Scarlet Angel (34 page)

Her eyes shot open. “Holy shit. Collier was right…
Derrick found something.”

Scarlett twisted her body one direction. Her broken
rib stabbed into her lung, taking her breath away. Pain shot
through her chest and side, but she climbed to her hands and knees
anyway.

Her hand planted on the sapphire-glass window. Her
palm slipped at first, leaving a streak of red. Beyond the window
she saw the massive blue orb that was her home. “Jesus, Derrick.
What did you find?”

Scarlett tried to stand. Every muscle in her calves
and thighs quivered. More tears streamed down her face but she kept
pushing up.

Finally climbing to her feet, she looked at the
world below again. She had to get the data to somebody. Someone
needed to see what Derrick had been up to.

Scarlett turned and limped for the door. More
explosions came, each one threatening to knock her to the floor
again.

Back in the main hall, the walkway was nearly empty.
A few staff in uniforms and researchers in white coats ran by.
Scarlett figured they were heading for escape buoys. She staggered
after them.

A trickle of blood ran from a small cut on her head
down into her eye. She wiped at it and kept repeating in her own
mind that someone needed to see what Derrick had been doing.
Someone needed to find out why he was willing to kill to keep the
project secret.

Scarlett’s feet shuffled across the metal floor. She
nearly tripped when the voice on the intercom changed.

“
Scarlett? Hello?”

She stopped. “Dax?” Her voice was a cracked whisper.
She cleared her throat and tried again. “Dax?”

“
Scarlett! Oh thank
god.”

Jules was crying in the background.

Reflexively, Scarlett turned toward the ceiling.
“Dax… How did you find me? How did you even know I was still
alive?”

She waited a long moment without a response. A whiff
of smoke drifted to her.
Oh shit.
She started shuffling down
the walkway again.

“
Scarlett? Can you hear me?” Dax’s
voice cracked with static.

“
Yes, what the hell’s going
on?”

“
The virus we infected the station
with… It’s out of control. It’s corrupting the station’s vital
systems. Whole sections of the station are losing power or
exploding. Don’t know how long we can keep this
connection.”

The smell of burnt plastic and hot ozone grew
stronger. She glanced over her shoulder and saw grey puffs starting
to collect on the ceiling at the far end of the hall.

“
What do you want? I’m trying to
get out of here.” She knew she wasn’t going to make it.

Jules said something, but it was too quiet for
Scarlett to hear.

Dax cleared his throat. “I will. I’m trying.
Scarlett, you have to get to an escape buoy.”

“
No shit.”

“
Alright, I need you to trust me
for a minute, okay?” His words came out faster.

Scarlett stopped again and glared at the ceiling.
“Jesus Christ, Dax. Just tell me what to do.”

“
Okay… you have to go back the
other way.”

She looked back down the hall. “There’s fire that
way.”

“
Not yet. There’s only smoke so
far.”

“
Um…” She rolled her eyes.
“Generally where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

“
Dammit, Scarlett. Trust
me.”

“
Fine, but if I die of smoke
inhalation, I’m going to kill you.” She turned and shuffled back
the way she had come.

“
Okay, good. Now, we’re going to
lose contact here in a second. Thirty meters straight ahead past
Derrick’s office, there’s a hatch in the floor. You’ll need to go
down there and—”

The intercom fizzled and his voice was gone.

Scarlett slouched her shoulders for a second.
“Mother Fu—” Her broken rib poked at her lung. “Ow, dammit.”

She looked back the way she was originally going,
then back to where Dax told her to go. He said to trust him. But
she didn’t know if she could trust only half the information.
Do
I have a choice?

Scarlett fixed her eyes on a spot on the floor just
past Derrick’s office and willed herself to get there. A minute
later, she saw the hatch handle embedded into the floor.

A flicker of yellow pulled her attention from the
floor to the curve of the hallway ahead. Flames licked through the
doorway of the side rooms. Thick, black smoke billowed out of the
open hatch, creating a moving wall of choking death. The acrid
taste of the burning station coated her tongue.

Scarlett pulled herself along faster, ignoring the
pain. She reached the hatch and dropped to her knees. Finding it
unlocked, she flung small trap door open. A ladder descended down
into a dark shaft.

She looked at the coming wall of smoke and crawled
down into the shaft, closing the hatch behind her. In the dark, she
groped for handholds. She descended one rung at a time until her
feet hit a solid floor.

Her hands fumbled along the wall, finally brushing a
flat panel. The panel beeped then lit up along with a series of
blue arrows on the floor. To her right was an airlock. Two words
emblazoned on the airlock door made her cry anew—Escape Buoy.

* * *

The docking clamps released, sending a loud thunk
through the hull of the buoy. Scarlett watched through the small
window on the hatch door as her buoy sped away from the station,
leaving only the fading reflection of flashing red and blue beacon
lights. She glanced down at the sliver of wood embedded in her
side.
I can’t believe I made it.

Attitude jets fired and the small ship altered its
course. From her new angle, Scarlett could see pieces of the
station exploding. Flames filled most of the windows on the
station.

Dozens of other escape buoys of various sizes raced
away from the burning station, their blinking lights creating
cascades of color across the black of space. Scarlett hoped
everyone was going to make it. She’d seen and caused enough death.
She didn’t think she could handle knowing she was responsible for
so many innocents dying. Only two people on the station deserved
her wrath. One of them was dead and the other was likely in his own
buoy. Just as she thought of Neil, a ship undocked from the central
spire. The snub-nosed shuttle arced away from the station and
turned toward the Earth. She watched as the ship faded into a tiny
speck before entering the planet’s atmosphere.

Behind her, the communication terminal turned on and
hissed with static. “Escape buoy four-seven-niner, this is Earth
Command. Rescue vessels have been deployed to your location. Please
confirm your status.”

She mentally went over her wounds. Fresh blood
continued to pour over the crusting bits surrounding the chunk of
wood in her side. Her hand reflexively went to the blisters behind
her damaged and deaf left ear. The motion made her wince at the
broken rib spearing into her lung.

Scarlett felt her heart rate begin to slow. The last
of her adrenaline rush was fading. She turned to the communications
console. The lights on the touch screen panel swirled and her head
swam.

She reached for the blinking button to open the comm
channel. No matter how far she reached, the panel moved farther and
farther away.

Son of a bitch.
Darkness pressed in at the
edges of her vision.

Scarlett found just enough energy to mumble to
herself. “Well, at least everyone else is safe. And Derrick is
dead. Someone will find the data core. I’ll take that as a decent
trade.”

The console squelched again just as the blackness
closed in on her.

“
Escape buoy four-seven-niner,
this is Earth Command. Rescue vessels have been deployed to your
location. Please confirm your status, over.”

She struggled to keep her eyes open, but they closed
anyway. The copper taste of blood returned as she forced out one
last word. “Alive.”

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