“Then give them your records,” Gyre said.
Em recoiled, her self-control fracturing. “Those—”
“Are going to be more accurate than anything I could tell them.”
It was the truth; her memories of those last few days belowground were chaotic and twisted, warped by fever and pain and terror. She remembered everything in perfect clarity, and at the same time could only see brilliant, terrible moments, disconnected and overwhelming, when she tried to focus.
Em looked at her for a long time, then touched a button on her side of the table. Shutters slid down over the mirror. The camera aimed at Gyre went dead, its green light blinking out. “Gyre,” Em said, “if I give them those records, you’ll never climb again. I can’t take that option from you.”
That was the truth, too. Three days ago, she’d requested access to everything Em’s computers had on her, and Em had approved it. Despite her appointed psychologist’s best efforts, Gyre had gone through all of it. The recordings weren’t continuous and didn’t always have the video of what she’d been seeing through her reconstruction, but there had been enough. She’d listened to herself scream for Em to amputate her arm, listened to herself talk to the ghost of Isolde, listened to herself dying.
She’d wanted to understand what had happened to her. She’d failed.
Em was right. Nobody would ever hire her again after listening to that, not even if she successfully integrated with her prosthesis and got over her newfound fear of the dark.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to go back down.”
That was a lie.
She could still see Isolde sometimes when she closed her eyes. She could feel the rot in her stomach and the cool, dank air of the cavern on her face. She could still feel the pull, the relentless tug, the invitation to climb back down and forget the world above, give in and close off all the pain and the struggle and the loneliness.
What would it feel like, to go back in? To find a different crack into the world below the ground? Even in a different cave, would she still hear its call?
What would it be like, to go down with a team of handlers, management, a reasonable plan?
To go down without Em?
“I don’t want you to go back down either,” Em said, interrupting the spiraling path of her thoughts, bringing her back to the surface. “But I—I can’t decide for you, not anymore. If I give them those records, I ruin you.”
Gyre laughed sharply. “Like you haven’t done that already.”
Em recoiled as if struck, and Gyre imagined how it would feel to punch her, to grab her, to hold her down. She shifted in her chair, then covered her face with her remaining hand. Skin against skin. It felt good. It felt like everything she’d wanted when she’d been down in that cave.
She was topside now. She held on to that fact, looking around at the room and its contents: all man-made, nothing out of stone. She felt the anger subside.
“I’m sorry,” Em murmured. “I’ll never be able to express how sorry I am, but I—look, I’ll give them those records if you ask me to, but in return, you need this.” She placed a card onto the table between them. “That’s your key to get to the black box. It opens in two days. It’s yours, all yours. The recordings will cover things my computers didn’t keep, and they’re unalterable, easily verifiable. You can access them for any purpose without needing permission from me. I’m going to destroy my own key.”
Gyre stared at the card, then picked it up, turning it over in her hand. She waited to feel something. Vindication, maybe. Empowerment. Even shame, whether for recording Em to blackmail her or for being afraid that Em would hate her for it, when it had been her best option.
But she felt hollow. “What do you think I should do with them?” she asked. Because, really, what could she do with them? Em had never admitted to breaking any laws, was on record being honest and human and broken, and every contract Eli and Jennie and all the rest had ever signed had been airtight. Legal. The bedrock on which the colony’s economy had functioned for almost its entire existence.
All the recordings proved was that she’d never had a chance, that she had signed up to be the plaything of a broken rich girl. And what could she gain from it? Tickets off-world waited for her as soon as she decided where she wanted to go. A fat paycheck sat in her account, transferred in before she ever left the cave. She already had more than she’d dreamed of when she took the job.
It was a useless relic of another time. A reminder of her ultimate powerlessness.
“If you make those files public, if you let everybody hear me explain not only what I did, but why I did it, you’ll give my competitors the ability to destroy me,” Em said.
Oh.
Those recordings would open Em up to criticism, hatred, even mockery for her weakness and madness. It couldn’t harm her in court, no, but it didn’t need to.
Em would never find an investor again, never hire a caver again. She would likely have to step down from her position in Arasgain. Who would trust her to run a business, when they knew how many lives, how many resources, she’d wasted not for profit but for grief?
A legal remedy paled in comparison.
The card rested like a leash in Gyre’s hand, a leash that wrapped around her horrible, beautiful monster’s throat. And Em had placed it there willingly.
“What now?” Gyre whispered.
“Whatever you want. I’ll buy you your tickets before the box opens so you can make your choice freely. No more playing on a rigged board.”
She could leave. Take the money and go. Take the money and destroy Em anyway. She could get off this planet, get away from the siren call of the caves, get away from Isolde forever.
She could find her mother.
The thought stunned her momentarily, and then she said, “Buy two.”
“What?”
“Two tickets.” Her fractured memory blurred with the recordings. She’d been delirious with fever, and Em had said . . . “The two of us, walking into my mother’s boardroom, me in the suit. I want to do that. I want you to be there. I want you to be there at the end.”
Em reached across the table and took Gyre’s hand, lacing their fingers together. The touch was electric, racing through Gyre’s nerves and to her heart, which stammered in her chest. This was real.
