The Pedestal (19 page)

“You guys hiring?” a tall, muscular man asks. Terrell is suddenly glowing; I nearly pee my pants as I recognize the rhino man from the shopping mall.

Terrell steps toward him in a brisk, confident stride, reaching out for what must be his trademark handshake. I think I hear him say “Terrell Webster,” but I can’t be sure. I’m twenty feet away by then, running faster than I’ve ever run in my life. I’m somewhere near the center of the dock, which means the nearest exit should be one of the dock doors on either side of the warehouse. But I’m not interested in those. I push toward the back end of the warehouse, where I can just make out the profile of a small spacecraft through a dock door. The other craft are gone now—and if I don’t hurry, this one will be gone, too. Behind me, I hear Gunn’s man on my tail; his feet clap like bare hands against the concrete floor, applauding the approach of my untimely death. I’ve got a good fifty-yard head start, though.

I reach the dock door and leap into the gaping maw of the spacecraft. Inside, a robotic forklift is lowering a final crate into position; I surge past it into the safety of the cargo bay. It’s dark in here, and though I’m thankful for this small favor, I have no idea how far into the chasm I’ve ventured, much less how much farther it extends. Fumbling around with my hands, I manage to locate and unlatch the lid of a large crate. Inky darkness veils its contents, though a quick inspection by touch reveals a fair amount of empty space within. But it’s a big risk; there’s no telling what’s in there, and the last thing I need is to crawl into a crate of razor blades.

The man is standing in the dock door, now. I can see his eyes, piercing and cold—the eyes of a predator. They slip over me and keep going. I’m protected in the darkness—for now. He takes a step into the bay. With an inner groan, I realize that I don’t have a choice anymore; all I can do is cross my fingers that I’m not escaping death in one form only to encounter it in another.

I slip into the crate and gently lower the lid back into place. It’s very warm inside and I doubt my panicky breathing is helping. In mere seconds, I’m drenched in sweat. My back is lodged against something blunt but painfully invasive. I hear the forklift retreat, and the entire vessel rises a few inches as the seventy-five-hundred-pound machine backs out onto the loading dock. A full minute passes in silence. I’m contemplating a quick retreat back onto the dock—where I can hide among the pallet racks—when the ship comes to life. I hear the muffled grunt of hydraulics as the cargo door closes, and suddenly we’re moving.

I think I’m sharing real estate with some sort of oversized pipe fitting; my fingertips explore what feels like a merging of short pipe sections, budding with bolt heads around their union. Plastic banding spans the cubby in a stiff web, binding the freight to the bottom of its crate. The protrusion against my back gouges my ribcage incessantly as my weight shifts to the jerking of the vessel.

As far as nonlethal hiding places are concerned, I couldn’t have chosen a more uncomfortable one to stow away in.

The moment the aircraft becomes airborne, my predicament escalates from haphazard to lethal. As the landing gear retracts, the air begins to jettison from the fuselage, depressurizing the bay. The gap between my crate and its unlatched lid hisses with the outflow of my modest air supply. Forget about the freight digging into my back; that’s merely an inconvenience. The ship’s cargo bay may have protected me from a brutal death at the hand of a cold-blooded killer, but its price of admission looks to be equally fatal.

I struggle to leverage the lid back against its rubber seal, but with only slick surfaces to grip from the inside, I’m just wasting precious time and energy. I’m guessing I have less than a minute before the air is sapped completely from this enclosure. If I’m still curled up here when that happens, I’m dead.

I give an experimental heave against the crate lid. Though it’s already open a little, it resists opening farther; either the exponential increase in hull pressure is weighing it down or I’ve already grown weak from oxygen deprivation. Frantically, I try again, putting every ounce of strength and stamina into a single, desperate effort. My heart soars as the lid grudgingly lets go, releasing its compression with a muffled
poof
. Suddenly, I’m gasping in a vacuum. In my panic, I forfeited a brief and valuable opportunity to catch a good breath; thanks to this oversight, my lungs are now starving. I’ve got to get out of here.

Now
.

In spite of these frightful circumstances, I’ve been granted a small favor. The fuselage, which was cloaked in complete darkness earlier, is now dimly lit by a series of tiny beacons lining the walls. On its own, the light doesn’t save me, but without it, my doom would be a foregone conclusion. A variety of freight containers form a neat, forklift-sized corridor through the bay. It seems to extend for miles, terminating in a blurry pseudo-horizon. It’s too far, I know. Yet what else can I do, but try? Flailing down the path like a wounded animal, I feel as if my chest is pressing in on itself, squeezing out my last bits of life like a twisting sponge. I’m down to seconds, I think. My skull is stinging at its core, infusing with a sweet fog—
Sleep
, it seems to say;
It’ll all be better if you just sleep
. Spots appear before me, dancing with colors that can only be the conjurations of a dying brain.

And then I see it.

Straight ahead of me is a hatch—it’s right there, so close I can almost touch it. Like a runner digging deep in the last few yards of a marathon, my will to live transcends my weakness. In a final bound, I surge forward, drunkenly stumbling against the coveted exit.

I pull at the lever, summoning what little strength I have left in me—which is frightfully scant—and it proves just enough. With a hissing release of suction, the door opens. Just a little, but I’ll take what I can get. Clean, breathable air sucks past me into the cargo bay, along with the shrill whine of an alarm. I drop to my knees and cram my face into the makeshift airway. My lungs drink greedily, slurping oxygen like a heavenly brew. The fog in my skull thins, burning off a little with each breath.

