Latchkey

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  Where that light hit the ceiling it started drilling through. Bricks fell and struck her face and she prayed to the Chooser, the One Who Got Away, the Ragpicker, whoever was listening, that one would hit her hard enough to cave her head in like an eggshell and she could be done, but that was a mercy she was not accorded.

  They’re safe, she told herself, shutting her eyes and waiting for whatever came next to receive her. It worked. It’s okay.

  And then—it was over.

  The connection was gone. The ghost-energy roaring through her was gone. She went limp, incapable of movement as the ghost sheathed her knife for her, lowered her to the floor, propped her head up at a sickbed angle as pieces of something pattered down around them.

  The ceiling. Isabel struggled to draw it into focus. It felt like she’d been kicked in the head and her eyes weren’t cooperating. Chunks of white brick were falling, chunks and then bigger chunks, and then sudden motion as the ceiling unzipped down the length of the tunnel as far as she could see and all at once there were no more bricks to fall in, there was no more ceiling, only the black mud of the lakebed, which quivered for the briefest instant and fell in.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Isabel was drifting.

  Black mud. Black water. The ghost-place?

  No. She’d have sensed the crossing-through. She didn’t feel half-here, half-there. Think. The ceiling had fallen in, vomiting lakewater, and—

  A pressure on her back, her chest, her everywhere. Her brain took a moment interpreting cold, wet. Her face was in it. She’d better hold her breath.

  Something pulled her along.

  The ghost-place. Black water. The river. This time her thread had tangled in a swimming fish, a shark, a thing along the shore, and was unraveling her like knitting as she whisked wrongways, upended, unspooled, the current winding up her silver skein.

  But her thread was gone. Without looking, she could feel the lack of it. He cut it? Besides, the pulling was in her arm, inexorable, her shoulder liable to pop. Familiar. Where’d she felt this pain before? Pulling down. She couldn’t hear a thing. Her ears were stopped. Her mouth. Worse than drowning, maybe, if she tried to speak. To breathe. The lake would stomp her ghost down into the tunnel floor.

  The tunnel floor. She could feel it, there, beneath her hand, against her cheek. Shards of tile grinding at her face.

  A tremendous concussion rocked that floor, once, twice. Again. Dulled beneath the mud, but with her body pressed full-length against the floor, the thumps shook down along her bones like aftershocks of detonations.

  The fifth, or maybe sixth, sounded different.

  At the seventh, the floor dropped out from under her. She fell and fell.

  * * *

  Landed. Same steady puke of lake-stuff, tumbling through a narrower gap. Like water being poured down an anthill. How deep did this place go?

  The map. Lost now. She struggled to summon it to mind. Those colored lines, one per level of the tunnels. She’d fallen through the floor of the blue one, SUBLEVEL A. Which put her, presumably, on the—green?—one below it, SUBLEVEL B. About which she knew precisely nothing. For starters, how to get back out of it.

  Different room, empty, set with one of those heavy doors. She could just make it out through the sorry small glow of the whatever-it-was on the floor. Something she’d landed on and now scrambled off of in the dark. Something bigger than her, vaguely person-shaped, sprawled out on the tile. Something completely clotted over in mud, glow striving through where the cover was patchiest. Something not moving.

  A distant rumble sounded, up and over, seizing the walls and giving them a single warning shake. Something above let out a long low squeal and buckled. The ceiling rained down a smattering of junk—and held. Further creaks and pops suggested it wouldn’t hold for long.

  She hurt all over. The thing on the floor still didn’t move.

  It must have been Tanaka, or Martinez, or some kind of debris. It couldn’t be the ghost because he was fine, he could’ve gotten clear of the cave-in no problem, he wasn’t weakened like Salazar, he wouldn’t get caught out this easy, all he’d have to do is turn and run.

  She drew the harvesting-knife, because best case still meant a fight, a ghost to put down. And worst case—

  The thing stirred, or twitched, not rising, and something in the way it made even that tiny movement sent her guts into a barrel roll, because she knew in that instant that the broken thing on the floor was not Tanaka. Not Martinez. Not anything she could begin to accept.

