The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

  She could hear the movement of water from ahead, and as she stepped around a column formed by two outcroppings meeting, she saw its source: a stream flowed down a nearby wall, and from there through a channel in the ground. The channel grew wider as it went. Gyre followed it, picking her way across it in places on islands of rock that hadn’t been worn away yet, until she stood at the banks of a small underground lake, its surface still except for where the small, trickling flow met it. The banks were short cliffs of scalloped stone, striated with what appeared to be different colors or compositions. Out farther in the water, a few outcroppings of the same layered rock pushed up from the depths, delicate pillars that looked as if they could topple at any moment. And all along the uneven walls and vaulted ceiling, the blue lichen cast its light. The water was clear and calm, and beneath the surface lichen glowed, lighting up the lake. The whole space amplified it.

  Gyre’s shoulders sagged in a minor surrender. She powered down the reconstruction entirely and found she could still see. The space was beautiful, not unsettling like Camp Five or the maw behind her, and she laughed helplessly. She’d just been spooked. Spooked and tired, because she wasn’t taking reasonable, human breaks. The glow of the lichen was enchanting, once she could see it divorced from the fungal tumors at Camp Five, and she felt her heart rate slow, her muscles relax. She let the beauty overwhelm the horror for a long while, then pulled back into herself and checked her map.

  Camp Six was close by, but the way was blocked by a wall. She would have to go back and around. This lake appeared to connect to the sump, but Em had left a note.

  ENTRANCE TO SUMP IMPASSABLE. STAGE FROM SECONDARY ROOM.

  Gyre’s stomach curdled, and she turned away, trying to stave off the rising bile in her throat. This was it. This was the hell sump that had killed Hanmei. Had killed Laurent. Had they originally entered from this bank? Isolde had said that the old entrance had been closed off, that she’d needed to find another way out.

  This whole cave was cursed. She couldn’t ever let herself forget it, not for a second.

  She retreated back to the room of the outcroppings, away from the glow, and switched to her reconstruction once more. She found a narrow spot with few approaches to tuck herself into. She hunkered down there, drawing her knees to her chest.

  At least five bodies are in that sump. Em’s divers, Laurent, and Hanmei. Beyond that, several more of Em’s sacrifices had turned back at their first encounter with it. Had any been able to establish a line that held, or did it keep moving? Did it shift every time? It had taken seven days for Isolde’s team to map it—how long would she need to be down there? Gyre’s mind raced through the possibilities, conjuring images of herself being wedged into tight crevices, unable to free herself, waiting until her battery ran out of power—or of the crevice closing on her in a snap, flowing around her as the Tunneler passed nearby.

  All of that could have happened as she swam to Camp Six, she realized.

  She shouldn’t have moved forward on her own.

  She swore and scanned through the other files Em had sent to her suit, desperate for a distraction for her fevered thoughts. She found music, and put it on random, sagging in relief as lazy singing filled her helmet. Off-world music, but unobjectionable. Simple. A sad love song. She’d take it.

  Eventually, she stretched out onto her back, or as much onto her back as the suit allowed. She stared up at the stalactites above her and at the uneven ceiling. In places it was no higher than the ceiling of a room, but in others it shot up into uneven shafts that terminated several meters in the air. Gyre’s fingers itched, as if she needed to be climbing again despite her exhaustion. It had taken Isolde two days after she’d struck out from the sump to get halfway up the long cliff. If she started now—

  Em’s line clicked open.

  “I’ve found your mother.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gyre shot upright. “Em? What—where have you—”

  “Your mother. She’s alive, remarried with three children, on a garden world as you expected. She’s still going by Peregrine, and there were no outstanding warrants for her arrest, so I believe you can put to rest the theory that she ran off-world with a cartel.”

  Gyre shut off the music and blinked rapidly, not entirely comprehending. Her thoughts whirled between Isolde in that interview room, the sump, and the idea that her mother—her mother—had been found, had been found alive and with a new family and—and she’d seen Isolde at Camp Five and this was what had isolated Gyre for the last nine hours?

  And then she snuck a small glance at the indicator light at the bottom left of her screen. The recorder was still on.

  “She’s on an artificial garden world in the Viarsian system,” Em continued as if nothing was wrong. She must not have noticed it yet. Gyre trembled with relief and hunkered down a little in her suit. “I’ll get you a first-class ticket once you’re above surface again,” Em said. “As part of your compensation. I’ve prepared another contract amendment.”

  Guilt washed over her. Should she say something, admit to the recording? No—no sense in risking it.

  She cleared her throat. “I—Em.”

  “As circumstances have changed drastically since your engagement, if you would like to turn back upon reaching the sump, you will receive both the ticket and prorated compensation.”

  “Em.” No, she had to turn off the recording now, before Em saw, before Em realized Gyre had betrayed her. Em was offering up everything Gyre wanted on a golden platter.

  Yet Gyre hesitated, thinking of Adrian Purcell, crushed and abandoned at Camp Two. Jennie Mercer lying broken and cold up at Camp Four. The faceless cavers who would follow after her.

