Way Down Dark

by J. P. Smythe

  You know the rest of that story and how it goes.

  I didn’t tell your mother, not at first. She was so busy with you. Later, when I told her what I had done—that the boy had gone to them—we argued more fiercely than we ever would again. (At least until the day that she told me she was dying and what she wanted you to do.) She told me that I was irresponsible, that I had cursed the baby to a life of abnormality, an upbringing that couldn’t be predicted. She told me that I should have given him to her. She was a mother; she would have brought him up. I had never been a mother, she told me. She used it like a weapon, that I didn’t have those feelings so I couldn’t possibly understand. But looking at you, I’m not sure that she was right. I could feel that love. I did feel it, for your mother and for you: only for you two.

  So I left. For weeks I was alone.

  One day, she came to find me.

  “You did what you thought was right,” she said. “That’s true, isn’t it?” And it was true, Chan. I thought that it was right: for me, for her, for you. And she wept, and I wept, and we were friends again, closer than ever before.

  Years later, she told me that she was dying, that the coughing, the blood, that was all leading her toward a single end. There was no chance to change that. She told me her plan, that you would be the one to kill her. That by doing it she might be able to create a new story, using the smoke pellets that we had, the belief that the people here have in ghosts and nightmares. She might be able to make them stay away from you. She could use her final moments to keep you safe forever.

  I loved her, and that was what she wanted from me. It was the final act of looking after her, as I had been doing her entire life. So I agreed, and I helped you.

  And now she’s gone, and you’re left. You’re all that’s left of her, and I love you just as I loved her.

  10

  Agatha coughs. Australia is full of truths, and this is one of them: an injury like hers can’t be recovered from. Her breathing drops away in stages: first quieter, then drawn and scratching her throat like a Low.

  Then it stops. She stops.

  The door opens, and Jonah comes in. He’s still covered in her blood, his hands stained. He hasn’t cleaned them, and I don’t know that he’s even noticed. “I’ve watched the screens,” he says, “and I can’t find them.” He looks at Agatha, and his face changes. I can see that he doesn’t want to ask.

  “She’s gone,” I say, and I stand up and push past him. There’s no time for mourning. “We need to find Mae,” I say.

  I pull my suit on while he flicks through the screens, touching them almost too gently. The one that I broke has come back, a pretty background there now instead of the video feed: a mountain, grass, a lake. It’s almost ridiculous, this beautiful image. But it’s not here. It’s got nothing to do with us.

  “She’s nowhere,” he says, “or there’s something missing. Some parts we can’t see.” He points to sections where the view of the ship is totally blank, where there’s nothing but darkness. Maybe someday I’ll tell him his story. When we’re quite past this. When he can be distracted. That day isn’t today.

  Our stories are something we make for ourselves, not something we’re born into. “The broken screen,” I say. “Is it working again? We need to find them.”

  “I don’t know.” He reaches for it and touches it, but nothing happens. There are three smaller symbols on the screen at the base of the mountain: a lightbulb, a black circle, and a white circle. I point to the first: the lightbulb. “Try that,” I say, and he presses it.

  The lights flick off down here, all along the corridor, in the kitchen, in every berth. The children scream. We’re lit only by the screen, the two of us. I reach out and press it again, and everything comes right back. The screaming stops.

  “Try the next one,” I tell him. He presses the black circle, and the screen instantly changes. The mountain scene is replaced by a list. When I read it, it looks as though every part of the ship is named: sections I through to VI, floors 1 to 91. Other parts are listed too: base, arboretum, exterior.

  And then one final one, at the bottom of the list: earth.

  I press the button.

  The planet clicks into view. I’ve never seen a planet before. There are no windows on Australia, no view of the stars. We know that they’re out there, because we were told. We know that we’re traveling from system to system, searching for a new home, because that’s what they told us. Those are the oldest stories.

  We were lied to; I know that now. This is a prison. There was no flood. Earth is the same as it ever was. They just put our ancestors on this ship and sent us into space.

  The planet on the screen is a sphere of green and blue and white, so close that it’s almost touchable. It’s so clear.

