[Danny]

politically correct? what does that have to do with it? politeness, yes, but PC? naa...

oh well, this bit is quite nasty by my standards. lots of blood...

CHAPTER 17

I tried to put the Killer out of my mind, but I couldn’t. I’d seen him. He was here. He would get me, and then people would die. Try as I did to think of something else, that thought kept running through my mind. I was more terrified now than I had ever been before in my life. My life had been in danger before, but there were at least seven people whom I needed to protect, and whose lives were now in danger.

We reached the Navigation Room, although I barely noticed the route. As we should have expected, it was not unoccupied. A sole mudokon was sitting at a desk in the dark, with his headphones on. I was in my own world of terror, so Vint crept up behind him and dealt him a swift blow to the back of the head with his rifle, knocking him unconscious.

The Navigation Room was an octagonal room at the very top of the Command Decks. It had windows taking up most of all eight walls. I handed Vint the torch, and kept my eyes closed, just in case. I heard the sounds of Vint rummaging around, in drawers and filing cabinets, searching for a map, a journey plan.

“Ulven? Aren’t you going to help?”

I was afraid. I couldn’t speak.

“Ulven?” I could feel his proximity. “I could do with some help here.”

I managed to shake my head, and mouth the word: “Scared.” I wanted to tell Vint to go, to get away from me, but I couldn’t. I sensed him move away, and heard the sounds of the search once again.

Because I had my eyes closed and Vint had his back to the door, neither of us saw the guards creep in, and Vint’s search meant that we never heard them either. The first I knew of it was when I was grabbed from behind, and my rifle torn from my hands, another gun barrel shoved into my throat. I opened my eyes to see Vint struggling with another guard, who had managed to get both of Vint’s arms behind his back, and held him in a headlock. A third mudokon stood by the light switch.

It wasn’t really their fault. They were only acting in self-defence, really. After all, we had already knocked their Navigator unconscious already. They saw us as a threat. As we were, of course. They only wanted to take us prisoner, probably, which nade what happened particularly unjust and gruesome. They didn’t know about the Madness, about the Killer. If they had, the mudokon holding me would have been more careful not to stand me in the centre of the octagonal room, where I’d be able to see my reflection in all eight windows.

They also wouldn’t have switched the light on.

I looked around, blinking in the light. The first thing I laid my eyes on was Him. In the window, holding the bloodstained shards of mirror. I tried to look away, but he was everywhere; wherever I looked, he was standing there in the window. I closed my eyes again, trying to shut him out, but I knew already that it was futile. He was all around me. He outnumbered me. What was the point of resisting? He would win anyway. I didn’t want to get more hurt than I needed to. I relaxed, and allowed the Killer to take over.

I have very blurred memories of what happened next. I later pieced together the events from what Vint told me.

Apparently, I let out a great scream, and grabbed the arm that the mudokon holding me was using to hold the gun to my throat. I grabbed it just above the elbow with both hands, and twisted it. The mudokon screamed as his bone shattered, and dropped the rifle. I spun round, and used him as a shield from the rifles of the other guards, while I pulled half of his arm bone out of his flesh. Blood was pouring out of the mudokon’s arm as I extracted the shard, then I held it to his throat. I advanced slowly on the mudokon holding Vint, keeping my mud in between him and me. When I was close enough, I slit the throat of the mudokon I was holding with his own arm bone.

The mudokon holding Vint was too surprised to react instantly when I leapt on him, wrenching his rifle from his grasp and throwing him to the ground. I spun on the mudokon by the light switch, and let off two bullets into him gun arm, making him drop his own weapon. Ignoring his screams, I fell upon the mudokon on the floor, grasped his skull with both hands, and forced both of my thumbs slowly into his eyes. I ignored his screams, which Vint later said had been almost unbearable, and the fountain of blood pouring out round my thumbs, I grimly pushed my thumbs down until they would go no further.

I didn’t get the chance to finish off that mudokon off then, because the one that had been by the lightswitch jumped me from behind. He was clawing at my eyes with his good arm, and hitting me numbly with his other. I stood, throwing him off, and then descended on him, grabbing him by the feather. I lifted him up to a standing position, then ran screaming to the windows, and smashed them all with his head. When all eight panes were broken, I took his still bleeding at still moving head, and used it to clear the frames completely of their remaining fragments. Many of them stuck in his head, like some kind of crest.

The mudokon I had blinded was soon put out of his misery, because I pulled two large shards of glass from the head of his companion, and forced them into his eye sockets until he stopped screaming and writhing.

I stopped, and stepped back. The Killer drifted away, or at least to wherever he goes when he isn’t in control. I returned to, hah, to normal, if you could ever call me normal. Normal for me, anyway. I looked around, unable to remember the events of the last few minutes, and wondering what had killed our attackers.

CHAPTER 18

Vint was leaning against a filing cabinet, holding his head in his hands, apparently weeping. He was covered in small scratches, where he’d been hit by flying glass from the windows. I couldn’t understand why the windows were all broken, but I could tell that they were the reason why Vint was bleeding. I reached out to touch him, but he turned away, and curled up into a foetal position. I could see a particularly large shard of glass sticking into his back, so I reached over and extracted it. Vint tensed, then relaxed, but did not turn around. I looked around again.

One mudokon was lying on the floor, the top third of his arm floppy and boneless, because the bone was lying beside his slit throat. A second mudokon was lying on his back, with two long shards of glass sticking out of his eyes like some kind of gruesome binoculars. The third was leaning floppily against a wall, his misshapen head facing the wall, his feather torn, his skull caved in. The floor was covered in small shards of glass, and soaked in blood. This reminded me a little of Zell’s carpet after his death, but I found that I could think about it without bringing on the Madness, as if the killer was now gorged, his appetite for death sated.

I turned back to Vint. “Vint?” He stirred, but did not turn around. “Vint? It’s Ulven. I’m here now. The death has gone. I’m back. I’ve driven the Killer away.”

He didn’t respond, and I looked around, despairing. Then I noticed something. There had been one mudokon here when we walked in, that Vint’d knocked out. Where was he? The only bodies here were the guards. I looked towards the door, which was swinging open. A faint trail of slightly bloody footprints led out of the room towards the stairs, as if the bearer of the feet had walked across a floor of broken glass…

“Oh shit!” I turned to Vint, and shook him more urgently this time. “Come on, Vint, we have to go! Now, or there’ll be more killing.”

He stirred, but didn’t get up. I lost my patience, and lifted him onto my shoulders. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to find my way back through the ship, and there was a great chance that we’d run into crew, who would be heading up here along that route. I staggered to the window and looked out. Yes, the deck beneath was wider, so we’d be able to stand on its roof. Looking sideways, I could see that there were ladders going down the side of the ship. Good, good.

Now, a problem. How could I get both Vint and myself out of the window without either of us getting badly cut? I couldn’t lower Vint out first, because most of the glass had fallen outside, and he would get hurt, but I also wouldn’t be able to reach him if I went first, and if I tried to carry him out, his back would get badly scratched.

I had an idea. I strode over to the desk, and prised the wooden top off it. Wiping the glass off it, I carried it to a window, and lowered it out onto the roof of the lower deck. Then I lifted Vint up again, and lowered him onto the desktop. Climbing after him, I thought that we were leaving a fairly clear trail to follow, with the blood on our hands and feet. I realised I no longer cared. We could clean up before returning to the others. I raised Vint onto my shoulders and began to descend the ladder.