Dr Gorman logged on to her computer and got to work. After so many years at the Spiral, she knew the computers almost better than anyone. The only person who knew more about the IT systems was Dr Chandelling.

And now he's lost his mind.

Which makes me the master of this facility.

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 45 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 has most definitely happened.

I still don't even know what went wrong.

All I know is that it started with the Dennisons.

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 will 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 already."

"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 Gorman on subbasement 10 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. "Dr Gorman and Dr Chandelling were both here when the new systems were installed. They know it better than anybody else here."

"Are you saying that my subordinates have more control over this facility than I do? That, right now, Dr Gorman is in charge?"

Linden leaned back in his chair and sighed. "There's nothing we can do."

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

Dr Gorman grinned. The job was done. Nobody was going to leave her to die in a hole without her taking them with her. Despite her grim fate, she felt better knowing that her final act had been one of strength and control. She would be abused by no one, lest they suffer the dire consequences.

The man who had raped her had learned that lesson when the garbage truck had hit him. She suspected Deus Manus had been behind it, which meant he had died as a direct result of what he had done to her. Karma had been at work that day, and it would wield its sharp-edged sword again today.

For now, she would join up with the others in the conference room. At least she had the opportunity to not die alone.

And at least I will get to see the deaths of the people responsible for this catastrophe. The Dennisons are going to pay...

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

"What are you doing?" Jerry asked Rimmer.

The sergeant was fiddling with the back of his radio with a combat blade he had produced from a scabbard on his belt.

"I'm trying to get inside the radio. All of the units have a regulator chip inside them. It allows us to deactivate them remotely should one go missing. It's a security feature and Kane just activated the chip in this one. If I can remove the chip, I should be able to get it working again. I might be able to contact my men."

"And get us the fuck out of here?"

"That's the plan."

"Can I help?"

Rimmer pressed the tip of his knife into an exposed screw and began turning. "It should only take a minute. Best thing you can do is step away from the door. No point attracting any of those things."

Jerry nodded and stepped away from the hatch. He went and sat back on his boulder and twiddled his thumbs.

"I really screwed up my life these past few months."

Rimmer laughed. "None of that is going to matter if those things get inside here."

"It's not even that which bothers me. I've been expecting to die since the day I got brought down here and, surprisingly, I've been okay with that. What upsets me is that I won't get to make certain things right."

Rimmer was still unscrewing the radio unit, but he glanced upwards. "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."

"Oh."

"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 said. "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."

"So you're saying that there's, like, an evil God as well?"

"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. Seeing the abominations in this prison has only increased my belief of that."

Jerry sighed. "I don't know what to believe. All I know is that the world was a pretty sucky place before you showed me all of the monsters you have locked up down here."

Rimmer raised his fist in victory as the back panel of the radio popped off and fell into the sand. There was an immediate burst of static letting them both know that the unit was once again live.

Rimmer started trying to reach people right away. He pressed the transceiver button and spoke in clipped tones. "This is Rimmer. Report back. Report back."

There was no answer from any of the people Rimmer tried.

"You think everybody is dead?" Jerry asked.

"I hope not." Rimmer twisted the dial on the handset a few more times and then rubbed his beard as if he had a thought coming to him. "Hold on a minute... Yes, almost. There!"

The radio speaker broke free of static and picked up the clear sound of voices.

"Who is that?"

"It's the conference room," said Rimmer. "I've tuned into the intercom on the desk. I think... I think it's one of my men, West, and... Is that Andy Dennison?"

Jerry nodded. "Definitely. Let him know we're here."

"I can't. We can only listen."

"So how does this help us?"

"It doesn't. But at least we know we're not the only ones alive. If we sit tight, things might turn towards the better."

Jerry frowned. The sound of slithering and creeping beasts in the corridor told him otherwise. He placed his head in his hands and fought the urge to weep. Dying like a man suddenly seemed important.

Why couldn't I be trapped in a cell with Nessie instead of this arsehole?

Shit, Nessie? Is she okay?

Jerry looked up. "Did you hear Nessie's voice on your radio? Is she with Mr Dennison?"

They listened for a few moments to the hushed conversation that was going on nine floors below.

Rimmer shook his head. "I hear a couple of my men, Andy Dennison, and a few of Dr Gorman's lab assistants if I'm not mistaken. No one else though."

Jerry's head dropped. "I hope she's okay."

"You really like her?"

"She was nice to me; seemed to like me. That's pretty rare."

Rimmer placed the radio down on the sand carefully and looked at Jerry. "Seems to me you set out to make people not like you."

Jerry shrugged. "I guess. I don't know why I do it. I'm just kind of an obnoxious dork."

"No, you're not. You act like an obnoxious dork so that people don't like you. I think you do that because you can't take people not liking you for who you really are. You can't accept rejection so you make sure that nobody gets a chance to learn who you really are. Textbook single-parent upbringing. You feel rejected by your father and you developed natural defences against being rejected by anyone else."

Jerry huffed. "I didn't realise you had a side gig as a psychiatrist. How you know so much about me anyway?"

"I pulled up your file when you arrived. British Government only lists a mother for you, no father."

"And you think you know me because of that?"

Rimmer twiddled with his beard. "No, I think that because I know myself. "I didn't have a father either. Drifted through life, acting like an asshole, getting in fights, pushing people away. I joined the army just to separate myself from society."

"So that's why you're such a hardass, then?"