Dead Space: Martyr Read Online Free PDF Page A

pulled the sheet of tin aside far enough for him to duck inside.
    It was dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
    At first, he couldn’t see anything except the shaft of light entering through the crack of the door. But he smelled something, a rich and pungent smell, almost metallic—he couldn’t quite place it. Then slowly he began to make out dim shapes. A table, scattered with indistinct objects. A basin, turned over on the packed earth floor. There, at the far end of the room, he saw astraw-and-grass pallet, and on it, under a tattered blanket, the shape of a body.
    He called out to her. “Bruja!” The form in the bed didn’t move.
    He moved slowly across the room until he stood just over the bed. Cautiously he reached out and touched the form through the blanket, shook it slightly.
    “It’s me,” he said. “Chava.”
    She was on her side. He tugged her over, flipped her onto her back, and the blanket slipped down to reveal the bruja ’s wide staring eyes and her slit throat.
    He found a box of matches and with shaking fingers lit the lamp on the floor beside the bed. He pulled the blanket off, saw the knife she held in her death-clenched fist. The blade was brown with her blood. He carefully tugged the knife free and laid it flat on the bed beside her. Her other hand, he saw, was badly cut, long gashes on each of the fingers.
    Ixtab, he thought.
    He picked up the lamp and held it close to her face. The cut was jagged and incomplete, the bluish white of her trachea jutting out. She had been dead for some time, hours at least, maybe days. The smell in the room, he realized, was the smell of her blood. How was this possible? He’d just been with her. Or thought he had.
    Shaking his head, he turned and made for the door, then suddenly stopped. In the lamplight, he saw something else. The walls were covered with crude symbols, like nothing he’d ever seen, odd twisting shapes, inscribed in blood.
    Shocked, he stared at them. Slowly voices crept into his head, the bruja ’s among them. He turned and fled.

10
    After Altman had left, Hammond stayed on drinking. His head ached. Had it been wise to tell Altman? Had he been right about him? Maybe he was a free agent, but then again, if he were someone fishing for information, wouldn’t that be exactly what they’d want him to think, that he was talking to someone who was safe? But you couldn’t be sure that anybody was safe. You couldn’t be sure that someone wasn’t watching you right at that moment. They were always watching, always looking, and the moment you felt safest was probably the moment when they were watching you most closely, most sneakily, the moment when they’d figured out how to worm into your skull. That’s what they must have done—they must have implanted a recorder in his skull. His head hurt, had been hurting for several days now. Why hadn’t he seen it before? They were recording his brain waves; then they transmitted them to some super-secret high-tech neurolab somewhere and plugged them into someone else’s head and then knew everything he was thinking. The only thing to do was not think. If he stopped thinking, maybe he could keep one step ahead of them.
    Someone was coming across the room toward him. A large man with a bushy mustache and a wrinkled, liver-spotted face.It must be one of them. He tensed his body but remained motionless. Was there time to get to the knife in his pocket and flick it open and stab the guy? No, probably not. But he had the beer bottle in his hand. Maybe he could throw it at the man’s head. If he threw it hard enough and just right, it might knock him out. Or no, wait, he could grab the bottle by the neck and break it off. Then he’d have a real weapon. They’d never take him alive.
    “Señor?” the man said, a concerned look on his face. “Is anything the matter?”
    What was that voice? It was familiar: the owner of the bar. What was his name? Mendez or something. He relaxed. What was