I was at the end of my second to last day of the journey when the airbike broke. At some point in the hours preceding, it had picked up a new rattle but since the air bike picked up new rattles like a drunk picked up bottles, I had ignored it. That had gotten more difficult as the trip dragged on but I had hoped that it would last at least until I got to the next stop. It was another cave and I didn’t have much that I could use to repair the air bike there, but I thought it was possible that something had just come loose and needed to be taped back down.
Then the whole thing began to shudder violently, and with a sudden shriek and groan of machinery failing, it fell. It hit the ground hard, the impact driving the steering mechanism into my chest, driving the breath from my lungs even with the suit’s protections before I was thrown from the bike. My HUD flashed with some message but with the entire world spinning wildly, there was no way I could read it.
I crashed down hard, not onto a thick pillow of soft snow but onto maybe a foot of hardened frost on top of solid stone. I moaned and writhed in pain like a half-squashed bug. When I finally opened my eyes I could read the suit’s message.
Sudden change in velocity detected. Would you like to activate safety measures?
I glanced at the yes and the suit’s eye tracking systems decided to pick up on it. There was a puffing sound and the suit’s outer layer expanded as though I’d suddenly gained about five hundred pounds.
“Euclid are you okay?” Ai asked. Cyrus was busy dissolving into gales of laughter.
“You look like a human croissant!” he all but yelled, choking and gasping as he tried to get enough air to laugh harder.
“Yeah. I think I’m okay.” I said, muting Cyrus until he’d gotten it all out of his system. It took a full five minutes for the suit to deflate, but at least that gave the suit time to give me a diagnostic on my injuries. According to it, there was only bruising which was nice. It would have really sucked to crack another rib like I had the last time the air bike had gone to pieces on me suddenly.
Once I was able to get back up and take a look at the airbike though, I didn’t feel so lucky. I stood there for a long minute, just looking at it. The suit’s scanners catalogued the damage as my eye traveled from piece to piece.
A small icon of an envelope appeared in my HUD. I opened it and a small chat window appeared with Cyrus’s helmeted head as an icon at the top. The only message was,
Hey! Unmute me.
I thought about just leaving him on silent for a while but I hit the icon that let him speak again.
“Rude,” he said as soon as the voice channel was active again.
“Yes. You are,” Ai said. I was surprised. I’d never heard that tone in her voice before. Then again, I wasn’t rude.
“Whatever. How bad is the damage?” Cyrus asked.
“Bad. Very bad,” I said. They were both silent and again I felt just how desperately alone I was. They might have been able to talk to me but I was alone out here all the same.
“Can you repair it?” Cyrus asked at last. I pressed my lips together and shook my head slowly.
“I could if this had happened while we were still within a day's walk of the Ariel. But we’re not. I don’t have the tools I need. Or the scrap.”
Saying that out loud let it sink in just how bad this was.
“I don’t know if I can get back n-“
“Hey!” Cyrus shouted suddenly, interrupting me. The noise made me jump and I looked around wondering if there was some threat he’d seen. But my eyes fell on his video window. I still couldn’t see his face but there was something in his posture, the way he’d leaned closer to the camera, his helmeted head jutting forward, that spoke of anger.
“Do not talk like that. You’re going to get home. You might not know how you’re going to get back, but you are going to get back.”
“Cyrus I-“
“No. Not right now. You can’t afford any more of your self-defeating crap. You listen to me. You. Are. Going. To. Survive. And you’re going to do it because you are the most badass, capable human on that planet, do you understand me?”
“I’m the only huma-“
“Do you understand me?” He repeated louder.
“I- I understand.”
“Then say it.”
“I…” I gave a sigh. He was right after all. I was alone. There was no one else out here. If I let myself start thinking it was over, it would be. “I am the most badass, capable human on this planet.”
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I had to admit, even though I felt a bit sheepish about it, it felt good to say that.
“You’re damn right you are. Now, let's figure this thing out.”
I nodded.
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Thank you, Cyrus,” Ai said, genuine gratitude in her voice.
“Hey, it’s my neck on the line too,” Cyrus said, a bit embarrassed.
“Ai, how long will it take me to get to the next shelter?” I asked. The sun would still be up for another hour, maybe hour and a half but the cold was already beginning to settle in. It almost felt like an actual entity, staring at me and wondering if it should move in for the kill now.
“On foot it should only take you an hour. You should get moving though. This far out I wasn’t able to get as much information on each location as I would have liked. If you need to go to the alternate location it could be bad for you.”
“Okay. Be sure to drop a pin here on our map. If I figure out away to fix the bike, even just enough to limp back, I don’t want to try and search for it under the snow,” I said.
“Already done,” Ai answered. I figured she would have. She was smarter than me after all.
I went to the remains of the airbike and pulled out what little supplies I’d had there and set them in a backpack. It felt weird to wear over the suit, not being able to feel its texture or even its weight. But that wasn’t as strange as looking at the air bike and wondering if it was the last time I’d see it.
