Chapter Fifteen

The Ascent

Ariea’s ears churned and the world came into a dizzy focus. She looked down and liquid filtered away beneath her, into the recesses of the chamber. The pod swung open and she staggered out drunkenly, vomiting against the concrete. Her body was soaked and freezing.

It all came rushing back: Fall, Marty, Agloff, Winter. All of it. A panic gripped her. Her breath ran ragged and she recoiled onto her backside. It felt both the two minutes of waking time ago that it was, and a thousand lifetimes away all at once. A moment later, the pods whirred again, and Oxford, Merry and Memphis all staggered down from their guardians. Oxford lumbered towards Ariea.

‘Hey,’ she said, her teeth chattering. ‘At least Winter never got in. We know that.’

‘How are you?’ Merry asked with a shiver.

‘Had better days,’ Ariea jested, rubbing her sleeveless arms. ‘Does it feel like a long time to you?’ She gazed into the darkness, her eyes slowly adjusting.

‘Check!’ Oxford called from down the way, tossing a torch from one of his pockets towards them.

Ariea clicked it on. Instantly, it fell, rolling down the concrete as she snatched her hands across her mouth to stop herself from screaming. The bones of Governor Fall and his advisors were splayed across the floor, resting atop the spot where their blood still stained the concrete.

She turned next to Marty Naples. His body sat behind her. His weary features rested just beyond life. Ariea was not sure how she should feel when she saw him there. A part of her was grateful he was gone. Most of the time he had terrified her, his outbursts, mania, born of lifelong pain, and his immutable obsession with Agloff. But every so often, he would arrive at their home, gentle-souled and mild-mannered, smiling from ear to ear. For all of it, she wished only that she had known him better.

Ariea then extended an arm towards Agloff’s pod, but Oxford told her to stand back. He clicked it open and Agloff faltered into Oxford’s arms. Ariea yelped.

Agloff was set down and footsteps rushed to him. Urgent voices around Ariea melded into white noise. She turned her gaze to the back wall. She could not look. She must not look. Oxford cried something and she could hear him tear at Agloff’s shirt, stripping his chest bare.

Someone called Ariea’s name and she winced in reply. A hand guided her towards Agloff’s head. She was ordered to support it while the hand pushed a jacket beneath his greasy hair for a pillow. Agloff’s muscles had atrophied in their non-use. The wound on his arm was no less ripe than the day they entered the pod.

‘Ariea,’ he mouthed, unable to muster anything beyond silence. Ariea lowered her face to Agloff’s, where the contours of his skull were visible through his skin. She cupped his hand in her own and played at his knuckles. ‘Sorry,’ it whispered.

‘We shouldn’t have put him in so weak,’ Oxford said. ‘If it had been much longer, he would have died. Lucky we woke up when we did.’

Merry, suddenly pale, struggled for words. ‘Well, how much longer?’

Agloff’s presence was drained of all life, but the final blow.

Oxford held out a hand to his shoulder. ‘A couple of hours, then we need to go. We’ll all be dehydrated. It’ll kick in soon.’

Ariea tilted her head. ‘Won’t it be swimming with pilgrims?’ she blurted.

‘Nah. Look how long we’ve been here.’ He gestured Fall’s remains. ‘They’ll have left a long, long ago. I told Wilson to wake us when it was safe.’

‘How long?’ Ariea asked, afraid for the answer.

Oxford marched to a peculiar black box that flickered. ‘Wilson,’ he said, clapping his hands and the box hummed into a faint sort of life.

‘Uranium power reserves have been depleted, Operative Blue. To have preserved you longer risked a high probability of pod failure. My own internal power supply should remain functional for several further decades.’

Oxford hesitated. ‘How long were we in there?’ he asked.

‘Eight hundred and eight years, three months and twenty days,’ the machine said nonchalantly.

A thousand thoughts crammed themselves into Ariea’s head and she found herself unable to focus on any single one. Her grip on Agloff’s fingers loosened. It couldn’t have been. How could it have been. Ariea felt like she may suffocate. The well of dread at the foot of her stomach swelled to a peak like she might have been sick again.

‘Bloody hell,’ Oxford said faintly. ‘That’s my whole life. Just gone.’

Ariea’s mind raced from thought to thought. Did Winter even exist now? Had the Confederacy returned to occupy the Colony? Or were they still blossoming across the stars, too ashamed to return? Perhaps they were all dead and this now marked the last bastion of humankind? Had winged fever obliterated the Colony? At those last two propositions, her mind mangled them into one horrifying possibility: that the seven of them, in this chamber, were the last of their species.

She then looked down at Agloff, wheezing on rotten air, still unable to forgive him. Why should she simply because he was weak? He had not earnt her forgiveness yet. Absent time didn’t make that pain go away. He had merely repeated an apology, hoping it might eventually stick. For all Ariea’s cares for Agloff, his obsessions grated against her. Was she not enough?

