The Luminous Dead
Page 34
She stared at the level indicator.
Em.
Gyre licked at her lips, dry and cold and cracked, searching for her strength, for her commitment. All it would take would be to say yes. But to do that would be to lose this trace of Em. Em had intentionally left this untouched, for her. For her life. As a gesture of respect, of trust.
It was as if that level indicator was Em.
“You’re coming to get me,” she mumbled, her swollen lips aching.
Gyre stared at her display, reaching out as if she could touch it. Then, reluctantly, she closed down the interface, staring instead out into the cave. All Gyre had to do was wait.
The darkness settled around her, black and cold. Her stomach burned.
She was alone.
Alone, but not alone. She could feel them close at hand, all the others who Em had watched die in this cave. They were her reflections, all of them: selfish, driven people, strong and foolish, chasing money and glory and success without a care as to why somebody would pay them so much to come on an unknown expedition. What did any of them lack that she possessed? Nothing. Em had been clear: the only thing unique about Gyre was the combination of her failures.
Gyre stared into the blackness. If only she were back at Camp Two. If only Adrian Purcell could bear witness to this, her undoing. His corpse had spoken to her that horrible day when she’d first realized how doomed she was, telling her to turn back, telling her she would wind up just like him. But she had thought it was Em he was warning her about, not the cave.
She hadn’t listened.
Movement—at the corner of her eye. She oriented to it, desperate. Her lips formed the shape of Em.
And out of the darkness came Jennie.
She approached in a staggering, unnatural gait. The front and back of her suit hung open, jutting from her waist, and Gyre could see the electrodes and tubes strained and taut, jumping with every step. Her body was wreathed in a pale white glow. Fungal tendrils grew from her chest and bloomed from her mouth, and as Gyre watched, their light grew brighter. Brighter.
Jennie stopped only a few steps away, looking down at her.
“You’re not real,” Gyre mumbled, the words slurred and barely sound at all. “Not again. Won’t do it again.”
Jennie didn’t respond. Instead, she crouched down and grabbed hold of Gyre’s ankle.
Gyre stared up at her. “Not real,” she slurred again.
Again, Jennie said nothing. She began to pull, and turned away, hauling Gyre behind her as she walked back to the ledge, back toward the Long Drop. Gyre felt herself move, heard the squeal of her suit scraping over stone. She kicked, weakly, but Jennie was relentless. She kept walking, kept walking, until beyond her, Gyre could see another figure clinging to the edge of the cliff, braced along the steep, sloping slab of stone. It was a man, naked and motionless in the darkness. He watched them both with glassy eyes, his body gaunt and haggard, his skin paper-thin. He was pale, so pale, and Gyre remembered him from the cliffside, remembered the face she’d thought had been Isolde’s.
Eli.
And there, too, was Isolde. She stood just in front of him, at the edge of the Long Drop, waiting. They were together, the bodies that the cave had swallowed up. The bodies Em had never found.
Climb down, climb down. Gyre could hear the call. She could feel it buzzing in the air around her, cold and damp and dark. Walk into the cave and don’t turn back. Stay with us. Stay with all of us. This is where you belong.
Eli dragged his emaciated body over the lip of the cliff, trailing rope behind him, and joined Isolde. Gyre couldn’t follow the motion, couldn’t watch him as he moved. She only saw him leave the spot he’d been in and noticed him by Isolde’s side, as if Gyre had lost consciousness, only to come to a few seconds later. Jennie was there too, and Gyre was closer, on her knees, crumpled at Isolde’s feet.
She looked up, craning her head, her lamp illuminating Isolde’s knees, her stomach, her face, all in stark, dancing shadows. All in real, harsh light. Isolde looked older now, older and tired. Real. She crouched down and cupped Gyre’s chin in her hands, her fingers bare millimeters from Gyre’s skin, separated only by the plate of carbon below her jaw. Gyre wanted that touch, craved it, and she reached up, fumbling with her helmet. The screen flashed warnings.