  I press the button for the exterior, and I see it, what I know to be Australia herself: a lumpy metal mass in a muddy red-brown color, covered in white rungs—like ladders—around the outside. And behind the ship is the same planet, white swirls over all the other colors.

  I look closely. It must be a picture, I tell myself, to remind the guards where they came from. But it’s not. As we stand there watching, I realize that I can see movement. Stars winking into life as the planet moves across space, as the bulk of the ship moves across the screen. In the distance, the blinking of other distant objects in the sky, and farther away, the sun. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve had it described to me. This isn’t a picture.

  We’re seeing the outside of the ship.

  The ship is outside Earth, right there, right next to it.

  And we’ve been here the whole time.

  Beneath it all, underneath the image, there’s a new button on the screen. Another button featuring a single word, a word that we’ve been looking for the whole time, but here it’s not just a definition, not just a location, but also an instruction. I know that pressing it will do something.

  Home, it says.

  PART

  THREE

  11

  I don’t bother trying to keep my movements hidden as I push my way out of the Pit. Being up and out here will be easier, I decide, than trying to decipher those screens. This is how it would have been for me before I knew about what was below the Pit, how it’s always been here for us. Somebody wrongs you, and you find them in the darkness, and then you deal with them.

  The ship feels empty even though there are still people living. So many abandoned berths or people hiding to make them look abandoned. The Bells, the Pale Women, all dead. The Lows are all in the arboretum, Rex with them. And Mae. Jonah finally found them on the screens while I stared at Earth, absorbing that last horrible truth. I saw Mae, Bess clinging to her. They were out in the open. There were torches all around. They wanted me to find them. I don’t know how many of the Lows are waiting for me. I never knew. Rex built an army, and she took what she wanted. The ship is hers. Even when I took her prisoner, they didn’t believe that she was dead.

  I’ll worry about her later. For now, I have to focus on Mae.

  I wonder, as I climb up to the arboretum, how they would react if they knew about the lie. If they knew how close to home—a real home—they actually are. I wonder what they would do then.

  I crouch on the edge of the gantry and look over into the arboretum. They’re crowded inside, nestled among the burned trees and the blackened remains of the bushes. The Lows are cheering and jeering and calling out in angry voices. Their breathing seems to happen as one: this long, gravelly inhale, then the same sound pushing back out again. Rex stands in the middle of them all, her single hand raised up, rallying them. She shouts something that I can’t hear. I don’t need to.

  Mae is there, next to Bess. It’s hard to make her out at first, and then I see her outline through the goggles: a small glow of green, held tight, Bess’s hands on her shoulders. She must be terrified. It makes my heart hurt to imagine how scared she must be.

  I start to creep along one of the gantries that lead to the arboretum,
taking it slowly. None of them are looking toward me, which is good. If they saw me, if they attacked now, I’m not sure I’d survive. All the other Lows want me dead. But Rex wants something else. She didn’t kill me down below. She wanted me to know that she escaped, to see what she had done to Agatha. But that can’t be all. She could have held my head while it happened, made me watch Agatha die.

  As I get closer, I see that she’s sent Lows up onto the bracers at the top of the arboretum. I can’t see what they’re doing, but it can’t be good.

  Then Rex screams, and the Lows disperse. They run in every direction, toward me, across the gantries, toward all the other parts of the ship. I’m quick, faster than I knew I could be, and I leap over the edge of the gantry I’m on and swing down underneath it, using every muscle in my arms to hold on. They won’t look for me under the gantry; they can’t see me here, I know. They thunder across, shaking the bridge. I hold on. I wrap my arms through the metal, hook my feet in. I’m not going anywhere, not without Mae. As soon as the noise stops, I’m back up, back on my feet and running.

  Mae is there, and Bess, and Rex. Rex doesn’t see me, not until I’m on top of them, not until I’ve got Mae in my hands, until I’ve slammed a fist into Bess’s face, until I’m running as fast as I can, Mae clinging to me. But holding her slows me down.

  I can’t worry about that. I keep running.

