The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

Genres: Horror; Space Exploration; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

A thrilling, atmospheric debut with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck — enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother — meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials and has no qualms using them as a leash — and a lash. And Em has secrets, too....

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies — missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations — drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler that calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive — she must confront the ghosts in her own head.

But how come she can’t shake the feeling she’s being followed?

Release date: April 2, 2019

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Print pages: 432

Sample

Chapter One

She’d never gone this deep.

Gyre wriggled her armored body another centimeter into the crevice, then eased her bag of gear after her. The plating on the back of her calf scraped over the stone, and she winced at the noise. Nobody had warned her that the opening to the lower cave system was so small—or empty. To be fair, she hadn’t gotten a lot of warning or preparation. She’d been too eager to get below the surface to question if there should have been more than the limited orientation she’d received.

Still, when she’d signed up for the expedition, she had assumed three things:

One, that there would be a team assisting her, monitoring the readings from her suit from afar, pulling up maps for her when possible, and keeping her company in the dwindling light as she left the surface.

Two, that she would enter through a giant borehole into a mining camp, and would stage in that camp before pressing deeper into the ground.

And three, that the amount of money she was being offered would be directly related to the sophistication of the expedition.

And yet here she was, alone in a tiny crevice in an unknown site, her helmet speakers silent.

“Caver here,” she said for the fifth time. “Would appreciate contact, base.”

For the fifth time, there was no response. The only sounds were her breathing inside her helmet, the soft pulsing of the alert system displayed in front of her face, and the groan of her suit against rock as she contorted her spine and pressed through another few centimeters.

Gyre paused, leaning against the curved crevice wall. Maybe she should go back. Maybe her suit was malfunctioning. At the hospital where she had been fitted into it, she had gone through the regular check and double check of all systems, including communications transmission. Everything had been fine then, and her year of helping other cavers into similar suits told her that all systems were go. But she didn’t have a death wish, and going any farther without comms was suicide. Her eyes flicked over the readouts inside her suit again.

Everything was normal.

“Beginning to suspect suit is shot,” she said anyway, addressing the emptiness. “Preparing to abort.”

The speakers in her helmet finally came to life. “Negative. Do not abort. Caver, continue.” The voice sounded female, clipped and authoritative. More important, it sounded real—not a computerized response.

Well, that got a reaction. Gyre’s lips twisted into a bitter approximation of a smile. “Roger,” she muttered, and shuffled another few centimeters.

The crevice widened abruptly about half a meter farther in, and Gyre stumbled out, reflexively moving to dust herself off. But carbon polymer just scraped over carbon polymer, a frustrating reminder that for the next several weeks—or even months—she wouldn’t be able to feel her own skin. She shook her head.

Rookie.

The suit was her new skin, filled with sensors and support functions, dampening her heat and strengthening her already powerful muscles with an articulated exoskeleton designed to keep climbing as natural as possible. She wouldn’t even remove her helmet to eat or sleep. Her large intestine had been rerouted to collect waste for easy removal and a feeding tube had been implanted through her abdominal wall ten days ago. A port on the outside of her suit would connect to nutrition canisters. All liquid waste would be recycled by the suit. All solid waste would be compacted and cooled to ambient temperature, then either carried with her or stored in caches to be retrieved on her trip out. Everything was painstakingly, extensively designed to protect her from . . . elements in the cave.

And, all the while, her handlers would be monitoring her vitals and surveying her surroundings for her. It was Gyre’s job to move and climb and explore; it was her handlers’ job to document.

“Caver, continue,” repeated the woman from before.

Gyre scowled, then straightened up and looked around the cavern. Her suit used a combination of infrared and sonar pulses to generate readings on the surrounding topography, which was reconstructed into what looked like a well-lit but colorless scene on the screen in front of her. In an emergency, the reconstruction could be turned off and a normal light turned on, but it wasn’t advisable to have a lamp burning, giving off heat, attracting attention down in the cold darkness of the caves.

There was a reason, after all, that cavers could demand enough money that they’d be able to get off-world after only two jobs, maybe three.

Too many cavers didn’t make it that long.

Just one of the many reasons Gyre was going to do it in one.