5% CHARGE REMAINING
She didn’t care. She found the release. Took the helmet off and cast it aside.
Isolde smiled at her, then held a finger to her lips.
Don’t speak.
Isolde was right. If she spoke, she’d call the Tunneler back. If she spoke, the cave would collapse, and she wouldn’t be able to climb down. If she was quiet, if she crawled to the edge of the cliff, found her line, clipped in, she could join Eli. She could be with Isolde. Then when Em came, she would follow them all. Em would follow her down, desperate to find her, and then they’d be together, all of them, in the heart of the cave. They’d be together in the blackness.
She wanted that. She wanted that more than she’d ever wanted anything, except maybe to feel her skin again, to see her body. She looked down at herself. Her helmet sat beside her, the lamp still on, illuminating the segmented plate of her suit. It wasn’t her. None of it was her. She watched Isolde’s hands skim over her legs and nodded. She understood.
Jennie had been trapped in her suit when she died, and now she stood, rotting, glowing, unnatural and wrong. But Eli and Isolde, they had died honestly. They had died themselves.
She wanted to be herself, before her battery gave out and locked her in place.
Her fingers followed the path Isolde laid out for her, and she began cracking apart her suit. Without her helmet on, she couldn’t trigger its release, and it fought her. But she pried it apart bit by bit, freeing her feet, her calves, her thighs. One shin was covered in warped, diseased flesh, the blister that had been there now infected, the skin swollen and hot against the cool air. It went numb once it was exposed and the chill seeped in. It felt good, but soon she shivered. The gel on her exposed legs cooled quickly, and with it so did her blood. If she could only get the cold up higher, onto her stomach, high enough to numb the pain, then she could take the rope, start to climb down.
She could hear the cave calling to her.
Down, down, down.
That was when she saw her. Jennie, splayed open and motionless just a half meter away, so close to the shelf that she had died under. She looked different now, duller, stiller. Gyre crawled to her. She reached out and touched her, nudged her, lifted her chin. The glowing fungus that had already colonized what was left of her eyes swayed. Gyre no longer felt guilt for desecrating Jennie’s body, or shame for not having rescued her. They were together now, and all Gyre could feel was relief.
She wasn’t alone.
Shaking from cold, from infection, from exhaustion, she curled up next to Jennie, tucking her head against the other woman’s shoulder.
Just a moment’s rest, and then she’d climb down.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Water.
She smelled it first, the mineral edge in the air, the subtle drop in temperature that followed. She could even taste it, a faint clearness on her tongue that instantly made her throat contract and her lips feel dry, so dry.
The water was coming.
She could hear it now, the distant trickle that grew to a rush that bloomed into a roar. Water, cascading over stone. In the glow of a thousand fungal filaments that grew from her body and Jennie’s beside her, twining them together, Gyre watched as the first trickle snaked past her bare legs, her hunched form, growing, growing, until it touched the lip of the Long Drop and sheeted down.
She watched as the Long Drop filled to the lip, buoying up a constellation of glow. And down in the water was Isolde. She floated at the surface, silent, pale, beckoning, Eli sunken just below her, bound in climbing rope.
It was a final invitation. It was time.
Boots rang out against stone, above the roar.
She had lost part of herself.
Rope dragged against stone. Something touched down heavily. Then something lighter. The click of carabiners opening and closing.
Footsteps, running footsteps.
Then the lights came on, two of them, two bobbing, burning globes in the darkness. She couldn’t see who they were attached to, but she saw them get closer, closer. She saw one draw up short, surprised. Then it moved more quickly, sprinting, and Gyre’s heart pounded as it approached, drawn as if by the call of the cave itself.
And then Em was there, backlit by the lamp behind her. Gyre couldn’t see her face, but she could see her wide hips, her short legs. She knew. She knew.
Gyre’s lips parted, trembled.
She’s not real, whispered her mind.
