Murmansk-13

She redoubled her efforts as she set of down another flight. Katja could hear their heavy mag boots clumping against the metal treadplate behind her. Suddenly the stairwell was cacophonous with ringing aluminium.

Where was she going? She couldn’t remember, the noise made it difficult to remember. Away, that was it. She looked back up, her pursuers were slow, wearing heavy spacesuits and cumbersome boots that kept catching on metal surfaces. She didn’t have to be fast, but she had to keep moving. It was just so hard when her legs didn’t feel like her own.

Papa, her poor Papa. Her mind was on edge as if preparing to receive a flood of information, instead she could barely recall his face.

“Katja, please stop!”

A large, white number four, loomed out of the dim heralding the landing. One floor, really? Katja felt hopelessness wash over her and realized she’d been crying, her cheeks raw.

The grating above her burst open, clattering on the plating of the landing at her feet before disappearing into the darkness below, catching handrails as it descended to the trunk floor. She screamed as a short but stocky black man levered himself lightly to the aluminium deck, his drop barely betraying a sound.

“You Katja?” His accent was thick, African American, his barrelled chest rising and falling in heaving breaths. “The girl they’re hollering for?” Large eyes gestured upward.

Katja found herself stumbling backward from the man who effortlessly reached out and grabbed her hand, small in his. She shrugged it away and fell, the base of her back catching the edge of the steps. She yelped, more in surprise than pain, her tailbone largely numb. “Leave me alone,” she protested, curling into the foetal position, burying her head in her hands.

“Where you goin’?” Katja could feel the man lean on one knee beside her. His musk of stale sweat choked the air around her.

“Get away from me!” She tried to push backward, but found the steps still braced against her back. The man stepped away and Katja chanced to look at him. He was young and wide faced. His features smooth and symmetrical beneath closely clipped curls of coarse hair. He appeared burdened but earnest. Katja struggled to get up, her lower body refusing to act in concert with her arms. “Help me up!”

“You want me to help you up, or get away from you?” The man replied, exasperated.

Katja could hear the sound of her pursuers boots clattering ever closer, they were upon her now. “I need to get away from the people chasing me,” she sobbed. “They killed my father.”

The black man looked behind her. “They didn’t kill your father,” he said, softly.

“I saw them. I saw them do it!” Divorced from the moment, Katja hated how petulant she sounded.

“I don’t know, what you think you saw,” he said, leaning forward to take her hand. “But I know what I heard and I know what I am hearing now.”

“You’re wrong,” Katja began. She took his hand, her mind reeling with memories. She felt her reality – her defence, unpinning. Unsurely, she finished. “You weren’t there.”

“There are worse things than these people,” he said, then slowly lifted his hands up.

☣☭☠

“Leave her alone!” Tor’s voice cut through the sudden quiet as the dissonant chatter of mag boots ceased. At the bottom of the stairs he watched the black man slowly raising his hands in surrender, eyes wide with suspicion as he took a step back from Katja. Tor realized Mihailov had drawn the rifle, having finally torn it loose. The muzzle rested inches from Tor’s cheek. “Rein it in Mihailov, you could hit the girl.”

“He could be like Falmendikov,” replied Mihailov, his eye focusing down the scope.

Tor looked at the solid black man on the landing below. “Who are you?”

“Jamal, Jamal Francis,” he replied in a deep, bass voice.

“Mihailov, lower the damn rifle,” Tor turned to his second mate, the Bulgarian reluctantly looked askew of the scope. “He is not like Falmendikov, lower the fucking rifle.”

For a tense moment, Mihailov refocused his gaze on the scope. Then gently lowered it as Tala brought her hand to the barrel. The Filipina gave Mihailov a concerned stare that went unnoticed as Mihailov watched Jamal with narrowing eyes.

The two parties remained stationary in anxious standoff, with Katja struggling to stand in the middle.

“Do you live here?” Asked Tor finally, stealing a sideways glance at his Second Mate.

“Yeah,” replied Jamal, lowering his hands. “If you can call it that.”

“The girl,” Tor took a step from the landing. “She’s with us.”

Jamal helped Katja back to unsteady feet then returned to a safe distance. He looked upward into the trunk. “They’re coming.”

Above them Tor heard double doors flap open with a plastic whoosh, Mihailov wheeled around and aimed his rifle upward, blindly focused on the scope. The sound of scuffling movement preceded the clotting of air with dust, whipped up from the landings overhead. The double doors continuing to chatter. Myriad sounds echoed about the stairwell.