That was close.

I’m surprised at how little time it takes to regain my strength; in less than a minute, my body has all but forgotten its near-death experience. I turn my attention again to the hatch; like my crate lid earlier, it’s been unlatched, yet hijacked by the immense hull pressure. With fresh air in my system, I’m reinvigorated. I lean hard against the riveted steel, pushing with the heels of my hands until it eventually gives. When the space is wide enough to accept my head, I wedge my body firmly into the gap and begin wriggling therein, gaining a centimeter here, an inch there. Cool atmosphere screams past me into the vacuum of the cargo bay, whipping my hair painfully about.

And just like that, I’m through, plopping into the tail end of a short hallway. At second glance, I realize the end of the corridor doesn’t terminate immediately, but adjoins a perpendicular hallway. I take a few steps into the passage, passing a deep cubby inset into the wall; the space is lined with orange storage lockers, the floor littered with all manner of cordage and packing materials.

I’m not sure where to go from here, only that I can’t remain static for long. The shrill breach alarm blares around me, filling me with a new sense of trepidation. I’m retracing my steps to the open cargo bay, reaching out to shut and latch the door behind me—I wasn’t born in a barn, after all—when I hear something new. From beyond the corridor, approaching footsteps thump a deep, sinister cadence below the noise. I shouldn’t be surprised by this development—of course the ship would be manned, and the alarm continues to cry for human attention—but my opportunity to think this through fell into neglect as I was fighting for my life. As a result, I have no plan; I’m at fate’s fickle mercy.

Almost immediately, a lone, grumbling voice joins the choir. It sounds close, and it sounds angry. On impulse, I throw myself into the storage cubby, where my body lands in a hapless jumble amidst a pile of loose netting. I’m not at all hidden, here; at best, I’m slightly camouflaged by clutter.

“Of course I’m sure it’s closed,” says a man just as he bursts into the corridor. “We couldn’t have taken off if it was open!” He’s dressed in a flight suit, his facemask dangling on a tassel from his helmet. As he nears me, he exclaims: “What the—it
is
open. How’d that happen?” For a terrible moment, his words seem directed to me. But then he scurries past me and I realize I’ve gone unnoticed for the moment.

He regards the open hatch and throws up his hands. “I’m telling you, it was shut and latched.” With a stiff yank, he grizzlies the door open and peers inside. He’s a short guy, but there’s no question he’s strong—stronger than me, anyway. I hear his voice again, but this time his words are absorbed into the intense cross-breeze rushing from the ship’s interior into the low pressure of the cargo bay.

I’m not sure what I’m waiting for; this guy is perfectly preoccupied—with his back to me, at that—yet I lie frozen in this corner, where I’m vulnerable for discovery at any moment. Abruptly, the man secures his facemask and hurls bodily into the cargo bay.

This is it, I realize. I won’t get a better chance to make a move.

I climb hastily to my feet with my eyes locked on the open door. Suddenly, the trajectory of the aircraft lifts and topples me back to the net pile. At once, the man reappears through the door and latches it in a tantrum of exaggerated motion. The alarm silences. I flatten myself into the netting, as if I might will my body into a state of invisibility. “You trying to kill me, or what?” he snaps. “Give me a second to get back on deck, would you?” He storms past me, disappearing into the small hallway from whence he came. When he’s gone, I can’t help but laugh.

Holy scrap, that was way too close.

I’m not out of the woods just yet, though. Any second now, the craft will change slope again, this time almost vertically, to punch through the atmosphere. Once the shift is in motion, I’ll go bowling around like a piece of trash in the wind. Milliseconds after this realization hits me, the floor pitches again and the craft’s engines graduate from a low whine to a deafening hurricane. Without really thinking about it—almost instinctively, really—I enable my NanoPrint’s inner-ear stabilizers.

See how easy that was, Adrian?

I’m in mortal danger, yet all can I can do is bury my fingers in the netting and hunker down to weather the storm. As the ship accelerates, I begin to slide toward the rear of the vessel. Our trajectory is rising acutely; with a stab of fear, I discover that my grip won’t be able to support my weight for more than a second or two. While I still have the strength, I begin to loop the thin strands of netting around my hands. I hear the roar of friction against the ship’s hull as we accelerate even more.

I’m not sure why, but the interior lights are fading; it’s almost like—

When I come to, my feet are afloat in midair, hovering eighteen inches over the floor. My hands are entangled painfully in a chaffed knot of vinyl netting, anchoring my body to the floor. The g-force must’ve knocked me out; without an oxygen mask or a flight suit, it’s a minor miracle that I’m alive at all. Nevertheless, I haven’t survived unscathed: my head is spinning and my stomach is threatening to follow suit. Sure enough, the slightest movement causes me to vomit, soiling my little nest with miasmic bile.

The room is spinning so fast. Why won’t it slow down?

Closing my eyes, I attempt to consult my NanoPrint settings—my inner-ear stabilizers are enabled, aren’t they?—but my implant isn’t responding. I know it’s still running, because I can feel it tingling beneath my skin as it calls out to the nexus. Yet, try as I might, I can’t get it to acknowledge me.

This can’t be good.

I get almost no time to contemplate the meaning of this, because the ship’s reverse thrusters suddenly engage in sequence, slowing the craft for docking. The pilot is a surgeon with the controls, so deft that I don’t even realize it when we’ve finally docked. My only clue is that the outer cargo door begins to retract as the telltale clatter of forklifts and pallet jacks resounds through the nearby bay.