“Continuing,” she acknowledged, but paused first to drink in the space. The ceiling was high and vaulted, the ground even and dry. Far off, she thought she could hear water. The surface had been in a near-constant drought since she was a child, but most of the deep caves in this area still had water flowing through them, and would periodically flood from harsh, sudden storms that destroyed settlements and washed away topsoil and structures on the surface. This was the first time she’d personally set foot in a chamber this deep.

It was beautiful.

It was also unnerving.

She made her way to a marker blinking on her HUD, clambering down a wide natural staircase, a duffel full of equipment and food slung over her shoulder.

“Where’s the mine, base?” she asked as she slid over one of the larger drops and landed in a haze of dust. “Is this new ground, or just a new entrance?”

Base was, of course, silent.

Maybe this was normal. She’d never heard of taciturn support teams from the senior cavers she’d talked to, but she also hadn’t been allowed in the topside command rooms. The problem was that if this was normal, the team would expect her to know that.

They didn’t know this was her first time down.

Gyre came to the edge of another, larger drop. Like the five she’d descended to get down to the initial crevice, this one had an anchor at the top, and a fresh, high-quality rope leading down. There had been other cavers here, and recently.

“Base, requesting a topside search,” she said, considering the rope. “Confirm that there are no other cavers ahead of me. I’m seeing signs of—”

“There is no mine, and no other cavers,” the woman said. “Equipment was put in and caches established in anticipation of your descent.”

Okay. No mine wasn’t ideal, but not unheard of; her boss must just be looking for deposits in new ground, sending people in one after the other. It wasn’t common these days, with most of the land already picked over, but in a true expedition like that, pre-stocked caches were a good idea. Given the pay rate on this mission and the sophistication of her equipment, this was clearly a high-end pursuit, and yet—

And yet so far she could only be sure of one person in the support room, and the techs who had helped calibrate her suit hadn’t been chatty or worn the logo of any of the major mining concerns. She’d known from the beginning that this was an individual-run expedition, and at the time, money and the quality of the equipment had eclipsed all other considerations. They’d been worth falsifying her credentials here and there to make her look proven. They’d been worth hiring a surgeon to redirect her bowels for a month—something she really couldn’t afford, but the payout from this job would more than cover it—just so that she’d have the appropriate scars when the expedition’s doctors cut her open.

But now that she was underground, she was beginning to wonder if she had made a giant mistake.

Of course, there could still be five or ten techs. Maybe they were all shy. Maybe the woman with the mic was territorial and a total idiot. It was possible.

If that was the case, she just had to keep going until shift change.

In the meantime, she reassured herself that expeditions were always top-heavy. They could afford to be, had to be. They were standing on a veritable mint deep below the surface of Cassandra-V, the only thing keeping the colony halfway viable, and decades of mining had taught them a few things.

Like the fact that early teams that went down to establish mines or take samples ended up dead. Ninety percent failure rate. Big groups, small groups, solo explorers . . . it didn’t matter. Something always killed them.

Something always killed them, until somebody got smart enough or desperate enough to try wearing a drysuit down, alone, into a cave. Even now, nobody was sure if it was because it blocked heat rising from the body, or smell, or something else, but one person, in an enclosed suit, could survive. One person, though, needed help keeping watch while they slept, and the suits became more and more elaborate to provide for longer and longer survey missions. Now missions had at least five or ten techs topside. She’d seen it firsthand, working support on two medium-sized operations. A year ago, she’d helped her first caver into a similar suit—a hotshot guy with two expeditions already under his belt—and it hadn’t been nearly as elaborate and high-tech as this one. This was top-of-the-line and must have demanded an even larger crew.

So where were they?

The sensible thing would be to call off the mission and walk back out, while she still could. But she’d sacrificed too much to get here, this deep, with this much money on the line.

She didn’t want to go through it all again. Next time, her embellished work history might not stand up to scrutiny. And if she was wrong, if there was a team, and she walked out? Nobody wanted to hire a caver who would breach contract. Not when there were so many others waiting to be picked.

Not when there are a hundred other kids as desperate as I am.

Gyre rolled her shoulders back to center herself, then clipped into the rope at hip level, attaching the duffel to her suit. It was the first of several she’d be ferrying in that day, the rest stacked and waiting for her on the other side of the narrow crevice she’d entered through. She reached behind her to the hump of hard carbon seated across her shoulders. All her equipment was slotted into the suit itself, and the storage space on her back protruded almost like a satchel. As she ghosted her fingers over the release sensors, her HUD displayed what was stored there. Her rappel rack was within easy reach, and she released it from its slot, then hitched it to the front of her suit and threaded the rope through its bars. Once it was secure, she glanced over the edge again.