  I feel something slam into my back. Rex has caught me, but all I can feel is her blade. It’s sharp, hard, digging in, and then I’m falling, face-first, right down into the soil. I can’t breathe, and I can’t see, and I can’t move. Mae screams, and I let her go, because I can’t hold her anymore. And then Rex is in front of me, and she plants her feet in the soil near my face. She treads onto my shoulder, and the pain isn’t like anything I’ve ever known. It’s roaring inside my flesh and bones, hot and cold at the same time, stinging yet strangely dulled. She pulls something out of me: my mother’s knife, still stuck fast into what’s left of her arm; it’s the same knife that, I know, took Agatha’s life. That knife has taken the lives of two of the most important people in my world. Only Mae and Jonah have been spared so far.

  “I knew that you would come,” she says, pushing her foot down on the wound. I struggle, trying to fight back. She kicks me over, presses down on my chest, grinding the hole in my back into the ground. From here I can only see upward. My vision swims, but I can make out the top of the arboretum where it’s connected to the roof of Australia: the fixtures that it’s hanging from, the parts where it’s plugged in and fastened to the rest of the ship. From here, it’s so delicate. And even in the dark I can see some Lows hanging from the metal that keeps it up. They have equipment, welding tools, taken from the weapon makers and the Shopkeepers. They clamber like spiders, moving around, putting their tools to use. The sparks fly, lighting their faces in the darkness. That’s how I see them.

  I know what they’re doing.

  The arboretum could have grown back. We could have cared for it, nurtured it, fixed the lights, and brought it back. But they won’t let that happen.

  Instead, they’ll use it as a weapon, something to beat down the door of our new home. I watch them as they work on the girders, on the joists, taking their blowtorches and saws and weapons. And the arboretum creaks. It shakes beneath me. Cutting through the supports will take them a while, I know—the metal is thick and strong, designed to withstand far more than a few Lows with basic tools—but they’ll get there. What Rex wants, she gets, and she wants the arboretum to fall. What happens when it reaches the bottom of the ship, I don’t know. It will slam into the Pit. It will crash through, most likely. Maybe it will kill everybody I’ve saved, everyone down below, by crushing them. Or maybe worse. Maybe it will punch through the hull of the ship itself.

  I don’t know what happens if the ship is torn apart.

  I’m guessing that it’s nothing good.

  Rex kicks my shoulder again, and the pain brings tears to my eyes. I choke them back. I watch as she reaches down to pick up Mae, who struggles as much as she can. Rex is too strong. She squeezes her arm, and Mae squeals. “She comes with me,” Rex says. “How about I don’t kill her? How about I bring her up just like me?” She says that, but there’s no bite to it. In that moment, it’s almost sadness, I think. She aims the knife directly over me, pointed right at my face. “This went into the old woman so easily,” she says, “and it only took one try to finish her. But she was soft. You? You’re harder. I wonder how many times I’ll have to use it on you.”

  She pulls her arm back, ready to strike. I shut my eyes, expecting blackness, the nothing that comes after. I want to make it come easier.

  I expect for just a moment, a fraction of a moment, to see my mother. Like the Pale Women said, when you die, you go to somewhere else and see everyone you loved in life.

  Instead, I hear Mae cry. I open my eyes, and she’s pulling at Rex’s arm, holding on to it, to stop the attack. Rex turns, slaps Mae with her good hand. The little girl falls backward, but it’s worked. Rex is distracted.

  “Maybe first you should watch me kill everything you care about,” she says. She’s hesitating; something’s made her rethink this. She grabs me by my head, her hand trying to get purchase on my hair, but she can’t quite take hold. She kicks me to the side, booting at my shoulder over and over, making me howl. I try to crawl away from her, toward the edge, and she grabs Mae from the ground and pulls her close. “Watch her!” she screams to someone else, but I can barely even hear her over Mae’s howling. I’m barely awake, the pain is so intense. Bess rushes to Rex, pleads with her.

  “Don’t,” she says. “Don’t, don’t.” Rex pushes her backward, and she falls, then scrambles forward, begging, pawing at Mae, at Rex’s legs.

  “No,” I say. I push myself to my knees. Rex is wheezing. She’s still hurting from before, from being in the freezer.

  She bends down and slashes at me, Mae’s face close to mine. The knife cuts my cheek, and I feel warm blood running down the side of my face.