  She got hold of both his arms and started dragging. Her hands were slimy, his coat-sleeves were slimy, she lost her grip and fell back, spiking pain from her tailbone out the top of her head. Wiped her palms on—there was nothing to wipe her palms on that wasn’t already covered with mud. Dug in and pulled.

  In a fair world he’d weigh nothing, absolutely nothing, the way a weak ghost should. Frostbite and vertigo, a smear of silver and light. In a fair world she could bring herself to leave him here to save her own skin, maybe light a little candle to Catchkeep so She’d find the mud-soaked silver rag of him in the blind reeking Ragpicker’s bowel of this place, She’d take him to a ghost-place door and shove him through, and meantime Isabel would be aboveground. Safe. Alive.

  It crossed her mind for a second. But a lot of things crossed her mind every day that she didn’t mean at all. That was just a function of minds. The rest of her was busy struggling with the motionless weight of the ghost along the floor, slipping and skidding and hauling toward the doorway, which was open, though starting to sag along the upper edge, bearing unaccustomed weight. The room was filling. The walls wept black water.

  Up to her waist now. Every old ill-healed injury screeching at her while she, without breath to scream herself, mentally cursed the ghost roundly as she muscled him across the threshold of the open door and out into the hall.

  There, the floor tilted downward to the left, just enough that the water and muck ran down that way. For now. Eventually it’d hit a blockage and backfill up to here, and she’d drown. Or suffocate. Or asphyxiate. Or whatever it’s called when you keel over in the dark with a double lungful of lake-slime, countless tons of mud grinding your ghost into your waterlogged corpse for eternity.

  It sludged on by and she turned to the darkness in the other direction, wishing with all the hope left in her that it wasn’t a dead end.

  Fought her way toward it, pain blooming across all her senses simultaneously. The ghost’s faint glow caught a spark on something distant and metallic. Dead end, all right, but with a door at the end of it, thirty or forty feet off. Staggering under the ghost’s weight, it looked like a mile.

  Isabel paused a second, sucking in huge lungfuls of dank air. Behind her, in the room she’d just left, the ceiling crumpled in like a sheet of paper in a fist, plowing tonnage of mud into the floor. Her breathing break was officially over.

  She squatted down, readjusted her grip on the ghost, and stood, shakily, half-shouldering him, dragging them both down that endless little stretch of hall. Muttering under her breath: slag-for-brains, should’ve run, the hell told you to save me, what’s wrong with you, die anyway down here, there is no damn reason you should be this heavy, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

  Knew she shouldn’t waste her air. Couldn’t stop, all the same.

  Made the door, inched it open, digging in her feet and shouldering hard. Adrenaline shoved her through. Just enough fight-or-flight left in her to heave them both in and wrestle the door shut again behind them, cranking the inside wheel to lock it as the lake surged up behind. The door creaked and whined as the tunnel filled—old hinges, old bolts, a lot of bolts, no window—but held ground, its seals standing off against the lake and repelling it. For now.

  She had to find another way out. But her legs had other ideas. They went out from under her and she collapsed, smacking her cheekbone on the toe of the ghost’s boot on her way down. Saw stars. Didn’t care. Lay on the floor—clean dry
unbroken floor here, wherever here was—and breathed the delicious disgusting air.

  After a while she opened her eyes. Everything felt wrong. Her skin felt hot, her blood sluggish, her muscles sapped, her bones loose. The dark was gluey, airless, heavy and thick, pressing down on her like the mud that waited for her above. The ghost’s glow was barely denting it anymore.

  The ghost.

  For a sickening instant she knew he’d been damaged beyond repair, was a deflated silver rag with empty eyes, she’d tug on his boot and it wouldn’t be attached anymore, the leg would slide free of it like a faintly glowing string of spit and she’d suffocate down here in that dying light alone.

  She shuddered. Couldn’t make herself pull on that boot so she brought a fist down on it instead. Seemed solid enough. The ghost mumbled something unintelligible, like a person drifting into peaceful sleep, or a person going into shock.

