The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

  Gyre clenched her jaw and surged forward, gaining precious speed. She could see the barrier wall that protected Camp Six, there at the far edge of the light from her lamp. But she was clumsy, lurching. Her foot refused to lift more than a few centimeters from the stone, and her toe caught on a ridge. She tripped, sprawling forward, cursing, clawing to get herself back upright.

  The suit fought her.

  Her lamp went out. The alert disappeared, leaving only the timer, ticking down toward zero.

  No.

  She only had a few hundred meters left to go—even fighting against her suit, only another minute at most. She swore and reached for the equipment hump, but it was like moving under a lead blanket. Her muscles were too weak, her suit too heavy. All she could hear was her own breath, rasping from her throat, and the pounding of her pulse. The film across her skin tightened, pulling at her flesh, suctioning it to the polymer around her.

  The suit was dying, and trapping her inside it.

  But she was on dry land.

  She could use Jennie’s battery.

  It took all her strength to force her hand back far enough to brush her hip. Without enough charge, the servos that powered the suit and allowed it to respond to her movements were shutting down, locking in place joint by joint. The same mechanism that had supported her on her long climbs, that had given her the sheer strength to climb into a waterfall, was now turned against her. She twisted her shoulder, grimacing in pain as she pushed herself against the exoskeleton. Her fingertips caught the latch to the storage compartment.

  The mobility of the fingers on her suit was still comparatively high, even if the arms and legs could barely move, even if her head was frozen in position. She felt for the backup battery, her fingers tangling in rope, displacing bolts.

  Something moved on her left.

  Gyre’s head jerked up, banging into the inside of her suit as the helmet didn’t move with her. There was nothing in front of her, but the motion had been to her left. She tried to turn her head.

  She couldn’t.

  Beyond the glow of the lichen, there was only pitch blackness. No faces. No bodies.

  You don’t have time for this. She twitched her fingers, felt something spin. Another twitch. The battery rolled into her hand. Please let this work, please, please.

  More movement in the corner of her eye. She instinctively tried to face it but couldn’t move except to close her fingers around the backup battery. She dragged her arm back, reaching for the port. It was like pushing against a wall, unmoving, unyielding. She moved so slowly, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a hallucination.

  More movement, shadows fluttering to her right now.

  She shouted, loud enough to make her ears ring, and jerked her arm. She could hear the suit groaning in protest. She’d really moved, and now she could feel the plane of her back, and she fumbled for the eject button with her thumb, other fingers clenched tight around the battery.

  The button depressed. She heard the dead battery clatter to the ground, spent. She screamed as she shoved the backup battery in, and in an instant her headlamp came back on, and she spasmed, her prison loosening. Her free hand clawed against the ground, and she drew her knees up under her, then took off in a lurching sprint for Camp Six.

  BATTERY APPROACHING TOTAL SHUTDOWN

  CAVER, SWAP TO BACKUP

  The alert blinded her. She shook her head, puffed out air, tried to clear it. It refused, and she slowed by a hair, fumbling with the controls.

  The light in her headlamp sputtered.

  The battery wasn’t going to be enough.

  Gyre surged forward into the red of the alert, the darkness of the cave. Her light flickered again, and then her left knee locked up for just a millisecond, just long enough to throw off her stride. Her shoulder struck a pillar and she spun to one side, nearly losing her footing.

  She reached the barrier wall, one last short climb between her and safety. She jumped, hitting the edge with her stomach, grunting and letting go of the backup for the half second she needed to stabilize herself and sling one leg over. Her lights dimmed, then cut out.

  The backup battery began to fall. She cried out, reaching back, grasping it just as she pulled herself onto the top of the shelf. She forced it back in. Her light came back on.

  Her suit refused to move.

  No. No.

  The suit wasn’t displaying the remaining charge of the backup battery. Was it too low, or not seated? Whichever it was, she couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t move. Her gaze fixed on the stone that filled her vision. She couldn’t move, and soon she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

  She was so close.

