Princess of the Void

Tonight is the night. Grant’s more grateful than ever for his guitar to keep his hands from fidgeting and picking the threads out of his coveralls.

No motion on the cameras. He waits for Batty to wake up and show herself. He’s already coming up with how he’ll describe the plan.

“Grant.”

Grant looks up from his guitar.

Drake is in the doorway. Grant didn’t hear him come in. “You mind putting that away for me?”

“Sure.” Grant leans the guitar against the desk. “What’s up?”

“You’re watching an empty room, Grant.”

“I do that every night.”

“Tonight you are watching an empty room, Grant.” Drake’s face is as unmoving as concrete. “Batty’s not in there.”

“Oh.” He sounds hollow. Like he’s listening to a tinny recording of himself bombing a performance. “Where is she?”

“We don’t know, Grant.” Drake’s eyes are ice. “We’re wondering if you might.”

“No. Of course not.”

Drake stares in silence at him for ten seconds. A curtain of sweat is rolling down his back.

“Come with me,” Drake finally says. “Let’s take a quick walk.”

“I shouldn’t be leaving my post.”

Drake folds his hands in front of him. This is the same man who watched him sign that NDA. “Stand up.”

Grant stands up. His legs don’t give out beneath him, which is a minor victory.

Drake stands aside. “After you.”

“I’m not sure where we’re going.”

“We’re going left.” And Drake stares at him until he leaves the room, and goes left.

Drake follows him, occasionally ordering him down one side of a junction and once through a door. Grant has never been in this part of the facility. He realizes belatedly he should have been memorizing the way back.

“You had a very simple job, Grant,” Drake says. “Very hard to mess this job up. Next left.”

“What’s going on, Drake?”

Drake just shakes his head. They stop by a crash-bar door that Drake props open.

Beyond is a tiled room with a folding table in the middle.

“Do you recognize that?” Drake asks.

On the folding table is the go-bag that was in his trunk. The changes of clothes. The flashlights and batteries and food. The maps, the books. The sleeping bags, one adult-sized and one kid-size. The gun.

“Would you like to tell me why these things were in your car?”

“I was.” Grant needs to swallow the taste of bile out of his throat. “Gonna go camping.”

“Step inside, please.” Drake’s hands are on his belt. One thumb’s hooked into the buckle. The other settles near his pistol. “Let’s go through this stuff. And talk.”

He looks at the gun on Drake’s belt. The palm pressed on the holster.

He looks at the room beyond. There’s a drain in its floor.

He bolts.

“Stop. Stop.” Boots stamp the laminate flooring. He hears Drake unhook his radio. “He’s running. He’s— right.”

Grant twists round a corner into a straight break. He’s turned around. He’s lost.

“Stop or I will shoot.”

Grant feels as though he’s dreaming as he stumbles to a halt. Like his legs aren’t obeying him anymore. He glances back and stares down the barrel of Drake’s Glock.

“Hands on your head.”

He obeys. The gun pushes into his back and marches him back to the room with the table and the bag and the drain.

Drake pushes him inside. “Couldn’t hack it after all,” he says. “Couldn’t hack it. Sorry, kid.”

“Drake.” Grant searches the man’s face. For anything he can reach. “Let’s— let’s talk at least. Like you said. Let’s talk.”

Drake shakes his head. “Turn away.”

“Please, man. Please.”

Drake seizes his shoulder and twists his body. “Turn the fuck away.

“No,” he screams. “No no no no”

A heavy thump behind him and an earsplitting bang. He sprawls forward. Something hot and wet beads on his neck and for an absurd moment he thinks this is it, I’ve been shot, this is how it feels. Then he hears the scream.

He turns around. Batty is clinging to Drake’s back and sinking her teeth into his throat. Her little hand is clamped down on his wrist, twisting the gun to one side. Plaster rains on them from a hole he blasted into the ceiling. Drake’s cry rises an octave amid a raw flood of terror and pain, and then Batty’s head jerks and yanks and a fountain of bright blood gushes from his ruined neck.