Then, Lady squealed, and the chamber’s heads turned. She reached a hand up to one of the pods. ‘The pretty bride lady,’ she said. As if shaken to his senses, Oxford rushed to her side and too extended his fingers across the glass. He was momentarily captured by Alice’s vacant beauty, encased in ice, forever. A silver trail glistened down Oxford’s cheek. His head bowed and it took the briefest of moments for Ariea to clock what had happened.

Oxford roared, hurling his fist against the pod. The boom rang through the chamber, unheard by the world. The glass splintered like veins and Oxford looked as his hand bled.

‘Wilson,’ he said eventually.

‘A filter cracked in the chamber under abnormally high pressure from the pipeline manifold. This caused toxins to be absorbed into the bloodstream, poisoning Ms Blue. Given the timeframe involved, it is surprising there were no further fatalities.’

Oxford dropped to his knees. There was nothing to say. Ariea wanted to comfort him as he had her by the riverbank a thousand lifetimes ago. But she knew it was fruitless. It was unfair. Oxford was the best of them, and lost the most: Alice, Marty, and the Underground he worshiped. It was enough to break a man beyond repair. Oxford placed his lips against the splintered glass and kissed her memory a final time.

‘We should go,’ he said. He nodded frantically. ‘Yeah, yeah, we should go.’ His face twitched. His fingers writhed restlessly. ‘Come on,’ he grunted. ‘Come on, let’s go. I can’t…’ His voice fractured. ‘I can’t stay here. Let’s go,’ he said a fourth time. ‘Please.’

Ariea reached an arm towards him, but he stepped away. ‘No, no. Just— Don’t touch me! Please.’ He repeated the last word with quiet determination. ‘Come on.’

‘We can’t go yet!’ Merry protested. ‘Look at Agloff; he can’t even walk.’

Oxford’s brow furrowed. ‘Good.’ His voice was a bullet through the chamber. Ariea looked from Oxford to Agloff. Oxford was more than aggrieved. He was enraged. He knelt down to Agloff then.

‘This was your fault,’ he whispered. Agloff was paralysed, unable to stand, eyes darting in their sockets.

‘Oxford— it wasn’t,’ Merry said.

‘She died because a filter cracked in the pod. She was in the pod because our home was attacked by Winter. Because they wanted him. Because he didn’t give himself up. Marty— Marty died because he didn’t go to Fall. His fault!’ Oxford put his face to Agloff’s ear. He spoke with words so furtive; they were not meant for anyone but Agloff to hear, but Ariea did hear. ‘Give up. You may just save the rest of us.’

‘I’m not leaving here without Agloff,’ Ariea said. Oxford stood over her, but she was unmoved. Her words were final.

Stolen story; please report.

‘Then don’t leave.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry if I care more about getting the five people who actually have a chance at living out alive. What’s happened in our time together? He goes March Town, it gets blown up. He goes Underground, and everyone’s fucking dead. Stick him in the pod. Leave him. He doesn’t slow us down. We don’t die. You’re pissed off with him anyway,’ he added, pointing at Ariea. ‘You said at the wedding.’

Ariea’s face soured. ‘Hell to Feng, Oxford! It doesn’t mean I wanna let him die!’

‘Yeah?’ Oxford looked back at Alice and Marty. ‘I lost way too much to get nothing back.’

Ariea tightened her arms across her chest. ‘I get how angry you are, I do. But that is no excuse. Never. You wanna be pissed at someone, be pissed at Winter.’

‘Winter aren’t here.’

‘I’m not letting you hurt him.’

Oxford’s mouth quivered but he had nothing more to say.

‘He needs time. He will be strong enough to go up,’ Merry insisted.

Oxford leaned across her, almost forehead-to-forehead. ‘He doesn’t have any. He is too weak to move and there is nothing to help him here! How exactly do you expect him to survive? We leave him, and we just might.’

‘There was nothing I could do,’ Agloff whispered, his lips barely parting.

Oxford seemed to shrink. His eyes reddened and raw. His face pleaded. He looked less than a man in that moment. ‘You could have given yourself up,’ he begged, crouching over Agloff. Ariea could see it in him: the will to hurt. Her gaze guarded Agloff like a hawk, darting across Oxford for the slightest twitch: to raise his fist, to clench his blade.

Agloff panted. ‘They… would have come anyway.’

Oxford paused. ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘Now. If you want him, you bring him.’ He turned and trudged up the steps, hauling the vault door wide.

Ariea turned to Agloff. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’ll live,’ he said with a knowing look. ‘Help me up.’ Merry and Ariea guided him up. They shepherded him out on to the corridor beyond, guided by a lone torch Memphis had plucked from the walls of the bunker, and began to chase Oxford’s shadow.