  Don’t die.

  I see the blood drop down onto the charred ground. I hear the arboretum creaking. She’ll kill everybody, condemn us all, pass a death sentence without even knowing the truth about our lives, all because of what? Because she can?

  But then, I think, why do we do anything? I thought I knew, but I don’t.

  Then I see him. Jonah. Jonah’s here.

  He runs for us all, leaps, throws something down. A smoke pellet. It engulfs us, and I hear him struggle with Bess. I don’t see what happens through the gray, but then she’s running away from us, back to the main part of the ship. He could have killed her, and he didn’t. He spared her.

  Rex struggles through the smoke. I see her flailing limbs pushing it off her as she backs away to get out of it. But Jonah’s fast, and he can see where she can’t, and he snatches Mae away from her, and then he’s gone, back into the smoke, and she screams again.

  This is my chance. I push myself to my feet with my good arm, leaving the injured shoulder to recover as much as it can, and I throw myself into Rex’s back, all my weight onto her. She’s physically stronger than I am, but it surprises her, and I wrap my arm around her face, tightening it as much as I can.

  “Get Mae out of here!” I scream, wrestling with Rex. I shift my arm down to her throat. Her breathing is worse now, choking out of her in hard gasps. She kicks back at me. My mother’s knife, where her hand once was, flails, trying to find a part of me to cut. She can’t. I watch Jonah scoop up Mae, and I pull harder at her throat.

  She’s seconds away. I just have to keep holding on, then she’ll be gone.

  Jonah is watching, waiting for me, and so is Mae. I can’t let her see me kill Rex. I need her to believe that life isn’t just death and revenge. I would let Rex go, but I can’t. The war would end another way if I did. She’s ceaseless, and she’s had too many chances. I have to end it, I know that, but it doesn’t mean I want Mae to see it.

  “Go!
” I shout, and Jonah nods. He knows what I have to do. I wait until they’re gone, down the gantry. The Lows above us are still working on loosening the arboretum, too high up to know that we’re fighting to end it all. I just need to be faster than they are. I’ll deal with Rex, and then we’ll leave. We’ll get below the Pit and hit the home button before they cut the arboretum down. Home.

  Then she gets me, catches me with the edge of the blade, scraping it along my arm. It cuts through the fabric, down to the skin. It hurts, but not enough to stop me, not now. Still, I flinch, and my grip loosens, and she wriggles away. She’s breathing badly, heaving in air that she can’t quite seem to hold and coughing as it leaves her. But she’s on her feet, and she’s staggering backward.

  “You can’t kill me,” she says.

  “I can try,” I tell her.

  We’re both too tired to keep fighting, but that doesn’t matter. She swings at me, and I dodge her. She kicks out, and I slam my striker—I was able to find it in the moment she was gasping for breath—into her leg. Her blade clashes with my striker over and over as I try to get close enough to her to inflict the necessary damage.

  We’ve both been doing this—surviving—for too long. We’re both pretending that we have more left to give than we do. I scrape her with the stick, and she flinches as the blue flames rip across her skin. She cuts me with her blade, tearing through the outer layer of my suit. She kicks me in the shins; as I falter, I whip back and smash the point of my good elbow into the side of her head. I move back toward a burned-out tree, then pull myself up it and leap over her head, landing a few feet away with a jar that makes my shoulder ache, my scratches sting, and my wounds bleed, and then I run to get some distance between us. Breathing room.

  “Why can’t you kill me?” she asks as if she wants that, as if she’s daring me to, taunting me. “Little girl, why can’t you kill me?” She is hardly older than me, yet this is how she sees me: as a child. She sucks in air, wheezes, and then runs toward me. We go at each other again, slashing and bashing and bruising. I notice that every time she connects with her hand-blade, she winces. Her stump must be infected. And I know that it’s the blade, one final way that my mother is somehow managing to help me. Thanks to the infection, it hurts her to hurt me. The pain doesn’t stop her, not yet, but I can use it against her. My bad arm doesn’t work as I want it to. I can move it, but only barely. The blood has spread, I know, and I can feel its dampness soaking my suit, pressed against my skin.