Ignore the Signs

[PREVIOUSLY ON...] Aboard the dying station Meridian-7, with seventy hours of air left on his wrist and Thomas Crane's warning still ringing in his ears, Archie Moran weighed the clock against the caution and decided that time was the enemy. An old man who had spent twenty years alone in a bar, he told himself, could be forgiven for exaggerating. Elena had been dangerous too, and he had talked her down. He would do it again.

…

"We go to Gregor," said Archie. "Now."

He said it quickly, before he could change his mind. The words fell on the steel table like coins. Zoe's hand tightened on his. Across from them, Jin looked up from the cold pot of coffee with an expression Archie could not read.

"Directly?"

"Directly. We don't have time to prowl around the pipes." He was already getting to his feet. "Thomas was frightened. He'd been alone for twenty years, and I've never seen a man so glad to see another human being. I don't blame him. But he said it himself: I feel it, I don't know it. We've faced two Guardians. We know how this works. We find Gregor, we show him we're not a threat, we put down our weapons, and we talk."

"We don't have weapons," said Venn.

"Then it'll be easy."

Nobody laughed.

"Archie," said Jin, slowly. "I'd rather look at the logs first. I'd like four hours. Perhaps six. If someone is sabotaging the station through the main bus—"

"If someone is sabotaging the station, the person we need to talk to is the man who runs it. That's Gregor. That's always been Gregor." He tried to smile. "I know it's a risk. I know. But Elena did the same thing. Thomas did the same thing. They took us to the door, they let us talk to them. I think the Dimension wants us to. I think that's the test."

"And if it isn't?"

"Then we'll know in an hour," said Archie.

He saw Zoe's eyes on him, grave and dark and troubled. For one flicker of a second she looked as if she might speak. Then she lowered her gaze, and nodded, once, and said, in a small steady voice, "All right. We follow you."

He should have heard it.

He would remember that, afterward. He would remember that she had not said yes, and that he had not noticed.

…

The command deck was at the forward end of the station, through four pressure doors and a long cold gantry.

They went in single file, in the red light. The corridors narrowed as they climbed. The hum in the walls deepened to a growl. At every junction there was a plaque, brass on steel, with a number and a name: Frame 14. Frame 15. Frame 16. The paint was flaking. Somewhere ahead, water or coolant dripped on metal, tick, tick, tick, a lonely, regular sound.

"There's nobody here," Venn muttered. He was keeping close to Jin's elbow. "In Ashmore you couldn't sneeze without someone offering you a hankie. Where are all the people?"

"There aren't any," said Jin.

"There have to be some."

"Not in this Space. Look at the log." He held out his wrist. Faintly, in green, a line of text crawled across the little screen. Crew complement: 0. Residents: 0. Visitors: 0. "The station's empty. It was always meant to be. It's a solitary confinement cell with a view."

"Great," said Venn. "Fantastic. Love that for him."

"Quiet."

They came to the last door.

It was a heavy pressure hatch, painted red, with a circular wheel and a viewing slit. Above it, in stenciled letters, ran the words COMMAND — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. The wheel had been spun open. The door stood ajar, a hand's width, letting out a thin stream of pale light and a smell of dust and old electricity.

Archie put his hand on the wheel.

"Last chance," said Jin.

"Last chance for what?"

"To do it my way."

Archie looked at him. He did not mean to be cold. He felt tired suddenly, so tired, and the wrist-clock was ticking in the corner of his eye, and the cold of the place was sinking into his bones.

"We don't have the time," he said, and pulled the door wide.

…

The command deck was a long curved room, dark except for a ring of green consoles.

Rows of seats ran down both sides, each with a harness and a screen. Dead screens. In the middle of the room stood a raised dais with a single large chair, black leather, patched with tape, facing a viewport the size of a cathedral window. Through it, filling the glass from edge to edge, hung the pale blue world, enormous and calm.

In the chair sat a man.

He had his back to them. They saw broad shoulders under a faded naval jacket, the gray stubble of a close-cropped scalp, one big hand resting on the arm of the chair. He did not turn. He did not seem to breathe. For a moment Archie thought he was a corpse, left to sit at his post until the air gave out, and his throat tightened.

