"What's your problem?" Jerry asked them.

That's when he noticed the hay beneath him begin to squirm. He immediately scrambled away, and saw he'd sat upon some sort of round, grayish object roughly half a meter in width.

It looked like- "An egg," Jerry said.

His guess was confirmed a moment later, when spiders began to pour out of it.

Chapter Thirty-Five.

Kane sent another load of office workers up to the surface in the elevator and waited for it to come back down. A helicopter was en route to airlift everybody down to Albuquerque. As the head of the facility, Kane would not leave until the very last moment. He checked his watch: only twenty-six minutes left.

It was regrettable that not everyone could be evacuated. The fact that Sergeant Rimmer and a majority of the staff on other levels were beyond rescue was upsetting, but there was no viable way to help them. The risk was too great. Everyone at the Spiral knew that their lives would be deemed expendable should the worst happen. And the worst was certainly happening.

The elevator returned to the floor and Kane sent another load of people inside. "As soon as you exit the facility," he told them, "remain in the clearing and await extraction."

A security guard came up beside Kane. "I've swept the floor and checked in with Conway and Hartfield on levels 3 and 4. They have another twenty ready to go as soon as the elevator is free."

Kane glanced around at the panicked faces in the Nucleus. "How many left on this floor?"

"A dozen. One more load after this one and we should be fully evacuated on this floor."

Kane nodded. "Then I will relocate to level 4 and work on getting everybody out of there next."

"Yes, sir. I'll let Conway know."

Kane watched the last people pile into the elevator and waited for the doors to close.

Yet they remained open.

Kane strode over to them. He glanced at the employees inside. "Has anyone commanded the elevator to stay open?

People shook their heads.

Kane huffed. "Doors close... Doors close... Surface level."

The doors remained open.

Kane grabbed a hold of one of the doors and yanked, but it held in place firmly.

Kane raised his voice into a shout. "ELEVATOR CLOSE DOORS NOW."

The elevator did nothing.

Kane grabbed his nearest man, a tall security guard with a fuzzy blonde moustache. "Linden, run a diagnostic on the elevator. Why aren't the doors closing?"

Linden ran over to the nearest computer station and began typing away. After a few moments, his brow wrinkled in confusion and he glanced at Kane uncertainly.

"What is it?" Kane demanded.

"The elevator has been placed into maintenance mode. All functions are on hold until it's released."

"Then release it."

"I can't, sir. The access to the elevator's commands has been locked. I can't get into the menus."

Kane marched over to the computer. "Stand aside." He typed in his own login details and went into the elevator's control systems. As soon as he tried to enter the base menus he was met with the message: ACCESS DENIED. FULL SYSTEM LOCK DOWN INITIATED. CONSULT ADMINISTRATOR.

Kane thumped his fist down on the keyboard, dislodging the Ctrl chiclet. "I am the administrator, you son of a bitch."

"Let me try something, sir." The security guard logged back into the system and ran a few commands. After a moment he straightened up from the keyboard and once again creased his brow in confusion. "It seems that Dr. Gornman initiated the lock down. She's reset access privileges so that no one can override her commands."

"How could she do that?"

The security guard shrugged. "I don't know."

The realization hit Kane like a slap to the face. He thought back to when the elevators were installed, and remembered giving Gornman administrative privileges to them during a counselling session. She'd expressed concern that if anything happened to Kane, the elevators could trap those who worked at the Spiral. He'd shared the operation control to make sure they'd function if there was an emergency and he became incapacitated.

But instead, Dr. Gornman had used that knowledge to shut the elevators off.

Kane shook his head and gritted his teeth. "What the hell is that woman doing? She's going to kill us all."

Chapter Thirty-Six.

Dr. Gornman stared at the monitor, drinking in Kane's anguished expression.

"Who's in charge now, General?"

The idiot would have no choice. He'd have to revoke Protocol Omega, or else kill himself and everyone in the Spiral.

Gornman watched him go to the nearest hallway phone, and she picked up when he called.

