She was going to go fast; going down would be easier than going forward, at least as far as needing to see went. The headlamp should be enough, and switching would slow the drain on her battery. But it would be a long, long descent, and the thought of doing it almost blind made her throat close up.
Better her throat than her suit, though. She didn’t want to be a statue, frozen and slowly starving to death, hanging from a rope and hoping that it wouldn’t—or maybe that it would—break and send her falling to her death.
The indicator ticked down again.
23% CHARGE REMAINING
It was all the impetus she needed, so she clipped onto the rope and began her descent, waiting until she passed the second bolt and was comfortable on the cliffside before she turned off the reconstruction and clicked on her small, dim headlamp.
Cutting through the darkness, Gyre rappelled down in smooth, even leaps. The bolts held. She made good time by trusting them, forcing aside any thoughts of falling. It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. They were her bolts, and the bolts held, and the yawning darkness welcomed her into it.
She covered the first day’s descent in a little under two hours, and when she realized she’d reached the small ledge she’d fallen from a week ago, she was surprised by how relieved she felt. She navigated it more carefully this time and swung down toward the larger ledge and Tunneler path below. The telltale thrum in her bones grew more and more distant the farther down she went, freeing up her lungs for deeper breaths, and her heart from its terrified racing.
Camp Five wasn’t far. She could do this. Get to the raft, haul up the battery box, and then she’d be good. She’d be safe.
She touched down on the deep ledge with a relieved groan, her legs quaking in protest as she made them properly take her weight. Her whole body felt impossibly heavy now that she’d stopped descending, and she considered pausing here, taking a nap. A quick look at her battery indicator proved that was out of the question, but she could at least stop to eat.
She walked a short circuit around the ledge first, stretching her legs out, thinking, remembering. The video, the sedation . . . I should have turned back here. But even now, with context and distance, she knew she could never have made that choice. She’d already come too far.
Given up too much.
Was she always bound to end up here?
Dwelling was pointless, though, and she stepped out of the tunnel mouth and back onto the ledge proper.
Isolde’s face stared back at her.
She shouted in panic and fumbled with the rope, desperately trying to clip in. She had to get away. She had to—
Not real.
She stopped, panting, her eyes fixed on the apparition. Isolde’s pale face was drawn and exhausted; she was older, perhaps, than she had been in the video. She was also hard to see, doused in shadows. Gyre stared at her, waiting for her to vanish like Hanmei had, but she remained solid. Real. Impossibly real.
Gyre reached out.
Isolde retreated, backing away, away. Past where the ledge should have given out.
And then Gyre blinked, and there was nothing.
Gyre scrambled to the far end of the ledge, switching back to her reconstruction and peering over the rim. Nothing. There was nothing at all.
Except for a bolt, turning yellow as she stared at it. Unsafe. Unknown. There was rope, leading down. It was taut, as if there was a weight on the other end.
Gyre fumbled with her settings, then turned on the external speakers she hadn’t used since Camp Five. “Hello?” she asked.
It echoed back from the domed ceiling a few seconds later.
“Isolde?”
The cache at Camp Four. The face at Camp Five.
Em was wrong. There’s somebody here.
It was never the spores.
She reached out with one trembling hand and touched the rope.
If she cut it, Isolde—or whoever it was; Isolde was dead by now, couldn’t have survived all these years—would fall to their death. Would be gone. The threat would be gone.
But fuck, if it really was Isolde . . .
She backed away from the ledge and turned off her external speakers. She could feel it again too, the rumble in her breast. The Tunneler was making another pass, circling this section of cave again. It was close—she was certain of that now.
She couldn’t move forward until she made a decision. Trembling, she sat down against the far wall of the ledge and set up her feeding. Her eyes never left the bolt, still glowing a faint yellow just past where the ground fell off. Cut or leave? Trust Em or herself?
With a flex of her fingers, her rope-cutter extended from her right wrist. She had to cut it. If she really was hallucinating, it made no difference. If she wasn’t, it might save her life.
Isolde, Isolde, Isolde. Isolde was impossible. She couldn’t make her decisions based on that, and Em would never know. She would never, ever know.
Stomach still crawling from the sludge that was coating it, Gyre shuffled forward on her knees, over to the edge. She stared down into the gray and black rendering of the cave structure around her, at the emptiness. There was no sign of Isolde, only the taut rope, the bolt.
With one jerking motion, she slashed across the line. It gave way, and aside from a quiet slither as it passed through the air close to her, there was no noise at all. Even two minutes later, Gyre holding her breath nearly the whole time, there was no thud of a body hitting the ground.
She couldn’t keep waiting, and she clipped into her own line, forcing herself to look ahead. As she switched back to her headlamp, her fevered brain conjured eyes on the far wall looking back at her, shining against the blackness.
Her grimace turned to a violent snarl, and the eyes blinked back in surprise. She released her hold on the wall, taking the next step down in a long, wide, graceful arc. Her muscles protested, but she ignored them.
A few more hours, and she’d have light. She’d have food. She’d have Em back, and a massive computer at her beck and call to monitor everything around her.