  “Get up,” she said, her voice unsteady. Brought her fist down again, harder this time. No response. Opened her mouth and her throat caught. Swallowed. Tried again. “You have to clear some of the mud off you. I need the light.”

  “Request acknowledged,” the room said. “Activating.”

  There came a tinny humming sound from above, and a fraction of the ceiling lit up.

  Isabel shouted, scrambling back and gasping, knife out, shoulders to the wall. It was a miracle her heart didn’t short out on her right there. “What,” she whispered, more hard exhalation than voice. “What.”

  “Tertiary auxiliary power supply at five point five percent,” the room said, and a few of the lights fluttered dimly and blinked off. “Emergency conservation mode engaging.” Its voice was smooth as milk, but also choppy, like the words were being read off a long strip of paper with holes punched through it at random intervals. Like listening to Ayres.

  “Registering extensive systems damage. Temperature control no longer operational. Humidity control no longer operational. Archival seals no longer operational. Primary archive no longer secure. Please remove all records and materials in accordance with archival protocol to the secondary—”

  The voice, still talking, dissolved into an incomprehensible fizz, like a beehive tied up in a sack. More of the ceiling blacked out.

  But the water still hadn’t made its way in. Isabel could tell the construction of this room was different. The floor was made of different Before-stuff than the floor of the hallway. Same with the walls. The door was heavy, with sealing latches on both sides. Like the sets of doors they’d shut and sealed between the cleared area and the second hatch, she realized, and was briefly faint with gratitude that she and the ghost had thought to shut them on their way down the tunnels.

  All in all, the impression this room gave her was of a box that, once closed, could only be opened deliberately. The heart of the maze. The last part standing when all else fell.

  “Get up,” she said again, either to the ghost or to herself, but she was the only one that moved. Made her way back over to him, gingerly. As if her footfalls would shake him into sparks, like the seed-fluffs of suns-and-moons at summer’s end. Knelt gently. In the room’s light his glow had vanished, the way the sunshine hides the stars.

  She wanted to move him, assess the damage, look for wounds that she could maybe patch. The way he’d stayed sprawled wasn’t promising. What did they say about a person with a broken spine? Move them in a certain way? Don’t move them at all? Did a ghost have a spine to break?

  She sat her heels a moment, chewing her lip in impotent fury.

  The healing device in his pocket. She fished around. Amazingly, still there.

  Less amazingly, it was dead. He’d used it up on Sairy. She hurled it at a bank of metal doors on the far side of the little room. It struck with a muffled clang, slid down, was caught in a handle. Profoundly unsatisfying.

  “Tertiary auxiliary power supply at five percent,” the room informed her.

  Isabel had never wanted to punch a wall so badly in her life. But the last thing she needed now was a busted hand. “Get your shit together,” she hissed at herself. “Think.”

  She had as much basic first-aid experience as could be expected of someone who’d spent years being regularly thrust into, and surviving, ritualized single combat to the death. What she lacked was the first clue how to heal a ghost. Lure one, yes. Banish one, yes. Destroy one, yes. Fix one—really fix one—no.

  Strengthen one enough to hopefully get a read on what was wrong with it, though? That she could just about manage. Wasn’t ideal by a long shot, but she was in no position to be looking down her nose at damage control.

  She scooted up until she was kneeling beside the ghost’s head. His eyelids were open the barest slit, so Isabel waved a hand in front of his face, receiving no response. Lissa slept like that, eyes partway open like she was keeping vigil, expecting to get jumped if she dropped her guard. But Isabel didn’t guess the ghost was sleeping.

  She tilted his head back and opened his mouth. Or tried to. He had his jaw clenched so tight she’d have to break his teeth to pry it loose. Of course he did.

  “Can you hear me?” she said. “I’m trying to help you. Open up.”

  Nothing.

  She drew the knife. Realized she was covered in ghostgrass, which probably wasn’t exactly helping. Emptied her pockets and removed the braids at her wrists and neck and ankles, and pitched the lot of it across the room.