The bike was kind of a piece of crap, but it was my piece of crap. I’d built it. I’d worked on it and repaired it just about every day for months. I’d sunk a lot of time and effort into it and it had served me as well as I could have hoped. Better even. I was no engineer, and yet it had faithfully carried me back and forth over hundreds of miles of snow. It felt wrong to just leave it there, like I was abandoning a pet or a friend.
But there wasn’t any other option. And Ai was right. I needed to get moving.
So I turned around and started walking. I picked up speed and soon I was running away, leaving the airbike to be buried under the already falling snow.
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A miserable hour later (the running wasn’t so bad, but Cyrus insisted on playing me his “pump up” playlist and every song on it was worse than the last) I reached the location where the night’s rest stop was supposed to be. Supposed to be, but wasn’t.
The terrain had become rockier and hillier as I’d gone further and further out, which hadn’t helped my running. It also meant that I couldn’t really see where the cave that I was supposed to stay in could be. It could have been around any corner or behind any ridge.
“Ai? I’m in the right spot aren’t I?”
“Yes although since the tracking for your location isn’t precise, the cave could be anywhere within about five hundred feet of you.”
“Great. So I just have to search around until I find it?”
“That does seem to be the case, yes. I am sorry that I cannot be more precise.”
“It’s fine,” I mumbled, annoyed at the situation. I was tired and wanted to lay down. There wasn’t anything that could be done except search though.
I started walking in circles. It makes more sense than you’d think. Since I knew the cave had to be reasonably close, by walking in a gradually widening concentric circle I had to find it eventually.
“You know kid, you should be careful about this,” Cyrus said.
“What do you mean?”
“I just have a bad feeling is all. It’s weird that you can’t turn up this cave, right? How much do we know about it?”
“Ai? How much do we know?”
“The information is not complete. However, a mining ship that crashed about fifteen miles north of here was able to perform a scan of the area and found that there should be an entrance to a cave system very close to where you’re standing.”
“We don’t know anything else about this cave?” Cyrus asked, incredulous.
“You’ll recall that lack of information was a reason that I was against this course of action,” Ai said, her dry tone a barb.
“Guys, it’s fine. I’m sure I’ll find it soo-“
And then the ground disappeared beneath my feet. Or rather, I took a step and the ground wasn’t there to meet me. I fell through a snowdrift and the whole world went white. I hit the ground hard enough to rattle in the suit. The stupid suit that didn’t bother to ask if I wanted to deploy its airbags or whatever it had said.
I rolled over and found myself at the mouth of a cave.
“Well, I found it,” I said. As soon as I spoke, I knew something wasn’t right. It took me a moment to realize what it was though.
I was moving. The mouth of the cave seemed to be widening, like a mouth preparing to devour me.
“Oh crap,” I said as I realized what was happening. The mouth of the cave was a steep slope rather than a gradual one. The piled snow had hidden it but now that I had disturbed it, the whole mass was beginning to slide into the darkness.
And it was taking me with it.
“Kid, don’t move,” Cyrus said at the same time that Ai said,
“Euclid you have to be still.”
They were right. Too bad my body wasn’t listening to them.
I scrambled, trying to fling myself away from the entrance to the cave. All I did was start a miniature avalanche. The wave of snow dragged me down towards the opening.
“No, no, no,” I whispered to myself as the darkness reached out for me. I screamed as the snow began to move faster, and I couldn’t stop myself from sliding in.
There should have been more sound. It was a weird thing to think as the light disappeared above me. But instead, it was nearly peaceful, the snow muffling everything. The only clear thing was Ai and Cyrus screaming my name in my ears and when the ground disappeared from beneath me even that sound cut out, sudden and final, like a lifeline snapping.
I don’t remember hitting the ground. I know I did because I didn’t fall forever, even if I still sometimes dream that I am still falling through endless darkness, the air from my own screaming hitting my face. Either the suit’s fall protection system’s kicked in or the snow that fell with me was enough to slow my impact to survivable levels.
Either way, I woke in pitch blackness, hours later. I thought I’d frozen stiff, it was so hard to move at first. Pain throbbed through my head, neck and shoulders but that wasn’t so bad. According to the suit I had a concussion again. That was scary, especially since I’d been unconscious. Wasn’t much I could do about it though.
“Ai?” I asked.
Silence.
“Cyrus?” I tried not to hear the quaver in my own voice.
“Anybody?” I asked, stupidly. Only then did I notice the icon up in the corner of my HUD. The series of lines that represented the suit’s signal strength. There was only three little dots and occasionally a tiny piece of scrolling text that read Searching.
I was completely and utterly alone, in absolute, perfect darkness that even my suit’s night vision systems couldn’t pierce. And I was afraid to turn on the suit’s lights for fear that I would find out that I was not alone, that something stalked the darkness with me, waiting only for me to give some sign of where I was.
But there weren’t any options. There never were. I made myself sit up and turn on the suit's light. It came from a small bulb mounted in my helmet. The light showed me that I was, in fact, not alone. I was surrounded by corpses.
Corpses I recognized.