James Axler – Parallax Red Parallax Red

Smiling scornfully, he worked his legs as if he were running in place. Gracefully he turned to plant his feet against a wall and bounced from it to the ceiling in a zigzag fashion. Brigid swam toward the overhead light fixture hanging from the highest point of the ceiling.

Bracing herself as best she could, she lashed out at it with both feet. Though the motion sent her rocketing backward, the glass shattered explosively. Sharp shards and splinters danced in the air like a cloud between her and Sindri.

Sindri avoided plunging through it by braking himself with hands slapped flat against the ceiling. Brigid hit the wall on her right side with bruising force. Immediately she began pulling herself down toward the floor, using her treaded boot soles to achieve a degree of traction.

Hissing in frustrated fury, Sindri crept along the curved ceiling, circling the outermost edge of broken glass. Brigid knew that once he circumvented it, he would launch himself off the ceiling and swoop down on her like a bird of prey.

Kane heard the drunken laughter and cracked, off-key singing before he negotiated a bend in the tunnel wall. The four trolls who had escorted Brigid and Sindri bobbed and pirouetted in the null gravity. One of the little men appeared to be sitting in an invisible boat, making clumsy, jerking, back-and-forth movements with his arms. At the same time, Kane recognized the song they were croaking as a hopelessly mangled rendition of “Row Your Boat.” He would have laughed at the scene, except he knew the hatch they floated before and ostensibly were supposed to guard led to the medical facility. Sindri and Brigid had to be inside.

Reining in his impulse to charge among them and lay them out with his fists and feet, Kane imitated the trolls’ slack-jacked, giddy expressions. He floated negligently toward them, singing a song he had heard Lakesh give voice to more than once. He couldn’t remember all the lyrics, but as he approached the trans-adapts, he sang loudly about luck being a lady tonight.

The trolls accepted his participation in their spontaneous sing-along, their hatred of humans subsumed by an overindulgence in oxygen. They greeted him with grins and hoots of appreciative laughter, clapping their hands and feet.

Kane gently bumped a pair of trolls aside as he reached out to trigger the photoelectric sensor beam that would open the hatch.

“Hey, youfuckin’ big ‘un,” snapped one of the trolls in a surly, challenging tone. “You can’t go in there.”

Kane turned to face him, maintaining a friendly smile. The little man didn’t return it. He scowled ferociously. Kane knew from experience that every group of drunks had at least one member who turned nasty when under the influence, whether the intoxicant was home-brewed whiskey or oxygen-rich air.

This particular transadapt was a mean drunk and, even if a loathsome big ‘un hadn’t appeared, he probably would have picked a fight with one of his friends.

The troll reached for Kane’s shoulder. He struck out at the little man with his left fist. It caught the trans-adapt in the sternum, and his swart features seemed to squeeze together like a fireplace bellows.

Uttering a strangulated wheeze, the troll catapulted straight back, cannonading against the opposite wall. The double impacts drove consciousness from his gimlet-hard eyes with the suddenness of a light being switched off.

The laughter and singing of the trolls instantly died. They looked at the slumped, floating form of their comrade with dazed eyes and sober faces. They flicked their gaze to Kane, staring at him with mounting horror and realization.

He waved his hand in front of the door sensor, and before the hatch had fully irised open, he lunged through it. The lunge, which began in zero gravity, ended in a limb-heavy, clumsy, face-first collapse to the floor. He realized in midfall that his fear the gravity generator would reset itself had been borne out.

Objects crashed and tinkled all around him. He raised his head just in time to glimpse a small naked man plummet straight down from the highest point of the ceiling. Behind him he heard the surprised grunts and gasps of the transadapts as they dropped heavily to the tunnel floor.