He remembered that dream, the way every door had slid open at his merest whim. It had all felt so real, so…

Kendrick left McCowan where he lay and worked his way back up through the levels until he came to the same shield door through which he had twice entered these killing zones.

The closer he came to it, the louder the shield door buzzed with an invisible energy that made him want to reach out and twist it with his bare hands. He felt an indefinable something shift in it at the thought.

Open, damn you, he thought. Let me out of here.

This time the tannoy remained silent, the unbroken camera lenses glinting down at him. Kendrick wondered if they'd let him out.

He stepped up to the enormous steel slab and pushed it, aware how futile this gesture might be. Then he sank to his knees and pressed his head against its surface.

Something inside it gave: like a release of pressure, or a bubble bursting.

He pressed against the door again and found that he could sense the lines of electrical energy connecting the cameras in a network. The gun turret that stood nearby became perceptible as a faint skeletal shadow, a pattern of controlled lightning that flowed out of and joined with the electrical systems that controlled the entire complex of the Maze.

Kendrick pressed his fingers harder against the metal and wondered if he had only imagined feeling it tremble.

The door shuddered, then grew still, although he could hear gears and levers clicking deep inside. No wonder Sieracki and his men were so afraid of us.

A small sob escaped his throat as, finally, the door laboriously swung open.

25 October 2096 The Maze

"Who's there?"

It felt like being in a crowded room where everyone else was invisible and silent. The sensation of another presence was palpable.

Kendrick was back now in the place where Robert had died. He flicked the torch on, having so far used it only sparingly in order to conserve its batteries. But here he needed to be able to see clearly, to be sure that the figments of his imagination really were just figments.

Under the steady light of the torch, the distant walls shimmered, transforming a military storage facility into something more like a fairy grotto. To Kendrick's astonishment, Robert's corpse still lay where it had fallen all those long years ago.

I should have died down here with him and Peter. I didn't deserve to survive this nightmare.

As Kendrick played the torch's beam over Robert's remains, it struck him that the corpse had an eerily beautiful quality to it. The skeletal form was wreathed in silver threads that converged upon it from all corners of the vault-like space, their slender lines twisting together in great bales that erupted from both the walls and ceiling. Threads crawled across the floor in uncountable millions, and Robert's gaping, fleshless jaws glistened with fiery brilliance as the light moved across them.

Kendrick sensed rather than heard the gentle beat of a thousand wings, the source of that almost inaudible sound somehow always out of range of his torch beam.

He forced himself to step towards the gleaming skeleton, even though his mouth was dry with terror. He imagined that something was shifting in those empty sockets as if it was observing his passage. He could feel something constantly prying at the edge of his awareness, making itself known through a furious tingling in his skin.

Then wings began to take shape in the periphery of his vision, a thousand million malignant hornets, each with the face of the same dead boy.

Kendrick moved away from the eyeless skeleton – and then he started to run.

Kendrick turned a corner; then another corner. He ran further, found a stairwell and descended quickly, encountering a greater proliferation of the gold threads there. He leapt down more stairwells, noting how rapidly the gold-coloured threads around him were now being subsumed into the silver. He stopped, momentarily uncertain, at an intersection and saw how the silver threads right above his head began to drop down, towards the top of his head. Yelling, he ducked away from them.

Far behind him there was a sound like rushing water. Kendrick's blood ran cold to think what might be coming after him in the dark.

The gold threads led ever downwards, and he followed them.

Kendrick reached the same great domed room with its central engine and banks of equipment, as silent as the day he'd left them.

Passing through it quickly, he discovered Peter McCowan's body slumped exactly where he remembered. Kendrick felt the sting of tears in his eyes, along with a deep and indelible sense of loss.

Golden threads sprouted in thick plumes from McCowan's exploded skull, reaching up in twisted bundles to the ceiling far above. The corpse shone like a jewel.

Even as Kendrick glanced to one side, he noticed glints of silver beginning to spread through this river of gold. Near McCowan's remains the air smelled of beer and cigarettes and sweat, all overlaid with a lingering musk of death.

"Peter?"

Right here. The words seemed less than a whisper, deep in Kendrick's mind.

"Why can't I see you? I could see you before."

Used up all my resources trying to keep him out, but soon it'll all be gone. Then I'll be gone.

Kendrick gazed down into the golden skeleton's empty eye sockets. "What do you want me to do?" he pleaded.

Take me with you.

"You told me I could get all the answers I needed down here."

Not down here. No, the evidence you need is on the Archimedes.

Kendrick blinked, and a chill ran through his spine with such intensity that he almost cried out. "Then why the hell bring me all the way down here?"

Because you need me up there with you. You'll never find what you're looking for if you have to deal with Robert on your own. Put out your hand – or I'll die without your help – and you'll die without mine.

"What makes you think you can do any better with Robert up there than you fucking did down here?"

He has an advantage down here that he won't have up there. I can handle him, I swear. Now touch me. Put out your hand and touch me.

"You tricked me, you lousy shit!"

I told you I could get you what you need to bring Draeger down, if you came here. And I will. But if you walk away from me now I won't be able to help you. Take me to the Archimedes and you'll get what you need.

Kendrick wished that he still had a functioning heart so he could hear how loudly it was hammering.

"You misled me, damn you. You could have been fucking straight with me."

As no answer came, he shook his head and swore loudly. Then he knelt down next to McCowan's corpse. As he did so, he realized with a shock just how fast the silver was spreading, and again he heard that distant rushing sound.

Kendrick removed one of his gloves and reached out to McCowan's skeletal cheek, for the first time noticing that even the surface of the bone was covered in cilia-like threads, like golden fur. Reaching further, he closed his eyes and felt a sting as the filaments brushed against his skin.

He opened his eyes again, stifling a scream. Golden threads slithered across the back of his hand, coating it in an instant, as if he had just combed his fingers through a cluster of aureate spider webs.

Stumbling backwards, his foot caught against a bony elbow. The skeleton collapsed in front of him, the skull toppling with a clatter.

Kendrick pulled himself upright and stared again at the back of his hand, watching in horror as the golden filaments melted into his flesh.