The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

  And then his femurs, sheared off halfway up.

  There were scraps of clothing left too, and she bundled all the pieces together, trembling as her armored fingers touched his bone. He was exposed, eaten, but didn’t that make him free? He and Julian had been released from this cave long ago. She gathered his remains into her arms and walked them back out to the platform. She settled the pile of him by the others, and then sat down at their feet once more, staring at the long row.

  We’re all here together now.

  “I’ve run the calculations,” said Em.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Gyre stiffened. Em’s words were an intrusion, and so was the video feed that opened in the bottom corner of her screen. Em looked more awake, but so solemn. Gyre stared at her.

  Em kept talking, as if she had no idea that the bodies were just in front of Gyre. “I finished a full-detail model based on the data your suit sent to me. The Tunneler passed between the sump to Camp Five and the chamber you washed into. The weight of the water broke the stone on either side. You can get out, easily, the way you came in. Your suit is still stable, and the Tunneler has, as far as I can tell, moved on. It must have been leaving the area when you left Camp Six. Maybe whatever was calling it lasted until you touched water.”

  The relief that flooded her at knowing she was safe was short-lived, erased by Em’s recitation of theories. Gyre said nothing.

  “I apologize for my absence,” Em said. Her throat worked. “It was . . . unprofessional.”

  “No shit.”

  “Are you prepared to keep moving?”

  Gyre scowled. “What about them?”

  Em was silent. Her gaze left the camera, went to some other screen. Her fingers moved, tapping filling the space between them.

  “Ah,” she said at last.

  “The least you could do is say goodbye,” Gyre said.

  No response.

  “You got what you wanted,” Gyre prodded.

  “I know,” she conceded. Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “But if you want me to keep my shit together, I can’t do this.”

  Gyre debated. Em, functional, was far more helpful than Em, grieving. And she didn’t owe anything to Em. She’d only ever wanted to help Em to stop the deaths.

  Mission accomplished.

  But here, now, Gyre wanted Em to witness the people who had died.

  “Then don’t keep your shit together.”

  Em gasped, as if Gyre had struck her, her head dropping forward, chin to chest. Gyre shifted, rising up on her knees and locking her suit there, staring at the row of the dead from high enough up that she could see their faces. Their bodies filled Gyre’s screen, and she hoped it was transmitting directly to Em.

  “She wasn’t down there,” Em said. At first, Gyre couldn’t think of who she was, but then it clicked. There was so much pain in her voice, so much bone-deep weariness, Gyre nearly collapsed under the weight of it.

  Isolde.

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “And my father was.”

  Gyre swallowed, unsure of where Em was going with this. “Yes.”

  “That means—” She cut off, hiccupping. “That means she never got this far when she went back down. If she’d gotten this far, she would be dead with him, or she would have pulled his body out, like you did. She wouldn’t have just left him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And that means I’ll never find her.”

  Gyre flinched. “Because I’m the last one.”

  “No,” Em said. “No. Because if her body was still down here to be found, it would be here, or I would have found it years ago. This was the last place. This was my last chance of finding her. She’s not here. She’s just . . . gone.”

  She thought of Isolde by Camp Five. Isolde on the ledge.

  Isolde, her body missing all these years.

  Concentrate on the present. “That’s why you ran, when you saw the bodies.”

  “That’s why I ran,” Em agreed. “I know it’s pathetic. I know you needed me. But I saw my father and I saw the others and I didn’t see her and I knew. I knew.” Her throat bobbed as she choked down tears.

  Gyre couldn’t find the words to make Em understand how afraid she’d been, how angry, how overwhelmed. And it wasn’t even understanding, really. She was sure Em already understood.

  It’s just the rest of her pain got in the way of her being able to care enough. To prioritize.

  This always took the lead.

  So this was what they had, together. Gyre licked her chapped lips, then asked, “Do you know why she left?”

