looked so inviting, an end to the blind scrambling, no more of her helmet bumping into what she couldn’t see.
Her arm briefly tangled with the power cord; she shook it free and hauled herself toward that tall column of water ahead, that flooded straw, that sunken stairway.
Before she got there, she had her first spasm, like a hiccup, a violent and automatic gasp for air. She lost her grip on the line and felt her chest nearly burst from the effort of breathing. The temptation to shed her helmet and take a deep inhalation of water overpowered her. Something in her mind insisted she could breathe the stuff. Just give her a chance, it said. One lungful of the water. Anything other than the toxins she had exhaled into her suit, a suit designed to keep such things
Her throat spasmed again, and she started coughing in her helmet as she pulled her way into the stairwell. The rope was there, held down by the wrench. She swam for it, knowing it was too late. As she yanked down, she felt the slack coming—the loose end of the rope spiraled in sinking knots toward her.
She drifted slowly toward the surface, very little of the built-up pressure inside her suit, no quick ride to the top. Another throat spasm, and the helmet had to come off. She was getting dizzy, would soon pass out.
Juliette fumbled for the clasps on her metal collar. The sense of deja vu was overpowering. Only this time, she wasn’t thinking clearly. She remembered the soup, the fetid smell, crawling out of the dark walk-in. She remembered the knife.
Patting her chest, she felt the handle sticking out from its sheath. Some of the other tools had wiggled out of their pockets; they dangled from lines meant to keep them from getting lost, lines that now just made them a nuisance, turned them into more weights holding her down.
She rose gently up the stairwell, her body shivering from the cold and convulsing from the absence of breathable air. Forgetting all reason, all sense of where she was, she became singularly aware of the noxious fog hanging all around her head, trapped by that dome, killing her. She aimed the blade into the first latch in her collar and pressed hard.
There was a click and a fine spray of cold water against her neck. A feeble bubble lurched out of her suit and tumbled up her visor. Groping for the other latch, she shoved the knife into it, and the helmet popped off, water flooding over her face, filling her suit, shocking her with the numbing cold and dragging her, sinking, back down to where she’d come from.
The freezing cold jolted Juliette to her senses. She blinked her lids against the sting of the green water and saw the knife in her hands, the dome of her helmet spinning through the murk like a bubble heading in the wrong direction. She was slowly sinking after it, no air in her lungs, hundreds of feet of water pressing down.
She jabbed the knife into the wrong pocket on her chest, saw drivers and spanners hanging by their cords from her struggle through the blackness, and kicked toward the hose that still led through four levels of water toward the surface.
Bubbles of air leaked out of her collar and across her neck, up through her hair. Juliette seized the hose and stopped her plummet, pulled upward, her throat screaming for an intake of air, of water, of anything. The urge to swallow was overpowering. She started to pull herself up, when she saw, in the undersides of the steps, a shimmering flash of hope.
Trapped bubbles. Maybe from her descent. They moved like liquid solder in the hollow undersides of the spiral staircase.
Juliette made a noise in her throat, a raw cry of desperation, of effort. She pawed through the water, fighting the sinking of the suit, and grasped the railing of the submerged stairway. Pulling herself up and kicking off of the railing, she made it to the nearest shimmer of bubbles, grabbed the edge of the stairs, and pushed her mouth right up to the metal underside of the step.
She inhaled a desperate gasp of air and sucked in a lot of water in the process. She dove her head below the surface and coughed into the water, which brought the burn of fluids invading her nose. She nearly sucked in a lungful of water, felt her heart racing and ready to burst out of her chest, stuck her face back up against the wet rusty underside of the step, and with her lips pursed and trembling, managed to take in a gentle sip of air.
The tiny flashes of light in her vision subsided. She lowered her head and blew out, away from the step, watching the bubbles of her exhalation rise, and then pressed her face close for another taste.
Air.
She blinked away underwater tears of effort, of frustration, of relief. Peering up the twisted maze of metal steps, many of them moving like flexible mirrors where the trapped air was stirred by her mad gyrations, she saw a pathway like no other. She kicked off and took a few steps at a time, pulling herself hand over hand in the gaps between, drinking tiny bubbles of air out of the several-inch hollow beneath each tread, praising the tight welds where the diamond plate steps had been joined many hundreds of years ago. The steps had been boxed in for strength, to handle the traffic of a million impacts of boots, and now they held the gaseous overflow from her descent. Her lips brushed each one, tasting metal and rust, kissing her salvation.
The green emergency lights all around her remained steady, so Juliette never noticed the landings drifting past. She just concentrated on taking five steps with each breath, six steps, a long stretch with hardly any air, another mouthful of water where the bubble was too thin to breathe, a lifetime of rising against the tug of her flooded suit and dangling tools, no thought for stopping and cutting things free, just kick and pull, hand over hand, up the undersides of the steps, a deep and steady pull of air, suck this shallow step dry, don’t exhale into the steps above, easy now. Five more steps. It was a game, like Hop, five squares in a leap, don’t cheat, mind the chalk, she was good at this, getting better.
And then a foul burn on her lips, the taste of water growing toxic, her head coming up into the underside of a step and breaking through a film of gas-stench and slimy oil.
Juliette blew out her last breath and coughed, wiping at her face, her head still trapped below the next step. She wheezed and laughed and pushed herself away, banging her head on the sharp steel edge of the stairs. She was free. She briefly bobbed below the surface as she swam around the railing, her eyes burning from the oil and gas floating on top. Splashing loudly, crying for Solo, she made it over the railing. With her padded and shivering knees, she finally found the steps.
She’d made it. Clinging to the dry treads above her, neck bent, gasping and wheezing, her legs numb, she tried to cry out that she made it, but it escaped as a whimper. She was cold. She was freezing. Her arms shivered as she pulled herself up the quiet steps, no rattle from the compressor, no arms reaching to assist her.
“Solo—?”
She crawled the half dozen treads to the landing and rolled onto her back. Some of her tools were caught on steps below, tugging at her where they were tied off to her pockets. Water drained out of her suit and splashed down her neck, pooled by her head, ran into her ears. She turned her head—she needed to get the freezing suit off—and found Solo.
He was lying on his side, eyes shut, blood running down his face, some of it already caked dry.
“Solo?”
Her hand was a shivering blur as she reached and shook him. What had he done to himself?
“Hey. Wakethefuckup.”
Her teeth were chattering. She grabbed his shoulder and gave him a violent shake. “Solo! I need help!”
One of his eyes parted a little. He blinked a few times, then bent double and coughed, blood flecking the landing by his face.
“Help,” she said. She fumbled for the zipper at her back, not realizing it was Solo who needed
Solo coughed into his hand, then rolled over and settled once again to his back. The blood on his head was still flowing from somewhere, fresh tracks trickling across what had dried some time before.
“Solo?”
He groaned. Juliette pulled herself closer, could barely feel her body. He whispered something, his voice a rasp on the edge of silence.
“Hey—” She brought her face close to his, could feel her lips swollen and numb, could still taste the gasoline.
“Not my name—”
He coughed a mist of red. One arm lifted from the landing a few inches as if to cover his mouth, but it never
