He stumbled back into the room filled with cabinets, found another door to stagger through and slammed it shut behind him. He was now in a side office with a window overlooking the room where Smeby still crouched helplessly.
More of the malignant creatures poured in from the stairwell till uncountable thousands muffled Smeby's screams with the sheer density of their numbers.
Kendrick stepped away from the glass, sickened. Not real, he reminded himself. Aural and visual hallucinations that burned the sanity out of their brains. Anyone without augments would see nothing.
Of course, that didn't explain the corpses he'd found. But it was easier not to think about that aspect.
Kendrick watched in horror as some of the creatures swirled in the air like living smoke, then rushed forward to smack into the glass that separated them from Kendrick. As the glass began to star, he gaped numbly, unable to accept the reality of what he was seeing. Then he looked desperately around the office. There were other doors at the far end: a sign on the wall announced that one of them was an airlock leading out to the station's exterior, the other door seemed to be an elevator, leading back up to the interior of the Archimedes.
On a metal desk stood a computer terminal. It was active, with several windows of information displayed on the screen. Kendrick stepped towards it, noticing that the dust covering the table had been disturbed recently.
He glimpsed a shadowy movement and heard the click almost too late. Draeger was crouching behind the desk, a gun gripped in both hands. He yelled when he saw Kendrick and fired at him wildly.
Despite the close quarters, Draeger managed by some miracle to miss. Kendrick stumbled away while Draeger, shrieking like an animal, fired indiscriminately into the air before pulling himself upright and fixing Kendrick firmly in his sights.
'What… what the fuck are those things out there?' Draeger shouted, wild-eyed and shaking. His spacesuit was smeared with blood, but somehow Kendrick didn't think it was the man's own.
It was difficult for him to accept that the homunculi were physically real. But if Draeger could see them, and he had no augmentation biotechnology…
'Robert Vincenzo,' Kendrick replied. 'They're all Robert Vincenzo.'
'Who the hell's he?'
'He was down there in the Maze with the rest of us,' Kendrick told him. 'That's what your augmentations did to him.'
Draeger stared at Kendrick with an expression like a floundering fish. 'I want to make a deal,' he said finally. His voice was cracking.
A deal? Did this man never give up? Kendrick let out a laugh that sounded halfway to a hysterical sob. 'It's far too late for that, you stupid bastard.'
'I want you to understand something. You do not belong here.' Draeger waved the gun at Kendrick. 'You do not belong here.'
'If that's the case, then neither do you.'
Draeger shook his head defiantly. 'Move over there and turn around. Put your hands against the wall. I don't know what those damn things are, but nobody's going to have to worry about them much longer.'
Kendrick complied, having little choice. 'Now stay there,' said Draeger.
Kendrick heard Draeger step away behind him.
He twisted his head around slowly and saw the other man move over to a wall panel set next to the airlock. Shadows fluttered beyond the window glass. Kendrick didn't think it could hold for much longer.
Draeger's fingers danced across the panel and the door opened, sliding into the wall. He stepped through, the door immediately sliding shut behind him.
As soon as he was gone, Kendrick went over and studied the same panel. He could try using his augmented abilities to get it open but that might take too much time, judging by the sound of scores of small bodies slamming into the glass just behind him. He tried hitting random buttons in the meantime, but – not surprisingly – that didn't work.
Perhaps there was another way to get out of the station…
His wand crackled into life. 'Kendrick? Kendrick, it's Buddy here. I want an explanation.' The other man's voice sounded harsh and brittle.
Kendrick slammed open the door of the surface elevator. He could only pray that the thing would work. 'There isn't time,' he yelled into the wand.
'Tell me now, Kendrick, before it's too late. Tell me you aren't going to-'
Kendrick broke the connection and put the wand back in his pocket. Then he hit a button and the elevator began to crawl laboriously upwards.
Another great shudder ran through the hull around him, much more violent this time. From somewhere not so far away, he could hear a rushing sound again. He glanced at the display on his spacesuit's arm, which told him that the atmospheric pressure in the chamber above him was dropping rapidly. It seemed that the station was venting its air supply.
The rumbling noise grew stronger, rattling the teeth inside his skull. Kendrick had no idea if he'd be able to survive once all the air had been voided.
He pulled out his wand again and hit a switch. 'Buddy, did you feel that?'
'Of course I fucking felt it.' Buddy sounded distant, distracted. 'Someone just blew one of the nukes.'
'That's not possible. If one of those nukes had been blown, we wouldn't still be standing here.'
'Not if there were other nukes, apart from those we saw.' Buddy's voice became very thin, as if he was getting farther away. 'Think about it. A station this size, if you wanted a real demolition job, you'd have to plant several of them externally at different points around the hull. You'd need more than one to be absolutely sure the station was fully destroyed, if you were relying on low-yield tactical nukes like those.'
'Draeger must have figured that out and found one somewhere. If I can only find him-'
Buddy laughed shakily. 'For what? To blow the thing up yourself? It's too late, Ken. It's time you…'
Kendrick stared down at the wand in his hands. Never too late, he told himself.
The elevator ground to a halt with a barely audible electronic ping.
He slammed the door open and stepped back out into the main facility building, immediately breaking into a run. His wand map would tell him where the other external airlocks were.
'Kendrick!'
He gazed down at the wand, his thumb hovering over the button that would break the connection. 'Goodbye, Buddy,' he shouted into it.
If the air was venting he needed to find a spacesuit helmet soon or he'd suffocate before he could track down Draeger – unless survival without breathing was a real possibility for him now. But how long could he manage? Five minutes? Ten? An hour? Better to get himself a suit and take no chances. Still gripping the wand in his gloved hand, Kendrick stumbled back the way he had come. The winged creatures had vanished, at least for the moment.
'Wait, listen!' Buddy yelled to him.
'I've heard enough.'
'No, just listen! There's a satellite array fixed on the outside of the station. If Draeger intends to upload any information to Earthside, he'd need to access that array directly – since the power for half the facility is shorted out. Do you follow me?'
No wonder, then, that Draeger had opted to find his way to the station's exterior. Kendrick suddenly realized that he was starting to hyperventilate, his lungs attempting to suck in air that was no longer there.
'How do you know he has anything he wants to send?' With that computer terminal deep down inside the facility Draeger could have already downloaded everything he needed.
'I don't know. But if he's heading for the array that kind of answers the question.'
'I'm still sorry for the way things worked out, Buddy.'
'So am I, believe me.'
Static began overwhelming the wand, making it nearly useless.
'Can't you hear it?' said Buddy's voice, but it was hard to be sure he was actually addressing Kendrick and not someone else.
'Hear what?' Kendrick yelled over the static.
And there it was. He heard the singing – was that the right word? – which he'd heard while standing on a hill