  Em’s shoulders tensed, drawing up toward her head reflexively. “She wanted to see my father again,” Em said. “She was trying to—to do what I’m doing, but she wouldn’t let anybody else die.” Her lips contorted into a thin smile. “She would have hated the woman I grew into.”

  Probably. Gyre didn’t say it. “So she went down herself?”

  “Not even that, at first. It was just endless R&D, endless meetings and looking for more investors and running this business that was only helping her creep toward her goal. She wanted better gear, gear that would protect her from everything down there. Then she got tired of waiting. Just like you got tired of waiting for your mother, and butchered yourself so you could take this job, even though you knew it was a huge risk. She just . . . went back in. She told me she was going on a research trip. She didn’t tell me where. I found the note on her computer the same day the news report came out, that she’d been last seen—well, you read it. We used it for the obituary.

  “And in nine years I’ve never seen a trace of her.”

  “She’s really gone,” Gyre whispered.

  She had died down here, in some secret place, or some place that no longer existed. Perhaps she’d fallen down a shaft, perhaps she’d been crushed to paste. Gyre remembered her face, hovering at the edge of Camp Five. The missing cache. Fuck, if only it could be true. If only Isolde was somewhere here, alive, scavenging, scraping for survival.

  And Em, Em must have been clinging to that too when she hadn’t found the body. But now, with the row of corpses in front of them, there was no way of avoiding it.

  The end of this all was sad and wretched and pointless.

  There had never been any chance of finding Isolde, and that had been all Em had ever really wanted—the chance.

  And I destroyed that.

  “She tried to be good,” Em said softly. “She was so broken, but she tried. She wanted me to feel safer than she did, wanted me to not miss him as much as she did, but she couldn’t move on. She cried most nights. Some nights, she was so angry. Days, too. The anger could come at any time. You—you watched the interview with her; you know how damaged she was. You could see it, right? It never faded, really. She just got better at hiding it.”

  Gyre said nothing, caught between wanting to comfort, and knowing with unsettling certainty that when this was all over, that would be her own fate. Broken, never quite moving on, damaged by this cave. By these deaths.

  “She never got to see my father again,” Em whispered. “After all that, she never got to see him.”

  Gyre swallowed around the tightness in her throat. “But you did,” she said, wanting to comfort Em despite herself. “You’ve gotten to where she wanted to be.”

  “And killed so many people to get there. She had the right idea,” Em said, shaking her head. “It should have died with her. That’s why she walked in alone. And there I was, unable to move forward, but instead of being brave like her, I didn’t go into the cave myself. I didn’t end it. Instead, I sat up here, watching you all march to your deaths for the dream of some cash. It’s—I’m disgusting.”

  “You’re a monster,” Gyre agreed. Em’s flinch brought her no joy, no vindication. “But a human monster. People are selfish. You are. I am. Humans are selfish. It’s what we do. You loaded the gun, but Jennie Mercer, Michael Doren, me—we all pulled the trigger. We all decided
the risk was worth it. You never forced us.”

  She remembered standing in Camp Six, looking at the sump entrance, thinking these exact thoughts. It felt different now, returning to this logic. Then, all she’d wanted was for Em to stop.

  Now she wanted Em to move on.

  “No,” Em said, fisting one hand in her hair. “I didn’t force you; you’re right. I just took advantage of how this world drives people to do horrible things just to survive. I just—played the game, from the winner’s chair. Gyre, I thought I was smart. I thought I was brilliant, that I was perfectly using my resources to chase this goal, and I never—the goal was the problem, wasn’t it? I solved the question as best I could, but I never stopped to ask myself if I should solve it.”

  “Well, now you have. And now you know the answer.”

  “I won,” Em said, her voice soft and thin. “I beat this sick game. I found the person who could take me to them. And I’ve destroyed you.”

  Gyre snorted, on the edge of tears but refusing to give in. “Not yet. I’m still alive, last time I checked.”

