Paranoia is one of the symptoms Max rattled off. No wonder the passengers killed each other.
“Reed, I just want to get off this fucking ship. Stay focused,” I say, working to keep my voice calm. If I get agitated, that’s only going to amp him up further. “You’re letting it get to you.”
“You want me to think that, don’t you?” he demands. “But I know better. I’m seeing things more clearly than I have in a long time.In a long time!”
Okay, yeah. Reed is losing it. I wish to God I’d thought to put him in front of me, instead of letting him trail behind. In the fucking dark.
It’s work not to hunch my shoulders protectively. It feels as if a glowing target has been painted over my back, daring Reed to charge forward.
But there’s nothing to be done about that now, except to get us out. Ahead, the darkness seems a bit brighter, indicating that we might be nearing the stairway to the atrium level and the working lights that Diaz’s team was in the process of setting up. I don’t know that light will help anything, but it sure as hell will make it easier to see what’s coming.
I think.
Soft sobbing comes from nearby, perhaps a few feet away. Brokenhearted, devastated crying, punctuated by deep gasps. It sounds… real, more so than anything else we’ve heard.
Instinct tells me to slow down, but I resist that impulse and keep walking.
It’s just a device, a weapon, vibrations against the eardrum causing strange effects. That’s all.
Except it’s not. Device or no device, a lot of people died here in a variety of horrible, violent ways. If any place should be haunted, it’s this ship. So is it any surprise there’s a bunch of angry, confused spirits trying to make themselves known?
Even more than that, though, it feels as though the ship has taken on a life of her own, a conglomeration of the spirits trapped withinand yet something more. An entity in and of herself. And she doesn’t want to let us go.
I shake my head at myself.Now who’s letting this place get to her? Paranoia, Kovalik. It will bite you in the ass, if you don’t watch it.
“Are you crying?” Reed asks, scoffing.
“Keep moving,” I say, startled. Is he hearing the same thing I am? Real or not real, then?
As we get closer, the volume of the crying increases. It sounds as if we’re going to stumble over someone—her?—in a second.
Maybe… maybe one of the security team members fled up here from the violence and chaos below.
That thought is enough to make me hesitate, to slow for just a second as my fingers brush past the smoothness of a door.
Which is all that’s needed.
A cold hand locks bruising-tight around my left ankle as I prepare to take a step, throwing me off-balance.
My arms pinwheel frantically and I lose my grip on Kane as I try to catch myself.
I can’t fall. She’s waiting.
The woman from under the bed. I don’t dare look down, but I know it’s her. Her mouth and ears stuffed with cloth, her eyes blindfolded and yet she sees…
Before I can restabilize, Reed crashes into my back with a grunt.
We go down hard, in a tangle of limbs.
Immediately, I scramble to free myself and stand, anticipating the icy touch of her hand again. Perhaps against my face, reaching for my eyes…
But before I can get very far, another hand grasps my leg—this one, though, warm and very much alive. Reed yanks me back toward him. The carpeting burns against my palms as I scrabble to stop my backward progress.
“What are you—”
“I knew it,” Reed says, the words tight through his clenched teeth.“You’re trying to be the hero, and you want me to play the fool. But I’m not going to do that. Do you hear me?”
I kick out at him, but on my stomach, it’s virtually impossible to connect solidly. “Listen to yourself, that doesn’t make any sense. I need you to talk to your father. I need you to—”
