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I couldn't. Darkness was rising with the water, soft squelching sounds behind me that Iknew was just the water sucking at the steps but my imagination had no trouble making into soft padded feet. Before the last glimmer faded and the dark wrapped close and soft as cotton wool over my eyes, the clutching of claustrophobia began in my chest. There wasn't enough air. If I didn't drown in the flood I would in the darkness, the weight of how many tons of earth and rock pressing down to crush the life out of me.
Focus. You have to focus. You have to.
I knew I had to. I tripped, barked both knees, and fell, my head hitting the wall with a sickening crack that made phantom stars swirl in front of my starving eyes.
Dammit, Da
Claustrophobia descended on me, sheer terror wringing out what little sanity I had left. This was like Rigger Hall again, like the Faraday cage in the basement, where I had learned to fear dark closed spaces. It was ever so much worse than an elevator, because there was no escape.
My left shoulder flared with soft heat. It was so warm I expected it to glow as I stared up at the ceiling, stone edges digging into my hip and the back of my head. Wait a second. I can see.
I shifted, and the light moved too, dappling the stone as soft wet sounds drew closer.
Just like a demon to die and leave his house to flood. The hideous, panicked amusement in the thought was a thin shield against rising hysteria. The light moved again as I tilted my head.
It was my emerald, glowing fiercely. Green light danced as I moved my head, slowly, watching the play of color against the stone. Spectral illumination — far too much to come from the one tiny gem in my cheek — bathed the steps. My tat writhed madly on my cheek, an itching so familiar and so comforting tears pressed hot against my eyes. I blinked them away. With the light came a little air past the clutching in my chest.
Get up, Da
I didn't want to. I wanted to lie there and rest. If you stop moving you'll drown. Get up. Move.
I couldn't. I just wanted to rest. Just for a moment, until I could find enough breath to move. Until the terror went away.
Then Lucifer's already won. The deep voice was pitiless.
Merciless. It wasn't someone else's voice used to prod me into action, unconsciously using a familiar tone so I could pretend someone was here with me, that I wasn't alone. Are you going to let him win?
"Shut up," I whispered. "Shut the fuck up."
You might as well admit it, Da
The soft lapping drew closer. How far below the water table were the mosaics, Inhana's dark eyes now watching blackness instead of the slow dragging passage of time and the shuffling of her A'nankhimel?
The thin moaning sound, I realized, was mine. I was lying on the steps groaning while the water rose. Like a beaten animal cowering in a corner.
Just stay there. The deep voice sounded disgusted. I sounded disgusted at myself.
The Knife hummed in my hand. Squelching, lapping sounds moved closer, teasingly.
"Get up," I whispered. "Get up, you bitch." If I can talk I can breathe.
I tried. My legs refused to move. The muscles were shaking, quivering as nerves rebelled, drunk on terror. Just lie there, sunshine. Choke a little bit when the water reaches you. It will all be over soon, and you can rest.
Here in the dark. Forever.
It was amazing. Laughter rose inside me, from the wrecked place where I used to be human. It bubbled up past my lips, a dark rancid howl, and my eyes rolled up inside my head as I strained, the chilling little giggles broken by a long hu
I twitched.
Just lie there, sunshine. The voice was so reasonable, so calm, and so fucking disgusted with me. It's all over. "Like… hell… it… is!" The pauses between the words filled up with howling, insane laughter. Something cold touched my boots. Moved up, slowly, along the outside edge of my shins, my soaked jeans turning colder as fresh fingers of water caressed them.
I jerked away from those caressing fingers. Scrambled, finding fresh strength as the Knife hummed in my hand like a high-voltage cable. The world turned gray, light from the emerald set in my cheek bleaching stone. Strings of damp hair fell in my face. I was sweating, great drops of unhealthy water standing out on my skin. Salt stung my eyes as I gasped, heaving for air against the constriction around my ribs.
I made it up to my knees.
Well, look at that, the disgusted voice remarked. You can move after all.
"Shut up." Then I saved my breath for moving. The mark on my shoulder spilled a wave of strength down my skin, working in, barely enough to keep me upright. I choked on something hot rising from my abused, empty stomach, and stumbled along.
Each step was torture, working against the weight of childhood fear like a lead blanket. My knees felt shattered, my thighs on fire, my neck steel-strung cables drawn tight by a demented dwarf. I climbed up, swearing at myself with each step, curses that spilled past my lips the longer I moved, until I was gasping both for breath to move and to keep up the string of obscenities.
The sound of water faded. I kept going, until the stairs vanished and I emerged into a long, low corridor lit by orange orandflu strips, long-burning firesafe illumination. My breath returned with a whoosh, claustrophobia easing. I stared at the shapes on either side of the hall, not believing what I saw.
What the hell?
Stacked on either side of the hall were bones. Great pyramids of skulls over neatly piled femurs, pelvic bowls stacked like bread bowls, the arched shapes of what I realized were ribs arranged aesthetically, fingerbones mortared into the wall, smaller bones sticking into crumbling concrete.
Sekhmet sa'es. Catacombs. The word swam up through layers of shock and exhaustion, and I let out a short bark of relief. My lips were cracked and stinging with salt. My clothes were ruined, blood and seawater drying as they plastered against my fevered skin. I itched all over. Skulls leered at me, their empty eyes holes of madness.
They're dead, Da
"Anubis-" The prayer began, but I stopped it short. On my own again.
But the emerald, and my tat -
Don't think about that now. You have other credits to fry right now.
The walls trembled. I put out a hand to steady myself, touched a stack of bones that spilled from their careful teetering and puffed into dust on the way to the floor. The splinters that reached the stone broke with a dry whispering sound. How long had they been down here?
What was that? I braced myself against more crumbling bones.
The scar on my shoulder rippled with heat. And not just that — a sudden certainty bloomed just below the smoking surface of my mind, losing any conscious semblance of thought. It felt like a grassfire inside my skull, like I'd once seen on the rolling sava