  “I do remember all of them,” Em said, leaning forward in her chair, large brown eyes open again, gaze boring into the screen. “All of you. I do. Maybe not their names, but I remember how it felt every time, listening to them die, watching their stats dive, finally severing the connection between my computer and their suits. Some of them cursed me, in their last moments, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t apologize. Because I didn’t want them to think I wanted their forgiveness. That’s not what I deserved, or desired. It wouldn’t have made any difference. What made a difference was me making sure their families got their payouts. The few times the next of kin could pay enough to sue me, even though my contract was airtight and I would have won, I settled. I just—couldn’t argue it. Legally, they made their own choices. But I killed them. For . . . this.”

  “You got what you wanted.”

  “Yeah. I . . . Fuck. I did all this for nothing. I killed them all for nothing. I lost you for nothing. There was never any chance of finding her at all.”

  Gyre’s heart tightened in her chest as she unlocked her suit and sank back down to the ground. She looked around her for a moment, helpless, then saw the gear bags left behind by the old crew. Slowly, limbs heavy and thoughts full and sluggish, she went to one, and began rifling through it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a way to give them a funeral,” Gyre said.

  Em’s breath caught, the same way it had back at Camp Two. “I don’t want a way to feel less guilty.”

  “It’s not for you,” she said. Her hand closed around a small, cylindrical pack, and she drew it out. Rolled it between her fingers. It felt right. She sat back and pulled open the drawstring, then fished out the folded-up camp stove.

  Perfect.

  “I’m sorry,” Em whispered.

  “I know,” Gyre said. The lighter packet with it still worked. She primed the fuel bottle, then hooked it up to the stove.

  “Wait—don’t light that.”

  “Why? Because the Tunneler might come?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll take the risk, for them. For this.” She turned on the flow of gas and lit it, watched it burn for a few seconds, ignored Em’s weak noise that could have been fear or pain or surprise. Then she turned it off and carried the apparatus to the other side of the platform, and set it down above Hanmei’s head, where she lay in the center of the row.

  Returning to the duffel, she found a pot, bits of clothing, unopened MREs, climbing rope she could tear pieces off of, degraded from decades of cave moisture. She worked quietly, and Em said nothing, but she was there, always there in the corner of her screen. She had her chin in her hands, her fingers clawed against the seam of her lips.

  “I watched all the videos,” Gyre said softly. “So . . . I need this too. For me. For them.”

  Em squeezed her eyes shut. “Leave it to you to care more about them than I do.” She laughed bitterly.

  “I haven’t had the time for the pain to be familiar,” Gyre pointed out. “And I—I promised them. Back at Camp Six, the first time, I promised them I would stick around to end this. I meant to end the expeditions, but they deserve to be put to rest too. Them, not the ghosts in your head.” She swallowed, then cleared her throat. “Plus, they gave me something. Watching all those videos . . . I needed to see people being happy. To hear other voices. To remember what it’s like.”

  “To not be alone?”

  “And to be out of this suit.” She lifted her hand and pressed it to her side, over her feeding port. Her stomach gave a dull, answering ache. She hadn’t been thinking, when she’d vomited the day before. She hadn’t had a choice. But ever since, her port had felt—strange.

  Her last feeding had been uneventful, however, and what could Em even do? So Gyre said nothing, letting her hand drop. She went back to the little burner and knelt before it, filling it with the scraps, the offerings.

  “I opened Michael’s and Jensen’s masks,” she added, even though she was sure Em had noticed. “When I opened Jennie’s suit, when I was getting her backup . . . she had barely begun to rot. It didn’t seem right.”

  “The suit does preserve,” Em admitted. “It makes extraction easier, but it’s mostly a side effect of being a closed system. As the wearer dies, the suit stops exchanging oxygen, and—”

  “I don’t want to know this,” Gyre interrupted, grimacing.

  “Right. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “They just seem trapped. Just like Laurent and Hanmei. That they’re not rotted means . . .”

