The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

  There was no trace of the Tunneler, or the dead. As she pulled herself from the other side of the sump, fear gave way to the first itching of hope. Two days, and she’d be out. Two days, both easier than any she’d faced down in a long while.

  * * *

  Gyre was nearly back to Camp Three when she heard the sound of footsteps.

  “Em,” she whispered, shoulders drawing up defensively.

  “What is it?”

  “Can you hear that?”

  Em’s image appeared on her screen as she tapped out a few commands and cocked her head. “No, I didn’t hear anything. What was it?”

  Gyre swallowed, suddenly afraid to speak. If Em hadn’t heard, did that mean Gyre hadn’t either? Was this the hum all over again? But she hunched forward, straining to listen as she crept along the passage, and could still make them out.

  “I hear footsteps,” she whispered, cold terror wrapping around her chest and squeezing.

  This was real. This was happening.

  Eli. She hadn’t killed him after all. He was coming.

  “Are you still hearing them?” Em asked, concern finally registering in her voice.

  “Yes,” she said. They were clear, faint but echoing. It was the sound of boots on rocks.

  Em pursed her lips. “Gyre,” she said hesitantly, her brow furrowing. “Are you sure you haven’t just noticed your own footsteps?”

  “No.” She crouched down where she was, a few meters from where the tunnel would let out onto Camp Three. She needed to be ready. Eli would be disoriented, starving, unpredictable. As she waited, she strained to hear something, anything.

  She heard nothing.

  Boots on rock . . . Eli had left his entire suit behind.

  Eli didn’t have boots anymore.

  “It . . . might have been,” she conceded, her face burning. No, no, but she’d heard them. This wasn’t like the humming. This was the rope at the ledge on the Long Drop. This was the pale face in the darkness. Whoever it was must have stopped walking. That was all.

  They were waiting for her.

  Frantic, Gyre keyed up the map of Camp Three, trying to remember the layout. There was the side tunnel she was in, which was barely a slot at the exit. There was the path back to Camp Two, a broad avenue by comparison. Here was the nook that the cache had been left in, off to the side of where the avenue to Camp Two turned into a narrower ledge that circled the edge of the chamber. And there was the chaotic left side of the cavern, where there were piles of fallen rock from an earlier cave-in that were scattered amid crushed stalagmites and sudden drops and rises in the cavern floor.

  She could try to squeeze her way through the jumble, but if she made a single sound, whoever it was could hear her, rush her, pin her down. If they were in the nook, she could try to sneak along the rim, then sprint up the avenue.

  But what if it was Eli? If it was him, didn’t she have to try to help? Try to get him out? How he hadn’t died of hypothermia after swimming the sump, she couldn’t imagine, but if it was him, she could save him. She could save one person.

  Em could really, truly try to make amends.

  She swapped her view from the map to what was in front of her. For a brief second, as her screen changed over, she expected to see Eli’s face staring at her, gaunt and broken. But he wasn’t there; it was just her, crouched in the passage.

  She still couldn’t hear the footsteps.

  Her certainty wavered. Maybe Em was right. It was the easiest explanation. Swimming the sump meant she hadn’t heard her own footsteps in almost an hour. Back on land, she had noticed them, started to panic. Spiraled, like she had dangling above the lake, fueled by the husk of Eli’s suit, his body lost somewhere in the cave, just like Isolde’s.

  “How are you feeling?” Em asked gently.

  She was on fire, shame kindled and crackling in her chest. “Embarrassed,” Gyre admitted. “Ready to keep moving.”

  Em looked worried, but turned off the video feed, as if to give her privacy. Gyre appreciated the illusion and stood up. She walked slowly to the slot exit of the passageway. The footsteps were her footsteps. Eli, wherever he was, was dead. He’d died at least a week ago, if not longer. Definitely longer.

  And if not, he was dead at the bottom of the Long Drop. He was a corpse, either way, naked and forgotten.

  She turned sideways and eased herself through the slot into the Camp Three chamber. On the other side, she leaned her back and head against the rock wall, gazing out at the room.

