Greg Cox: Loose ends

A feeble moan caught her ear, and she looked down to see Ramirez lying at her feet, a gaping wound in his chest. The injured pilot was black-and-white, too, but someone had colorized his blood, which glowed as psychedelically as the pigments in a black-lighted painting. Neon-red fluid pooled beneath the lieutenants body and leaked from the corners of his mouth. Isabel stepped back in horror, yanking the toes of her boots away from the spreading pool of gore, and threw her hands over her mouth. She suddenly became aware of a rhythmic throbbing noise, pounding in the background like rolling thunder many miles away. The muffled thumping, which she instinctively knew had to be Ramirez's own failing heartbeat, grew slower and fainter by the second.

"Oh my God," she realized. The lieutenant wasn't dreaming, he was dying! Morton must have shot Ramirez, just like he killed Okada, and the biker in the alley. But where was Liz? Isabel looked about rapidly, but saw no sign of the kidnapped girl, only Alex's backpack, lying crumpled on the stone floor. Where had Morton taken Liz after shooting the lieutenant? Perhaps only Ramirez knew.

I have to hurry, she thought, and not just for Liz's sake. She had wondered sometimes about what would happen to her if she stumbled into someone's mind at the very moment of their death; now she seemed dangerously close to finding out.

And, even more terrifying, she knew she would have to go even deeper into the dying man's consciousness to learn everything he knew of this place, and of Liz's fate. What ijl stay too long? she worried, dread eating away at her resolve. What if he takes me with him wherever he's going? "David?" she whispered, then tried again more loudly. "David!" The dying pilot's eyelids flickered momentarily, but that was all. All around her, the fading pulse ticked away toward its inevitable cessation.

Unable to avoid kneeling in the sticky, sickening crimson pool, she took Ramirez's head in her hands and tried to rouse him from his terminal slumber. "Wake up, David!" she shouted into his face. "Talk to me, please!"At first, there was no response and Isabel feared she was too late. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw ebony shadows creeping in on them from every corner of the cave, threatening to extinguish Ramirez's last spark of life. She could barely hear his faltering heartbeat anymore.

His eyes opened, making contact with hers. "Isabel?"She dived into his deep brown orbs, the portals to his soul, and instantly landed inside his head, looking out through those same eyes at the craggy ceiling of the cave. Darkness closed in perilously, obscuring his/her view, but Isabel found what she was looking for in the churning recesses of his memory. Yes! she thought ecstatically, swimming back toward the rapidly shrinking light. Time to go.

Part of her regretted leaving Ramirez to face the ultimate blackness alone, but then she remembered how, on the phone, the blackmailed lieutenant had worried only about his security, not Liz's. She decided not, to lose too much sleep over Ramirez's tragic end, despite the intimate bond they had just shared.

"Good-bye, David," she whispered, using his own quivering lips, then woke herself up…

Max was there, right where she'd left him, watching her with eyes so naked in their agonized hope that she had to look away. The rest of her friends were there as well, seated around the empty pizza trays. Alex took her hand and offered her a sip of water. "How did it go?" he asked gently.

She appreciated the tender treatment, but declined the water, unwilling to let her tormented brother suffer in suspense an instant longer.

"I did it," she told them, the salvaged memories and impressions still fresh in her mind. "I know where they are."

“I'm coming for you, space-girl! You can't get away from me! Give me back that case or I'll dissect you myself!"Morton's threats reverberated through the twisting labyrinth of underground chambers, the echoes making it impossible to guess just how near or far away he was. Hiding in a chapel-like grotto, carved out eons ago by seeping water and sulfurous gases, Liz kept her eye out for the telltale gleam of Morton's flashlight, which she assumed he had appropriated from Lieutenant Ramirez, who had no doubt joined the gunman's ever-growing list of victims. Periodically, over however long she had been fleeing through the convoluted caverns, she had glimpsed the leading edge of the beam falling upon a glistening limestone wall nearby, spurring her onward through yet more branching tributaries and tunnels.

The incandescent handprint upon her belly, which seemed to glow all the brighter the more frightened she became, was an extremely mixed blessing. On the one hand, it helped her navigate, albeit randomly, through this light-less subterranean realm, helping her avoid stumbling into solid walls or yawning chasms; on the other hand, it made her visible to her relentless pursuer, advertising her location like a neon sign on a moonless night.

For the moment, however, she seemed to have gained a slight lead on Morton, who must have taken a wrong turn somewhere amid the diverging corridors. Liz took advantage of this lull in the chase to do something about the sticky tape binding her wrists together. Locating a sturdy stalagmite with a notably jagged tip, she backed against the stony fang, using it as a saw to gnaw away at the overlapping strips of duct tape. Doing so meant dropping the purloined attache case, but Liz decided she needed her hands free even more than she wanted to hang onto the coveted spacecraft debris.

"I know you're in here, Tess!" Morton called out, still laboring under the false impression that that was her name. Liz wasn't sure how she felt about facing death with that particular name on her would-be killer's lips. Do I want to spend my final moments on Earth mistaken for a trampy blond homewrecker from anotherpla.net? The duct tape was maddeningly durable and hard to cut through, but she eventually succeeded in poking a hole in the tape between her wrists, then used that tiny gash as a starting point for tearing away at the gluey fibers holding the tape together. It was taking way too long, though, and Morton sounded like he was getting closer.

"Don't be stupid!" his booming voice railed at her. "It won't do you any good to get hopelessly lost down here. You're just going to starve to death in the dark!"He had a point, Liz realized, but the alternative, putting herself back in Morton's bloodstained hands, was even less appealing. She'd cope with finding her way out if and when she finally got away from the murderous gunman. Tom and Becky ultimately made it out of the caves, she recalled, clinging to that storybook happy ending for comfort. So can I.

Only a few gooey strands held together the tape confining her arms. She tugged her wrists apart with every ounce of strength she could muster, while simultaneously sawing away at the last fraying filaments. All at once, her wrists sprang apart and Liz discovered she could see her own hands for the first time in hours. At last! she thought gratefully, savoring this one small victory over Mortons brutality. Eager fingers peeled away the rest of the tape, revealing wrists that were red and chafed, yet blissfully free.

Moving quickly, to get farther away from Morton, she rescued the briefcase from the floor and headed away from the sound of his approaching voice. Feeling like some exotic bioluminescent lifeform, evolved to exist far below the Earth's surface or at the bottom of the sea, she turned her silver light upon the escape route ahead of her.

Two separate pathways-one wide, one narrow-diverged before her. Iiz hesitated, uncertain which natural aperture to take. Morton might have trouble squeezing his bulk through the skinny crevice, but what if that aisle kept on thinning until it ceased to exist? She shuddered at the thought of getting wedged into a dead end, unable to turn around and go back the way she came without running straight into Morton; all the killer would have to do is wait right where she was standing now for thirst or starvation to drive her back into his clutches. Okay, she decided, the wide door it is.