But Em felt real as she crouched beside her, as her light illuminated Gyre’s frigid legs. Em felt real as she beckoned her companion over, as they turned to each other, their heads bent as if talking. But Gyre couldn’t hear them.
She made herself sit forward, roll onto her knees. Her stomach was swollen and taut, burning with fever. Something gave, and hot, fetid slime slithered down between the remaining plates of her suit and her skin, marking a path over her hip, onto her exposed thigh.
Em had stopped moving, watching as Gyre crawled to the edge of the Long Drop.
Em was here. Em was really here. Gyre could have sobbed from the relief. She had thought she wasn’t strong enough to go on.
But with Em, she could be.
Em followed her, looking back over her shoulder at her companion. Her suit looked strange, badly fitted, ill worn. Wrong, in all the ways that Jennie had once looked wrong. If Em wasn’t real—
She reached the cliff’s edge and grabbed for the line.
Em knelt at her side, her faceplate sliding up. She reached out to touch Gyre, then stopped, as if afraid. There was barely any light now, but Gyre could make out the curve of her cheek, the glint of reflection from one eye.
“Gyre, I’ve come to take you home,” Em said, and it was her voice in the darkness.
Gyre smiled, relieved, so relieved. “This is home,” she said.
Em stiffened, drawing back a moment. But then she said, “I can’t go on without you,” and reached out and took Gyre’s hand, tugged it close to her breast. Clasped it tightly. Gyre curled her fingers around Em’s.
She understood.
“Come with me,” Gyre said. “If we climb down together, we’ll never be alone again. They’re all down there, Em.”
“Gyre—”
“They’re waiting. Isolde is waiting. We belong down there, with them.”
Em made a small noise of pain, and then her arms were around Gyre, and she was hauling her away from the edge of the cliff, up to her feet. Gyre gasped and nearly fell, fighting against her suit. But even as she struggled, she felt the faint whir of the remaining servos and filters go quiet, felt her arm lock into place. The batteries had finally given out. She thrashed, eyes burning with tears. If she couldn’t move her arm, then how could she climb? Pain spiked up from her belly in a way she couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t remember ever feeling before, and she felt as if she were falling. She felt the world fracturing around her.
“Em, please,” she said, gasping.
“You don’t belong down here,” Em murmured in her ear. “You never did. Maybe I do, but you deserve the sun. Gyre, please, stay with me.”
“I belong with them,” Gyre whispered, struggling to stand, to look back. “This is why you couldn’t let go. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault. It was always the cave.”
“The cave is just a hole in the ground,” Em said. “It never deserved any of you.”
Gyre looked at Em, her chest heaving. She was shaking again, shivering violently. She was so cold, and burning up, all at once.
Something was very, very wrong.
“Don’t leave me,” Gyre whispered.
“I won’t,” Em said. She smiled, and the light caught her lips enough, or perhaps Gyre was feverish enough, to see that it was a pained smile, a desperate smile. A smile that wanted to be true, very much. “Gyre, if I could give you the world, I would. Never doubt that.”
And then the other caver was at her side, helping Em support her, pulling her away from the Long Drop, toward the shaft. The other caver attached a cable from their suit to hers, and the plates around her shoulders loosened once more, drawing power across the tenuous connection.
“We have to find Eli. Find Isolde. They’re just a little deeper—we can’t leave them—”
Em bowed her forehead to Gyre’s. “I am taking you home, and I am sealing this cave. It’s time to put the past away.”
Yes. Em was right, as much as Gyre’s heart ached. Yes, Gyre wanted to get out. She wanted the sun. And if the cave remained open, she knew she would walk back in, one day. It was the right decision.
But she struggled, searching for Jennie’s body. They held her tight as she tried to twist, tried to reach back.
“Jennie,” she said. “You can’t leave Jennie.”
Her saviors paused.
“Bring her out,” Gyre said, with all her remaining strength. “Bring her out, please. At least her. At least. If we won’t join the rest, bring her home.”
