with fiery brilliance as the light moved across them.
Kendrick sensed rather than heard the gentle beat of a thousand wings, the source of that almost inaudible sound somehow always out of range of his torch beam.
He forced himself to step towards the gleaming skeleton, even though his mouth was dry with terror. He imagined that something was shifting in those empty sockets as if it was observing his passage. He could feel something constantly prying at the edge of his awareness, making itself known through a furious tingling in his skin.
Then wings began to take shape in the periphery of his vision, a thousand million malignant hornets, each with the face of the same dead boy.
Kendrick moved away from the eyeless skeleton – and then he started to run.
Kendrick turned a corner; then another corner. He ran further, found a stairwell and descended quickly, encountering a greater proliferation of the gold threads there. He leapt down more stairwells, noting how rapidly the gold-coloured threads around him were now being subsumed into the silver. He stopped, momentarily uncertain, at an intersection and saw how the silver threads right above his head began to drop down, towards the top of his head. Yelling, he ducked away from them.
Far behind him there was a sound like rushing water. Kendrick's blood ran cold to think what might be coming after him in the dark.
The gold threads led ever downwards, and he followed them.
Kendrick reached the same great domed room with its central engine and banks of equipment, as silent as the day he'd left them.
Passing through it quickly, he discovered Peter McCowan's body slumped exactly where he remembered. Kendrick felt the sting of tears in his eyes, along with a deep and indelible sense of loss.
Golden threads sprouted in thick plumes from McCowan's exploded skull, reaching up in twisted bundles to the ceiling far above. The corpse shone like a jewel.
Even as Kendrick glanced to one side, he noticed glints of silver beginning to spread through this river of gold. Near McCowan's remains the air smelled of beer and cigarettes and sweat, all overlaid with a lingering musk of death.
'Peter?'
Right here. The words seemed less than a whisper, deep in Kendrick's mind.
'Why can't I see you? I could see you before.'
Used up all my resources trying to keep him out, but soon it'll all be gone. Then I'll be gone.
Kendrick gazed down into the golden skeleton's empty eye sockets. 'What do you want me to do?' he pleaded.
Take me with you.
'You told me I could get all the answers I needed down here.'
Not down here. No, the evidence you need is on the Archimedes.
Kendrick blinked, and a chill ran through his spine with such intensity that he almost cried out. 'Then why the hell bring me all the way down here?'
Because you need me up there with you. You'll never find what you're looking for if you have to deal with Robert on your own. Put out your hand – or I'll die without your help – and you'll die without mine.
'What makes you think you can do any better with Robert up there than you fucking did down here?'
He has an advantage down here that he won't have up there. I can handle him, I swear. Now touch me. Put out your hand and touch me.
'You tricked me, you lousy shit!'
I told you I could get you what you need to bring Draeger down, if you came here. And I will. But if you walk away from me now I won't be able to help you. Take me to the Archimedes and you'll get what you need.
Kendrick wished that he still had a functioning heart so he could hear how loudly it was hammering.
'You misled me, damn you. You could have been fucking straight with me.'
As no answer came, he shook his head and swore loudly. Then he knelt down next to McCowan's corpse. As he did so, he realized with a shock just how fast the silver was spreading, and again he heard that distant rushing sound.
Kendrick removed one of his gloves and reached out to McCowan's skeletal cheek, for the first time noticing that even the surface of the bone was covered in cilia-like threads, like golden fur. Reaching further, he closed his eyes and felt a sting as the filaments brushed against his skin.
He opened his eyes again, stifling a scream. Golden threads slithered across the back of his hand, coating it in an instant, as if he had just combed his fingers through a cluster of aureate spider webs.
Stumbling backwards, his foot caught against a bony elbow. The skeleton collapsed in front of him, the skull toppling with a clatter.
Kendrick pulled himself upright and stared again at the back of his hand, watching in horror as the golden filaments melted into his flesh.
The rushing sound was growing louder, more frenzied.
And then McCowan was standing there in front of him, his face twisted in a grimace. 'That's more like it,' he growled. 'Right, let's get the fuck out of here.'
'What have you done to me?' Kendrick screamed. 'What's this stuff getting inside my skin?'
'That stuff is me,' Peter replied. 'Trust me, I'll get you what you want. But first you're taking me to the Archimedes.'
As Kendrick retraced his path, invisible wings assailed him. Yet when he waved a hand in front of him he found that there was nothing there.
'Just get out of here,' he heard McCowan mutter. Behind them the gold was dying, fading, the silver seeping through it like dye in water.
'Not real,' Kendrick muttered to reassure himself as he found his way back to a stairwell and began to climb. 'Just in my head.' He repeated the words over and over, like a mantra. He stopped at a door, thoughts whirling through his mind.
He realized that Robert Vincenzo must have been the source of the original nanite infestation. The augmentations had extruded outside his body, spreading uninterrupted through the corridors and dark spaces of the Maze over the intervening years, some echo of the boy's deranged mind still locked somewhere inside them. The same must have happened with McCowan and perhaps, somewhere out there, the corpses of other Labrats lay in mass graves with nanite filaments slowly infiltrating the surrounding earth. Perhaps their thoughts still flickered silently through dank, mossy soil even now…
Laughter, high and child-like, echoed from far away in the darkness.
In my head.
'It's not in your head, it's real.' McCowan's voice spoke as if from right behind Kendrick's shoulder.
'Fuck this! None of this is real!' Kendrick pressed forward, his muscles numb with fatigue. He moved steadily up and through innumerable stairwells and corridors.
He was now out of the killing levels but still had a long way to go.
The densely packed networks of filaments – all silver now, wherever he looked – were beginning to bubble up, like pockets of gas rising to the surface of heated liquid.
As he got closer to a smooth dome of silver, several inches in diameter and protruding from the filament- dense wall, a homunculus-like shape began twisting under its oil-slick surface. As if waiting to be born.
Kendrick backed away from it and something clattered to the ground by his feet. In my head, in my head.