  “Fuck!” she shouted. It did nothing. Tears tracked down her cheeks, but they also did nothing. Nothing, nothing. She was going to die, ten meters from batteries, from salvation. If she had just closed that box at Camp Five properly, she would have lived. If she had just run faster. If she’d avoided the columns, if she hadn’t tripped. She held her breath, cheeks expanding, until, with a shuddering sob, she began puffing through her options.

  Morphine. Morphine could end this quickly, gently. She didn’t want to starve, didn’t want to suffocate, didn’t want to know which would come first with her broken battery. But she couldn’t summon the medical panel, her thoughts racing too fast. Did her suit even have enough power left to inject her? Different settings flickered in front of her. Was the display dimming? How much longer did she have?

  The communications setting screen flowed into her vision. She paused, staring at it.

  Em.

  She’d initiated contact before she had consciously decided. She watched as the link established, whispering, “Please, please,” like a litany. Her suit still refused to move, and she was pinned to the stone like a splayed, dissected animal as she waited. Waited.

  The indicator turned green.

  “Gyre?”

  “Em,” she said, gasping. “Em, fuck.”

  “What’s happened? You’re not moving. Are you hurt? Are you—oh shit.”

  “Yeah,” Gyre whispered. “Yeah. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left, but the suit isn’t moving. So it can’t be long, right?”

  “You’re getting some power, but the connection is fucked.” There was a pause, and then Em’s face appeared, filling her screen. “The battery isn’t seated right.”

  “Can’t be. Took it from Jennie’s suit. It’s broken.”

  Em frowned, her attention laser-focused on her screen. She looked so controlled, Gyre wanted to cry. Wanted to shelter under her for dear life.

  “I wanted to say goodbye,” Gyre said, her voice thick. “I wanted—I wanted to apologize, the recording, I know you saw it—”

  “Do you trust me?”

  She stared at the screen.

  “Gyre, do you trust me?”

  “What are you going to do?” Administer the morphine? Cut the oxygen? Displace with helium? How would Em kill her? She was shaking now, unsure if she was relieved or terrified.

  “There’s no time, Gyre. Yes or no?”

  The answer was terrifyingly easy. “Yes!”

  “Don’t worry about the recording; I understood. And I’m sorry,” Em said, glancing at the camera.

  Gyre’s chest tightened. Her heart stopped.

  And then her screen went black.

  At first she heard nothing beyond her heart and her breath, and then she realized what that meant. The air exchange fans had stopped. The fans that had slowed in her climb to the waterfall had gone still at last, ceased exchanging her depleted air for fresh. She didn’t have a day before they failed and she suffocated—it was going to happen now.

  Her lungs began to ache as each breath took in less oxygen. She panicked, gulping in a huge lungful of depleted air and holding it, holding it, her eyes feeling as if they would burst. Then, seconds later, her arms jerked. Her legs remained rigid, but her hands flexed, one pushing the battery back into its slot. The lights didn’t come back on, though,
and neither did the air filter. Her skin crawled as the film against it lost something, turned to slime. Everything felt wrong, and her lungs burned, her eyes hurt. Her head swam.

  Her free hand reached out. Grabbed what felt like stone.

  And dragged.

  The whine of polymer pulling over rock filled her awareness as she let out the breath she’d been holding, sobbed as she tried to take another. Tried not to hyperventilate. Her suit inched forward. Em was dragging her to the batteries. All she had to do was hang on. All she had to do was not die.

  Her legs were fixed in an awkward position, and it hurt as Em pulled her across the uneven floor, her knee catching on small outcroppings, her hip falling to depressions. But she was moving. She was moving, and just when her thoughts were spiraling apart from lack of air, the filters turned on for five seconds. She couldn’t hear them over the pounding in her ears, but she could taste the stale air, and she gasped for it, sucking it down. Then it went away again.

  Her hand brushed something. Her arm curled around it. She felt herself lift, pulled up into a sitting position. She could hear her hand, clumsy, not hers anymore, fumbling with a latch.