Em leaned in, her breath ghosting over Gyre’s cheek, the sensation shattering in its simplicity. “Of course,” Em whispered. “Of course.”
Gyre closed her eyes, shaking with relief. She felt herself go limp. Felt herself be set down on something long and flat. Heard one of them walk away. Felt the odd, swaying weightlessness as she began to move, up and up.
She felt sunlight on her cheeks.
She slept.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Please state your name and age for the record.”
“Gyre Price, twenty-two years old.”
“And how long has it been since you were pulled out of cave designation Lethe, location undisclosed?”
“Three weeks. About.”
“Please give as exact an answer as you can, Ms. Price.”
Gyre met Em’s gaze, her lips twisting into a bitter smile. “You already know.”
“For the record.” Was Gyre imagining the apology in Em’s eyes?
“I think it’s been nineteen days. I don’t know. I’ve been unconscious for a lot of them.”
She had only seen Em a few times over those long weeks, brief meetings overseen by physicians, psychologists. Nobody knew all of what had passed between them, but everybody had seemed afraid to leave them in a room together unsupervised.
Apparently that had changed. Had the doctors given permission, or had Em decided she didn’t care?
The room they sat in was stark and clinical, the walls a bare white, the table between them simple and metal. Gyre sat on one side of it, a temporary prosthetic arm strapped to her stump and supported by a sling across her chest, a test to see how quickly she was healing and how soon she could be fitted with the real thing. On the other sat Em, and to her left a mirror hid any number of observers, concealed behind a twisted reflection of Isolde’s interview tape.
Em was sweating.
Gyre fixated on the thin beads of moisture dotting her hairline. The detail was so small her helmet’s display would have never rendered it, and so honest it made Gyre’s pulse speed up. Real. This was real.
How many nightmares had she had in the last nineteen days, where this exact scenario had played out in more monstrous ways?
“And how are you recovering from your injuries?” Em asked, her voice, so familiar, breaking through the brittle glass of Gyre’s worries. Focus on me, it said, and Gyre listened. She had been well trained.
“Fine,” she said, even as her hand went to her
side. It hurt. She’d insisted they take her off painkillers for this interview. She hadn’t wanted to answer Em’s questions while out of her mind on drugs. She’d wanted to face her as her own person.
Her own person. Gyre wanted to laugh.
Em must have insisted on the comfortable chair they’d dragged into the room for this interview. It let her lean back slightly, and supported her abdomen, still weak from the rupture of her large intestine and stomach lining, and the ensuing infection. She was swathed in comfortable, easily laundered clothing, and her hair had been carefully combed and retwisted. Now more than ever, she was Em’s creature, dragged back to some form of half sanity from the precipice of the Long Drop, packed back into the shape of a woman.
The seconds ticked by, stretching into minutes, and Gyre realized that Em was struggling to find something to say, her eyes darting to the mirror.
Gyre watched as she took several deep breaths, her chest rising and falling beneath the tailored teal fabric of her dress. A thousand emotions flashed over Gyre’s brain, stoking her anxiety. She couldn’t endure for long, not with an audience. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Right.” Em forced a thin smile. And just like that, she rearranged her features into calm distance. But Gyre knew where to look now, knew where the cracks would show. It was in her breathing, as familiar as Gyre’s own. It was in the pursing of her lips, faint but undeniable. “This interview will specifically cover your encounters with the Tunneler, at the request of the biological research arm of Arasgain Technologies, working in cooperation with Oxsua Mining,” Em said, nodding to the mirror with only a slight grimace to betray her distaste of working with her mother’s employer. “Are you ready to begin?”
“Just the Tunneler?”
“Yes, we don’t need to discuss anything outside of that scope. They have a theory, something to do with life cycles, mating displays, and aquifers.”
“Good for them.”
“They would like to hear about the circumstances leading up to each sighting, from your perspective.”