“It’s not the end,” Em whispered. “You saw me at mine, and I’m still here. I haven’t left.”
“We walk back out of the cave,” Gyre said slowly.
Em nodded. She rose, circling around the table, sitting on its edge and clasping Gyre’s hand with both of hers. “Do you think you can do it? Put the suit on again?” Her eyes searched Gyre’s face. “You don’t have to. You never have to.”
“I can do it, to see the look on her face. Come with me.”
Em’s hands tightened again.
“Nobody else understands,” Gyre said. “Nobody else will ever know what it was like down there, not even if they watch the recordings a thousand times. If we’re apart, we’re alone. I don’t want to be alone.”
“I don’t want to hurt you again. Ever again,” Em whispered.
“Come with me,” she repeated. She couldn’t articulate the rest of it, how Em leaving would hurt, how her staying would hurt, how there was no way either of them could ever win. But she wanted Em there, with her. She wanted to experience the pain together, to struggle together, to hate each other and need each other, maybe even to love each other when the rubble cleared. She’d thought about it every day since waking up, and so many days before. It was foolish, and dangerous, and the Gyre of two months ago would have hated her for thinking this way about the woman whose obsession had brought them to this moment.
But it was the truest thing she had left. When Gyre had been ready to follow Isolde, Em had been there to carry her back into the sun. When Em had been forced to see the full horror of everything she’d done, Gyre had seen the humanity in her. They had broken each other open down in the dark, and now that thei
r wreckage was splayed out in the light, Gyre recognized every inch of Em, and Em knew every inch of her.
Gyre slipped her hand from Em’s, set the card aside, and reached up to cup Em’s cheek.
Em slid from the table, going down on her knees in front of Gyre. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she confessed. “But I can’t do it again. I can’t base my life around an obsession. I can’t follow you down into that cave, I can’t give up, I can’t—”
“I’m not asking you to give up.”
Gyre leaned down despite the pain and kissed Em, the briefest contact, sensation arcing down her spine. This was the woman who’d put her in that suit, who’d sent her down chasing ghosts knowing it would likely end in death, but who also had refused to let her die, over and over again. Em had fought for her even though death was Em’s thesis, was her conclusion, was the only thing that should have waited for Gyre. Even though the twisted rot that had destroyed so much had already destroyed the both of them, almost to the core.
Gyre could see it, though: a small fleck of humanity, surrounded by a shell of pain that was beginning to crack, beginning to give way.
And she couldn’t be certain, when she got down to that point, whether she was thinking of herself or Em. They both had two options: fester and die, or take what they were given and grow.
“I’m asking,” Gyre said, pulling back only a few centimeters and meeting Em’s gaze, “for you to try.”
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to thank my husband, David Hohl, for going on this journey with me, for reading my drafts, and for keeping me sane. Thank you for encouraging me to send my book out into the world; without your excitement and confidence, I may never have believed my writing was ready to share. And thank you, too, for correcting my climbing errors. Any mistakes remaining are my doing alone.
To Shyela Sanders, my closest friend and my loudest cheerleader. Thank you for the time you spent with me in the trenches of the first draft, helping me brainstorm much of the original structure, and for every time after that I ran to you with plot problems, triumphs, and fears. This book would not exist without you.
To Morgan Azinger, Katie Marsh, Thea Price, Krystal Loh, and Sarah Hofrichter for believing in me, celebrating the highs with me, and reassuring me through the lows.
To Madeleine Roux, whose feedback and encouragement made it clear that publishing was the path I wanted to take.
To my agent, Caitlin McDonald, for seeing the promise in this little book, and for your patience, your guidance, and your advocacy; as well as to Rae Chang, Kiki Nguyen, and the whole of Donald Maass Literary Agency for championing me and guiding me through this whole process.
To my editor, David Pomerico, for constantly challenging my assumptions. You made me dig deep and think hard, and it’s no exaggeration to say that any version of The Luminous Dead without your involvement would have been an entirely different beast, and weaker for it. And to the rest of the Harper Voyager team, with specific thanks to Nate Lanman for keeping this engine moving forward and answering so many of my questions.
To my father, David Starling, and my stepmother, Stacey Starling, for always believing in me. To Dave Hohl and Sukey Hohl for accepting me as your own and supporting me from the first day we met. To my aunt, Carolyn Gehret, thank you—despite being a little afraid of the dark, you have shared and amplified my triumphs at every turn. And to my grandfather, Ned Gehret, for always knowing I’d publish a book one day.
And finally, this book could never have existed without my mother, Betsy Starling. You taught me how to write, how to love, and how to grieve. I only wish you were still here so I could share this story with you.
About the Author
Caitlin Starling is a writer and spreadsheet-wrangler who lives near Portland, Oregon. Equipped with an anthropology degree and an unhealthy interest in the dark and macabre, she writes horror-tinged speculative fiction of all flavors. The Luminous Dead is her first novel.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the luminous dead. Copyright © 2019 by Caitlin Starling. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
first edition
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover illustration by Alejandro Colucci
Frontispiece image © Brandon B / Shutterstock
Maps designed by Mike Hall
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition APRIL 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-284691-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-284690-7
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