Those hours passed in agonizing slowness, her limbs growing tired, her fingers nearly useless. The eyes were gone the next time she looked over her shoulder, but then again, her vision was getting so blurry that she couldn’t be sure if they were there or not. She never did hear a body strike the ground far below her, but she always heard the Tunneler, constant rumbling at a distance. It wasn’t in her bones yet. She had time.
She took the descent at breakneck speed, so fast that as she returned to the cliffside once, she struck at an angle, banging the arm she’d injured on her first descent. The pain flared to life, briefly eclipsing the ache in her thighs, the pounding of her head. Her jaw hurt from how much she’d clenched it, but she didn’t stop, didn’t slow.
The battery indicator ticked down.
18% CHARGE REMAINING
Gyre wondered how much of her sanity remained.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Camp Five floated motionless on the surface of the sump, covered in a fine layer of spores. By her headlamp, Gyre could see the faint glow and the puckered texture of the powder on the surface of the water. Taunting her.
16% CHARGE REMAINING
The alert hovered in her view, joining in the mockery. She grinned, though, fiercely. She’d done it, and she’d done it expertly.
But at such a cost.
Her hands were shaking as she placed an anchor at the rim of the pool, her knuckles brushing one of the fleshy growths of fungus that were clustered so tightly, so close to the water. It flexed slightly, and seemed as if it wouldn’t give, but then exploded in a burst of pale, glowing spores. They settled thick on her hands and she flinched, but kept working.
Bolt set, she tied in, checked her line. Just a few more minutes. And then she could rest and hear Em’s voice and go home. She stepped out into the open air above the water and walked herself down. The light of her lamp bobbed against the darkness, flashing across the smoothed walls of the
pit, skittering across the tumorous masses.
Catching the edge of what looked like a face, which darted away again as Gyre looked down at her hands.
Easy, easy. She took each step carefully, concentrating on the movements of her hands and feet. She couldn’t afford to fall into the water. Her rebreather would turn on, the buoyancy would activate on its own, and how horrible would it be to get so close, only to be trapped, frozen, under the surface?
She paused to put in another bolt, just in case.
At last, she touched down on the raft. It distorted under her weight, rivulets of water sliding over her boot. She stayed tied in, taking up her slack once she’d sat down. Then she grabbed up the rope to one of the boxes and hauled. The heavy crate rocketed up through the water, and then it was in her hands, and she was fumbling at the latch. She opened it. Ropes. A drill. The box of gear, not the one she needed. She closed it, pushed it out of her lap, hauled up the next one.
This one jerked, then twisted, the feel on the line all wrong. It was hard to see beneath the water with the glare of her headlamp on the surface, through the film of spores. Breathless, she kept pulling.
The box broke the surface—open.
Empty.
Empty.
No ration canisters, no batteries.
Empty.
She held the box in her hands, staring in disbelief, transfixed. Then, heart pounding, she tossed it aside. It crashed into the surface of the water, throwing glowing spray back at her, but she was already at the edge of the raft, loosening her line, jumping in. Her lamp lit only a small circle in front of her, and she switched back to her reconstruction, battery charge be damned.
Down at the bottom of the cenote, below the tunnel that led to Camp Six, ration canisters and batteries littered the silty floor. They were arranged into concentric circles, a monument to her impending death. She kicked, hard, and was jerked back by her line. Cursing, Gyre cut it and plunged deeper. Her hand closed around the first battery. She reached for another, another, and then pushed up to the surface, three held tight to her breast.
Breaking the surface, she kicked awkwardly for the raft, one hand outstretched while the others cradled her prize. As she reached the platform, she stretched, pushing them onto the raft, then following herself. She ignored the water sheeting from her suit and shoved the first one into the backup port.
It didn’t have a charge.
She tried the second, and the third, but they were the same. Cold. Dead. Had the water shorted them? Em must have built them better than that. Must have. Except she’d said, at Camp Three, that the batteries needed waterproof containers to cross the sumps. No. No. She dove back into the water, pulled another three up to the surface. Deposited them. This time, she tried to wait for them to dry. She took the rope behind her and shoved it into the backup port, hoping it was absorbent enough to make a difference.
14% CHARGE REMAINING
“Please, please,” she whispered.
She picked up one of the batteries and shook it, dislodging the last few droplets. Holding her breath, she reached back and slotted it in.
No charge.
Gyre howled. She howled in pain, in anger, and in hatred. Hatred for whoever had desecrated the box. Hatred for herself.
Because who else was down here, really?
Only her.
She’d been hallucinating from the spores. She’d been panicked. She’d closed the box and thrown it into the sump, and she hadn’t latched it right.
She hadn’t even noticed it spilling its contents out across the silty bottom as she dove.
Her bellow wavered, fell apart into a sob, and she beat her fists against the wall. The raft shifted under her, the batteries rolling, falling back into the water. “Your fault, your fault!” she hissed, tears burning in her eyes, not sure if she meant her fault or the fault of her mother, abandoning her to the obsessive fate that had dragged her this far.
And then she heard it, faint, like a dream. A whisper.
Caver, continue.
Em’s voice, there for a moment, and then gone. She stilled, save for the shaking of her shoulders, the trembling in her chest.
