Page 124 of Dead Silence
Verux and I are more alike than I thought. Like corporate foster parent, like daughter, it seems.
My shaking hand lowers the weapon slowly. In this moment, I want to curl up in a ball on the floor of the cargo bay and just… stop. Everything.
The comm in my helmet rasps suddenly, making me jolt. “I’ve got it,” an exhausted male voice says in my ear. He’s wheezing, his breathing pained and uneven.
Someone is still alive? One of the security team members, it has to be. I don’t recognize the voice, but I’m pretty sure all of Shin’s team is in here. In pieces.
Max taps the comm implant near his ear. “Good work, Montgomery. Disconnect it and bring it to the cargo bay.”
Montgomery? I wrote him and his team off as lost the second I saw Diaz and her crew. The effects of the MAW seem to be stronger in closer proximity to it.
To be fair, Montgomery doesn’t sound good.
“Affirmative,” he responds to Max in a raspy, clotted voice after a bout of thick, wet coughing.
But he succeeded. He found the device and he’s bringing it home, like an obedient dog retrieving a stick.
My heart plummets toward my feet. Max is going to win.He’s going to get the device, leave onAres,and blow us up. It’s all been for nothing.
A rippling sensation suddenly crawls over my skin, raising goose bumps, despite my suit. Except it’s more of… a retraction, like the ocean pulling away from the shore. The relentless pressure in my head lessens, like a cork is in the process of being pulled, and then vanishes.
It’s off. It’s gone.
Max, watching me, nods. Then steps across into the bay, in anticipation of Montgomery’s expected arrival.
And it clicks.This.This is what Max has been waiting for.
He’ll go back to Verux to report his final success—he’ll be the champion, the hero, one last time—and Verux will go on doing what it does. No one will know the truth. Other children will lose their parents. Isabelle Behrens, perhaps. That might be more my fault than Verux’s but if I’m a product of Verux—a faulty one—then maybe they share some of that blame. Hurting individuals for the sake of greater advancement of the whole and that all-important bottom line, while pretending their conscience is clear.
I should have shot him the first second I saw him. Kane and I were never getting off this ship, anyway. Thinking otherwise was just another delusion. That delusion just happened to be one I wanted to believe in.
Tightening my sweaty grip on Diaz’s gun, I bring it up again, aiming at Max as he comes toward me.
He shakes his head. “Please don’t. I assure you, I have more practice at this than you do.” He keeps moving, each step measured and slow.
I back up to keep distance between us. I can only imagine what a younger Max must have done on his earlier QA assignments.
“It’s unlikely anyone would be able to recover enough of your body to determine your cause of death, but if you force me to fire on you, we won’t be able to take that chance,” he says calmly. “We’ll have to create a new story. One where you attacked my team and cost innocent lives.”
“So I’m either crazy or crazy violent,” I say. My throat is tight, not just from Reed’s attack earlier, but the lump of unshed tears. My whole life, it feels like I’ve been trying to avoid that classification, and in spite of those efforts, it seems that label will bemylegacy.
Max tips his head back and forth, as if considering. “Sounds about right,” he says. “Don’t you think? I’d prefer to avoid that outcome, though. It raises more questions that we won’t want to answer.”
God forbid my death inconveniences them.
I smack into something behind me, abruptly halting my progress. Glancing up, I find the winch and safety tether for the LINA, dangling overhead. I’ve walked myself into the back corner of LINA. Unconsciously seeking safety, perhaps.
I put my other hand on the gun to steady the trembling. Max will shoot me before I can get into LINA, I’m sure of it. He won’t take the minuscule chance of me surviving the explosion inside the LINA. And I’m not confident enough in my ability to hit him with the single shot I’ll be able to get off before he fires back. So, I’m out of options and room, unless I want to turn my back on Max and try to run.
Thoughts racing, I imagine it for a moment, trying to play it out. The cargo bay is huge, and if I can get away far enough and turn off this fucking helmet light, then maybe—
“Kovalik!” The guttural shout from the darkness behind me makes me jump.
Reed.I freeze. While I feel clearer, he definitely does not soundany saner. He also sounds close. Like, right outside the cargo bay close.
Panic squeezes tight in my chest. Right now, the LINA is blocking me from sight, but that won’t last if Reed comes in. And if he finds me, Max won’t have to worry about a story at all. He can just step back and watch Reed kill me. I have a gun, yes, but Reed has the advantage of the dark—I’m lit up like the bright side of the moon—and I have Max to worry about, splitting my attention.
“Kovalik!” Reed bellows again, his dragging, shuffling step echoing inside the cargo bay.
