Abaddon's Gate

A

When she could finally move without feeling light-headed she went looking for help and found that the corridor outside her room was worse.

Just a few meters from her door, a young man had been crushed. He looked as though a malevolent giant had stomped on him and then ground him under its heel. The boy was not only smashed, but torn and twisted in ways that barely left him recognizable as a human. His blood splashed the floor and walls and drifted around his corpse in red balls like grisly Christmas ornaments.

A

“Help me,” he said, and then coughed up a glob of blood and mucus that drifted away in a red-and-green ball.

A

“Help me,” the man said again. His voice was weaker and filled with even more of a liquid rasp. A

“I will,” A

The man began weeping softly. A

This was the part the mille

They loved scenes of righteous Godly vengeance on sinful mankind. They loved to show God’s chosen people safe from harm, watching with happy faces as they were proved right to the world. But they never showed the aftermath. They never showed weeping humans, crushed and dying in pools of their own fluids. Young men smashed into piles of red flesh. A young woman cut in half because she was passing through a hatchway when catastrophe hit.

This was Armageddon. This is what it looked like. Blood and torn flesh and cries for help.

A

She recognized that her interest in the relative movements of the ship was just her mind trying to find a distraction from the scene around her, and started crying again. The idea that she might never come home from this trip crashed in on her. For the first time since coming to the Ring, she saw a future in which she never held Nami again. Never smelled her hair. Never kissed Nono, or climbed into a warm bed beside her and held her close. The pain of those things being ripped away from her was worse than anything physical she’d suffered. She didn’t wipe away the tears that came, and they blinded her. That was fine. There was nothing here she wanted to see.

When something grabbed her from behind and spun her around, she tensed, waiting for some new horror to reveal itself.

It was Tilly.

“Oh, thank God,” the woman said, hugging A

Unable to hug back, A

“My face is fine. Just a little cut. But my arms are hurt. I can barely move them. We need to get help. Alonzo Guzman’s in his room, and he’s hurt. Really hurt. Do you know what happened?”

“I haven’t met anyone yet who knows,” Tilly said, rotating A

“I think they were for a second,” A

Tilly nodded and pulled a red-and-white backpack off one shoulder. When she opened it, it was filled with dozens of plastic packages with tiny black text on them. Tilly pulled a few out, read them, put them back. After several tries, she stripped the packaging off of three small injection ampules.

“What is that?” A

A

“I was sleeping when it happened,” Tilly said, tossing the empty ampules into the first aid pack. “But I woke up feeling like a forklift had run over me. I think my ribs were popped out of place. I could barely breathe. So I dug up this pack from the emergency closet in my room.”

“I didn’t think to look there,” A

“Hey, kiddo,” Tilly said, “takes a second for that first rush to ease down a bit. I spent a full minute trying to resuscitate a pile of red paste before I realized how wired I was.”

“What is this?” A

Tilly shrugged. “Military-grade amphetamines and painkillers, I’m guessing. I gave you an anti-inflammatory too. Because what the hell.”

“Are you a doctor?” A

“No, but I can read the directions on the package.”

“Okay.” A

“Let’s go find someone who knows what’s going on,” Tilly said, pulling A

“And after, I need to find my people,” A

“I may have given you too much. Nono and Nami are at home, in Moscow.”

“No, my people. My congregation. Chris and that other guy and the marine. She’s angry, but I think I can talk to her. I need to find them.”

“Yeah,” Tilly said. “May have overdosed you a bit. But we’ll find them. Let’s find help first.”