Against Gravity

"So what do we do now?"

"I didn't get a chance to explore even a tenth of this place the first time I was here. And if things are falling apart up above us, then maybe there's somewhere they can't see us, or find us. Or perhaps there are weapons we can use against them."

"I heard stories about what happens to people who don't do what they're told once they're down here."

"You mean gas?"

"That's what I heard. You can't run away from gas."

"Maybe so, but if we don't find some way out, we're going to die one way or the other."

McCowan nodded. "Listen, before we do anything else, I want to ask you this. That knife you had in your hand a few minutes ago – were you really going to use it on me?"

Kendrick felt his face grow hot, and looked away while McCowan continued. "I'm not playing this game, Ken. No matter what the consequences may be."

Kendrick nodded slowly. "If we can't find a way out, they'll gas us both."

McCowan shrugged. "We're dead men anyway, aren't we?"

They searched, together or separately, calling out to each other through the infinite darkness. A tentative map of the lower levels was now begi

At one point, he heard Peter McCowan's voice echoing through the corridors, calling his name.

"I found something." McCowan gri

"Not so fucking thorough after all, eh?"

"Are there any more of these things?" Kendrick circled the room, kicking aside trash, vainly searching for another of the green boxes. "Let me take a look at that," he said, reaching out. Some i

McCowan glanced around thoughtfully. "Did you notice how there are hardly any cameras down here? Seems like the lower the level, the less thorough the surveillance. There have to be blind spots."

"We should do something about the cameras," Kendrick muttered.

"Yeah, why not? Let's blind the sons of bitches."

A brief silence fell between them. "Peter, if we can't find ourselves another mask-"

"Shut the fuck up," McCowan snapped. Kendrick averted his gaze.

"We'll find one," McCowan continued eventually. "But standing around yattering won't do it. Start looking again. Maybe we missed something."

They pulled a couple of ruined chairs apart and wielded the metal legs like clubs. It was a strangely joyous experience, smashing the cameras wherever they found them, even though the devices were tougher than they looked. But the two men destroyed sufficient numbers for them to achieve a powerful sense of satisfaction.

Unless some other means of tracking their movements existed, there were now whole areas of the Maze where their progress could not be tracked.

It had occurred to both of them that they would have no warning when the time came for them to die. Kendrick left McCowan to carry the mask, an act of implicit trust. For them not to trust each other would mean winding up with one of them dead for certain.

Kendrick had hoped, perhaps, for an ABC suit, a logical thing to find in such a place. Or else an airtight vault where they could seal themselves in. But their search was fruitless.

At some point, Sieracki's soldiers would need to pump their poisoned air back out in time for the next batch of combatants to be thrown in.

Exhausted, Kendrick and McCowan found themselves at the deepest level. Robert and Ryan had died near here.

"I don't think we've got much longer to go."

McCowan's eyes flicked upwards at the ceiling. "You think they're still alive up there?"

"Who?" asked Kendrick, puzzled.

"Your family. Your wife and your kid."

"I just don't know. Sometimes I convince myself they must be, other times…"

"I understand."

McCowan nodded. "I found something else." He pointed down the network of corridors that he had just been investigating.

"What did you find there?"

McCowan hauled himself up again. "I should show you first. C'mon."

The room was round like an upended bowl, extending above their heads for about a dozen metres. In its centre stood an enormous engine of some kind, and they had entered onto a circular catwalk extending all the way around the open space in which it stood. The floor, a few metres below them, was accessible by ladders.

"Over here." McCowan pointed with the gas mask that he still held loosely in his hand. Kendrick followed him down a ladder and over to some kind of control area. Banks of rusted machinery stood all around them.

Kendrick gazed around. "I don't see anything."

He didn't see the steel chair leg swinging towards his head until it was far too late. His vision blurred under a wave of agony. McCowan's fist slammed again and again into the back of his neck, smashing him to the floor. Just before all thought and awareness abandoned him, something cold and hard was pressed against his face. The last thing Kendrick heard was the sound of McCowan's laboured breathing.

He dreamed.

Fantastical creatures floated through the empty blackness of the lower levels like monsters from a Bosch nightmare. A burning figure ran screeching along the corridors, the surrounding flames golden yet cool so that they did not burn. It cried out his name, sometimes imploring, sometimes harshly angry.

He tried desperately to find a way out. He ran through doors that slithered open at his approach, ran past robot gun turrets that melted into slag as he passed. He was now nothing more than skin and bone riddled with metallic threads, more machine than human.

Kendrick woke up to find something pressed against his face. He screamed, still half-caught in a nightmare of drowning at the bottom of a deep, dark ocean. The thing was still pressed against his face, and he couldn't get it off.

Staggering to his feet in a panic, it took him a moment to realize that it was the gas mask strapped over his face. His thoughts numb, he instinctively reached around the back of his head and, with unsteady fingers, began to unstrap the mask.

Then he stopped as he remembered the rumours of gas. Refastening the straps, he sucked air into his lungs, the sound loud and claustrophobic in the confines of the mask. A canister had been carefully strapped between his shoulder blades.

There was no sign of McCowan himself.

A dull vibration rolled through the ground under his feet. But low enough so that at first Kendrick thought it was a product of his imagination.

Half an hour later, he found McCowan. The other man hadn't gone far. From a distance, he looked almost peaceful, sitting with his back against a wall. But, as Kendrick drew closer, what had appeared from a distance to be a contented half-smile resolved itself into a rictus grin, the lips drawn painfully back across the teeth, the eyes showing mostly the whites.

Safe inside his gas mask, Kendrick licked his lips nervously. It was easy to picture himself lying there instead. And, even though he hated himself for it, it was impossible for him to deny the thrill of gratitude he felt at knowing that someone else had died on his behalf.