The Luminous Dead

by Caitlin Starling

She’d heard somewhere that pride came before the fall. But she wasn’t going to fall. She was going to climb.

Or her love of tight, claustrophobic spaces.

Could not be me x.x this would be a personal hell

That was the look of somebody resigned to being the monster they knew they were.

She’d thought about Em deliberately hiding things from her, but not about the computer algorithms making sure she never saw confusing things. If the computer knew another person couldn’t be down there, would it hide movements? Signs?

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.

But I don’t know that I could have gone on wrapped itself around her heart, nestled in her chest. She meant something. She was different from the other cavers. The warmth she felt was part rage on those other cavers’ accounts, but a lot of it was simply happiness at being seen. At being wanted.

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.