Her readout display blinked as it measured the distance down with a few sonar pulses: 70 meters. In normal light, the bottom would’ve been pitch black, but her HUD’s reconstruction showed it in full detail as if it were only a few meters away. She crouched to check the anchor, even though she’d already practiced this hundreds of times since signing on to this project.

Nothing about cave exploration should be done on autopilot.

Everything looked fine. She’d been trained—or rather, she’d taught herself—to place her own anchors every time, but the other, shorter drops she’d already done had been anchored correctly.

Base had confirmed this one had been placed for her.

“Caver, continue,” her handler said, her voice flat. Emotionless.

Gyre straightened, checked her device one last time, then stepped off the edge.

Chapter Two

Her first camp was just shy of a quarter kilometer from the entrance slot, and five hundred or so meters below the surface. Just as her handler had said, she’d found a cache waiting for her, but additional fresh supplies would still be necessary. Even with high-density, compact nutritional canisters, she’d need more than the few stashed here if she was going to stay under for longer than a month, and then make the climb back out.

She spent two days making three trips back to the surface to retrieve gear. The topside base said nothing else after the beginning of her second trip. At first, Gyre was relieved; the woman on the other side of her comm line, so far her only contact, was abrasive and cold. Her silence left Gyre to make her own decisions. It was comforting for a few hours, as if this job were just like all her solo practice runs. But then the overbearing quiet became too much. Five hundred meters of stone separated her from human contact, and she felt it in her bones. She’d never been under for more than a day on her own before—one of the many small details she hadn’t exactly been forthright about when signing on.

So she murmured and sang to herself, trying to distract her itching nerves, the sound never leaving the confines of her helmet as she settled into camp at the end of the second day. It was a quick task. No fire, no sleeping bag, no cooking. Instead, she patrolled the perimeter, administered her meal for the night, then tried to get comfortable.

The suit had some limited internal padding and support; it served as a moving sleeping roll as well as armor and structural enhancement. But that was like saying a metal stool was furniture, and therefore equivalent to a bed. She positioned herself as comfortably as she could, locked her armor in place to lessen the load on her muscles, and powered down the visuals in her helmet.

“Going to sleep, base. You got my back?” she asked the black emptiness.

“Affirmative.”

The same woman. She’d been there—probably—the whole time. No shift change.

No team.

Fantastic.

“Does base have a name?” Gyre asked, trying to ignore the alarms going off in her head.

Nothing.

Trying to keep her voice light, she said, “Does base care to tell me why an expedition this expensive isn’t giving me a full crew?” It was a risky move; if her handler got angry, Gyre would be screwed.

“You are adequately supported,” the woman said.

“But it’s just you, right?”

Silence. Then: “Yes.”

“That wasn’t in my contract.”

“Your contract,” the woman said firmly, “promised adequate support.”

Gyre twitched, jaw clenching. She breathed through her nose, counting up to ten. “This is highly unusual,” she said. “I’d feel more comfortable if I knew you had relief up there.”

The handler said nothing.

Which left Gyre facing the same choice as before: be smart and leave, or stay and make it work.

She shouldn’t risk staying. But she couldn’t risk leaving.

“Does base have some music she can pipe in, or a book I can read?” she asked grudgingly.

“Go to sleep, caver,” her handler replied. “I will keep watch.”

Yeah, Gyre thought, scowling, until you pass out yourself because you’ve got no relief up there.

But biology won out over her better judgment. She was exhausted, muscles sore and mind foggy, and it wasn’t long before her thoughts began to drift. Back when she’d started exploring the slot canyons and pseudocaves near her home ten years ago, she’d just been a twelve-year-old girl expertly avoiding her house and her dad. The pseudocaves, which could almost reach the depth she was at now, didn’t require suits. They had the usual risks: cave-ins, flash floods, falls, lack of food. Some of them were wickedly difficult to navigate, demanding top-tier skill. But two or three people could go down for the day without a suit, or with just an old-fashioned simple drysuit with no intestinal rearrangement and no catheters if they were really worried. Nothing would come out of the blackness and kill them. But the pseudocaves also didn’t have minerals. They were economically useless, and usually empty.

So she’d played in them, first for fun, then to build the skills she’d need to sign on with a true cave expedition and earn enough money to get herself off the planet.

