THE COURTYARD IS empty and for the first time in over twenty years there are no greeters outside the entrance. Even if the colony hadn’t been attacked, there would be no one there. Now they all know that Suh isn’t coming back.
I slide off the top of the tendril I cut through before and land on the old platform that Pasha stood on just a couple of days ago. I detach the rope, coil it and sling it over my shoulder. I’ll need it in there. After clambering over the rail, I step across the gap between the waiting platform and the top of the slope leading up to the entrance to the city. Less than twenty-six hours ago Marco stood here with the whole colony watching. Sung-Soo was just meters away, knowing it was all false and keeping his silence.
I’m putting this off. I press my hand against the join like Marco did and the valve opens. I see the plant inside near the entrance, now just stalk and leaves, and the tunnel stretching ahead of me.
This will be the death of me, surely? I’ll survive in the tunnel, but once I’m past the valve at the far end leading deeper into the city, I’ll be poisoned. A flash of Suh’s last moments and the blotches spreading across her skin returns along with the sound of her wheezing as her airway closed. The bubbling in her lungs . . . all of it plays out without any need of my chip to enhance the memory.
But that was before we adapted to this planet. Her body was geared up for a sanitized memory of Earth’s environment. No new viruses or diseases introduced for all that time during the journey on Atlas. My body has been altered to thrive in this environment since then. I’m more likely to survive.
It doesn’t take away the fear though. As a scientist, I know this is madness. But I also know this is an act of faith. I step inside and wait until the doors close behind me.
I have no headlamp. No respirator, not even a pair of gloves. I pull my sleeve down until I can wrap it over my fist and reach out to the side until my knuckles brush the wall. With something to guide me now I take a few tentative steps forward in the darkness, doing everything I can to try to keep my breathing steady as my heart’s percussion threatens to overwhelm me.
All I can think about is Suh’s death. After all these years of doing everything I could to avoid even a reminder of what happened, I find myself walking toward it. Is this actually a desire for suicide disguised as a desire to understand this place?
“Oh, shut up!” I jump at the sound of my own voice and then laugh, the terror tipping over into mild hysteria.
My hand is wet and the laughter chokes off. The skin on the back of my hand is tingling. I try to work out if that’s because of what’s soaked through my sleeve or if it’s the cold or just plain panic. In the darkness I can’t check for any discoloration and the sensation is spreading.
I turn around to go back but misjudge it and walk into the opposite side of the tunnel. My forehead slaps against the wet slime coating the inside of the wall and I yelp at the direct contact. In moments my whole face is tingling, like I’ve been outside in snow and then plunged my face in a bowl of hot water. Stupidly I turn, looking for some crack of light to guide me out, but there’s nothing except darkness. I blink frantically, trying to work out if I really do have my eyes open as the tingling spreads up my arm and down my neck. It’s then that I know I don’t want to die. There is no romantic notion of following Suh on that last journey. There’s just fear and waiting for my windpipe to close and my lungs to fill with liquid.
But neither of those things happens. Instead, a pale blue light fills the tunnel, seeming to glow from the walls rather than from a single source. I can see the tunnel stretching away from me to the valve that I entered and another valve much farther away. I can even see my footprints as darker depressions in the slick floor.
I look at my wet hand and my stomach drops when I can’t see it. I can feel myself waving it about in front of me, I touch my face with it to reassure myself it’s still there, and I can feel it against my cheek. But all I can see is the tunnel, as if my body is still in darkness.
“There has to be an explanation,” I whisper to myself. A hypothesis emerges from the roiling mess of my panic. Perhaps it’s still dark in here, but somehow I can now see the tunnel via a different spectrum. I rub my wet fingers together, thinking of the sensation contact first created that is subsiding now. Perhaps something in this substance has altered me, enabling me to see the interior of the tunnel.
Cut off from the environment in our suits and helmets, we had no contact with this part of the city when we first stepped in. I’ve never allowed any of the gunk to come into contact with me after my illegal visits. But perhaps that was our first mistake. Perhaps, just like the pheromones released by that plant, the city releases something here in the entrance tunnel to prepare us for its depths. We kept ourselves blind.
I feel normal now, my skin no longer tingles, and I can cope with not being able to see myself now that I can see where I’m going. I look at my footprints to get my bearings and walk away from the doors, deeper into God’s city.