or screams in the background.
He'd gone back to squatting by one of the shield doors. McCowan reappeared a little while later, and for more than an hour just sat staring hollowly into the darkness.
Kendrick waited to see what the other man would do. If McCowan refused to enter the killing levels, he probably wouldn't last more than another day or two. Like the rest of them, his torn clothing hung on his emaciated frame like rags on a scarecrow. His eyes were bright even in the darkness, like jewels in the eye sockets of a cadaver.
McCowan's name was called for the last time. A few seconds later Kendrick's name was also called. McCowan's eyes glinted in the dark as his gaze fixed on Kendrick's. Then he got up and walked away.
'Ken?'
Kendrick forced himself to turn slowly. McCowan stood only a short distance away, at the far end of a storage area like the one that Robert Vincenzo had died in.
Kendrick noticed that the other man wasn't carrying a knife.
McCowan's gaze fell to the long blade grasped in Kendrick's own hand. He shook his head ruefully. 'So, you going to use that thing on me?'
Kendrick opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a kind of stutter. Then he shook his head, as if he could as easily shake loose the confusion and near-delirium that plagued him.
Then he started to laugh until tears rolled down his face, and this laughter transformed into a violent, racking sobbing that sucked up every last remaining dreg of energy left within him. He sank down onto the cold, hard concrete, clutching his head in his hands, while the knife clattered down beside him.
Kendrick felt a hand drop onto his shoulder. 'I guess you know the rules better than I do now,' McCowan said. 'That raises a couple of questions.'
'Peter-'
'We're not doing this,' McCowan said firmly. 'Right?'
Kendrick nodded. 'I've been thinking that there must be some way out of here,' he said at length.
'Well, you've not yet had any success trying to magic those doors open. Look, if I'm going out, I can think of ways better than doing so for Sieracki's personal entertainment.'
'Sieracki is dead.'
McCowan cocked his head quizzically. 'What makes you say that?'
'You can hear it whenever they summon people in. It's different voices. They sound… out of control, I think. This has nothing to do with testing military technology, not any more. It's about killing us, in the most sadistic way possible.'
'So what do we do now?'
'I didn't get a chance to explore even a tenth of this place the first time I was here. And if things are falling apart up above us, then maybe there's somewhere they can't see us, or find us. Or perhaps there are weapons we can use against them.'
'I heard stories about what happens to people who don't do what they're told once they're down here.'
'You mean gas?'
'That's what I heard. You can't run away from gas.'
'Maybe so, but if we don't find some way out, we're going to die one way or the other.'
McCowan nodded. 'Listen, before we do anything else, I want to ask you this. That knife you had in your hand a few minutes ago – were you really going to use it on me?'
Kendrick felt his face grow hot, and looked away while McCowan continued. 'I'm not playing this game, Ken. No matter what the consequences may be.'
Kendrick nodded slowly. 'If we can't find a way out, they'll gas us both.'
McCowan shrugged. 'We're dead men anyway, aren't we?'
They searched, together or separately, calling out to each other through the infinite darkness. A tentative map of the lower levels was now beginning to grow in Kendrick's mind, but they found no secret entrances, no bolt- holes in which they could hide away from the soldiers who controlled the Maze. Kendrick felt a frustration burning in him: it would take too long to explore the lower levels thoroughly.
At one point, he heard Peter McCowan's voice echoing through the corridors, calling his name.
'I found something.' McCowan grinned when Kendrick found him in what looked as though it had once been an office complex, a maze within the Maze, a warren of cubbyholes and empty rooms stacked with mouldering paperwork. A long green metal case lay open at his feet. The contraption of rubber and glass in his hands was a gas mask.
'Not so fucking thorough after all, eh?'
'Are there any more of these things?' Kendrick circled the room, kicking aside trash, vainly searching for another of the green boxes. 'Let me take a look at that,' he said, reaching out. Some inner clock was telling them that they had little time left before the next batch of victims would be cycled into the lower levels.
McCowan glanced around thoughtfully. 'Did you notice how there are hardly any cameras down here? Seems like the lower the level, the less thorough the surveillance. There have to be blind spots.'
'We should do something about the cameras,' Kendrick muttered.
'Yeah, why not? Let's blind the sons of bitches.'
A brief silence fell between them. 'Peter, if we can't find ourselves another mask-'
'Shut the fuck up,' McCowan snapped. Kendrick averted his gaze.
'We'll find one,' McCowan continued eventually. 'But standing around yattering won't do it. Start looking again. Maybe we missed something.'
They pulled a couple of ruined chairs apart and wielded the metal legs like clubs. It was a strangely joyous experience, smashing the cameras wherever they found them, even though the devices were tougher than they looked. But the two men destroyed sufficient numbers for them to achieve a powerful sense of satisfaction.
Unless some other means of tracking their movements existed, there were now whole areas of the Maze where their progress could not be tracked.
It had occurred to both of them that they would have no warning when the time came for them to die. Kendrick left McCowan to carry the mask, an act of implicit trust. For them not to trust each other would mean winding up with one of them dead for certain.
Kendrick had hoped, perhaps, for an ABC suit, a logical thing to find in such a place. Or else an airtight vault where they could seal themselves in. But their search was fruitless.