Then a voice came out of the dark.

"You're late."

It was a deep voice, a rough voice, with the trace of a drawl. It was tired. It was courteous. It had the flatness of a man reciting words he had rehearsed.

"Mr. Gregor?" said Archie.

"Gregor's fine." The chair swiveled slowly. "Haven't had a surname in a while." The man in it looked at them, one by one. He was perhaps fifty, heavy, with a seamed brown face and pale blue eyes, and a scar that ran from the corner of his left eye to the line of his jaw. There was a patch on his jacket where a name tag had once been. "Four of you. They said four."

"They?"

"The Voice." The smile that crossed his face was not a happy one. "He's been telling me about you for a week."

Archie felt his stomach drop.

"What voice?" said Zoe.

"Nice man. Polite. Real calm." Gregor laid a finger against his temple. "Talks to me at night. Through the speakers. He knew my name. He knew Navy numbers and my mother's maiden name and the name of the boat I was on when I got my first stripe. Haven't heard those in fifteen years. Think I cried." He regarded Archie with a mild, bloodshot interest. "He says he can let me go."

"He's lying," said Jin, sharply.

"Probably."

"Gregor, listen—"

"I did listen. That's the thing. I've been listening a week." Gregor leaned back in the chair. It creaked. His voice was perfectly even. "I've been here fifteen years, son. Fifteen years in a tin can with no one to talk to. I've got a machine for company, and the machine's got nothing to say. Do you know what that does to a man? Do you have any idea?"

"I think—" Archie began.

"You don't." It was said without heat. "You can't."

…

It was then that Archie made his mistake.

He knew it as he made it. That was the thing he would never forgive himself, in the long dark afterward: that some small clear voice at the back of his skull said, Wait. Look at his hand. It was resting on the arm of the chair, loosely, easily, with the knuckles slack. But under the wrist, nearly hidden, a small black box was clamped to the armrest, with a red light blinking at one end. It blinked in slow time. Tick. Tick. Tick.

That's a transmitter.

He saw it. He recognized it. And then he looked up and met Gregor's eyes, tired and blue and bloodshot, and he thought: He's like Elena. He's like Thomas. He needs someone to say his name.

"Gregor," said Archie, and took a step forward with his hands open. "I'm not here to take anything from you. I know about the others. Elena. Thomas. I know you came in with them, with a man named Matteo, fifteen years ago. I know how long it's been."

"You do?"

"We all came for the same reason. We were sick. We were running out of time." He was speaking gently, the way he'd spoken in the throne room, and he could feel the words taking hold. "Whatever he promised you, he can't give it. He doesn't want you free. He wants something from you. I've met people like him. They smile and they listen and they nod, and when they're done, they take it all."

Gregor was silent.

The red light on the black box blinked: tick. Tick.

"That's a nice speech," said Gregor, at last. "You practice that?"

"No."

"It's good." He nodded, slowly. "You got a good voice for it. Real warm. Real honest." His eyes did not move from Archie's face. "The Voice said you would. He said, the architect will try to talk to you."

The room had gone very still.

"He said you'd be gentle about it. He said it would sound just like the truth." Gregor smiled, a long slow tired smile that crawled up one side of his face. "And he said that when you did, I should say thank you, and invite you to sit down."

"Gregor—"

"Please." He gestured to the seats. "Make yourselves comfortable. It's a long way down."

Behind them, with a soft hydraulic sigh, the pressure door swung shut.

The wheel spun. The lock engaged.

And all along the walls of the command deck, one by one, the dead screens flickered into life, and on every one of them, in pale gray type, was a single line: OXYGEN LEVELS CRITICAL. ALL SECTIONS SEALED.

…

A great way off, in a lab beneath the New Hampshire hills, a man in a gray suit set his tablet down on the desk.

He did it carefully, as one sets down a glass. He smoothed the cuff of his sleeve. He looked at the screen, at the blinking line of text, the four green traces compressed into a cluster at the bottom of the display, and the faint amber trace that was Gregor's, quivering and thin.

"That's step one," said William Cross, to the empty room.

Then he picked up the phone and began to dial.