It was only a half hour’s walk and scramble to the Long Drop, but by the time she reached it, her battery was hovering just over critical state. She stood at the edge of the drop and considered her options.
She was going to go fast; going down would be easier than going forward, at least as far as needing to see went. The headlamp should be enough, and switching would slow the drain on her battery. But it would be a long, long descent, and the thought of doing it almost blind made her throat close up.
Better her throat than her suit, though. She didn’t want to be a statue, frozen and slowly starving to death, hanging from a rope and hoping that it wouldn’t—or maybe that it would—break and send her falling to her death.
The indicator ticked down again.
23% CHARGE REMAINING
It was all the impetus she needed, so she clipped onto the rope and began her descent, waiting until she passed the second bolt and was comfortable on the cliffside before she turned off the reconstruction and clicked on her small, dim headlamp.
Cutting through the darkness, Gyre rappelled down in smooth, even leaps. The bolts held. She made good time by trusting them, forcing aside any thoughts of falling. It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. They were her bolts, and the bolts held, and the yawning darkness welcomed her into it.
She covered the first day’s descent in a little under two hours, and when she realized she’d reached the small ledge she’d fallen from a week ago, she was surprised by how relieved she felt. She navigated it more carefully this time and swung down toward the larger ledge and Tunneler path below. The telltale thrum in her bones grew more and more distant the farther down she went, freeing up her lungs for deeper breaths, and her heart from its terrified racing.
Camp Five wasn’t far. She could do this. Get to the raft, haul up the battery box, and then she’d be good. She’d be safe.
She touched down on the deep ledge with a relieved groan, her legs quaking in protest as she made them properly take her weight. Her whole body felt impossibly heavy now that she’d stopped descending, and she considered pausing here, taking a nap. A quick look at her battery indicator proved that was out of the question, but she could at least stop to eat.
She walked a short circuit around the ledge first, stretching her legs out, thinking, remembering. The video, the sedation . . . I should have turned back here. But even now, with context and distance, she knew she could never have made that choice. She’d already come too far.
Given up too much.
Was she always bound to end up here?
Dwelling was pointless, though, and she stepped out of the tunnel mouth and back onto the ledge proper.
Isolde’s face stared back at her.
She shouted in panic and fumbled with the rope, desperately trying to clip in. She had to get away. She had to—
Not real.
She stopped, panting, her eyes fixed on the apparition. Isolde’s pale face was drawn and exhausted; she was older, perhaps, than she had been in the video. She was also hard to see, doused in shadows. Gyre stared at her, waiting for her to vanish like Hanmei had, but she remained solid. Real. Impossibly real.
Gyre reached out.
Isolde retreated, backing away, away. Past where the ledge should have given out.
And then Gyre blinked, and there was nothing.
Gyre scrambled to the far end of the ledge, switching back to her reconstruction and peering over the rim. Nothing. There was nothing at all.
Except for a bolt, turning yellow as she stared at it. Unsafe. Unknown. There was rope, leading down. It was taut, as if there was a weight on the other end.
Gyre fumbled with her settings, then turned on the external speakers she hadn’t used since Camp Five. “Hello?” she asked.
It echoed back from the domed ceiling a few seconds later.
“Isolde?”
The cache at Camp Four. The face at Camp Five.
Em was wrong. There’s somebody here.
It was never the spores.
She reached out with one trembling hand and touched the rope.
If she cut it, Isolde—or whoever it was; Isolde was dead by now, couldn’t have survived all these years—would fall to their death. Would be gone. The threat would be gone.
But fuck, if it really was Isolde . . .
She backed away from the ledge and turned off her external speakers. She could feel it again too, the rumble in her breast. The Tunneler was making another pass, circling this section of cave again. It was close—she was certain of that now.
She couldn’t move forward until she made a decision. Trembling, she sat down against the far wall of the ledge and set up her feeding. Her eyes never left the bolt, still glowing a faint yellow just past where the ground fell off. Cut or leave? Trust Em or herself?
With a flex of her fingers, her rope-cutter extended from her right wrist. She had to cut it. If she really was hallucinating, it made no difference. If she wasn’t, it might save her life.
Isolde, Isolde, Isolde. Isolde was impossible. She couldn’t make her decisions based on that, and Em would never know. She would never, ever know.
Stomach still crawling from the sludge that was coating it, Gyre shuffled forward on her knees, over to the edge. She stared down into the gray and black rendering of the cave structure around her, at the emptiness. There was no sign of Isolde, only the taut rope, the bolt.
With one jerking motion, she slashed across the line. It gave way, and aside from a quiet slither as it passed through the air close to her, there was no noise at all. Even two minutes later, Gyre holding her breath nearly the whole time, there was no thud of a body hitting the ground.
She couldn’t keep waiting, and she clipped into her own line, forcing herself to look ahead. As she switched back to her headlamp, her fevered brain conjured eyes on the far wall looking back at her, shining against the blackness.
Her grimace turned to a violent snarl, and the eyes blinked back in surprise. She released her hold on the wall, taking the next step down in a long, wide, graceful arc. Her muscles protested, but she ignored them.
A few more hours, and she’d have light. She’d have food. She’d have Em back, and a massive computer at her beck and call to monitor everything around her.
Those hours passed in agonizing slowness, her limbs growing tired, her fingers nearly useless. The eyes were gone the next time she looked over her shoulder, but then again, her vision was getting so blurry that she couldn’t be sure if they were there or not. She never did hear a body strike the ground far below her, but she always heard the Tunneler, constant rumbling at a distance. It wasn’t in her bones yet. She had time.
She took the descent at breakneck speed, so fast that as she returned to the cliffside once, she struck at an angle, banging the arm she’d injured on her first descent. The pain flared to life, briefly eclipsing the ache in her thighs, the pounding of her head. Her jaw hurt from how much she’d clenched it, but she didn’t stop, didn’t slow.
The battery indicator ticked down.
18% CHARGE REMAINING
Gyre wondered how much of her sanity remained.