Condemnation

by Kell Inkston

  "It couldn't really be water on the other side, could it?" she asks.

  Carrie steps up at the ready. "...Only visual confirmation would tell for certain."

  It's her choice.

  "You're right," Clare reaffirms, and with a silent prayer, begins turning the wheel-handle for the door. There's a few loud, scraping cranks— and at once, the door's pressure into its lock mechanism subsides. It swings into her grip permissively, and she practically gasps in relief.

  "Yes!" Clare draws back with a deep breath and a hop. "See?! No water!" she announces; an exotic bouquet of scents flows through the door.

  "That is good," Carrie says, doing its very best to add to the conversation in some way.

  Clare nods to herself with an air of pride, stepping back up to the door to swing it open fully. With a creak, the door floats forward— and the first of many strokes of true horror passes through her.

  On the other side of the door is nothing.

  - Chapter 11 -

  It's not quite nothing, but it's far more nothing than it is anything else Clare has known in her life. A polar opposite to the tight, nervous spaces of the main systems, this area past the door opens up wide— and dark— into an imperceptible expansiveness. Only the walkway out is visible, which stops at a chasmous drop-off and then splits to the left and right.

  Clare can feel a slight warmth blowing through the passage, inviting her in— but the air itself... seems to sting her skin.

  Perhaps this is too much for a young adult to handle after-all— least of all one that has spent her entire life in the pleasant coffee-scented atmospheres of studious academia; but Clare has a reason to step forward— a very good reason, at that.

  She struggles with herself for a moment in deciding what she'll do next. She was certain that once she made it through the door, she would at last find the truth—but this is not a sort of truth that she could have ever imagined.

  "Wh— what's going on..." she trembles.

  "...There is the way forward,” Carrie answers. “We should continue."

  "But, I don't..." She briefly grips Waine's chat stone. She could have someone to tell about this, right now. She could persuade him to listen, and ask him to send someone down to find her. She could choose not to spend another second emotionally alone in this terrible foreboding place.

  But, then— she wonders whether they'd come to arrest her or rescue her. It would probably be both, she expects.

  "I— I don't know what to do now—” she sucks in a sharp breath, “but no matter what I choose at this point... I have to... I have to find her," Clare says, bracing herself. She’s going to make a wise decision, here. Rather than playing her hand to the people of Everhold right away, she’s going to take her time— and wait for more information.

  With another deep and wary breath, she steps out onto the very rim of the mysterious, overwhelming expanse of blackness. "W-well, left or right then?" she asks.

  Carrie clicks a moment as it steps forward after her, crossing the boundary of the door. "...Either will lead to our destina-" it stops, its attention closing inward as it begins clicking away again with a sudden and furious tempo. "You have one new message,” it promptly informs. “Do you wish to proceed now?"

  An immense, deathly chill runs down Clare's neck, like the teeth of some hideous, unseen animal seething for her flesh in a sleepless, ever-stalking stupor. The dread is becoming so swiftly palpable, that her body is failing to keep up with it. She feels another more rotten, foreboding breeze pass her by.

  "P-play," she confirms, sliding casually up to the expanse of the abyss, and heaving her dinner out into the darkness.

  "...Inquiry,” the robot interjects lightly, “Status Report for 'Clare' User."

  "I'm-" she gulps, unable to find adequate words. "Just play the message," she persists.

  "...Playing message," the automaton relents obediently. There's a loud click from within its head, and then—whether a blessing or a curse— the voice of her mother seeps from Carrie's face.

  "Clare... I... at least I hope it's you hearing this. Keep going down. Don’t back out. I don't know what we're going to find— but one day, you'll see what Everhold is built on, and I'll be finding out today... only, first I’m going to get some rest. It's quiet here, and I don't see anything to worry about. I'm going to lay back for just a little bit. Please don't push yourself too hard, honey. I... I'm relieved that there was something past Substation Seven, though. It means I'm right. There's more— but you know that for sure now, don't y-"

  There's a slight gasp in the recording, as if Mary's in pain.