  Her fingers wrapped around something. Her arm pulled back. She closed her eyes. Em, Em, please, she thought. What if, when the backup was removed, Em couldn’t get the new battery in? What if the connection to her computer, the only thing allowing Gyre to move, gave when there was no direct power? Fuck. Fuck. She was crying again, fingers spasming inside her suit, having no effect on how Em eased the backup from the slot.

  “Please, please,” she prayed.

  Her hand holding the fresh battery jerked, slammed the battery home.

  Her systems came on full blast in an instant, the reconstruction of the room brilliant and nearly blinding on her screen, her helmet blaring alarms as the air filters started up again. Her vision, blurred and foggy, resolved again as oxygen filled her lungs. She was hunched against the battery box, and she moaned, reaching for another of the glowing rods and fitting it into the slot for a backup.

  She was alive.

  “Gyre, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” She swallowed. “Yeah, I can hear you.”

  “Thank god,” Em whispered, her voice cracking. The video feed sprang back to life. Em was slumped back into her chair, her shoulders hunched forward, her arms wrapped around herself. “Thank god,” she repeated, and closed her eyes.

  “Good to see you again,” Gyre managed. Safe, safe, you’re safe, she repeated to herself. Em was there. Em hadn’t left her to die. Em had fought for her.

  She clung to that fact. Slowly, she pushed up to her knees. Her legs were weak, and they hurt from where they’d been badly jarred. And she was tired, so tired, but at the same time, she wasn’t sure she could ever sleep again.

  Safe, you’re safe.

  The tears came again, ignoring her protests, ignoring the way she wrapped her arms around herself. She waited for the rush of medication, a soothing chemical lullaby to quiet her panic, but none came. Instead, she felt the arms of her suit shift. Gyre stiffened, then sagged forward into the mechanical embrace Em seemed to give her, her suit flexing and moving to support her. Gently, Em eased her down into a curled position that was almost comfortable.

  “I need air,” Gyre whispered.

  At first, nothing happened. Then the reconstruction feed disappeared from her HUD and the faceplate of her helmet released, eased up and out of the way. Cool, damp air curled against her lips, her nose, her eyes.

  She vomited.

  The bile burned her tongue and throat, stung her eyes, and stank as it spread on the rock beneath her. It was the first thing she’d tasted besides filtered water in weeks, and it was horrible and wonderful. She retched again, bringing up nothing but thin, pale liquid, the result of her sludge diet.

  Groaning, she crawled away from it, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, nearly cutting her lip on the carapace of the suit and savoring the sensation.

  “I’m here,” Em said, when Gyre’s stomach had quieted and her chest had stopped seizing. The suit shifted again, just a little, just enough that it felt as if there was a hand on her shoulder. Without her faceplate, Gyre couldn’t see her, but it didn’t matter. The sight of her meant almost nothing compared to the feeling, undeniable and real, that she was there, at Camp Six, holding Gyre. It didn’t matter that she was using Gyre’s prison to do it, or that Gyre’s skin remained untouched, or that Gyre still had to climb out. There, in that moment, the most important fact was that Em was with her.

  She held on to the feeling tightly, too afraid to relax into it and rest, too afraid it would evaporate if she didn’t focus her whole attention on it. After days on her own, terrified she was about to die, she needed that feeling more than she had realized.

  It was the only thing that would be able to carry her out.

  She curled her fingers inside her gloves, wishing she could feel Em’s hand beneath her own. Her shoulders quaked with her quiet crying, and Em said nothing, demanded nothing. Gyre listened to the splashing of her tears against the stone below her, and it felt real. She existed outside the suit, and the suit wasn’t just a mechanical cage. It was Em. No matter what, as long as her computer remained linked to the suit, Gyre wasn’t doing this alone.

  A week ago, the idea would have terrified her. She would have hated Em for taking control of the suit. Now, though, part of her wished that Em could simply walk her out. If Gyre could only sleep, and Em pilot her body out, back to the surface . . .

