7.2 km from flash curtain
I MAKE MY way to the baths through the silent compound. When I turn the taps and lift my face to the spray, there is no one to hear my deep sigh, nor the things I murmur aloud into the steam. I touch my scars, the flash bat bites on my thigh and my arm, where just months ago, down nine, Dram drew the venom from my body. My memories paint a canvas of images: his eyes, green from the effects of the venom, lips cracked, a bat jaw clamped over his arm.
I dry off and dress in a clean Delver’s suit. I stuff a pack with rations and water and my sharpest knife. My hands still tremble, and my thoughts drag a few steps behind, but my legs are steady when I stand on the 5 etched into the floor of the Delvers’ quadrants. It’s crossed out with an X, an old caver’s mark that means “unsafe passage—do not cross.” According to Meredith, this tunnel is overrun with creatures; the outpost it once serviced is now inaccessible. I wedge my boot into the port door and force it open. It’s not the first time I’ve pushed past the Congress’s boundaries.
I climb into the pod and strap in, smoothing away layers of dust. The compartment allows a Delver to sit, because it moves horizontally, farther and faster than any of the other ports. I press my Delver’s chain to a sensor, and the port hums to life. The pod lights flicker and die. I sit for a moment in the pitch-black capsule.
What is the most important thing we bring into the caves?
I click on my headlamp and release the lever. The pod shimmies along the shaft. It creaks and groans like it’s protesting my unsanctioned Delver run.
And if our light fails?
The darkest places aren’t down tunnels, or in cordons absent of moonlight and stars. They’re inside us.
But then, so is the light.
My decision sparks inside me, a glimmer that grows as the pod skims above the track toward Outpost Five.
I’m not going to leave Dram in the dark.
I refuse to leave any of them to the dark.
* * *
Meredith was right about the termits. Evidence of them fills the passageway. As I move along the tunnel, I watch them through my goggles, though I think the moles did more damage than anything else down here. The pod won’t make it all the way to Outpost Five—Meredith wasn’t lying about that. The moles have cut off the passage with their own conjured pathways.
I check the map I found in the archives of the Grand Hall. I didn’t want to risk using a screencom that could be tracked by Congress. I study the tunnel markings and try to find my bearings. I’m close, but I can’t get as far as Outpost Five. There’s no getting past this barrier of rock.
Iron rungs protrude alongside conjured steps that lead up from the tunnel. I grasp them and pull myself up through an old auger shaft. I work to turn the hatch’s rusted crank handle, pushing past my exhaustion. On the other side of this barrier lies Cordon Five.
The glass cordon where I left my friends.
A place of flashbursts and broken promises.
* * *
I move quickly, leaning forward as my feet crunch over the glass crust. A narrow trench winds through the cordon, and I stay to the side of it, my only possible refuge. The sulfur clouds thicken around me, and I tug my goggles on, tighten my neck cloth over my nose and mouth, and push through the haze.
Lizards scurry over the scorched sand, chasing odd yellow insects and spiders. I watch them, hoping that the instincts that have preserved them will help me, too. Suddenly, they dart into crevices.
I dive into the trench after them, grasping hold of roots and rocks as I slide down deep. The roar of the flashburst echoes around me, and I clap my hands over my ears. Stone presses my cheek where I’ve wedged myself into a cleft of rock.
“I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive,” I shout, to cover the sounds of the burst, and to cover the fear raging within me. The heat robs me of breath, and I press into the stone, willing it to be shield enough. Sweat drips into my mouth, and I realize I’m yelling again, roaring back at the flash curtain.
Silence. Heavy. Oppressive as the heat.
I can hear every one of my breaths, and I count them, telling myself that I am still alive. A sudden, irrational fear of the dark seizes me. I crack a glow stick and stare at its green light. I’m so disoriented, I can’t tell which way to climb. Maybe the curtain releases something—some kind of particles—when it bursts like that. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t slept since I fled the Overburden.
I rest my cheek against the stone and clutch my light. This will not be my tomb. I’m not surrendering to the darkness.
“I’m alive.” I say it until it sounds like a song. I sing it to my friends the lizards, and whatever else might be hiding in the shadows. We are allies, fighting the beast that is the flash curtain.
A spider inches toward me. Black, with bright yellow markings. Dram and I would have avoided it down the tunnels, but I can barely lift my head.
“We are allies,” I murmur.
I set the light stick on the stone between us and sleep.