“Get off this ship,” Travis said. “Tell Darren how much I love him, and tell him I said to be brave no matter what, and if he wants to make me happy, to live. When he’s old enough, tell him how sorry I was for what I did.”

“I’ll never remember all this, Travis, you’d better just survive, thank you,” Gerry said.

“Forget it,” Travis said. “If you get off this ship, get off this ship. Be a whole and complete dad. You don’t need a ghost over you and neither does he. Just forget everything I said, and take care of him.”

Travis walked off, and Gerry’s breathing slipped away.

“Save a bullet,” Gerry said at last.

Travis knew the halls well, which would be black and which merely twilight. He picked his way aft, then up to the Penthouse Deck, one of the top two enclosed levels still open for the whole length. He crossed over the closed-off compartment, and again disappeared down a dark stairwell. It was a long walk made very slowly, carefully rounding each corner, stooping to peer down each stairwell, listening at each closed door. He would wait at the lower Theater exits. The top exits were barred. At the lower level there was one open exit to a side hall, as well as the backstage exit to the small lower lobby. He had to be able to monitor both exits.

He gripped the pistol tightly. He knew he was getting close, knew where the sentries were supposed to be. He also knew everything might have changed since Lee Golding’s killing Warrant. So Travis took his time. He had arranged for a long lead-time with Brenda. Brenda would be in danger too. The power could only be cut directly below the Theater. If Travis heard shots down below, he’d have to improvise.

He heard his own breathing, slow and controlled, the hush of his step rolling on the carpet, his shoulder brushing a corner. He sometimes imagined he could hear his heart beating as well. It was almost pounding in his chest, but he kept his breathing slow and controlled, listening for all other noises. This last hall was lit along the floor, but not well enough to see more than 20 feet ahead.

He expected sentries soon so he gently opened a door, let himself into an empty room, and waited in the dark for the lights to go out.

Twenty minutes later, he heard screaming. Panic. He put his face to the crack in the door. Brenda had done it. The hallway was completely dark now, the low-glow emergency track lighting shut off. He waited for any dangers to pass. The shouting went on, a reaction to the sudden loss of light in the Theater.

He came out and made his way forward into the heart of the dark and the dangerous.

He made his way quietly but quickly. Where he expected sentries there were still none. Then he heard two men talking:

“One of us should go in and find out what to do.”

“Just let him finish and see what he says.”

Travis realized how close he was to the Theater. He could hear Lee Golding’s voice, loud enough to echo through the dressing rooms into the hall where Travis crouched.

“This is not an accident! They’re flushing us out! If we go, we’re dead. We’re safe in here, we have the lower doors locked from the inside, and sentries outside to get me if they have to. We are in lockdown, and we stay in lockdown. If they want to come to us, it’ll be the last mistake they make.”

They don’t know you don’t have the only gun, Travis thought. But you do. That’s why you want to stay in there. So now I have to come after you.

“FIRE!” came a shout from one of the sentries nearest Travis.

Travis saw them moving towards another corridor; he saw them because there was a glow coming from out there somewhere.

Somewhere below, Travis thought, Brenda must have touched together some wires that shouldn’t have touched.

“FIRE, STAY IN THE THEATER!” a sentry yelled.

Will do, Travis thought.

As he slid behind the two sentries, he saw the fire, spreading from an open stairwell, a good twenty feet from the door backstage. He could make out the door now and found the handle. The door shook, locked from the other side.

“Who is it?” a voice said nervously.

Travis did his best Rick:

“It’s Dumas you idiot, hurry,” Travis said.

The door opened a crack. Travis saw eyes. Eyes saw him. Travis fired the gun, and the sentry fell inside. Travis grabbed the door and let himself in. There was renewed screaming from the Theater in reaction to the gunfire. Travis was out of the glow of the fire now, again in the dark, moving himself forward in the hallway quickly.

Now he was a killer. He didn’t let himself think of the man he stepped over, but he felt the label written on himself permanently.

“Everyone stay put,” Lee Golding was shouting. He was close, in the backstage hall.

He could hear Lee Golding’s footsteps, then he heard the sentries calling from out in the main hallways.

“We got the fire door closed! The fire is contained!”

Lee Golding repeated the shout back to the Theater: “The fire is contained. Everyone stay put. We have someone in here. We have someone in here who doesn’t belong.”

There were tense minutes. Travis had made his way towards the Theater itself. He expected Lee Golding’s attack each moment.

In the dark, he felt, heard, and smelt the presence of three hundred humans and knew he’d entered the open space of the Theater. Travis moved in the dark space, keeping the gun protected in his belly as he touched bodies on each side. One of these would be Lee Golding. He was so close.

Say something again, Travis thought. Show yourself. Open that big mouth and listen to yourself sound so heroic. I’ll shoot a hole right through you.

He felt the size of the man he bumped into, heard the quiet exclamation and lifted his gun. Before he could fire his arms were gripped. The gun was pointed away.

Lee Golding squeezed him tight. Golding couldn’t let go, Travis thought. If he took a hand off to go for his own gun now, Travis’s pistol would be quicker.

“You’ll die here,” Travis said.

“Maybe,” Lee Golding said, “but you’ll die here today.”

“LEEEEE!” came a woman’s voice.

“LEEEEE! LEE HELP!”

The voice was hysterical.

Travis’s head snapped back as his nose burst open, and pain shot through his brain. Lee had head-butted him. He rolled away into the protecting darkness, his world illuminated once more by red star bursts in his eyes, coloring the searing pain. Lee Golding’s loud footsteps went away from him. Travis struggled to his feet.

“What’s going on?”

“WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

“Stay put!” Lee Golding shouted from somewhere, “Stay put everyone!”

Travis was off after the voice. Stumbling, bouncing off others, Travis made the dressing room hall.

“LEE! HURRY!”

“I’m coming!”

Me too.

Around a corner, and they were backstage. There was light. A line of fire; a fiery tongue in the mouth of the backstage hall. Somehow the fire had beaten its containment by the sentries. There was a line of fire along one wall right out the door at the other end, and in the light there was Lee Golding’s wife, halfway to the door.

“Hurry, Lee!” she cried.

“What is this? How did this happen?” Lee said.

“Just come on!”

The two rushed down the hall together. Travis raised the gun and fired at them. They kept moving, Lee fired back and Travis flattened against the wall. I’m being shot at, he thought, with a sudden feeling of how far his life had changed.

Then the door was opened and closed. He ran for it, and for a second time the door held him fast. He heard the screaming behind him. The fire had reached the Theater and it was spreading. Travis went at the door with his body. He gave it everything, and the door moved just a hair and Travis knew it had been blocked with something. The fire was filling the hall behind him. The screams had reached a new pitch from the Theater. Travis was burning. The smoke was trapped. He struggled breathing. His asthma took hold; his chest tightened. He held the door with one hand, the gun with the other and tried to stay on his feet.