The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

That cold look of hers when Gyre had told her to screw herself over administering the sedative—Gyre knew that look on a deep, intimate level. That was the look of somebody resigned to being the monster they knew they were. The self-awareness was no comfort, didn’t imply that Em wanted to or could be brought back to reality.

“But to the point: everybody that comes back up gets paid, even if it’s a fraction of the full arrangement. Everybody who dies . . . their family gets paid. In full.” “It’s not in the contract.” “I know,” Em said. “People do read their contracts sometimes. It—” “Changes how people behave,” Gyre supplied. “Exactly.” Still a monstrous manipulation—how many of her cavers would have turned back instead of pushing onward? Gyre had come this far to protect herself, after all, and she knew that she should get out. The others hadn’t had that luxury. But it was difficult to feel the horror when she could see the humanity and the pain in Em’s face. She thought she was doing good. She thought she had no choice except to let them die, but she could at least make it better after. Monstrous. Human. Understandable.

And then she felt it, that same feeling she’d had back in the Tunneler path. Not quite the feeling of being watched; instead, that feeling of forgetting something, of ignoring something important. A tug, a longing that didn’t feel like hers, pulling at her spine. It was like a whisper against her ear, a distant cry that begged her to come back, come home.

She found the button to open the suit, set in under Jennie’s jaw, and pressed it. The click of the plates unlocking was audible, but without a functioning battery in the main port, Gyre had to wriggle her fingertips between the plates to pry them off. She started at Jennie’s sides and belly, cracking open the suit like a nutshell. From one armpit to the other, down along her ribs and across her belly, she freed the plates from each other. Then she grabbed Jennie’s shoulders and hauled her upright, peeling her off the part of the suit that contained the backup. Her body was somewhat preserved, feedback film desiccated and husk-like around her, but it and the flesh gave way when Gyre touched her, pulling apart across her back as she leaned the woman against her chest. Gyre sat there, breathing hard and staring at the tubes and electrodes running from the suit to Jennie’s torn flesh. This was her, beneath the suit. Wired in, plugged in, part of the technology. In some ways, she was just the brain inside of it, the fine-motor control.

It wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t horrible—it only was, and it was all around her, inside of her. She didn’t have room for terror or for panic or for anger. It was just the roar, the thrum, the throb, the pulsing vibration that was shattering her apart.

The surface. The sun. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t real anymore. What was sunlight to the desaturated lines of her readout, to the engulfing darkness beyond? What was open air overhead but another threat?

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 their 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.”