Free The Darwin Elevator by Jason Hough Page B

sense.”
    With a heaving cough, the crewman leveled the weapon toward Neil. A shaky aim, but dangerous enough. His mouth twisted into a raw snarl. “‘Hell with you. Help me, fucker . Up on your beanstalk …”
    Kelly descended from the ceiling in perfect silence, a spider on an invisible web. She landed right behind the babbling man and looked to Neil for his approval to take action.
    In the span of a few minutes the disease had almost taken over the man’s mind. He’d likely be dead soon, anyway.
    Neil nodded to her.
    In a single motion she knocked the gun from the crewman’s hand and brought her arm around his neck. At the same time she pushed off from the wall.
    The pair sprawled into the air, a tumbling mass of limbs. With no purchase, the man—the subhuman—could not gain an advantage. Kelly held her arm tight across the creature’s neck.
    Neil could only watch, numb with disbelief at the scene before him. A full minute passed before she let go.
    The crewman slumped, dead. The limp body drifted into a corner and settled there.
    A subhuman, Neil thought. In orbit . A litany of other thoughts blared in his head, but that alone drowned them. A man had contracted the disease in orbit, breathing air sterilized by the Aura—hell, inside the Aura. Something Neil never dreamed would happen, or even could happen. It was, by all rights, impossible.
    It occurred to him then that this might be the next Builder event. He had assumed another vessel would arrive, like the last three times.
    Two times, he corrected himself. Even a mental mix-up of the count was something he punished himself for. The Elevator and the disease, that’s what history will say. That line must be towed at all costs. What came before that was his business and his alone.
    His focus swerved back toward the present, and the future. He’d been so fixated on the idea that another ship would arrive, it never occurred to him that the next event could simply be a change in the existing circumstances.
    The last event, the arrival of a small vessel carrying the seed of the SUBS disease, had forced those who could do so to huddle within the Aura. Neil swallowed bitterly as his mind churned through possibilities. What if, he thought, the last five years have just been a grace period? What if they had meant for us to vacate?
    A chill washed over his entire body. Goose bumps sprouted along his back and arms.
    He couldn’t bring himself to look away from the corpse, bobbing in the corner, legs cocked in inhuman fashion. “Kelly,” Neil said. “My God, Kelly. How the hell did it get up here?”
    Hands grasped his shoulders and shook him. Kelly’s hands—she’d come to him at some point.
    “There’s nowhere safe now,” he muttered. “We misunderstood. We’re doomed …”
    She slapped him across the face. “Snap out of it,” she hissed.
    The sting of pain dispelled the fog in his mind. He managed to focus on her. If anyone else hit him like that, he would have sent them back to Darwin’s slums in a heartbeat.
    “Misunderstood what? Were you keeping that thing here?” she asked. “Some kind of damn experiment?”
    “No,” he said, incredulous. “Of course not. I have no idea how this happened.”
    “It got here somehow,” she said.
    “Listen to me,” Neil said. “He’s been here, Kelly. For weeks . I assigned the man. This … this can’t happen.”
    She faced the floating body, as if seeing it for the first time. The anger on her face turned to dread.
    I might have seen this coming, Neil thought. If only Tania’s father hadn’t blinded me. Foolish, foolish . He pushed the memory aside. Nothing but pain lay down that road.
    “We should alert the other stations,” Kelly said. “Initiate a lockdown.”
    “No,” Neil said. “God, no! There’d be chaos. You were in Darwin when the survivors started pouring in. You saw how people acted.”
    “But—”
    “What if he’s the only one,” Neil said. His words silenced both of