  "Dearest Clare— don't hate your dad, if he told you I died; that's what everyone would jump to anyway.

  Please stay safe. I know Carrie will do its best to take care of you, but you can't rely too much on it. I worked really, really hard on it; it’s definitely my best work— but it's still an auto and is prone to mistakes. It is unique, and you’ll see that, but it’s ultimately a failed project. It was meant to be more than what it is now. So I retrofitted it to do what it’s doing now, and hopefully it’s doing that job well.

  Now I want you to press onward, darling— to our little adventure!" Mary laughs with a slight, morbid humor before the message clicks out.

  "This concludes all messages," Carrie reports simply.

  For a long pause, Clare just sits against the wall along the walkway— staring out into the black expanse. The welling of tears in her eyes finally reaches its peak, and she lets out a gentle, quick sob.

  "You made it out," she whimpers with a light smile.

  "...Inquiry: What did 'I' make it out of?"

  "N-" she loosens her mask briefly to reach a hand in and rub her eyes; it’s not really a good idea in places where one would need a mask— but here, she's sure she’s fine. "Oh, just shut up. I wasn't even talking about you," Clare responds.

  "...Define phrase: 'shut up'," Carrie requests.

  "To stop making noise," she snaps with a wry, faint smirk.

  "...Noted." The automaton falls silent.

  Clare curls into herself gently for a moment, bringing in her knees and joining her hands to create a sort of self hug. The implications of her mother getting through that slaughterhouse of automatons is significant— but to think that there's more to the journey, that there's a great, unknown darkness down below— the thought truly horrifies her. Perhaps her entire definition of the world was wrong, and it actually goes down— rather than to the sides. Perhaps the only thing she has to await her now is the crawling underworld filled with squirming, silent things that hunt for flesh, and other untold evils that wait in the dark.

  Very gently and with great care, she leans just far enough to look down over the rim of the drop off.

  It's not absolute blackness down below. Faintly, on the very edge of her perception, she can see the fuzziest, grayest silhouettes of shapes.

  "Something's down there," she observes, wanting more than anything now for Carrie to have something helpful, at least encouraging to say for once. It says nothing, however— just like she told it to. After another respite of uneasy breathing, Clare releases a weary sigh, brings herself back to her feet, and shines her light down to the floor.

  Illuminated by the direct shine of her blue collar light, small droppings of what is most likely blood lead off to the left. She has her trail— she'll follow the blood.

  "Come on," Clare finally instructs, keeping her nerves together with enough ability to start sketching her feet along the fairly narrow walkway— Carrie close behind her with amazingly quiet steps for a machine. Clare is surprised by the specific ease in which Carrie can walk without making more than a slight *pat* noise. Her gaze trails at its feet for too long, and then she slips. Upon the slick pathway, the momentum swings her onto the floor and slides her legs across— dangling uneasily over the chasm.

  With a gasp, she reaches forward to grab a hold of something. Just as her torso lowers over the edge, however, she feels all o
f her weight suddenly lifted off her— with the exception of her coat, which packs heavily under her armpits. Carrie picks her up by the collar with no difficulty at all, and places her neatly back onto her feet.

  "Th-" Clare puffs in relief. "Thank you."

  Carrie says nothing, but nods. She's having trouble getting it through her head that that slip could have been the end.

  "Let's keep going," she continues, this time making good and sure to plant both her feet firmly onto the walkway. With renewed caution, she resorts to small, measured steps— almost more of a gentle slide than a step, in fact. Her balance is also sprawled along the smooth rotary wall now; she feels far more stable in this fashion. The two make their way along the precipice of darkness for several additional minutes, the mad silence suffocating Clare's mind like an eldritch anticipation. Thinking on it, she really doesn't want to do this anymore— but she knows that if it will lead to her mother, even the slightest chance, she has to press on.