  No . . . not everything.

  She stared at the indicator light.

  “I know you watched the last video,” Em said, still unaware, still totally consumed with her side of the conversation. For the first time, Gyre realized Em’s voice was tight, her words clipped. Mechanical, like Isolde’s had been in that video. “So you understand now. How dangerous this is. How . . . sick I am.”

  Gyre clenched her jaw and looked around the room. Em was right. She was sick. She’d left Gyre on her own, in the dark, suffering.

  She’d led more down here to die before her.

  But Gyre could understand now, her thoughts swinging wildly, pulled in a thousand directions at once.

  Mom. Alive.

  She swore, and looked back up at the ceiling, as if she could see Em that way. “Yeah, I understand.”

  “Will you be turning back? I assume so, even though you’re already almost at Camp Six despite my instructions.”

  Yes. No. She clenched her fists and resisted the urge to look at the recording indicator again. “I need some time.” She needed to think, and her mind wasn’t cooperating with her just now. She babbled out, “And I wanted to see the sump. Might as well know what I have to work with before making a choice.”

  She had the money, had her mother. She didn’t have enough to stop Em from doing this again. She had a deadly sump dive ahead of her.

  I saw your mother at Camp Five.

  What if she told Em about that part? It would compromise her, perhaps trigger some reiteration of her earlier confession on the ledge of the Long Drop. But Gyre could see how that might play out, with Em incapable of abandoning the impossibility that her mother was still alive, stranding Gyre down here to keep searching. Or worse, sending down more cavers despite any actions Gyre took against her back on the surface, too desperate and wild with grief to care about the consequences.

  And besides—with how long Gyre had been going without proper rest, the chances of it just being an afterimage from the video, caused by frayed emotion, were too high. Right now, the recording had only captured a few half-spoken words at the sump. It didn’t tell the whole story. It barely told any story. But if she described the encounter on the recording it would count against her own reliability.

  Em was quiet, waiting
. Gyre fought the urge to cradle her aching head in her hands. Instead, she looked back toward the marker for Camp Six, then called up a map. It was a longer walk than to the shore of the cavern lake, but there wasn’t a noticeable change in altitude. Easy enough.

  “I told you to stay put,” Em said at last.

  “You also left me for nine hours.”

  “Then you should have slept.”

  “Camp Five was within walking distance,” Gyre said, scowling. “I walked there. The cache is in place.”

  “Then you should have waited for me there. Taken advantage of having a break from me.”

  “That wasn’t a break. That was a divorce. You left me in midair.”

  “You were fine. You’re one of the best climbers I’ve worked with,” Em said. “And I—” Her voice broke and she went quiet for a moment, just breathing. When she spoke again, she sounded calmer. “You didn’t want to go that far to begin with—I don’t understand.” Worry crept into her voice, past the careful blankness.

  Gyre’s face heated. “I—” She hesitated, unsure of what lie to tell. “Those mushrooms creeped me out, I guess,” she muttered.

  “Mushrooms?”

  A small shock rippled through her. Em knew about the mushrooms, right? “Yeah,” Gyre said slowly. “They were blanketing the floor. Really nasty. They exploded with spores. I didn’t want to test the suit’s scrubbers on it.”

  “That’s concerning—cavers have encountered various fungi down there, but the last person to reach Camp Five didn’t find anything like that.” The soft tapping of keys came from Em’s line.

  Another shudder of unease clenched Gyre’s ribs tight. “Then why was the Five cache underwater, if not for the mushrooms?”

  “The spaces around Five and Six flood regularly. I don’t want the boxes . . . moving. At Six, I’ve got a good niche to put them in, but at Five the one good spot only fits the raft box. It makes more sense to sink the rest to the bottom of that sump. There’s no current, and less of a chance of it moving. The sump here is too . . . active. It’s safer up here, even if the niche gives way.”

  She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. “Makes sense, I guess.”

  Em cleared her throat. “Your suit stored metrics from the spores. I’ll review them in a bit. But, Gyre, diving on your own, without resting first, through a section you’d never encountered before? You could have died.” She let out a shaky breath. “Very easily.”

  “I’m not going to die,” Gyre said, her voice stony. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Em didn’t respond, no doubt wondering just how much Gyre really knew.

  She wondered herself.

  Her skin crawled like a thousand of the translucent insects from Camp Three had gotten inside her suit. She looked around, nervously, the overlapping maw of stone penning her in. She had to move. She set off, and was halfway across the space when Em spoke again. “My mother should have gone back for him. For my father.”

  Focus. Focus on her. “Based on what she said?” Gyre asked, approaching the passage that would lead to the camp. “No. She would have died.”

  “Well, she died anyway, didn’t she?”

  That almost caught her up short. Did she?

  Yes. She must have.

  Right?

  “Gyre?”

  She had stopped walking, and started moving forward again, hoping Em hadn’t seen the spike in her adrenaline, couldn’t see how tense she was. The passage was through an awkward gap, not exactly tight but hard to brace herself in, with large, smooth, round protrusions. It was like wriggling into the belly of some beast, but Em didn’t express any concern. Gyre tried not to think about Halian as she ducked through the opening.