She still remembered, vividly, the day she’d nearly broken her legs on a fall. She’d been just shy of her thirteenth birthday and had been descending in pitch darkness, her headlamp extinguished by the spray of an early rains waterfall now dominating far more of the cavern than it usually did. She’d been too arrogant that day to abort, or switch to a different lamp, so certain she could navigate the rest of the descent by touch and memory.

And she’d been able to, until about six or seven meters above the bottom—close enough to not be in life-threatening danger, but far enough to cause a problem if something went wrong. The roaring of the waterfall had gotten louder, and she’d assumed that was because she was getting closer to the bottom. She hadn’t realized that the recent rains had knocked free a bit of stone and the waterfall had changed trajectory just enough that as she lowered herself another meter—too fast, much too fast—she was caught in the thundering torrent. She’d lost her grip on her rappel rack and slid down the rope, pushed by the force of the water, unable to arrest.

But then she slammed to a halt, feet not more than half a meter from the ground, her rack caught on a knot that shouldn’t have been there, was only there because she’d screwed up packing her gear. Without it, she would have hit the ground, twisted her ankles or broken her legs. She spluttered, her hands finally gripping the metal and squeezing tight, obsessively, as her heart pounded. Water continued pouring over her, soaking her to the core. She’d been giddy on the adrenaline; she’d survived her first brush with death.

By the time she’d made it back to the surface, everything but her hair was dry. Her manic energy had faded, as had her excitement; she’d been left with a bruised chest where her harness had jerked her to a halt, and exhausted, trembling muscles. She’d limped back to town, to her house in the western reach by the cliffs, and collapsed in her kitchen, close to hypothermic and with the aftereffects of adrenaline still twisting up her insides. Her dad hadn’t been home.

With nobody else to talk to, she’d stared up at the photo of her mother hanging on the kitchen wall. Your fault, she’d thought, over and over again. Her mother had made her into this. Your fault, she’d thought.

Your fault.

Gyre twitched, then swore, eyes shooting open. Her HUD was on full brightness, and her heart was pounding, just like it had back in that waterfall. White noise blared in her ears. Her suit unlocked a second later, and she scrambled to right herself, to get up on her feet.

But there was no red flashing readout on her HUD, and as she came to full wakefulness, the noise lessened and her screen dimmed to normal levels.

“Good morning, caver,” said her handler. “Time to get to work.”

Gyre cursed.

“Your goal for today,” the woman continued, ignoring Gyre’s invective, “is to reach Camp Two. I’ve adjusted your HUD to show the way. Each trip with your supplies is estimated to take roughly three hours. Return trip will take two. Your schedule allows three days for this segment.”

It was the most she’d said all together, but Gyre didn’t care. She pressed her hands to her chest, willing her heart to slow down. “Screw you,” she hissed.

“Walking is the most expeditious way to work off the epinephrine injection, caver.”

Epinephrine injection— “That’s supposed to be for emergencies only!”

Her HUD flashed. Text began scrolling across it, quickly, until it stopped on an excerpt that read:

THE CAVER AGREES TO SURRENDER BODILY AUTONOMY TO THE EXPEDITION TEAM FOR THE DURATION OF THE EXPEDITION PERIOD, IN ORDER TO FACILITATE THE SMOOTH OPERATION OF THE EXPEDITION AND TO PROTECT THE CAVER’S WELL-BEING. AT THE EXPEDITION TEAM’S DISCRETION, THE EXPEDITION TEAM MAY PERFORM THE FOLLOWING, NONEXCLUSIVE TASKS:

ADMINISTRATION OF CERTAIN HORMONES AND NEUROTRANSMITTERS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ADRENALINE, DOPAMINE, AND MELATONIN.

ADMINISTRATION OF CERTAIN PHARMACEUTICALS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANTIBIOTICS, OPIOID PAINKILLERS . . .

And then it scrolled again, until it reached her signature.

“‘In order to facilitate the smooth operation,’” Gyre repeated through gritted teeth.

“Caver, please prepare for your first trip to Camp Two.”

Gyre hesitated a moment longer in opposition, then began securing the first duffel.

She’d made her decision. She was doing this for the money, for her mother. A power-tripping, asshole handler working without backup didn’t change that.

It just meant she’d have to stay on her toes and get good at swallowing her anger.