  After what feels like an eternity of skimming along the abyss, she finally sees it. A gray, crusty ladder, looking as if its color had been sapped from its body over the long dreary years, stands before her— leading straight down into the dark.

  As they approach, she stops short and stares at the ladder with an impalpable dread. "Are you sure this i-" Clare’s words falter as the blue light illuminates the old blood— just a small mark— right around the top of its entrance.

  “Alright, mom. Right behind you.”

  Clare grits her teeth in disgust, finally making the mental connection that she’s going to have to descend into the vast abyss. The ladder looks incredibly old, as if it could snap from even the lightest of pressure.

  "I..." She starts again, glances over to Carrie, and then immediately focuses back at the ladder; it is practically magnetic to her gaze. She has trouble looking away, knowing that in a few seconds, she's going to talk herself into mounting it and climbing down. Some of the ladder joints are so dilapidated that a kick could break them— and to think that she's about to trust her weight to hundreds, if not thousands of these age-weakened joints, makes her stomach crawl with yet another unique horror— like when one is dreaming and knows they have to jump into a shark-filled ocean.

  Of all things, the ladder makes her short for breath again. The thought of the joints breaking, sending her straight down— or worse, the hinge joiners that hold the ladder to the wall shattering, sending her and the entire ladder in a curved collapse deep into the blackness… She would crash into the floor, with no clue of what she'd find— and after having her expectations disturbed this many times already, she wouldn't be terribly surprised if she fell helplessly into a bed of insects, face-first into an automaton's grasp, or perhaps the dark, cold ocean, rife with horrors untold.

  "I don't...know if we..." she stops herself again. Complaining will do her no good, she realizes, especially when it’s a numbskull like Carrie as her shoulder to cry on.

  With an uneasy, careful movement, she leans down to get on top of the ladder. Just as she places her first foot on the top rung, however, she feels another tug. Carrie is pulling at her pack.

  "What?" She asks, exasperated.

  Carrie makes no noise.

  "Okay, you can talk. Now what's wrong?"

  "I would like to take your burden,” it offers. “This system does not think that structure is prepared for any extra weight."

  She takes a breath. The robot has a point. If it fell over, then it could just pick itself back up— but if she were to break the ladder on the other hand….

  She sheds her pack and hands it up to Carrie, who puts it on.

  "Okay, now?" she asks, understandably short considering the situation.

  " 'Clare' User should exercise a high level of caution when navigating this device," Carrie advises simply.

  Her gas mask stretches gently as a grin crosses her face. "Sure, thanks." Clare starts down the ladder with steady, measured movements— taking great care not to put too much pressure on any one rung, and ensuring she has three points of contact at all times. The rust crumbles along her fingers, covering her gloves in a gray-orange crust. There's a steady, foreboding creak with every step she makes, the sound running deep through the ladder as if the entire structure was about to give way at any moment. Clare doesn't let it stop her, though. So long as she keeps her weight distributed, she'll be fine.

  The climb is long, however— much longer than she expected. It just sprawls on and downward, like an endless gape waiting for any soul stupid enough to climb inside its dark abyss of wonder. Her climbing speed certainly isn't helping, and neither is the anticipation of what could be waiting for her.

  Again, her imagination gets the best of her. She wonders if there's something alive down there, and if it can see in the dark— and if it already knows she's there. With a hushed breath, she turns off her light. There's something about just staring at the wall, while having her light on, that really disturbs her. She feels intensely vulnerable right now— so she prays that the creatures can, in fact, not see in the dark— and by turning out the light, she imagines, the least she can do is lower her profile.

  Five minutes of this trembling anticipation continues, and then her foot hits something. She gasps from the surprise, pulling it up while simultaneously fumbling a hand back up to her light switch. With a quiet sob, she sees the area revealed to her. Looking away from the wall and the ladder is a dilapidated set of houses— miserable and sunken with the discolored scourge of mildew, suffocating anything that was once organic in the area.