‘How many floors you reckon you can do?’ Merry said.

‘I’ll tell you when to stop,’ Agloff panted.

Was it so bad to be grateful, Ariea thought? She kept looking at Agloff, so limp and useless, but entirely dependent on her. From here, he could not indulge in his fantasies. How she hoped it may stay that way, for his sake, and for hers. Here, he needed her. He was her last tether to the world gone by, of Backwater. She couldn’t lose that too, even if she couldn’t forgive him yet.

They set Agloff down on One-Hundred, at the remnants of Fall’s palace. The decadence had receded into atrophy. The paintings that spread the walls of the banquet hall were mired beyond recognition by mould and time. The line of Memphis’ torch cast hard shadows, and everything seemed a little sicklier for it. There was an otherworldly menace in it all. Ariea suddenly felt a great stress impose itself upon her, and she was starved of breath. It was in full of view of the Underground that it dawned on her: it really had been eight centuries.

At once, she became dizzy and a great pain throbbed between her eyeballs.

‘Anyone else got a headache?’

Oxford’s voice beckoned back. He kept a firm distance ahead. ‘We’re all dehydrated. We need to find water. I did say.’

‘How’s that gonna work then?’ Memphis snapped. His tolerance for Oxford had waned, between his treatment of Agloff, and the children Fall herded off to Jask.

‘There’ll be some in the tanks on the residential floors, any luck.’

Agloff sat down against the wall, his wound weeping again, and Ariea retightened his tourniquet. ‘Can you go get something? He’s bleeding,’ she called out.

Memphis frowned. ‘Like…?’

‘Like, I don’t know, anything!’ she barked. ‘Look for sterile bandages. Alcohol. There’ll be some somewhere, no one has touched anything.’

Now her obsession of becoming a doctor at Backwater came in handy. It was cruel that she got the grades, but the chance was stolen from her before she could turn a page of her textbook.

‘Thank you, for everything you’ve done,’ Agloff whispered. ‘And I really am sorry. Without you, I’d be dead, and I don’t think anyone’s ever meant that so literally before.’ Agloff laughed a haughty laugh.

Ariea smiled. ‘You can thank me later.’ She stopped short of accepting his apology. He had to prove it. ‘Now, shut up while I concentrate on you not-dying.’ She pressured the wound under the weight of her palm and beckoned for Merry and Memphis. A moment later, they returned with a box of first aid supplies.

Ariea cleaned the wound with rubbing alcohol, then wrapped dressing across Agloff’s shoulder best she could, tightening it. He grimaced. ‘Don’t be a baby,’ she yapped. ‘Should be good. Can you stand?’

Agloff nodded, rising sheepishly to his feet.

Their ascent was slow, and laboured, their rate of travel constrained by Agloff’s wound. The lower floors were mostly deserted for bodies, for the better, Ariea thought. Oxford led them to one of the agri-floors, where farmers grew crop for the Underground, its soil dry and undisturbed. Each of them donned a violet boiler suit from the outhouse beyond the field. Ariea was relieved to shed the dress she had worn to the wedding, and into something more comfortable.

Next, they raided the kitchen of a residential floor, siphoning water from the central tank into cannisters they each hoisted from their waists. Despite Oxford’s insistence that even canned food could not last centuries, Merry and Memphis eagerly stuffed tins of rice and beans into their satchels.

Progress then on was steady. They paused every few floors to rehydrate and allow Agloff to recover his strength. Merry and Memphis politely deferred their rice and beans to Agloff despite him struggling to hold his food.

The siege bulkhead Marty had closed on Floor Eighty was caved in at one of the stairwells. One-by-one, they leant their support to Agloff and Lady to climb through the rubble that propped open a passage to Seventy-Nine. Above was the site of the bloodiest skirmish between Winter and the Underground at Marty’s barricade. Ariea was grateful to bypass this in its entirety, lest the sight of a thousand skeletons plague her nightmares forever. Up here, some of the passageways and antechambers that guided their way through the landings were flooded by burst pipes and ruptured tanks. Even now, the plumbing creaked in its corrosion and Ariea would wince as if the whole Underground might burst like a dam.

They stopped for the night, or whatever time of day it was, at the landing on Fifty-Two, halfway exactly. Ariea was sure the darkness was getting on their moods- being forced to navigate by the perturbations of torchlight, and angled shadows. Everything irritated her, the squeak of pipes, the tickle of dust on her neck. This place was a curse. They found themselves three bunks and partitioned themselves for the night.