  No. She didn’t want it that way. She took a deep, chilled breath, the cold air shocking her lungs and making her feel more alert, more herself. While she appreciated Em’s rescue, the more Gyre calmed down, the more she hated the idea of being a puppet. She’d get herself home.

  Slowly, Gyre tried to sit up. Her suit obeyed her. Em was either watching closely, or had relinquished direct control some time ago. Gyre got to her knees, then shuffled to the crates and eased them apart, settling in between them with her back to the stone wall.

  “I’m good,” she whispered. “I’m okay.” Her voice sounded strange, echoing against the rock. It all sounded strange now. More real, or less real—one of the two.

  “Thank you,” Em said.

  Gyre laughed weakly. “For what?”

  “For not dying. For—letting me do that.”

  “Letting you save me.”

  “Mm. I—had to cut out your air filters.”

  “I noticed.” Her chest still ached. Her head did too. Gyre reached for the other storage box and began rifling through it, keeping her hands busy to keep her mind from spiraling again. She loaded up on rations.

  Thank you was what she wanted to say. Ached to say. Thank you for saving my life, thank you for not abandoning me, thank you for having such a beautiful voice, thank you for . . .

  For putting her down here in the first place.

  Her headache spiked. She grimaced, then realized she could rub at her temples. She shook as she lifted one hand and gently touched her suited fingers to her forehead. It felt strange. Wrong. Wrong, but perfect. She groaned, rubbing small circles, then let her hand fall away. The cool cave air swept over her skin again, and she reluctantly eased her faceplate back into place, her fingers trembling against the screen.

  Em’s face reappeared, small, in the bottom corner of her screen. Her eyes were fixed on her displays, and she’d drawn her knees up onto her chair. She looked confused. “You’re at Camp Six. Again.”

  Right.

  “I keep doing that,” she tried to joke, but it hurt. “I fucked up at Five,” she confessed instead, bowing her head. “Shorted the batteries last time I was there. I didn’t seal the case right. Wasn’t . . . wasn’t thinking straight, I guess.”

  “If your power had failed in the sump—”

  “I didn’t have any other choice.” She glanced at the video feed.

  Em looked stricken.

  “You could have gone to Camp Three,” Em wh
ispered.

  “Yeah.” She sucked at her teeth. “But we didn’t know that.”

  “You had a better sense of what you could do than I did.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was being stubborn. Being right was an accident.” She didn’t want to talk about any of this. She wanted to be sitting out under the sun, out of this suit, maybe with Em. She wanted to feel the press of a crowd around her, a mass of humanity, for the first time in her life.

  “If I’d lost you,” Em whispered, “I don’t know that I could have gone on.”

  Gyre stared at the small image of her. “Oh.”

  “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” Em said quickly. “I know it’s too little, too late, and I should have felt this way about the first person I sent down there. I know.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right.”

  But I don’t know that I could have gone on wrapped itself around her heart, nestled in her chest. She meant something. She was different from the other cavers. The warmth she felt was part rage on those other cavers’ accounts, but a lot of it was simply happiness at being seen. At being wanted.

  She was pathetic. They both were.

  They sat in silence a while longer, Em slowly uncurling in her chair, Gyre slowly relaxing into her suit, muscle cramps easing.

  Then Em frowned. “Gyre, can you feel that?”

  “Feel what?” But then she did. She couldn’t hear it, not quite, but she could feel the rumbling spreading through her legs where they were pressed to the ground, up into her chest.

  “Shit.”

  Em was still for a moment. Then her face contorted into a demonic snarl, and she slammed her hands down on her desk. “This can’t be happening!” she shouted, then clawed her hands through her hair. Her face was ruddy with fury, with panic.

  Gyre said nothing, just letting her head fall back against the wall behind her.

  “I’ve been hearing it since the waterfall,” Gyre said after a few quiet moments, her voice flat, numb. “It went away while I was in the sump. Not sure when it came back. How close is it?”