  “If it helps,” Gyre said, clambering over another outcropping, the exertion stilling the shaking in her bones, “I would have done everything she did. She got out. That’s all that matters.”

  Em made a strangled, angry sound, and Gyre winced.

  “I mean, that’s why you’re here. She came back, she built her company. Nothing she could have done would have changed any of it, except—except for not walking back here to die in this cave. Not leaving you behind.”

  “Stop talking, Gyre.”

  No. She needed this shred of interaction, whatever it was. This distraction. Gyre frowned, pushing herself over a final ledge and down onto a small drop-off, where the room widened again. “How many people have you actually talked to about this?” she pushed.

  “Enough.”

  “Yeah, but I’m the first one who’s come down here with you, right?”

  I’m the only one who’s understood.

  “That’s right. But you know as well as I do, if she’d gone back for my father and died, you wouldn’t be down there. I’d just be in therapy somewhere. It would have been better for everybody.”

  She was right, but Gyre couldn’t find any response to it. She didn’t have the energy to. She’d never been the comforter, the gentle one, and now, spooked by the cave, unsure of what she was perceiving, and knowing that her mother had just started a new life on a nicer planet, a life that required money and safety as prerequisites, she didn’t want to be either.

  But she needed the distraction. She needed Em to keep talking, or she’d tear herself apart.

  Breathe, breathe. She didn’t need Em.

  Gyre crossed her arms over her chest as she looked around the room. There, by the far western wall, was a small pool of water—likely the sump. A thin layer of water crept over the surrounding floor, not more than a few millimeters deep and not expanding across the entire cavern.

  Tucked on the northern wall, on a small rise—

  “Cache is here,” Gyre said, and made for it. Now let’s just hope it’s fully stocked. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to haul through Camp Five.

  But she had to, didn’t she? To buy time? Her head hurt.

  “Levels should be good,” Em said, responding to the new jump in Gyre’s heart rate. “Are you seeing any signs of—tampering? Was Five okay?”

  “Five was fine. Can’t see on this one yet.” She increased her pace to a jog, only slowing when she could make out the orderly shape of the storage containers. “Yeah, I think it’s okay.”

  Em let out a deep sigh. “Good. Good. Check the batteries, though, make sure they still have full charge.”

  “Way ahead of you, boss,” Gyre said. “I swapped out at the last cache. These boxes and the ones at Camp Five are a lot sturdier than the earlier ones.”

  “I don’t always use them. They’re bulky, hard to move. But I feel safer leaving them on the harder-to-reach camps, since they might not see another person for—years. And they’re completely watertight, in case of flooding. The earlier caches don’t need to be. Camps in the middle, like Three, get a lighter option to split the difference.”

  Smart, Gyre thought as she opened the box, letting herself sink into the familiar cadence of Em’s voice. You’ve got this all figured out. So why have you been failing for years? Everything inside glowed faintly and looked fine, and she picked up a battery, letting her suit run diagnostics on it via the cameras and sensors installed on its surface.

  “Good to go, though since you picked up a fresh set at Five, you should leave them in for now to conserve.”

  “Right,” Gyre said. Part of her never wanted to leave sight of the cache again, in case whoever had taken the cache at Camp Four was still wandering through the caves, could somehow make the swim from Camp Five.

  But who could it really be, down here? Isolde, wandering the caves for nine years—

  She needed to stop thinking like that. It was physically impossible that she’d survived a week, much less the better part of a decade.

  “Your heart rate jumped. Again. You’ve been erratic since I came back,” Em said. “Is something wrong?”

  “Just spooked,” Gyre said, swallowing thickly, closing the case and going to check the other boxes of gear. All of that seemed fine too. “Long day. Y
ou were gone for a while. What was that about?”

  “Finding your mother. It seemed important. For both of us.”

  “And? That wouldn’t have taken a day and all your attention. And it wouldn’t have made you change my contract. I know you.”

  Em sighed. “I was calling my contacts at the local mining concerns.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Nobody’s sent a caver down here. I own this opportunity, and they all know it. But my contacts could still be wrong—since they all know I own it, whoever came down here would have to be careful about who in their organization knew they were trying something. Whoever called the Tunneler, whatever happened to the cache . . .”

  “It could just be some local kid dreaming of making it rich,” Gyre supplied, though her heart felt like lead at the news. Or it could be your mother. “You don’t exactly have the same presence as the other concerns, and this doesn’t look like an established site.”

  Em laughed at that. Gyre managed a grim, thin smile as she settled down against the wall by the cache.

  “Is that the sump over there?” she asked, jerking her chin toward the small pool.

  “Yes. It’s not the easiest way in, but it’s the only one now.”

  “Your parents went in through the lake, right?”

  Em sighed. “Of course you explored.”

  “You already knew that,” Gyre countered, exhaustion flooding her now that she was off her feet again. She fought against it, unwilling to close her eyes. Pay attention. “Be honest with me. I know my suit pings my location.”