No one said anything the next morning. Ariea checked on Agloff’s wound, which seemed no worse for now. They munched on dried beans, and waited for Oxford to lead on. Still, it was difficult to get lost. They just had to head up. Ariea counted off each floor with every passing landing, and the panic in her chest grew in increments. Panic for the world they might find beyond the gloomy borders of the Underground.

‘How are you feeling?’ Ariea asked Agloff for the tenth time, as they finally reached the landing of One.

‘Despite all the walking, less weak. Just need a good sleep,’ Agloff said. ‘I’m sorry, Ariea,’ he added. The words fell from his mouth after a moment’s pause. It was like some forced instinct. Ariea sighed and her whole demeanour slackened, exasperated.

They stopped where they stood on the stairs. ‘Agloff, I know you’re sorry. Telling me a fourth, a fifth, a sixth time doesn’t make any difference. You’re sorry. Okay, I get it. But prove it.’ She allowed her voice to become a little harsher, a little colder. For too long she had owed herself to Agloff. She never really knew why. And now fate had entwined them for posterity. For all she told herself that she had done enough for him, that she was entitled to more, she still felt compelled to see that he was happy. And it made her unhappy that her compulsions went unappreciated.

‘How?’ Agloff said at last.

‘You’re smart, Agloff, you figure it out.’

They passed the cages where delinquents and children had been placed in ‘transit’ and along the stripes on the ground that herded them into orderly lines. Ariea felt cold at the near-distant memory. But she was glad to see them empty this time at least. Oxford grunted something as he waved a finger at the door ahead and Lady squealed excitedly.

The door to the new world.

Oxford paused with his hands against the wheel guarding the door, bronzed by rust. He puffed his cheeks as if expecting resistance. But it never came. He yanked down on the rim and the whole frame gave way. The metal screamed off its hinges, and Oxford tossed it to the side like scrap.

Sunlight bathed in through the open doorway and Ariea closed her eyes to catch it on her eyelids. She wasn’t panicked at all, she realised. She was free; this world was now her own, and with it she sensed a landscape of possibility. She helped Agloff over the crest of the final step and through the hole in the earth to the Aboveground.

First, she laughed, then fell to her knees. Merry and Lady circled each other in dance, chased by tails of dust. The land was parched and partitioned by deep cracks that cut at their feet, where the earth had boiled and broken under the relentlessness of the sun. But it was cold now and the wind had an icy bite. The world had changed in their sleep.

She looked, first to Agloff and then to Oxford, both stony-faced. One man irked by her words a moment earlier, while the other had lost a lifetime. Like Oxford, she had lost a home, but Ariea could imagine a new one here.

Her lip teetered joyfully. She had forgotten what that was like: the kiss of sunlight, the cut of a stiff breeze through her hair, the unevenness of the ground underfoot. She then stared at the horizon and pitied the souls below who never lived to see it bisect land and sky, so perfect in its flatness. Far to her left, she could see a great crater in the earth, about a mile away.

‘That wasn’t there…’ she thought aloud. Her voice tailed off.

‘No,’ said Oxford. ‘Remember… just before Winter got here, we saw that meteor across the sky? Landed quite close.’

‘No way,’ Merry exclaimed, cutting in. ‘That’s that?’

‘Seems reasonable to assume,’ Oxford replied with a shrug.

Ariea turned to Merry, wafting her arms to catch the wind in the folds of her boiler suit. ‘How’s Lady?’

Merry ummed, looking at the girl crouching on a rock, fiddling her fingers. ‘She’s alright. It’s not always easy knowing how she’s feeling. I reckon I do a good job but something like this… I don’t even know how I feel, so I really don’t know if she’s actually alright.’

Ariea sighed. ‘It’s all very make-do now. I haven’t got a clue what to do.’ Then, she laughed. ‘At Backwater I had a kind-of plan. This whole thing just completely screws with us.’ In another time, Ariea might have panicked. But the wind and sky instilled her with peculiar calm.

‘I’m the same. Memphis is the same. Agloff will be the same. Lady will be the same. But, if we’re screwed, we’re screwed together at least, right?’

Ariea smiled but was unsure how reassured she was. The wonder of stepping beyond the Underground would fade in time. In its place, the panic would start to set in between her ears, the buzz of white noise in her brain. A litany of What-ifs, and maybes. She would meet that panic when it came.

‘What now?’ Merry asked to Oxford, who cut a forlorn figure, gazing blankly out over the arid land and towards the haze of Lake Principia. He planted his arms at his sides. He looked exasperated by these people’s dependence on him and yet grateful for the responsibility, to have some meaning still ascribed to a life he was lost within.

Oxford dangled an arm out to point at a cluster of concrete stacks teetering above the horizon as far as the eye could see. To a gloomy town enshrouded by a low fog. A town that Ariea was sure wasn’t there eight centuries ago. ‘Seems as good a place as any.’