Grant watches Drake’s eyes roll into his skull, his jaw slacken. He crumples. Batty rides his shoulders to the floor.

She rummages on the body. She tugs the gun from its hand and stands up. Her mouth, her arms, her whole front are covered in arterial crimson. She gazes at him. Her pupils are so massive that her eyes appear entirely black, like a shark’s.

“Grantyde,” she says.

“Oh Christ,” he whispers. “Ohhh Christ.”

The reds of her irises wink back into view at the edges. They’re so bright it’s like they’re glowing. “Grantyde. Taiikari.”

“Wait. Wait. We need, uh—” Grant crouches at the corpse. His hands are shaking so violently he has trouble getting into its pocket, but he comes back out with Drake’s wallet and ID card. Batty’s brows furrow as he retrieves them. “For the locks.”

She stares at him as he straightens up. He has no idea, her expression. He doesn’t know what’s going on up there, he realizes. Drake was right about that.

She reaches her hand out, the one not holding the gun. “Hand,” she says.

Grant numbly passes her the dead man’s ID.

She moves to the door. When he starts to follow, she pauses. “Batty up. Grantyde here. Yes?” Her eyes flash.

“Yes. Okay. Just—you’ll come back, right?”

“Come back.” She nods. She blinks invisible. The ID and the gun bob in midair. Bloody footprints trace her passage.

He stands with Drake’s body. It’s been a little over a year since he sat in a room with a dead body, and it sure as shit wasn’t like this. He beats back the wave of nausea.

He packs his go-bag again. Fuck it, why not?

Should he bring his guitar? That would be stupid. Too bulky. He’s going to need to move. But should he? Batty loves that thing.

He’s on the verge of returning to the office to grab it when he hears the muffled gunshots. An automatic taktaktaktak

The lights turn red. A trilling siren starts in the office, echoing through the hall to him. He bites his knuckle hard. He feels like such a useless asshole down here. Is she okay? Is she dead? If she is, then at least he’s next. No time to grieve.

Minutes tick down. How long has it been?

“Grantyde.”

He leaps out of his skin. Batty’s standing in front of him; he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing for a moment and thinks there’s a chunk blown out of her side. But she’s got her invisibility on, he realizes. She’s just covered—covered—in blood.

“Come,” the gory wraith says, and pads from the room. He follows her.

She has a tangle of wires in one hand now. That’s his phone. She’s gutted it and reconfigured it into… something.

They make it to the elevator before Grant’s legs fail and he has to sit on the floor. He sees Drake’s eyes rolling back. He thinks he might faint.

“Grantyde.” She crouches next to him. “Grantyde, home.”

He nods, not trusting himself to open his eyes.

Over the coasting sound of the elevator, she sings, in surprisingly passable English.

The silence of a falling star

Lights up a purple sky

And as I wonder where you are

I'm so lonesome I could cry

The elevator doors open on the main floor. Batty takes his hand and pulls him to his feet. Together they step over the second corpse.

Batty leads Grant through a massacre. A half dozen people in tactical black. A poor shmuck with a cheap button-down and a handgun. Some shot, some torn open like Drake was. The reception desk is empty. The checkpoints are empty. In the scarlet light of the alarm, the blood smeared on the floors and walls looks black.

Batty doesn’t hurry. She’s alert but not alarmed. She’s killed everyone, he realizes. Everyone here.

They reach the front door. The parking lot is deserted.

“Wait. Wait. Before we go out.” Grant unslings his go-bag. He pulls a shearling coat out and hands it to Batty. “It’s, uh. Cold.”

She takes the coat. Her face is wary now when she looks at him.

They step into the night. “That’s my car.” He points to his civic in its pool of amber. Its trunk is popped. “It’s faster than on foot.” He mimics an engine noise.

“No car.” She shakes her head.

“We’re not gonna get anywhere walking, Batty. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“You come.” She points at the sky. “I take Grantyde. Home.”