Against Gravity

"You said something was burning? Explain," Sieracki repeated, his voice insistent.

Perhaps, Kendrick thought, he himself had spoken without even being aware of it. The light suddenly grew much brighter.

"I don't know what I saw. I-"

"Our instruments show nothing burning," Sieracki replied in his familiar flat tones. Kendrick had heard answering machines with more emotional depth.

He framed a reply, then stopped when he saw something that he would never, ever forget.

At first Kendrick thought that the figure was burning. But if this was fire, then the flames were of liquid silver. Insane laughter filled the air and the figure ran at him, almost whooping with joy. Kendrick stood, awestruck, as the creature ran towards him down the long corridor before stopping suddenly at an intersection.

All of a sudden, Kendrick could see something flowing through the conduits that lined the walls and ceiling. No, not seeing; more like a kind of sensing, like trying to hold an image steady in his mind. There for a brief instant, gone the next, always wavering then shifting away.

It was a little like the times when he had become aware of the flow of energy in the electronics systems around him, but on a level of complexity and depth that he could never have previously imagined. Energy, flowing through the walls, suddenly as clearly visible as the streets of a city on a summer afternoon. Bright pulses flared out everywhere from the walls and the ceiling.

Kendrick shouted out to Sieracki, unable to keep himself from babbling. "What was that? You never told us about this. Is it human? For God's sake, what is it?"

"Explain."

"I saw him glowing. I never imagined… I thought he was on fire."

Kendrick stared up at the nearest camera. "Didn't you see it?"

Sieracki was silent this time.

Kendrick wandered, lost, until he came to yet another of the Maze's thousand intersections. Here a shaft curved down into murky blackness. Empty offices filled with shadows beckoned him on either side. He gripped his knife tighter, imagining Ryan lurking in there, waiting.

He climbed down the dark stairwell, the air echoing with his lonely footsteps. Tiny lenses glittered here and there, crudely epoxied to any available surface. He pictured Sieracki watching him from the comfort of his own office.

From somewhere ahead sounded the clattering of feet. Kendrick ducked into an empty office space till the noise began to recede. Something metal gleamed at him in the corner of the room.

He picked it up: a catapult. Not a child's toy, however, for this one looked deadly. Next to it lay a small box filled with steel balls. He wondered how much damage could be done to a human body with such a missile.

Nobody who returned from the lower levels had ever reported finding firearms there. Of course, firearms lacked artistry from the point of view of a man like Sieracki. Just aim and fire – that wouldn't tell Wilber what a bio-augmented soldier might achieve in hand-to-hand combat. A catapult or a knife was more visceral, more immediate. In the context of Sieracki's grand experiment, they made perfect sense.

Disgust and self-loathing filled Kendrick as he threw the catapult down where he had found it. He stepped back out into the corridor, flooded with sudden hatred.

"Can you hear me, Sieracki?" he screamed, his voice echoing down the empty corridors. "Fuck you, I'm not playing your game any more! Do you hear me? Sieracki!"

"But you have to." The voice sounded close, very close. "Or else he'll just kill both of us."

Ryan lunged out of the shadows. Kendrick caught sight of him at the last second. He spun out of the way, crashing into a wall as something hot streaked across the side of his chest. He felt a stinging warmth traverse his flesh.

Ryan's forward momentum had sent him crashing into an ancient file trolley and tumbling to the ground amid clouds of dust. Kendrick felt a sudden desire to fight, to win. The knife was already in his hand, poised for a killing lunge. Instead, he stepped rapidly away from Ryan, keeping the knife pointed towards his adversary, so that at least he could defend himself.

"For Christ's sake, Ryan, just listen to me. There has to be a way out of here. We could-"

"There isn't," Ryan growled, picking himself up from the dust. There was a determination in the words as he met Kendrick's gaze.

"There has to be," Kendrick insisted.

He glanced down to see blood soaking through the thin paper of his shirt. Ryan had injured him – but surely it was only a flesh wound? He was still standing, still ready to protect himself.

"Uh-uh," said Ryan, shaking his head. He was carrying a knife like Kendrick's. Dried blood stained the dusty floor between them, and Kendrick tasted bile at the back of his throat. "Next time, defend yourself," Ryan warned him, backing away. "I never said I was going to make this easy for you."

Ryan turned and fled. Kendrick watched him go, dumbfounded. Then he went back to pick up the catapult.

Peering down a stairwell, Kendrick saw flickering light somewhere far below.

"You're in my head," he whispered to himself. "You're not real." real am real am real

Kendrick cried out at the pain that had just exploded inside his skull. The words sounded deafening, overwhelming: but they did not echo.

In my head. He pushed himself down the steps towards the burning figure, the light around it flickering like silent lightning. Again he perceived lines of energy flowing through the walls and ceiling, but they were now far more evident than before. It was as if he could deduce the layout of the Maze in its entirety, reduced to a schematic displaying the flow of electrons throughout its structure.

He looked closer and realized that the burning figure was Robert Vincenzo, Caroline's brother. But transformed – no longer human. Kendrick halted, frozen to the spot. Then Robert was gone, turning and fleeing into the depths.

Eventually Kendrick found the will to put one foot in front of the other, continuing his descent.

Even from far away, Robert's words still filled Kendrick's head. the bright began it

"Began what?" everything came the reply, they woke on the archimedes and waited such a long time now they know we are here

"You're going to have to explain that more clearly, Robert." they see themselves in us

The voice faded suddenly, interrupted by a series of high-pitched giggles that sounded near – very near.

Kendrick wasn't even looking for Ryan now. He just wanted to understand what had become of Robert, the only one yet to escape the Wards. He wanted to see if the flaming creature with Robert's face had objective reality, or if he was simply losing his mind.

A shadow flickered in the distance, accompanied by the clatter of feet on metal. Kendrick hurried towards it, finding himself on the threshold of a vast chamber filled with towering piles of metal crates.

He hesitated. It would be too easy for Ryan to creep up on him in there. Overhead, light glinted from a lens.

Kendrick wrapped his fingers tightly around the haft of his knife and stepped slowly forward into the chamber, listening, watching. Several low-bodied trucks sat on rails next to an industrial-size elevator.

Hearing the faintest scuff of a heel directly behind him, he turned, moving faster than he could ever imagine possible. A blade arced past his ear, missing his head by millimetres.

That should have killed me. Kendrick marvelled at the lightning speed of his own responses. Ryan stepped nimbly away from him, an animal sound emerging from his throat as he prepared to lunge again.