It got colder as I moved deeper into the cave. The darkness became a gloom that pressed in close all around me, seeming to reach for me through my suit to place icy hands to my skin. The glow from my suit’s helmet mounted flashlight didn’t seem to pierce that inky blackness so much as push it back a little, to hold it at bay.

The silence was overwhelming. The feedback from my own body’s movement was all that was with me. The sound and impact of my feet hitting the stone. My breathing and heartbeat, filling my ears. My own breath, thrown back in my face off the screen of my HUD.

But I was moving and that felt better than being stuck back in that tomb. I couldn’t think about the faces in there. I could only promise myself that I would come back and rescue them from that darkness. But to do that, I had to get out myself.

Euclid, your suit can help you map the cave the same way it does when we explore unfamiliar ships.

“It can?” I asked out loud and stopped to flick through the menus in my suit’s options to turn on the suit’s mapping feature. “Holy shit, it can.”

An approximation of the tunnel I was in and the room I’d left, along with the other tunnels that lead off from it, appeared in front of me. I had to work for way too long to adjust it so that it was only in the corner of my screen instead of filling it. A few more minutes of fiddling around and I had it showing enough of the map in that tiny corner that it was actually useful instead of just a few yards back and forth in the tunnel.

The tunnel branched twice before opening up into a larger cavern. That larger cavern had yet more tunnels that lead off in other directions. I suddenly understood why the crew hadn’t tried to escape this way. Without a map, it would be incredibly easy to get lost in here. Still it was strange that so many had decided to stay rather than risk it. Though I supposed that if any had risked it, I wouldn’t know unless I found their bodies as well.

Three tunnels later I was starting to get worried that I’d just keep going down and down forever but I found my first dead end. My initial plan was to avoid going downward as much as possible but it seemed that every branch that sloped upward dipped back down not long after. After that I just tried tunnels at random, though I stopped going down the ones that started getting tight. I didn’t want to try and squeeze through a tunnel that was too small and get stuck. Just the idea of it, being caught between rocks waiting for my suit’s power or food to run out with no possibility that someone would come to save me, was enough to make my skin crawl.

I’d been at it for nearly five hours, trying tunnel after tunnel, occasionally getting encouraging messages from Ai or Cyrus, and was considering trying to find a spot to at least take a nap when I found a footprint.

It was pressed lightly into some mud and I nearly didn’t see it. My first instinct was to think that the mapping system in the suit had messed up and I’d come across my own track. But just placing my own foot over the print told me that couldn’t be the case. I wasn’t a particularly big person but the suit had a lot of material to it and my own footprint would be significantly bigger. Not to mention, it didn’t have boot treads.

Someone else had been down this tunnel. God only knew when. It couldn’t possibly have been recently. Could it?

Hope and fear both flared in my chest at once. Another person could be someone that could help me escape. At the same time, these caves were scary enough when they weren’t haunted by some potentially dangerous or insane person that might be hungry enough to…

That didn’t bear thinking about. I firmly pushed the thought out of my mind and headed, quietly, in the direction the footprint led.

Thirty seconds later my head was filled with images of being spit roasted by a mad-eyed cannibal. Which was ridiculous. There was no way he’d have an apple to stick in my mouth, no matter how much my mind insisted on playing the image in my head again and again.

“I’m not going to get eaten. I’m not going to get eaten. I’m not going to get eaten,” I muttered to myself again and again as I headed deeper into the tunnel. A new message popped up in my HUD as I went.

Hey kid, at least you’re alone down there. No monsters or C.H.U.D.’s to come and eat you.

“The hell is a C.H.U.D?” I had to stop and wonder. Which only brought new horrifying ideas into my head. Thanks Cyrus.

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I had to go slower after I found the track. There wasn’t enough dirt or dust or whatever was on the ground to follow tracks consistently and I had no real way of knowing how old the track was. Whoever made it could have come down here, found no way out, and then gone back to the camp and could still be there for all I knew. So if I wanted to see any more tracks I had to be very careful to watch for them as I went.

Not only that but Cyrus’ message really did have me on edge. If someone was down here, the risk of being attacked was very real. The survival suit would give me a massive advantage in any combat situation with a person who didn’t have a suit of his own. Even so, the thing was far from invincible. If someone landed a solid surprise attack the fight could be over before I had a chance to do anything. And then I’d be dead.

