13

“Get to work, Ayers.” I watched him. On one hand, I was paranoid and untrusting of people like Ayers. On the other hand, I was usually right. There was no way I would let him get me or my friends killed while he tried to escape with the codes.

“Reaper,” Elise said from another section of the room. There shouldn’t be any place to hide, but the multiple staircases and ladders leading down into the center gave it something that passed for corners and the lighting was minimal.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine, I guess,” Elise answered. “You need to see this.”

“Horvath, watch Ayers. And I mean watch him like you don’t trust him,” I said.

The Wallach soldier grunted as he replaced me as Ayers’s guard. “I don’t trust him.”

Elise stood over a dark shape that had to be a body—a large, motionless body.

“Who did they leave behind? A technician who couldn’t take the isolation?” I asked. “A guard? Or just someone who pissed off Nebs and Ayers and got left here to pay the ultimate price.”

Elise shook her head as she answered. “I don’t think this is any of those things.”

I moved around Elise and stared down at a monster. The body had started off as a human, I thought. The more I studied it, the less sure I was. “It looks mummified. There aren’t any bugs or animals to speed the decomposition.”

“Keep an eye on Horvath and Ayers,” I repeated, then knelt next to the corpse. The pre-mortem color of the skin was difficult to determine. Post-mortem, it looked charcoal blue with a striped camouflage pattern. Decomposition had withered the tissue underneath the skin and possibly changed its overall effect, but I didn’t know what it had looked like before it died to be sure.

The head was too large, and I had an uneasy suspicion there were a lot of teeth in the mouth. Its lips had drawn back, showing a preview of the horror within.

“What’s wrong with its jaw?” Elise sounded nervous and I noticed she was dividing her attention between the dead creature and Doctor Ayers.

“I don’t think it’s hinged like a human mandible. I read a book during my isolation in Dreadmax; it was a fairytale about Earth, but it mentioned an animal called a snake that could swallow its prey whole. Maybe that is what this is.” I said. “X, are you getting all of this? Include Elise in your answer but leave Horvath out of it. I need him to focus on his job.”

“The structure of the jawline in the oversized mouth suggests that this humanoid had been able to take very large bites—or possibly swallow three or four kilos of organic material at once. The neck, which seems to have a tougher exterior than a human would, is also enlarged,” X-37 explained.

“You’re saying this thing has bad table manners,” I said.

“Unknown, Reaper Cain. I can conclude it is capable of such an action, but have no way to verify that is its preferred method to consume calories,” X-37 said.

“I’m going to bring it back with us,” I said. “Assuming it doesn’t fall to pieces when I pick it up.”

“Doctor Ayers has not concluded his data recovery efforts,” X-37 advised. “So you have time to examine the arms of this thing more closely.”

I squinted at the arms, leaning closer to see what my limited artificial intelligence had observed. What I found on the left arm were cable-like tentacles lying in a pool of putrid slime.

That this thing’s left arm differed from its right set me off balance. It wasn’t cybernetic, but for a second, I felt a strange kinship with it. It was a freak that had a mass of spike-tipped tentacles on its left arm. On instinct, I checked the dead creature’s left eye that found both of its eyes to be sunken and mostly decomposed.

“This thing is big,” I said. “I can lift it with my armor, but it will be awkward.”

“Please examine the right arm,” X-37 said.

I shifted my attention and saw what my LAI was looking for. The right arm had grooved slots from wrist to elbow where the tips of the organic spike-tentacles protruded. “Wow, X, it looks like the death tentacles could extend themselves—if it was alive.”

“I hope this is the only one,” Elise said. “It looks mean.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said. “Ayers, are you about done?”

“I have transferred all the codes into one unit that will be easier to carry back to the shuttle,” he said.

“Great, let’s get out of here,” I said, then hefted the corpse onto my shoulder. “Do you know who this freak is?”

“No, not precisely,” Ayers said, his voice so quiet I barely understood him even with the Archangel comms gear. “Nebs was looking for test subject 14B before we left Macabre. I would be very curious to know how he was left behind.”

“Ayers, there are a lot of things about this place that raise questions,” I said. “Elise, take point. Get Carrie down here with that shuttle.”