  “Means they’re stuck down here forever,” Em said.

  Gyre lit the stove. It would take a while for the first wisps of smoke to rise from the pot, but she watched for them anyway. “I know I asked back at the start, but do you want me to carry them out?”

  She hazarded a glance at the screen. But Em wasn’t chewing her lip in divided thought, and she didn’t look as pained.

  “No,” Em said. “I think . . . I think this will be enough. This is enough.”

  “And you don’t want to ask me to do more.”

  “I don’t want you to do more. It isn’t about the asking.” She leaned in, staring at the camera. “Gyre, I don’t know how to apologize enough. Or to thank you enough. But I’m . . . I want to stop running. I think I can stop running now.”

  “There’s not much left to run from.”

  “There’s you.”

  Gyre frowned and sat back on her heels, her gaze switching from the now-smoking offerings to Em’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “I was serious when I said that I don’t know how I’ll go on, if you don’t make it out of there.”

  “If I die.”

  Em winced at the word. “If you die. I didn’t lie; I didn’t exaggerate. And that feeling, it’s . . . it’s hard to manage. But if the time does come, if something does go wrong—”

  “I still don’t want to talk about this,” Gyre said.

  “I know, but I want you to hear me. It’d be the easy path to turn off my computer and walk away, but I will be here. I will be here, and I will fight like hell to keep you alive, and if I fail, I’ll be here then, too. And you can curse me and hate me and you’ll be right to do so. But I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone, not ever again. You have me.”

  Gyre looked away. She didn’t want to think about any of that, and especially not about how it made her feel warm, nervous, seen.

  She’d trusted Em to protect her, at Camp Six. She knew how that had ended. How it had ended every time.

  “You put me down here.”

  “I know. When this is over, I’ll buy you anything you want. I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you. Maybe it’ll never work, but—”

  “When this is over,” Gyre cut her off, “you need to apologize. To my face.”

  “Whatever you want,” Em said. She was smiling faintly. She looked—thrilled. Alive. Beaten dow
n, but beginning to glow beneath the bruises. “Thank you. For all of this. I’m glad you took the job. I’m sorry the job exists, but I’m glad it’s you here with me. I know that’s selfish, but—”

  “We’re all selfish,” Gyre said. “Just take a moment. Look at them, not me. Say goodbye.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  An hour later, the contents of the bowl had burned as much as they were going to without direct flame, and the fuel canister was nearly empty. Gyre shut down the rig, then, hesitantly, took the bowl and scattered the contents over their chests. Halian, Julian, Laurent, Hanmei, Michael, Jensen. She looked at what was left of them, whispered a goodbye, and then turned back to the sump.

  “Any sign of the Tunneler?” she asked.

  “No,” Em said. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying, crying that she had tried to hide by turning away and muffling herself. But she hadn’t left. Gyre wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It had been a private moment, one she hadn’t wanted to be party to, but it had felt honest. And she was glad to know Em hadn’t simply walked out of the room to avoid looking at the bodies.

  Gyre regarded the sump, then closed her eyes as her stomach lurched.

  You did this a few hours ago, she reminded herself. Em was there, and that should have made this easier. But something about the weight of Em’s attention made her more aware of her own nerves, and she took a step back from the sump. She sat down, running her hand over her calf.

  Her calf responded with a hot itch and a dull, deep throb.

  “Gyre?”

  She frowned, flexing her toes. There—that itch again. A nascent blister, in a place it shouldn’t be.

  She wasn’t supposed to get hot spots. The gel coating her skin was supposed to prevent that. “There’s something wrong with my suit,” she said, and tried not to shiver.

  Em’s brow furrowed on the screen, her gaze directed somewhere off to the right. “It’s the contact film,” Em said. “Some of it flowed out of place while your suit legs were unpowered. It should stabilize soon, but I recommend resting here a little longer to let it work.”