City of Ruins

TWENTY-THREE



Okay,” I say. “We’re going to get out of here very carefully.”

We’re standing behind the stealth field, where everything is normal. If you can call being many meters underground in corridors lined with a strange black substance normal. Ahead of us lay the corridor we had come through to get to the room, only now that corridor is littered with debris.

Debris that Quinte and Al-Nasir tell me has come from the walls, but the walls themselves now look the same as the walls inside the stealth field. If I hadn’t seen it without the debris a few hours before, I never would have believed that the debris had fallen off the walls.

I cross the invisible line, and then I stop and crouch, examining the rocks. They’re jagged, the breaks obvious and, to my untrained eye, fresh.

I carefully pick one up. It’s heavy. It also has no black material on any parts of its exterior. Some of that might be because it had broken away from an area behind the black material.

But I look at the other rocks littering the floor, and I see no black material on them either.

I want to know why. I’m back in diving mode. In diving mode I learn everything I can about everything I see. I absorb information. I question everything.

But I also know I can’t get immediate answers. I collect information like some people collect toys.

I can’t slow us down too much, however. I don’t know what caused this debris field, even though I have a hunch, and because I don’t know, I need to get my team out of here. We have no food and not enough supplies. We can’t get trapped down here. For once, I didn’t prepare for an emergency, and it is all my fault.

I’m inexperienced underground, and even though the archeologists had talked about how dangerous their work could be, I hadn’t really taken them seriously.

Just like Mikk.

My heart twists at the thought of him. Have I killed another of my valued team members?

I make myself take a deep breath, then I turn to the team.

“Anyone have experience with this kind of thing?” I ask.

None of them move. It’s as if movement would commit them to something difficult, something they’re not prepared for.

“We figured you’d know how to get us out,” Al-Nasir says, and this time his voice is the one that quavers.

“I have ideas,” I say. “I’m just used to disastrous wrecks and debris in space, not debris on the ground.”

And then, because they still haven’t moved, and because they expect me to be upbeat and to get them out and to let them know they’ll survive, I add, “This is a lot safer than it is in zero gravity. There we’d have to watch for floating debris. Here we just have to be careful about what’s below us.”

“Unless whatever caused this happens again,” Quinte says.

“I think it was the ship,” Rea says, his voice soft.

“We don’t know that,” Kersting says.

“We don’t know anything except how to get out of here,” I say. “And we’re going to do that very carefully.”

I wait until they’re all looking at me—or until it seems like they’re all looking at me. I can’t see behind all of the faceplates, but their heads are turned toward me.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I say. “I’m going to go first. Orlando, you’re going to be last. The rest of you, I don’t care what order you’re in, but I do want you all to record our trip. We’ll get different information because we’ll be focusing on different things, and that’ll be useful once we get out.”

“If we get out,” Seager mutters.

I turn to her. I wish I can see her face through the helmet, but I can’t. I want to make eye contact.

Actually, I want to shake her, but I know that’s not productive at all.

“We are going to get out,” I say. “I’ve been in much worse situations by myself with no backup at all. We’ll be fine if you listen to me and do exactly what I tell you.”

“Okay,” she says, but doesn’t sound like she agrees.

“All right,” I say, as if she is enthusiastic. “You will step where I step. You will touch what I touch. We’re going to assume those rock piles are unstable. We’re not going to disturb them. We’re not going to step on them unless we can’t get by any other way. We’re not going to touch the debris on the floor. Is that clear?”

“You think the stuff on the floor could harm us?” Kersting asks.

“If we step on it wrong, yes, I do,” I say. “I don’t want broken legs or twisted ankles. I don’t want any of us to bring rock piles down on us. We’re going to proceed slowly. No crowding, no pushing, no panicking. If you feel yourself panicking, you will take a deep breath, silently count to ten, and release it. You will do that five times before you speak again. Is that clear?”

“And what if one of us sees something wrong?” Rea asks.

At least he’s not asking out of fear. He’s asking because he knows that despite our best intentions, someone might dislodge something and we’d lose half the group to a rock fall.

“Speak up immediately and calmly,” I say. “Calmly is as important as quickly. Got that?”

They nod.

“Okay. If you see a problem beginning or if you’re having trouble, say ‘Boss, stop please.’ I will stop immediately.”

I pause until they nod again.

“All right then,” I say, realizing I’m repeating that phrase “all right” as if I’m trying to reassure myself.

Maybe I am. I want to shut off the gravity. I want to float around the debris. I want to travel closer to the ceiling of the corridor because the debris piles are bigger at ground level. If we were able to travel along the ceiling, we’d be able to get out a lot quicker—and with almost no trouble at all, at least as far as I can see down this corridor.

“Orlando,” I say to Rea, “you and I will have our suit lights on. The rest of you will not. Orlando, you’ll train yours upward. Mine will focus downward for obvious reasons. If any of you lose sight of me or need to slow down, ask me to stop. We stay in communication at all times.”

On a beginner’s dive that has gone wrong, this is where I’d extend a tether. We’d clip to it and travel slowly, one hand over the other, until we reach our destination.

But a tether won’t work here. In fact, a tether would be counterproductive.

So much of my training is counterproductive.

I take a deep breath.

“Ready?” I say, more to myself than to them. “Here we go.”

* * * *