  There was a shape in the jumble of collapsed stone.

  It’s not there. She looked upward, counting to ten. Her brain was playing tricks on her. It was the same weakness, the same madness. Shadows at the edges of her vision, over-interpretation of stimuli. She hadn’t been sleeping enough; it was to be expected. There could even be lingering effects from the spores. Em was here and could see everything.

  Em wasn’t afraid.

  She looked back down. The shape was still there, indistinct, hunched. She willed it away, waiting. Couldn’t Em say something? Couldn’t Em nudge her forward?

  And then the shape shifted, straightened. Turned around. And Gyre could see, now, exactly who it was. She could see the cleft chin, the gently curling blond hair. The piercing, haunted eyes.

  Isolde stared back at her across the cavern.

  She was real.

  She was alive.

  Don’t see it, don’t see her. She waited for Em to react. She waited for the wail, the scream, the anger, the pain.

  “Everything okay?” Em said instead. “You’re good to proceed.”

  Em didn’t see her.

  Why didn’t she see her? Gyre couldn’t move, her gaze locked on Isolde. The other woman looked back at her for a long moment, then began to pick her way across the talus pile. She was real. She moved like a real person; she looked solid. She wasn’t a darting shadow, a stress-induced hallucination. She wasn’t an over-interpretation by Gyre’s fevered brain.

  She was real.

  Could Em not see her? Was something broken in her computer algorithms that shielded Isolde from her daughter?

  “Gyre, what’s wrong?”

  If she told Em, Em would lose it. She would fall apart. But if it was really Isolde, she couldn’t just leave her here. She moaned, low in her throat.

  “Gyre, are you seeing something?”

  She had to tell her.

  “Isolde,” she whispered.

  Em didn’t respond.

  “It’s her, Em,” Gyre whispered. “She looks just like she did in that interview video.” Just like the day she left and walked down here. The cave had kept her alive. The cave had—

  “Gyre, I can’t see anything,” Em said gently, but her voice wavered.

  “It’s her. It looks just like her.”

  “Like the video.”

  “Yes.”

  Em made a small, pained sound. When she spoke, her voice was even, measured. Controlled. “The videos are from almost twenty years ago. She would have aged. That’s not counting nine years down here on her own. She wouldn’t look the same, Gyre. She’s not real.”

  “She could have come up for supplies. Gone to the outpost. Maybe this isn’t her first time down here, maybe—”

  “She’s dead, Gyre.”

  “You never found her body! If Eli survived for weeks without you, what says she couldn’t have managed years?”

  “You’re seeing things! Look! Look.”

  Her display shifted, flying through the different options. Sonar reconstruction, infrared, finally headlamp. And through it all, Isolde was there. Isolde was there, and as Gyre watched, she continued to move. She hauled herself up onto the plateau Gyre stood on, then straightened up. Leaned forward. Peered curiously at Gyre’s impassive helmet.

  “I have to try to talk to her,” Gyre said, and fumbled for the release for her faceplate.

  “Gyre, don’t!”

  “Em, your computers are wrong. I can see her. I can still see h
er.”

  Her headlamp switched off, her reconstruction springing to life. Nothing changed, Isolde still approaching in full detail, her clothes old, worn.

  “Can you see her now?” Em whispered. She sounded like she was in agony, like she was fighting for every word.

  She was beginning to hope.

  “Yes,” Gyre said.

  “Gyre, I’m showing you a recording of the last time you were in Camp Three. You’re hallucinating.”

  No. No. It wasn’t possible. Gyre shook her head, then opened her face mask, turned her headlamp back on. Chilled air slammed into her cheeks, her nose, but despite the switch from video to darkness illuminated only by her lamp, nothing changed. Isolde was only a few steps away now, and Gyre took a step toward her.

  Her suit locked.

  Em. She snarled, then took a deep breath. Isolde had stopped, was frowning at her. As Gyre watched, her eyes widened. Recognized her as another person.