“Caver, continue,” Gyre repeated. Her lips felt numb. Her head hurt.
She stared at the water.
Camp Six was a long swim away, but it was straight. It was easy. She’d done it alone before.
Not alone, she thought. Em had been gone, but the computer had been there, no doubt assisting. Now, she’d have to monitor everything herself. Buoyancy. Remaining capacity of the filtration canisters in her rebreather. And she’d have to do it without the reconstruction that was even now burning through her remaining battery power.
But it was the only chance she had left. Camp Three was too far away. Camp Four was empty. Camp Five was ruined.
Gyre took a deep breath, then switched to her headlamp. Stared a moment at the glowing film on the surface of the cenote, broken in places, dull and swirled. Then, without another look up at the cave above, without looking for more faces in the dark, she dove.
* * *
The first minute was agony. The water was dark and her headlamp didn’t pierce far into the gloom, and she made her way slowly, fingers trailing along the wall of the pit. Her toes struck one of the ration canisters and she spasmed away from the sudden contact, twisting in the blackness to find only the dull reflected shape she’d come to rely on. All she needed was to find the line she’d put down the first time, but she needed to do it fast. The urgency made her clumsy and slow-witted, made her forget at first that she had put reflective markers on the line. She swung her head wide, when she remembered, until her lamp glinted off the first one.
She kicked for it, reaching out her hand. Shadows darted across her vision, fleeing the light of her lamp. Fish, she reminded herself. Tiny things, insignificant life. But she was shaking all the same when her hand touched stone, when she slid her fingers down and bumped against the line itself. She grabbed hold of it, pulling herself tight against the rock. She was close to hyperventilating again, and she forced herself to slow her breathing. Her suit worked best when she was in control. She had to stay in control.
When she’d passed through before, there had been only small, sluggish currents, only the passage, and she’d been able to keep herself calm. But the mother of all sumps had changed her. Her isolation had changed her. Her fading battery had changed her. As she moved hand over hand along the line, she trembled uncontrollably, and it took all her willpower to uncurl her fingers each time. The light bobbed ahead of her, giving her nothing, showing only the small branch-offs and obstructing formations that she knew led nowhere, but feared were her only way out.
13% CHARGE REMAINING
She turned her lamp off.
She was plunged into blackness, weightlessness, the only sensations the suit against her flesh, the slight drag of gravity against her, and the tension of the line in her hands. Could she do this without added buoyancy? She dragged herself forward again, felt herself sagging away from the line. What if she let go? No, she needed to be neutral. A single-time inflation had to cost less energy than keeping her light on.
Right?
She made the decision, fumbled with the controls. The sacs spread along as her suit inflated, sharply, too much. She felt herself lift. Swearing, she tried to release the air in small, controlled bursts. She overshot.
Tears stung her eyes, but she tried again. Again. On the third time, the calibrations were just right.
12% CHARGE REMAINING
She didn’t have time.
She reached farther along the line, into the abyss, and hauled herself forward. Hand over hand; it was the only way she could do it. Hand over hand, flinching every time she brushed against the side of the wall or jostled the line between her fingers, biting down a scream the first few times she reached a directional arrow, not expecting the hard plastic.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, her fingers closed around a larger arrow, pointi
ng up. The bell. She was more than halfway there, and more than anything, she wanted to surface into it, pretend that she was safe in its little pocket of air. Bathe in the faint glow of its lichen. But she couldn’t afford to stop and restart the rebreathers.
She coaxed her knuckles open around the line and dragged herself away from the bell.
Her readout, darkened to conserve power, blinked red.
6% CHARGE REMAINING
BATTERY LIFE REMAINING LESS THAN ONE HOUR AT CURRENT ACTIVITY LEVELS
“Just a little farther,” she whispered, and swam on.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gyre reached the sloping bank with ten minutes remaining on her readout.
BATTERY APPROACHING TOTAL SHUTDOWN
CAVER, SWAP TO BACKUP
The words glowed in bright red across her screen, the only thing she could see with her lamp and reconstruction off. She didn’t waste time trying to dim the alert, didn’t dare use her limited power to turn on her light. She clawed her way up onto the wide bank of stone by touch alone.
As she turned off her limited buoyancy and her rebreather, the time estimate jumped back up to twelve minutes.
Not enough, she thought, and staggered for Camp Six.
Hands out in front of her, she felt for the pillars. She lifted her feet carefully to avoid catches in the stone. But she was going too slowly and she couldn’t find the way, not without a line. The chamber was too chaotic and too unfamiliar. Getting lost was as much a death sentence as her light.
Cursing, she turned her lamp on. The number fell again: six minutes. Without taking the time to orient herself, she broke into a full run. Her brain struggled to catch up, overstimulated by the shadows after two hours in absolute darkness. She made herself stare straight ahead, refusing to look between the pillars for ghostly faces in the gloom.
Her thighs burned as she sprinted, straining against her weight, which seemed to be growing with every footfall. She slowed meter by meter, struggling forward as if she were sloshing through the lake, as if she were trapped in hardening resin. Her suit was growing sluggish, and each step took more effort than the last.
The Luminous Dead Page 24