So with that cheerful thought, I lowered the brightness on my headlamp and trudged onward.

The first couple tunnels I went down had me thinking that I was following a madman. They didn’t just slope downward. It was nearly ninety degree angles in some places. Not only that but this wasn’t the nice neat series of dead ends that let me eliminate paths. This twisting rats nest of tunnels intersected and double back across each other over and over again. Without the suit to map this for me I would have been lost in minutes.

It took me a very long time to catch on to the mad man’s solution. He left scores on the rock down here with some kind of tool. Once I picked up on it, I saw the marks everywhere. He must have been down here for a very long time, carefully making his notches, crafting his map onto the cave itself.

Eventually I found that I wasn’t creeping through the tunnels anymore. I didn’t call out but I wasn’t as afraid to find this person anymore. If anything, I dreaded finding what was by far the most likely outcome, a dead body. I didn’t want to believe that someone this resourceful, determined had met such a bleak end.

Which was why when, in the distance I saw light, my heart leapt in my chest. My first thought was that it had to be someone else’s head lamp light. But it was too steady. I had to check my clock. There was no way I’d been down there all night. But it was daytime outside. And as soon as I saw that, the night’s weariness hit me in a wave.

Could it be this simple? This easy? Had everyone else really stayed up there to die while one of them kept on fighting and trying long enough to find their way out?

I hadn’t found a body. It was possible. Maybe they were out there and they’d been able to find shelter. The only way to find out was to go forward.

I started ahead again and before I’d taken more than three steps, the survival suit froze. I tried to take a step and it simply would not respond. Suddenly afraid that the thing’s programming had failed or that it had run out of power without warning, I instinctively staggered back.

The suit worked fine for that and, surprised by that, I fell on my ass. Of course. And from my new perspective, no longer fixated on the light at the end of the tunnel, I saw what it had saved me from.

There was an enormous, gapping, maw of a gap between me and the exit. The fall was easily a hundred yards down. The gap was probably only about twenty or twenty five feet. But in the dark with the light ahead of me, leaving me blind to everything else, it was so easy to miss, and the fall would have been horrible.

A sinking feeling hit me in the gut. Had the person I’d been following done what I had? Seen the light at the end of the tunnel and nothing else?

I shined my light down into the gap at its brightest setting but I still couldn’t see anything at the bottom. I looked across at the gap. It was possible for a person to make it across, even without a suit. A person close to the limits of what was athletically possible for any human but possible. So what if my guide had tried and failed?

What if I tried and failed?

Well, as far down as that drop was, probably a couple seconds of screaming and then a whole lot of very sudden nothing.

I paced around at the edge of the gap, staring at the ledge and then out across to the other side. Daylight was right there. Just within my grasp. I just had to have faith in myself to make it across.

“Yeah. Right. That’s real easy,” I muttered.

Euclid, I know you’re still down there. I know you can make it. Please come back to me.

I stopped in my tracks, staring at that message for a long time. A weird feeling hit my gut as I read it again and again, something I didn’t recognize, had never dealt with before. I chewed on my lip and gave the ledge one more look. I couldn’t do this on my own but with the suit, it shouldn’t be very hard.

I just had to be sure. I just had to run at that ledge and leap like I knew I’d land on the other side. If I really believed in myself, if I trusted the suit’s abilities, I’d clear that.

I closed my eyes and paced away from the edge, as far back as I could. From there I looked back at the way I’d come. Was it possible that there was another way back there? Maybe something the people at the camp hadn’t seen?

I leaned my head against the wall. I knew that was possible. I hadn’t exactly searched that cavern thoroughly. But going back there would just weaken my resolve. And I couldn't wait here forever.

Please come back to me.

I heard the words in her voice. I thought of Ai, alone in that ship. I thought of her slowly dying, never knowing exactly what happened to me.

Then I turned and crouched down in a runner's stance. In my head I counted down from ten, trying to calm myself and focus everything on what I was about to do. Terrible images filled my head as the numbers slowly drew down on me.

Three.

What if I...

Two.

I don’t know if I can!

One.

I burst into motion, driving myself forward. I ran like devil himself was coming behind me. I had to run at the very limit of what I could do, give myself no choice but to jump.

I screamed as the ledge came at me, the pit yawning like a dragon’s terrible maw.

And then, I flew.