"We're evacuating," Kane said. "What did you do to the elevators?"

"I shut them down."

"For God's sake, why?"

Gornman had been waiting a very long time to tell Kane what she thought of him. Of his rules. Of the Spiral. Of the entirety of Deus Manus. But instead of launching into a well-deserved scolding, she played it safe. Just in case things didn't turn out as she hoped.

"There are monsters everywhere, General. We can't risk one of them escaping."

"I'm in charge here, Doctor. I make that call."

Gornman pushed the martyr card. "The danger is too great."

"In twenty-four minutes this facility is going to fill up with cement. Do you want to be here when that happens?"

"Rimmer and his men can still contain the problem. You're awfully eager to destroy a multi-billion dollar facility."

"It's my decision, Dr. Gornman. I order you to start the elevators."

"I can't do that, General. Revoke Protocol Omega."

What Kane said next shocked her. "No."

For a moment, Gornman actually admired the old bastard. He had a heroic streak after all.

But she knew him too well. This was like a game of chicken, two cars speeding at each other. He'd break first.

"So be it," Gornman said. "Then they can drop a giant tombstone on the Spiral, with all the names of the people you've killed."

Gornman hung up the phone, then put the ringer on silent.

Kane would break first. She was sure of it.

He had to.

Chapter Thirty-Seven.

"We're in trouble," Jerry said.

"You think?" Rimmer asked, still peering through the Plexiglas.

"More than that. Look."

Rimmer turned and stared at the giant egg buried in the hay, dozens of spiders crawling out if it. Each was larger than a tarantula.

"Why are you waiting? Shoot them!"

"We're in a steel cell, Jerry."

"So?"

"Bullets ricochet. We'll cut ourselves to pieces."

As Jerry backed away, Rimmer advanced on the spider eruption, stomping and swearing. The imps followed suit, scrambling after the arachnids and tearing their legs off. For every one they killed, three more came out of the egg.

Jerry remembered what happened to Handler when he was bitten by a spider; the bloke damn near exploded from the venom. Not a good way to go.

But there didn't seem to be any good ways to go in the Spiral. One death was worse than the next.

Jerry joined the attack, stepping on the horde as fast as he could. The arachnids crunched under his feet like cellophane bags, farting out guts as they squished. It was disgusting, and scary as anything he'd ever done before, but the spiders weren't fighting back, or even trying to get away. Maybe they were too young to know any better.

"I really screwed up my life these past few months," Jerry blurted over the noise of the assault.

Rimmer laughed. "Really? You pick now to start talking about personal shit?"

"I might not get another chance to talk about it." Jerry stomped on a particularly large spiderling, which popped with the sound of a balloon. "I've got things I'll never be able to make right."

Rimmer glanced at him but continued to step on spiders. "The person you stole from in the UK?"

"No, fuck him. I have a brother. I messed things up with him. I would have liked to have said sorry."

"You may get a chance yet. Take it from someone who has faced certain death before and lived to tell the tale. Sometimes the heat of the moment stops us looking forward."

"So you think we'll get out of this alive?"

Rimmer shook his head. "No."

Jerry winced. "Well, what the bloody hell then?"

"Doesn't mean we're going to stop trying. Worst thing a man can do is lie down and accept death. God gave us life. It's our duty to preserve it."

"You believe in all that? I mean, you've killed people before and you guard a prison full of monsters. You still think there's a God?"

"Absolutely." He pulled out a tactical knife and shish-kabobbed a spider climbing the cell wall. "I just think that God has his hands a little fuller than we would believe. As much as I believe in Him, I also believe that there're evil forces that work against Him."

"Like Bub? Are you saying he's the devil?"

"People like to question God for letting bad things happen. Doesn't it make more sense that it's because he isn't in total control. I've always believed that God does what he can but that there are forces which seek to bring him down. Forces like Bub. Seeing the abominations in this prison has only increased my belief of that."

"But God is God, right? All powerful, almighty. Couldn't he just put an end to this bullshit?"

"They say the Lord works in mysterious ways."