Panic swelled in him like a great black tide. More of the bubbles were forming all around him. He turned away and ran, adrenalin pushing him onwards, heading for the sunlight somewhere far above him.
Several minutes passed before he realized that he'd dropped the torch.
McCowan hovered, a constant invisible presence, just behind his shoulder.
'There were more than you two down here,' Kendrick gasped. 'What happened to them?'
'Robert subsumed them, swallowed them up like Jonah's whale. They weren't from Ward Seventeen -didn't have the strength, not like you and me.'
Dragging himself up a stairwell, Kendrick found himself back in the Wards. A sound like a river rushing through the depths of the Maze swelled in the darkness behind him. He pushed through a door and slammed it shut. He grabbed a rusted bed frame and managed to wedge it against the door.
Almost there, almost there.
He hurried on into the corridor beyond, soon finding the central staircase leading upwards. Empty elevator shafts gaped like maws beside it.
As Kendrick put one foot on a lower step he glanced down the long corridor nearby, seeing a cloud of tiny, winged figures racing around each other like angry wasps.
Here, close to the surface levels, the walls weren't so thickly coated with the threads. But even as he watched, a patch of silver smoothed and rounded, budding within seconds. He gaped as the silver took on a sudden golden hue. The bud instantly faded back into the wall, as if never there at all.
Peter is doing this, he realized. Holding Robert back.
Kendrick staggered forward again, all sense of time lost. The corridors became infinite, stretching into darkened eternity. But something kept him going, his body just a machine transporting his awareness through the lightless depths.
The outside world lay somewhere ahead. A dim greyness became more than a hint of light, resolving itself into a faraway point glimmering at the centre of his universe.
'Almost there,' McCowan muttered encouragingly in his ear. Except, of course, McCowan was now in him, not outside. Once they'd left the Maze, would they go on sharing his head? Or would there be an end to it?
Kendrick stumbled into painfully bright morning sunlight, shielding his eyes until his augmented vision adjusted. The sun was still low on the horizon, burning off moisture from the surrounding jungle vegetation. Fatigued and shaken, he sucked in air perfumed with a thousand scents…
… And stopped again. His skin tingled, everywhere across his legs and his back. Almost a burning sensation…
He spotted Buddy standing not too far away, on the crest of a low hill overlooking the plain on which the Maze stood. His arms were folded casually, like those of some tourist checking out the sights.
Buddy turned, as if subliminally aware of Kendrick's sudden presence. He started towards him, smiling widely. But Buddy's smile faded quickly, replaced by an expression of horror.
'Jesus Christ, Kendrick, your face-'
Kendrick looked down at his bare hands, at the lines and vague shapes he could now see writhing beneath his skin. Filaments slid through his flesh like fine subcutaneous webbing. He reached up, his fingertips tracking the same fine, thread-like lines slithering under his cheeks, his nose, his ears, over his skull. He made a sound like a whimper and fell to his knees.
Buddy ran over to grab him by the arm, but Kendrick waved him away, 'Don't touch me.'
'C'mon, Kendrick, we have to get you to a hospital or something.'
Kendrick gasped. He wanted to burn his own flesh off, to hack it away, to tear it from his bones in great bloody strips. Looking at Buddy, he couldn't fail to see the revulsion that the other man couldn't quite hide.
Summer 2088 (exact date unknown) The Maze
The shield door froze halfway, forcing Kendrick to squeeze through a narrow gap. But it had opened, and he could hear voices: people talking excitedly, shouting.
Something thundered with a long, low vibration that rattled through the pipes and conduits lining the ceiling. He could see the shapes of other Labrats watching in the darkness. The gun turret near the shield door stood silent, motionless.
Static hissed from the tannoy speakers. Something had happened to the soldiers and scientists who had been guarding them. Kendrick knew in an instant that they had a real chance at escape.
He stepped forward again. The gun turret remained dormant. A figure moved towards him from up ahead. After a moment he realized that it was Buddy.
'Kendrick, is that you?'
The others were coming closer now. He could sense them shuffling and moving and muttering around him in the dark, shadows against shadows.
'There's a way out,' he told them, letting the gas mask drop from his fingers. Buddy gaped down at it, wide- eyed.
'Where did you -?'
'Sieracki's men didn't get everything. What happened here while I was down below?'
'We heard shooting over the tannoy, then it went dead, like you can hear now. That was a couple of hours ago. And loud booming noises, like something's been blown up.' Buddy grimaced. 'We thought you were both dead. You were in there a lot longer than anyone else so far. Is Peter-?'
'He's dead. We found this gas mask – that's what kept me alive.'
Buddy eyed Kendrick uncertainly.
'It wasn't like that. He deliberately saved my life. Listen, I think we can get out of here. There's a way.'
Kendrick pressed his hand and cheek against the great shield door that separated the lower levels from the Wards above. It buzzed with energy under his touch. He closed his eyes, hearing people shuffling and muttering behind him. He had to do this or they would lose all hope of survival.
He slid his hand across the door's surface. Something surged and shifted beneath his touch. A hollow rattle sounded from somewhere deep inside it – and he felt it shift.
'Now,' he said, standing. 'Push.'
At first he thought he'd failed, as a dozen pairs of hands belonging to people weak from hunger and thirst pressed against unyielding metal. Then something internal gave and the door slid aside, fraction by fraction, its hinges squealing in protest. Kendrick pressed harder, feeling something else give. Shouts of exclamation rang out as the door moved freely now, swinging wide to reveal the long corridors and ascending stairwells beyond.
Free! Kendrick stared at the soft glow of electric lights in the distance. They were free.
It soon became clear that the Maze was under attack. As for its soldiers and scientific staff, they found several men, half out of their uniforms, gazing up at ceilings as though they could see through them to some point beyond. One man lay crumpled in a corner, his face glistening with some thread-like substance that glittered as though it was some rare and precious metal. His features were peaceful, and he appeared to be unaware of their approach.
Kendrick moved past him, caught up in a great flood of bodies. He twisted, staring as the soldier died, oblivious, under a hail of fists and stamping feet.
They found others, cowering in laboratories and offices, as the mob moved on, meeting no resistance. Many