* * *

Elise paused in the doorway, contacting Carrie before stepping out onto the deck of the lava ship. “We’re ready for pick up. Let’s time it so there’s as little exposure as possible. I’m not excited about getting sprayed with molten rock again.”

The outside of her armor, and ours, was pockmarked with heat damage. On one section of her back, there was damage all the way down to the gold surface.

“I’m inbound,” Carrie advised. “Ninety seconds.”

A countdown timer appeared in all of our Archangel HUDs Elise waited for fifteen seconds, then led us out onto the deck. The moment we started to move, the deck came apart under our feet.

The shuttle touched down as Elise sprinted toward it. Just behind her, the deck split as though it had been designed to self-destruct. Horvath grabbed Ayers and pulled him back, saving him from a rather toasty death.

Sections of the lava ship plummeted downward, spraying red waves into the air. Horvath and I shielded Ayers with our armor. The add-on layers sizzled and burned as more and more of the magma splashed across us. All of us were struggling to maintain our feet and not slide off the tilting deck.

“Jump, Ayers,” I said, “and don’t tell me you don’t know how.”

His voice caught when he tried to speak. “You’re right. I was lying. I’m skilled in the Archangel armor. Nebs made me learn because he thought I might need it someday. But I still can’t jump.”

“Now is not the time for games!” I growled.

“I’m scared! Jumping over that is impossible!”

“Godsdammit!” I dropped the freakish corpse I was carrying and grabbed Ayers by one arm. “Horvath, get the other. We’ll have to jump with him between us. Ayers, I know you’re shitting your pants but try to jump when we do. All this extra protection we covered ourselves with will only make dying longer and more miserable if we fall in.”

“I… I… I…” Ayers stammered.

“I’m ready, Reaper,” Horvath said.

“On three. One, two, three, jump!” I leaped over the gap, holding Ayers as tightly as I could. The three of us sprang into the air, and for a second, it felt like we would make it.

I cursed, twisting in mid-flight, and shoved Ayers and Horvath as hard as I could. The effect was minimal because I had nothing to push off of, but it was just enough to get them onto the deck where the shuttle had touched down.

They landed in a heap while I hit the edge, smashing the armor so hard it knocked the wind out of me, and fell back.

“Reaper!” Elise screamed, already leaping toward me with a tow cable in one hand while Horvath and Ayers were tumbling across the rocking deck of the lava ship.

I hit the surface of the lava. All of my sensors went blank.

“You have forty-five seconds before the Archangel armor loses integrity,” X-37 said. “Please tread water.”

“I’m not in water, X!”

Something grabbed me and hauled me upward. Bubbling lava held onto my legs, nearly dragging me back down.

Lights and images on my HUD flickered and popped. The Archangel armor was trying to reboot, fighting for survival as hard as I was. When I heard Elise shouting at me, half of the words were lost, and she sounded like she was far away.

“Can you… can you at least try to climb out of that mess? My servos are overloading. Why are you so big?” she grunted, her words barely understandable. Apparently, I was heavy even with the added strength of her Archangel gear.

“I’m doing my best!” I snapped. “Why don’t you try swimming in lava. It’s harder than it looks.”

Elise started laughing so hard I thought she might be crying inside of her helmet. “You’re such a jerk!”

“Less talking and more pulling me out of the fire,” I said.

I was halfway out when Horvath came to help. After what seemed like hours but was only a handful of seconds, the three of us tumbled onto the surface between the edge and the shuttle ramp.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Carrie shouted.

I heard Ayers in the background yelling at her to leave us.

“I really don’t like that guy,” Elise said, panting the words as we all leaned on our knees to catch our breath.

“Me neither,” I said. “But you still have to be nice to him. I doubt this is the last secret he’s hidden from us.”

We staggered up the ramp and onto the shuttle, and Carrie took off. I grabbed Ayers and slammed him into his seat.

“You nearly got us killed.”

“I thought Reapers knew what they were doing. You can’t blame your incompetence on me,” Ayers said.

Elise pulled me back and pointed at a bench along the wall. “Sit down, Reaper. Buckle in. Let’s just get back to the Jellybird before you try to kill him.”

I complied, glad she had intervened. Turning away, I spoke with X-37 privately. “Can we never do that again, X?”

“I will enter your desire to avoid lava fields in my database,” X-37 said as I took my seat and strapped in for the ride back to the Jellybird.

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