Murmansk-13

Jamal mentioned that the station had not been supplied since they’d arrived. By that time the infection was still in an early stage. That made it four years since the station was serviced, supplied and properly maintained – unless the Unseen Hand possessed mechanics, engineers and electricians amongst their ranks. The stale oxygen, reduced gravity and constant smell of burnt electronics and plastic cycling through the scrubbers suggested that that was either not the case, or the spread of infection had become too advanced to manage the station.

If, and to Tala it was a big if, the Unseen Hand was a real entity, their base of operations would break apart around them sooner rather than later.

The sound of voices dragged Tala from her reverie like a blow to the head, voices and the distinct guttural moan of the infected. Tala turned to look at Katja, but her expression was oddly vague. In front Jamal and Oleg sped up. The noise was still far away and distorted by echo, words and inhuman keens ebbed down the corridor like an incoming tide. Somebody was in trouble, a sob rippled the cadence of the waves.

Oleg and Jamal bounded away down the corridor on all fours, both big men were gifted with a lightness of limb, their increased speed barely registered an increase in noise, Tala struggled to keep up, not as keenly adapted to the conduits despite her years as a ships hand.

As they neared the scene of the commotion. The voices, or more precisely one voice, gained clarity through the noise like a magic eye. It was Captain Tor, his ululating north Norwegian accent, unmistakable, even in distress. The Captain was in trouble.

Within seconds, Tala was on Oleg and Jamal’s heels, almost literally. Oleg’s booted foot clipping her chin. She crashed into the large Belorussian when Jamal halted in front of them, snapping her neck to the side painfully. Oleg barely flinched at the impact and peered through the very same grating Jamal stopped at. Tala strained against her jarred neck and her two solid companions to see what was happening. A long way down the corridor Tala could hear Katja struggling to keep up, in her panic Tala had forgotten about the girls injuries and now Katja lay somewhere in the gloom behind. For a brief second she was trapped between two closing walls of panic.

“Do something!”

In the corridor beyond, Captain Tor pleaded, for what Tala could not see.

“ Oh God, oh God no!”

It was Diego. The poor boy had a crush on her and Tala had knowingly strung him along as an emotional confidante, a shoulder to cry on when both their lives were a litany of failure, only his was about to end. She heard the screech of the infected.

“White coats. Finally, we see them.” Oleg said, although Tala never heard, before she knew what she was doing she was piling through the grate, somehow pressing through the meaty throng of Oleg and Jamal. Behind her she heard Jamal yell something about guns, but she didn’t listen, two pairs of hands trying to haul her backward slipped away against the soft fabric of her jumpsuit.

The scene fell quiet. A strangely unfeminine woman Tala recognized as Dr. Smith, stripped of her dichotomous beauty for the moment, held Captain Tor at gunpoint, his face pressed to the floor, wrists bound. A memory, unimportant and ill-defined, tugged at her mind, Tala winced.

Beside the woman and behind Tor stood another man in a white lab coat, like the rest of the players in the bizarre diorama, his focus had shifted through thick, circular spectacles to Tala.

Further down the corridor, a deathly ill and half eaten Sammy loomed over Diego, mouth distended like a boa constrictor, tiny blood shot eyes peering down his nose against the tilt of his jaw. Beneath him, Diego cowered, like Tor he was bound and the same flashing memories of District Four were summoned and gone in a millisecond.

Tala barely noticed the movement of Dr. Smith’s hand, but she felt the bullet scythe past her face, nicking away the top of her right ear. There was no bang, and Tala didn’t react, or perhaps she yelped in pain, she wasn’t sure, but she felt her blood warm against her neck and saw the dilation of the stewards pupils.

She knew Dr. Smith wouldn’t miss again, time seemed to slow around her, she saw the micro adjustment required for the next bullet to enter between her eyes. Distantly, Tala wondered how a practicing doctor had become such a crack shot that she could clip an ear with a silenced pistol from over thirty meters.

Like an animal in headlights, Tala awaited silent death, hardly noticing Sammy diverting toward her.