Against Gravity

He jerked his foot away, heard a ripping sound, and overbalanced, catching at the side of an elevator shaft with one gloved hand. He spotted shapes darting about far below, black on black, coming closer.

Kendrick ran, eventually finding a stairway. He slammed a half-rusted door shut behind him and kept ru

You need to be here, he reminded himself. You're not here just for yourself but for everyone else who was dragged here to die. Think of it that way.

He continued to descend till, stepping through an open shield door, he knew instantly that he had finally reached the lower levels.

This was the place where Kendrick had almost died. Where thousands had died. But something was different, and after a minute he worked out what it was. Down here, many more of the threads that coated the walls were gold-coloured, although the silver ones still predominated.

He pulled off a glove, and somehow found the strength of will to reach out and briefly touch a thick strand of the pale yellow filaments.

Kendrick whirled around, sure that Peter McCowan was standing there.

"Peter?"

His voice seemed to echo for an unusually long time.

This way, he imagined McCowan saying.

He turned to face down one particular corridor.

Suddenly he knew he had to go… that way.

A rusting gun turret still stood on its mount beside a shield door, the filaments that coated it giving it a strange bejewelled look.

Kendrick stepped closer to the large weapon and, as he watched, some of the gold threads glistened noticeably before slowly taking on a distinctly silver hue. As he waited and watched, he saw more of the gold absorbed into the silver all around it.

At that moment, Kendrick realized that he was inside McCowan. The Maze had become Peter McCowan's body, the corridors his arteries. Which left the question of the identity of the silver filaments. Someone or something else – Robert Vincenzo, he was sure – was in the process of eating away at McCowan, like a silver cancer.

Beyond the shield door there came a sound like fluttering wings. Again he caught half-glimpses at the edge of his vision, lost in faraway shadows.

All in your mind.

But what if it was real? Something had killed those soldiers back there.

The fluttering faded and Kendrick found his way to yet another stairwell that led far, far down. Somewhere down there, at the very lowest levels, people had died, some of them his friends.

Robert Vincenzo himself had died, somewhere down there. And Peter McCowan, too.

Summer 2088 (exact date unknown) The Maze

Kendrick searched until he came across the promised cache of provisions and water in a place that he could have sworn had been empty the last time he'd looked there. He stopped and gorged himself, making himself violently sick, even though there was not all that much food. It was in any case mostly freeze-dried protein, dry and tasteless. Enough to keep him alive for a few more days, however.

He allowed himself some fleeting dreams of freedom, of great metal doors sliding open at the wave of a hand, as obedient as well-trained dogs.

Then he gathered up as much as he could of the remaining supplies and found his way back up through the levels.

On reaching one of the shield doors that was open, waiting for his return, a voice sounded from a speaker. "Leave the food."

"Who is that?" Kendrick called out, aware how hoarse his own voice had become. "Where's Sieracki?"

"Drop the supplies or you'll die," the voice insisted.

Kendrick heard the sound of well-oiled machine parts rotating. A gun turret swivelled towards him and briefly spat bullets. The concrete above his head exploded into fragments that rained down on his shoulders.

He cowered on the ground, abandoning the food and water where they fell.

The voice continued, "Now, exit, please."

"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."