*  *  *

The contract had been more or less standard. No matter how many times she thought up a new biting retort to her once-more taciturn handler, she couldn’t move past that fact. Caving was lucrative, but ultimately a horrible job, and one you could only do for a few years at most before you were too injured to keep going, or you couldn’t take the isolation and the strain anymore, or the cave just straight up killed you. The smart ones cashed out early, with both their paycheck and their health. But there was always the allure of bigger, more lucrative, more dangerous jobs. The temptation was what dragged them all in; it didn’t let them go easily.

Most cavers were young these days, under twenty-five, a few even younger than she was. They’d all grown up on this colony where every job was wretched, where general life expectancy was low by the standards of other, more “civilized,” well-supported worlds. Backbreaking labor and low pay were the general rule. If you had the skill for it, then why wouldn’t you trade a little bit of bodily autonomy for enough money to feed your family or to start a new life?

Why wouldn’t you accept a single handler, if you’d already lied to get this far, if the money on offer was so good, you’d only need to do one job?

Trade-offs. Always trade-offs.

So instead of voicing all the biting comments bubbling up inside her, Gyre attempted a different approach during her second trip to Camp Two, her muscles burning and her thoughts buzzing in the dark.

“Base, that still you?”

Nothing. She ignored it.

“Because if it is, I hope you get some sleep soon. With what they’re paying me, they can afford some shift relief. I don’t want you falling asleep right when a Tunneler jumps me.”

She hoped that made the woman smile. Or frown. Honestly, she just hoped it made the woman react.

She maneuvered herself along a narrow ledge, belly pressed to the cavern wall.

“But if it is just you, we should get to know each other,” she continued, working the articulated toes of her suit into a better hold and levering herself and her pack along the line she was clipped to. “You got a name?”

Still nothing. Gyre tamped down the flare of irritation.

“Moller didn’t tell me much about you when he hired me.” Moller was the expedition owner. She’d met him twice: once at her interview, and once in the hospital where she’d been given a full examination and gone under for surgery, waking up properly rearranged for her suit. He’d been less sleazy than the other expedition owners she’d talked to. Off-worlder, with enough holdings elsewhere that he wasn’t overly invested in the colony. That worked better for her; he didn’t want an indentured servant—he wanted a caver. She couldn’t say the same about most other male owners. She’d counted herself lucky.

Now, though, she was starting to suspect she’d been played. She’d been lulled by how kind he looked. Good clothing, a soft voice. Salt-and-pepper hair. And yet he’d stuck her with a single handler—why? Why increase the odds of failure so much? Some sort of arcane tax-evasion scheme? Or maybe he got off on watching a woman flail in the darkness, struggling to survive.

No, that didn’t add up; he’d spent the money on the technology and her paycheck, if not the topside staff. Nobody would pay this much just to watch her die.

Right?

“Actually,” she said, her curiosity turning genuine and a little desperate, “he didn’t tell me anything about you. Didn’t mention that I wouldn’t have a whole team. He talked about the high-tech suit but didn’t mention that this wasn’t an existing cave system. Is he always like that?”

“Often,” the handler replied at last.

Gyre shuddered, a surge of endorphins cascading through her at the fear and relief triggered by hearing that voice. Her handler was still there. She clipped into the next anchor as she transferred to a new, descending line. Just a few meters down to the next platform.

“Is he there with you?”

“No, he’s not,” she said. “He doesn’t stay long.”

“Is that normal?” Gyre asked as she rappelled down in a few quick, easy bounces. “I got the sense that he wasn’t personally invested, but it’s a lot of money.”

“It’s not his money.”

Her handler sounded as if she were standing right next to her, and Gyre thought she sounded amused, like Gyre had just told a half-decent joke. A joke Gyre wasn’t getting.

“Rich dad?” Gyre hazarded.

“Rich employer.”

Gyre frowned, hefting her supply bag and moving along the rim of an old breakdown while skirting the boulders. “Most expedition owners don’t like working for anybody but themselves, in my experience,” Gyre said, leaving off that her experience was limited to assisting on two expeditions and listening to a lot of shit-talking in bars.

She looked around. It was another short descent to Camp Two, but there was a nice wide, flat stone nearby, and she set down her duffel and hopped onto it, settling in for a break. “So, who’s he got holding his purse strings?”

The other side of the line went silent again, and Gyre frowned. She’d felt like she was getting somewhere with the woman, at last—and talking about Moller hadn’t seemed too risky. Gossiping about the boss had always seemed like a constant of the human condition.