  “Isolde,” Gyre said, her voice echoing out into the cavern. “Isolde, I’m—I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

  “Gyre!” Em cried.

  “I can get you out. You’re not far from the surface now.” She tried to lift her hand and reach out to Isolde, but Em wouldn’t let her. “Please, say something. Your daughter—she can’t see you. Tell her you’re here.”

  “Gyre, we’re leaving,” Em said. Her suit jerked. Em lifted her right foot and extended it, placed it down ahead of her. Away from Isolde. Toward Camp Two. “Don’t make me do this.”

  Hot tears stung her eyes, in sharp contrast to the cool, still air of the cavern. “Em, she’s right here. Tell her, Isolde! Tell her.”

  Isolde said nothing. Gyre’s faceplate slid closed, Em’s image appearing instead in the lower left corner. “No! Open the mask, or the speakers. Let me talk to her. We can’t leave her!” Gyre pleaded. “I don’t know why she’s not responding, but—”

  “We have to! Gyre, breathe. Breathe. Listen.”

  And then she heard it: not Isolde’s speech, or even her exhale, but a rumbling. It grew swiftly, louder and louder. The very walls were shaking, and the air in her lungs was beginning to echo it.

  Air. Isolde’s chest wasn’t rising and falling. No steam plumed from her nose or mouth. But it was cool enough down here that Gyre’s own breath had steamed faintly in front of her eyes. If Isolde was breathing, there’d have to be—

  Steam curled from Isolde’s lips, on cue.

  On cue.

  “You’re not real,” she said. The sound was swallowed up by her helmet, by the growing roar around her, inside her.

  “Gyre, please,” Em said, forcing her another step forward. “I can’t do this fast enough. I need you to run. Can you run? Please. Please.”

  She blinked, and Isolde was farther away now, out in the talus field again. She was retreating. She was leaving. Gyre wanted to reach out for her, to call to her, but she couldn’t move.

  Not real, it’s not real. But the Tunneler is real. The rock is real.

  Small flakes of stone were falling from above her. She focused on them until she came back to herself. “I can run. I can run!” She could barely hear herself as she shouted.

  Her suit released.

  The roar was all around her, vibrating up her calves, squeezing her heart and shaking her rib cage. She staggered backward, then lurched toward the avenue, breaking into a sprint as she remembered how to move her legs. From behind her, she thought she heard words, Isolde’s voice, followed by footsteps.

  Not real, not real, she thought, fighting against the urge to turn around. Then a man’s voice replaced Isolde’s. Eli’s voice, no doubt, or what her brain conjured in its place. But she couldn’t slow, couldn’t stop. If she gave in, the cave would keep her, the Tunneler would kill her. Her muscles burned, screamed, seized as she reached the top of the incline. She fell to her hands and knees, but she kept moving, dragging herself forward, forward.

  Beneath her hands, the rock was trembling. The rumbling noise left her ears abruptly, and she could barely breathe over how the air in her lungs shook.

  “No!” Gyre shouted. “No!”

  But her words were swallowed up in the roar of the Tunneler as it passed behind her, the broad avenue collapsing. The shock wave knocked her onto her side, and she slid down into the chaos, curling into a tight ball as she slammed into the rocks below. She felt herself screaming but couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see anything as her sonar went wild.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Left arm has two full breaks as well as severe crush damage from the mid-humerus down. Your cannula has been completely dislodged. There are ruptures in your suit in twelve places that are taking longer than anticipated to close.”

  “I don’t want morphine,” Gyre repeated. It had become her litany. It had taken her from Em’s panicked shouting, through her begging, to her cold, clinical recitation of every reason that Gyre was going to die. Neither of them had mentioned that the Tunneler was still close enough to hear. Neither of them had mentioned that Gyre had killed herself by opening her face mask to talk to nothing.

  To talk to the cave, her addled brain corrected. And the cave had heard her, tempted her with Isolde. The cave had brought itself down on her head.