  Brushed her hands off for good measure and carefully made a shallow cut on one finger. She didn’t need a repeat of what had happened this morning—had that only been this morning?—with Salazar. Just a little blood would do. Probably. Really she had no idea. Her experience of damaged ghosts in the living world was limited. But she got the ghost’s mouth open as best she could and dripped some in. It didn’t look to be accomplishing much beyond reddening his teeth.

  After a minute Isabel got up. If she sat there, waiting for infinitesimal changes while the lights gradually died, she’d lose it, the end, and that would be that.

  Besides, even if the ghost somehow ended up completely fine, they’d still have to find a way out of here. Back the way they came wasn’t looking good. Whatever the door seal was made of, she reckoned it wouldn’t hold the lake off forever. Water, like trouble, always found a way in.

  “Tertiary auxiliary power supply at four—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Isabel yelled at the ceiling. Then, struck by a long shot: “Hey.” Tentative. Ridiculous. “You up there. Whatever you are. Can you…hear me?”

  If it could, it didn’t deign to reply. In a few minutes, though, it’d tell her how much longer the light would last. It’d loop that one thing for however many iterations it had left in it, and then the lights would go out and the voice would go out with them.

  It’s a ghost, she thought, grimly amused. The ghost of this place.

  It’d responded to light, though. There might be a few other phrases it recognized. Perversely tempting though it was, she wasn’t about to test it by saying door. Get me out of here would’ve been a long shot even by her standards, and she didn’t want to drain what little remained of whatever was powering it by screwing around.

  She thought back on what it’d said earlier. She had a mind for stories, for field notes, for call-and response, for ritual words passed down. Even under duress, its tendency was to retain.

  Archival seals, the room had said. Archival protocol. Primary archive.

  The room labeled ARCHIVE on the map had been almost directly beneath where the ghost had apparently busted them through the floor. Almost directly beneath and two levels down. No wonder the ghost had taken such a thrashing. This wasn’t SUBLEVEL B at all. It was C. The second floor they’d crashed through must’ve been almost completely rotten for them to have gone through it so easily, barely breaking their fall. Must’ve been like falling off a building. Like falling off a building with the added bonus of Isabel landing on him. She winced.

  Back to the ghost. Was the blood starting to kick in?
Wake him up? She couldn’t tell. Gave him another dose, kneeling beside him. Burning another minute she couldn’t afford. She wasn’t entirely sure exactly what would happen when tertiary auxiliary power reached zero percent, but she had a pretty good idea she didn’t want to be here when it happened.

  “I’m getting your useless ass out of here,” she informed him, and levered herself to her feet. “Somehow.”

  Archive, she thought. But what does that mean?

  For her it meant a box of field notes, collected over four centuries by countless ghosthunters, all dead. But she knew better than to expect to find one of those here. If her dealings with the ghost had taught her anything, it’s that the world Before worked different than her own. Different tools for different jobs. Different ways to fight, to live, to die, to get from place to place. Words were passed down generations, hand to hand, twisting their meanings slightly out of true. The way Catchkeep’s up-self wasn’t always Her. People used to call it Ursa Major, the ghost had told her, long ago, back when the stars of Catchkeep’s up-self were still inset on the blade of the harvesting-knife. A bear.

  Archivist, he’d said to her. You’re an archivist. Dubious. As if she’d said she was a fish.

  But he was out cold, or worse, so this room was her only clue to decipher the word, and the word was her only clue to decipher this room. Outstanding.

  Only one thing for it. She’d have to toss the room. But most of what it seemed to contain was empty shelving. That, and the usual garbage of these tunnels. White brick and tile and the twisted metal wreck of something in one corner. More shelving, maybe, mangled into shapelessness by whatever had destroyed the doors in the tunnels above. She made her way around it in the almost perfect darkness. Not even really knowing what she hoped to find. A door that magically didn’t open onto a flooded sector of the tunnels? Some Before-relic that would let her breathe mud?