Chapter 14: Chimes of Freedom

Ishmael’s son crouched at his side while Abigail worked on his leg; he sat in a puddle of blood despite a crude tourniquet. She kept shooting sidelong glances at the child.

“I should’ve helped you,” he said faintly.

Lily lingered, reduced to passive observer. She also couldn’t stop watching the boy, whose thin, pale face already showed some of the blankness of shock. “You did.”

“Not enough,” he replied, through gritted teeth. “She had my people killed. Everyone who saw you on the surface. And she knew about Gabe, she…”

“The surface?” Abigail looked up sharply. “That was true?”

Michael nodded. He’d posted himself to one side, waiting to help.

Abigail finished tying a much more professional tourniquet a few inches above the first. She smiled a little. “Explains a lot, actually.”

He smiled back, quick and tight, and started packing up the excess medical supplies. Lily tasted bile.

“There. I bought you some time, but—” Abigail glanced at Gabe’s round, worried eyes, then cleared her throat. “Um. You’re going to be fine. Just fine.”

The pool of blood was double the size it had been, and Ishmael’s skin looked almost translucent. “Thank you.” He swallowed. “Gabe, go see if Ellis needs help with the door.”

The boy scampered away with no hesitation.

Once he was gone, Abigail blurted, “How. How old is he? Who’s his mother, why did I never—”

“Helena Morrison. One of the…” He paused, then let his breath out in a pained rush. “He’s almost thirteen.”

Abigail covered her mouth, rubbing anxiously at her lips. “How could she? How could she have the greatest gift on earth and just leave?”

“She wanted him to have a future. Aboveground.” Ishmael closed his eyes, breathing in shallow pants. “Help me up.”

Michael and Abigail hauled him to his feet and carried him over to the others. He clenched his jaw so tight against the pain that Lily feared his teeth would break.

They set him down gently, back to the wall. Gabe was about thirty minutes away from becoming an orphan, still blissfully unaware; he held the heavy flashlight with both hands while Ellis stripped and twisted wires.

Lily tried to keep her attention on that and not on whatever was happening off to the left, where Abigail was cleaning blood from her hands and Michael was saying something too quiet to catch.

“I can’t,” she interrupted. “I might be all that’s left of Medical. The Station needs me.”

“You’ll be trapped here,” Michael protested. “There’s no—”

“We’ll find a way.” Her expression softened. “I have an obligation to these people, I swore an oath. I can’t leave.”

Lily turned away before one of them caught her staring. It made no difference whether she came or not. It didn’t matter.

—

Yellow warning lights flickered on above the door. Naomi had been quite thorough; the controls had been ripped from the wall and smashed, exposing tangled wires like entrails. Shards of black glass littered the floor.

Ellis tossed down his pliers with a sigh, then cautiously touched two wires together. When a massive spark jumped between them he grinned, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“Manual override is a dead man’s switch,” Ishmael whispered. “With redundancy. One panel here, one in the decon chamber. I’ll take that one. Is Em—”

“Maggie’s carrying her,” Ellis said. “How much time will we have to get everyone through?”

“I don’t know.” Ishmael set his hand on Gabe’s head, mussing the short brown hair. “Got your stuff?”

“Yessir.” The boy looked doubtfully at Ishmael’s blood-soaked pant leg. “Does it hurt?”

“Nope. Go put your mask on like I showed you. It’s safe to breathe outside, it’s just. It’s different.” Ishmael waited until Gabe scampered back into the suit room. Then he looked to Ellis.

“Like he was my own,” the big man said, softly. “I swear it. And if we find Helena, we’ll…we’ll give her a burial.”

Ishmael nodded, a tear spilling over as the two men clasped hands.

Despite her empty stomach Lily fought the urge to vomit. She went off to stand by herself, away from the rest of them waiting in groups and pairs. She found a rifle at the barricade and slung it, gripping the strap with sweating hands.

Ellis re-checked his work as Maggie clutched the rucksack against her chest, swaying and rocking from foot to foot. Michael watched them and Abigail watched him, worrying her lower lip. It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter…

The lights grew noticeably fainter, the air thicker. Finally Ellis proclaimed the work done and they took their places.

A shower of sparks jumped into the gathering dark as Abigail paired the wires. Deep, low groaning trembled through the bowels of the Station, vibrating through the floor.

Lily held her breath as a sliver of light appeared. That sliver became a foot. Then two feet, three feet, gaining.

“Ok.” Ishmael’s face was grey, beaded with sweat. “Ellis, help me.”

Ellis clasped Ishmael’s bloody hand and pulled him to his feet. They went into the decon chamber together, squeezing through the gap. Ishmael lay his palm against a familiar piece of black glass, pushing his whole weight onto it as it lit up green.

Slower than the passage of the sun across the heavens, the outer door began to grind open too. The inner door held at ten feet. So did Ishmael.

Ellis went first. Then Maggie, hand over the bulge in her rucksack, leading Gabe with her into the decon chamber. Lily saw the boy hesitate, digging in his heels.

A yellow warning light flashed.

Ishmael gripped Gabe’s shoulder. “I need you to go with Maggie and Ellis.”

The inner door slid an inch.

“You said…” the boy’s mouth trembled. “You said you were coming.”

“I can’t, now. I’m sorry.” The bandage was soaked through with blood. Maggie held her hands out on the other side. “Be brave. I love you.”

Gabe marched through with squared shoulders, staring ahead stiff and unresponsive as Maggie hugged him and Ellis hugged them both.

The door jerked as Lily crossed the threshold. Until she turned around, she could pretend Michael was behind her and not standing next to Abigail.

She lost her nerve in the decon chamber and stopped. Framed by a doorway which was undeniably narrower than it had been, Michael stared back at her. And he didn’t move.

Off to her right, Ishmael died. He did it quietly but Lily knew what a last breath sounded like as it slid from human lungs. His hand fell from the panel. He fell to the floor. The great mass of the door ground to a halt, then began to creep inexorably shut.

“Please,” Lily said, and she could tell by the look on Michael’s face that he’d heard the desperation in it. Too late now, too late to pretend she didn’t feel it. She held out her hand.

Movement behind her — the second door was also sliding shut, with the finality of grave dirt being shoveled onto her.

“Go, you idiot!” Abigail shouted. At her? At her.

But Michael started running. He cleared the inner door, slipping in Ishmael’s blood, recovering.

He pushed her out ahead of him into the antechamber.

Lily had time to be struck by the abrupt selfishness of it, the cruelty, but then she had him by the arm and she was dragging him forward with every ounce of strength in her body.

The door clipped his shoulder. They staggered under the weight of all that metal, and then —

Echoes bounced off the high ceiling as the vault slammed shut. Lily unclenched her fists from Michael’s coat and sat down, hard. He shrugged out of it and left it hanging, caught by its hem between the steel jaws of the outer door.

“Fuck you,” she began, but the rest of the sentence escaped her. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream.

He said nothing. He didn’t look at her.

The others were waiting in expectant, teary silence at the foot of the stairs, but Lily couldn’t cry and anyway there was work to do.

She hauled herself up through the long dark, legs and lungs burning. When they wrenched open the final door she staggered out into the world, sucking in a deep lungful of bitter night air. The cold cut like glass. There were no stars.

It was freedom, but it didn’t feel like it.