  She’d managed to stand up—barely—about five minutes ago. Moving seemed less likely. The collapse had smashed parts of her suit open, her skin visible beneath debris and blood, and the left arm mechanism was too damaged to lock up and protect the bone. The parts that no longer had power were rigid, bracing her wrist and a few of her fingers into awkward positions. The rest of her pulped arm hung limp, screaming in agony. She hadn’t looked at any of it yet. Instead, Em had described the damage to her as she’d struggled to extract herself from the few—lucky her—rocks that had fallen on top of her, and on repeating I don’t want morphine every few minutes.

  Her stomach was a blaze of agonizing wrongness, curdled by the adrenaline still storming her bloodstream and by the cannula, now painfully unseated, now allowing her stomach acid to burn through her insides. Infection would follow soon. Blood poisoning, sepsis. It was only a matter of time. Her vision was distorted and wavering, and she couldn’t tell if it was from pain or panic or the damage to her suit.

  Morphine would be easy, would make everything better, and maybe she’d die less afraid.

  She could hear death calling to her, whispering that it could take away the pain, take away the last shreds of what remained to her. It was the urge to walk back into the cave and follow Isolde; it was the fungus growing from Jennie Mercer’s face, growing from the rot in her heart where her mother had been. She fought against it out of reflex and stubbornness, struggling to remember what was still dragging her forward.

  The surface. The sun. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t real anymore. What was sunlight to the desaturated lines of her readout, to the engulfing darkness beyond? What was open air overhead but another threat?

  And then she pictured Em, looking at the clinical readouts on her screen, hearing Gyre’s agonized cries. Em would sit her vigil, watch her die, watch as they were both chased down by the inevitable at last. Em would watch her die, just like all the others. Except this time, Gyre knew her. Gyre had come so close to saving her.

  Gyre’s death would destroy her.

  And it was that, more than anything else, that broke through to her. Fight it. Keep pushing. I’m not alone.

  “I don’t want morphine,” she said, her lips swollen and numb.

  She tried flexing her left hand and cried out as the simple motion made her entire mind go blank.

  “I don’t want morphine,” she mumbled again, even though Em hadn’t said anything since the last time, or the time before that. She staggered forward, shin bumping into one of the rocks. She struggled to lift her foot up over it, her eyes fixed on the path ahead of her. It was barely a path now. The Tunneler had closed off the way back down to Camp Three, and had passed close enough in front of her that, from what she could see, t
he path to Camp Two had ceased to exist. It had cut her off from everything, past and future, depths and surface.

  The cave had done this to her, using Eli and Isolde against her, trapping her in the labyrinth she had been so sure she could leave. The rumble remained, a constant invitation and threat.

  But before she gave up, before she lay down and stopped moving forward like all the others, she had to know that there was no other option. She couldn’t give in if there was a way out. Her desperate pride wouldn’t let her, even now.

  “Em, I don’t want morphine,” she sobbed.

  “I know,” Em said. “I won’t give you any.”

  Relief flooded through her, and she laughed, giddy from the stark disparity between the small pebble of relief in her stomach versus the great mass of fear and resignation howling in her head. She watched as one of the breaches over her leg knit itself together, the gel fusing with her blood and coating her skin, the polymer shifting, adjusting, extending scaffolding to cover the gap. It wouldn’t harden properly, but it was a shield.

  She grappled for a hold with her right hand, her fingers struggling to close around the rock. With a groan, she heaved herself up and over.

  Her screen was cracked. She could see it now, feel it, the cool, dank air of the cave filtering through. She could smell the air. Taste it. It was like a balm. It was real. With it came the need to have the suit off of her entirely. She wanted to be free of it. If it wasn’t on her, maybe she’d be whole again. Maybe she could live, staggering through the dark.

  No. That was the cave talking to her again, her own self-annihilating impulse. She shut it out.

  She stumbled down into a valley of buckled rock, trying to get to the far wall, moving to catch herself with her left arm. It didn’t respond, and she overbalanced, falling, her shoulder colliding with the stone. Her vision went white. She couldn’t move her arm, could barely maneuver it.