Vic left his room and slammed the door. At the junction, he looked left at where the corridor curved around towards the staircase leading down to Control and up to Secondary, and right at where it dog-legged away from the core and towards the common room and garage. He hesitated for only a second, and then turned right.
With every step he ran further from his professional responsibilities and the alarm screamed at his betrayal.
6
Alex shot Melinda five times. She fell back still biting, and the guard captain yelled as her teeth tugged away part of his face. She flipped onto her back and writhed for a second, bloody hands shoving at the motionless intruder from beyond the breach, and Holly thought, That’s it, she’s dead now, I’m sure I saw her spine—
Melinda sat up again, pushing with one hand and seemingly unaware of her new, terrible wounds.
‘Alex!’ Holly shouted, as if the captain would need warning about this pitiful, bloody wreck. But Alex was leaning back on his knees with a terrible, disbelieving look on his face. One hand still aimed the pistol at Melinda, the other was pressed against his cheek and jaw where she’d bitten him. He leaned further back, legs bent almost in half at the knee now, head almost touching the floor, and the gun made a metallic tink as it dropped from his hand. He grew still.
‘Sir!’ another guard said, moving closer.
‘Back,’ Satpal said. ‘Stay back! Can’t you see . . .?’
‘See fucking what?’ Holly said, and then the cosmologist was at her side. She could smell the sweat on him, the fear. She wondered if she smelled the same.
‘She can’t be getting up,’ he said softly. And Holly knew that he was right. No one leaks that much blood and lives. No one . . .
‘Sir!’ another guard shouted, the one that Alex had sent away to fetch dressings to tend Melinda’s wounds. He stood close to the breach floor now, staring down at the massive pool of blood and the figures at its centre: the intruder, motionless with most of his head missing; Melinda, sitting up fully now, one arm propping her as she tried to get to her feet; and Alex, hand fallen from his face, horribly contorted and motionless.
‘What the fuck do we do?’ another guard said. He was standing ten feet to Holly’s left, pistol aimed at Melinda, his face pale. ‘Sir, what do we do?’ Holly realised that he was directing his questions at Alex.
The captain suddenly tensed, then raised himself back to a kneeling position. His mouth worked, but only a soft humming sound emerged from it. Holly could see his teeth through the wound in his cheek.
‘Shit,’ someone muttered. They could all see that the soldier’s movements were wrong.
‘We’re locked down in here,’ Holly said. ‘Two of you keep watch on the breach in case . . .’ She shook her head. ‘You.’ She nodded at the guard with the field dressings. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Neil.’
‘Neil, I think Alex is . . . is in shock.’ Alex was on his feet now, swaying forward and backward and looking around the room. There was something about his eyes . . . They didn’t look shocked to Holly. They looked different. He looked at her, then at Satpal, then at the three other guards, two of them pointing guns at him. Blood spewed from his face, and Melinda was behind him now, a bloody, meaty mess who should have been . . .
‘Melinda?’ Holly said softly, between a blast of the alarm’s loud siren. But the biologist did not seem to hear, and her previously beautiful face was gone, home now to red.
Alex hooted softly like a dove, a strangely beautiful sound. Then he ran at Neil, the guard holding the dressings, and Neil didn’t even manage to gasp before his captain shoved him backward onto a step and fell on him.
‘Shoot him!’ Satpal screamed, but neither of the other guards moved.
‘Oh dear God, what have we done?’ Holly said.
‘I can get us out,’ Satpal said, leaning in close to whisper his secret.
‘No. Lockdown.’
Neil screamed. Alex was biting him, his head thrashing. The other two guards were shouting at each other and at their captain, but still neither of them fired.
Holly glanced at the breach and the darkness beyond.