Gyre stretched out on her back as she waited for a response. Her gear bump propped her up, and she bent her legs at the knees before triggering the armor lockup, creating a hard couch for her to rest on. She groaned as her muscles relaxed those first few millimeters.

Gyre was just considering a short nap when her HUD blinked—activity on the comm line. She took a deep, anticipatory breath.

“Mr. Moller,” her handler said without preamble, “is my employee. As are you.”

The breath came out as a confused whine, and she quickly muted her side of the comm as she spluttered and unlocked her armor, sitting up.

Oh.

She’d never considered that option.

“Caver?”

“Here,” she said after unmuting herself. “And it’s Gyre. Call me Gyre. Miss Boss.”

“Em is fine,” the woman said, and there was that hint of amusement again. “Now: get up.”

“I’ve been making decent time—ahead of schedule,” Gyre protested.

Something on the left side of her HUD began to glow, and Gyre turned her head until it was centered. It wasn’t a goal marker, and it wasn’t directly on the path to Camp Two. Curiosity outweighed her annoyance, and she stood, then reached for the duffel.

“You can leave that,” Em said.

Gyre frowned, her hand dropping back to her side. “What’s the marker for?”

“Something I think you’ll appreciate, based on your file,” she said.

Gyre imagined the woman sitting at her station. Was she finely dressed? In pajamas? She didn’t sound much older than Gyre herself. Her voice wasn’t scratchy or squeaky; instead, it had a low, smooth richness. It was the kind of voice that would’ve turned Gyre’s head in a bar.

Off-world accented, too. Educated.

Gyre hesitated a moment longer, that marker burning on her screen, before giving in. The climbs hadn’t been hard the last two days, but they’d been constant, and she hadn’t explored nearly as much as she’d wanted to. She hopped down from the rock she’d been lying on and made for the glowing marker.

It led her to one of the cavern walls and faded in intensity as she neared. The image on her screen shifted, its colors adjusting to something closer to what she’d see if she had a proper light.

On the wall was a small growth of a pale white plant with substantial, translucent stalks. They were topped by what looked like tiny glowing flowers, and she crouched down to get a better look. The never-ending dry season up top meant that most of the local flora were tough, spiky, hard-rinded. Flowers were rare, and rarely attractive.

This, though—this looked like what she’d seen in pictures and vids from the garden colonies.

Em had been right. Gyre could feel herself smiling in wonder. This was what had kept her going down farther and farther into those pseudocaves, far beyond avoiding her dad, well before she’d ever thought of leaving Cassandra-V.

Back then, she’d wanted to see something special. She’d wanted to be strong enough, clever enough, to make it to places others had only ever dreamed of. Somewhere along the line, it had gotten twisted, focused entirely on success and money and getting off-world, but that initial impulse was still alive inside her.

“What does it grow on?” she asked. “It’s just stone down here.”

“It’s a fungus. Similar growths are all over this system, especially lower down. There are creatures that live in the water in the cavern and sometimes they wash up and die,” Em replied. “Up here, sometimes insects fly in. And when the rains come, they wash in soil and everything that’s in the soil. This one’s been there for several months, though, so it’ll probably drain its host soon and die.”

“So it’ll be gone by the time I come back up this way?”

Em hesitated before saying, “Possibly.”

Possibly—because she thought Gyre might bail soon, or because she was a perfectionist and hadn’t done the math? Gyre didn’t intend on bailing, so she leaned in closer and reached out to touch it.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” Em said. “I don’t have data on any interaction between its spores and your suit.”

“Can I take a picture?” she asked, frozen in place.

“I’ve taken it already.”

Her smile fell. Maybe Mr. Moller wasn’t a voyeur, but Em certainly enjoyed controlling her suit from her seat on high. Most expeditions, from what she’d learned from veterans, left their cavers to their own devices except in cases of emergencies—like the adrenaline injection should have been. Even if the contracts allowed it, those weren’t usually used to rouse cavers in the morning when their handlers were ready for them to start moving.

“Right,” Gyre said, straightening up. “Well, thanks.”

Em didn’t respond, probably tapping at the feeds of various metrics coming off her suit, or maybe reading a novel. Gyre didn’t care. Whatever connection they had started to make had already been severed. She stalked over to her duffel and hefted it, then headed off for Camp Two.