  The quick dip into the water and the resulting snap back up was a decisively jagged movement. It isn't until she feels the actual rung of the ladder giving way then does she realize that she has placed both her hands tightly on the same one— leaning back with all her weight. The rung snaps, and she falls into the heavy, murky, cold water— like the embrace of death.

  Her feet are still securely hooked onto the ladder in some vein subconscious attempt at holding onto anything that isn't wet— but it’s this very action that ironically holds her under the surface for several extra seconds. She can't pull in any air through her mask— she immediately realizes that the seal she made over the mask is completely bogus, and it’s not long before water seeps between the filter valves and from around the mask’s sides to flood the small haven of her face. The smell of the outside, muted by the safe, chemical comfort of her filter's charcoal-base screen, practically chokes her now that she can actually perceive its scent.

  Old water, dust, mold, mildew— and any number of forlorn bacteria flood into her mask; in her fight to inhale, she pulls in some of the water instead. She kicks her feet off the ladder in a fit to regain her balance upward just as she vomits into the compromised cover. The water isn't just putrid, no, it downright hurts— as if it had acidic qualities. It takes a few seconds, but she finally gets over herself and takes back to her feet amidst a quivering fit— cold, wet, and disgusted far beyond anything her body's encountered in her entire life.

  With a bitter, almost angry posture, all she can do is stand still while her body passes the rest of her digestive tract's food back up through her mask— a swirling, acidic torture that must simply be suffered through.

  This is presently the most agony she’s ever experienced, but that “record” is about to be broken several, several times throughout the next twentyfour hours.

  She takes a pause to lift her mask just enough to drain the fluid; surely no amount of the intrusive air’s presence could make this any worse.

  She spends another half a minute just standing there, shivering as a grinding sound approaches from above. It's Carrie, pack over its shoulder as it slides down the sides of the ladder in a swift, effortless descent. The auto jumps off the ladder just in time before its weight can take its toll on the structure’s sides, and plants its alloyed feet into the water alongside her. Carrie takes a moment to look over their surroundings, and then calmly turns its head to the soaked young lady bes
ide it.

  "Inquiry: Status Report for 'Cla-"

  "Shut—" Clare starts with a sputter, "up." She doesn't want to talk anymore— she just wants to be miserable and scared for a moment. It's weird, feeling jealous of an auto, but right now she really doesn't want to hear from something that cannot possibly understand how she's feeling in this miserable instant. A few seconds pass, and she takes her first breath with any tone resembling composure. "Okay. Where now?" she finally asks.

  "..."

  "You can talk, Carrie."

  "I only know we must continue."

  "… Well shit, then," she finally responds, with no other idea of what to say.

  With slow, shuddering movements, she casts her azure light over the sunken streets. There's a curtain of what looks to be spores swirling and clouding her vision, which is already poor through her mask, so that it’s even more exceptionally difficult to see. The eerie silence of the upper threshold they descended from is only slightly disturbed by the eerie calmness of the water below. She just knows there's something down here. Call it unconscious intuition perhaps— but there's something very old inside of her that stirs from these sensations; there's nothing quiet about it. At least the substation system was familiar, and that huge precipice was wide open— but this is concealed… tight… waiting. She has the unsettling premonition that she might just end up as additional bacterium for the massive biological soup that she's presently knee-high in.

  With a quick glance behind her, she looks over at the ladder. Its bottom part is terribly damaged from her physical outburst, but it still looks usable. Clare doesn't even think to ask herself how she's going to get Carrie, or her pack, back up; she's not so concerned about that right now.

  She takes one more breath, thinks about her mother, and just picks a house. At a trudging pace, the two move through the putrid concoction up to her selected structure— looking to be a small home of some kind. Its design is weirdly familiar to her for some reason, like something that has been replicated through Everhold.