The material reminded Henrik of a insect’s carapace; black and hard as stone, but with an iridescent sheen like the surface of a bubble. Slight imperfections in the surface made it appear unmistakably organic. He’d felt for a while now like he was exhuming some monstrous invertibrate.
“They won’t buy your story,” said Helli. She’d already downed tools, and was standing over Henrik with hands on hips, looking grave. “As soon as one of the stiffs from Central heads down here for a photo op, they’ll see what you’re doing. They’ll know you lied, they’ll shut us down, and neither of us will ever do field work again."
Henrik put down his chisel. She was right, he knew. But he had no intention of letting anyone from Central near the dig.
“You’ve never excavated relics before. I have. And yet -“ he turned to face her and smiled, raising his arms in a shrug - “here I am!”
In less than an hour, he’d likely be dead. And yet all he could think about were his boots. Why, he wondered, *had they taken his boots?"
The guards were frogmarching him through the cave. Every few steps one of Otis’s bare feet would slip on a deposit of algae or slime, and the guards would haul him upright again and bark insults or instructions in his ear. “Get up, traitor. It’ll be worse for you if we keep him waiting.”
The cave was lit by a long string of LED bulbs, fixtures drilled into the cave wall every few metres. They cast a dazzling blueish light over the glistening rock, the three figures casting a distorted shadow on the crags of the opposite wall as they marched towards the palace. God, his feet didn’t half hurt.
Another stumble and a shouted curse from the guard suddenly made Otis aware of the noise in the cave. The man had to shout to be heard over the din. Otis had dimly registered a hissing as they’d made their halting progress through the tunnel, but it grown to a thunderous, echoing roar. They must be close.
They turned a corner, it was as if earplugs had been removed from Otis’s ears. The roar became louder still, and clearer, and it was immediately obvious why: they had entered a vast circular cavern enclosed on one side by a monstrous waterfall. The shimmering blue cascade formed a semi-circle around them, and even at his current distance Otis could feel a cold mist-like spray of droplets on his bare skin.
Transfixed by the spectacle, he realised his mouth was open. He strained against the grip of the guards on his upper arms. If he could only get to the water, just reach out a hand to feel it rush over him, he could die satisfied, he thought.
“At last!” shouted a high-pitched male voice. Otis peeled his eyes away from the water and saw him: Lord Hemel, dressed in plain black overalls and holding a small cup in long fingered hands. “My poor child, straying so far from the flock. You must be exhausted. Here -“
And to Otis’s astonishment Hemel held out the cup for him to take a sip. He half expected to wretch, for the cup to contain urine or poison or worse, but it was water. Crisp, clean water.
Eventually, the wreckage had become his obsession.
It had started harmlessly enough. A lunch break spent working through the scanner reports. An air of distraction over dinner, as if something visible only to him were catching his eye. But as the weeks progressed, her brother’s preoccupation had slid into darker territory.
“It’s not just a signal,” he had whispered to her, eyes darting cautiously to the adjacent empty desks in the workshop. “The wreck’s actively communicating with us! I missed it before, but look.”
Harrison placed his tablet onto her desk, on top of the schematics she’d been reviewing. His hands had a slight tremble, she noticed.
“It’s a two-way exchange, Clarissa. Look: the wreck’s responding to our attempts to scan it.” He zoomed in to a point on his timeline, which he’d adorned with colour-coded annotations, links to datasets, sound files displayed as waveforms. Clarissa felt her skin prickle with apprehension.
“This is why the readings made no sense!" he continued, breathlessly. "Each set of readings is just a response to whatever we sent two days before. It’s all spoofed. It’s like a conversation in a slow motion."
She’d stood up at the point. She’d turned to face him, taken his hand, and asked if they could talk it over later, somewhere less open. Privately she’d been thinking about therapists, trusted colleagues, anyone else who might be able to reason Harrison out of his frenzy - or at least calm him down. But he’d been having none of it.
“You’re not listening,” he’d hissed, eyes again darting to the desks next to Clarissa’s. “I think someone else knows. Someone else on the Comms unit, maybe. I’m - I think I’m being followed, Clarry.”
The use of his childhood nickname for her had taken her off-guard, and annoyed her. She’d raised her voice at that point, told him he was being impulsive and irrational, and that she didn’t want to hear any more about it. This had been more effective than she’d intended; he stepped away from her, tablet now clutched to his chest, his breathing deep.
She’d never forgot his expression at that moment. He’d looked at her with a mixture of sadness and grim satisfaction. As if another of his wild theories had been vindicated. You’re in on it too, aren’t you? his face seemed to ask.
And that had been the last time she saw him. He hadn’t answered his door when she ascended to his lonely spot on the habitat ring later that evening, nor had he switched on his terminal. The next day he wasn’t anywhere on the Comms deck, and no-one had seen him since the previous evening. He’d vanished.
"Pop on down for a chat in the morning", the note had read. No request or agenda, no clue as to precisely what Hades wanted to chat about. Just "a chat".
In the century Warren had known him, Hades had never been quite so vague in his summons. Nor indeed, so friendly. These kinds of requests - infrequent as they were - usually tended towards the grandiose. The last time he'd received a summons from Hades, it had been written on a wax-sealed scroll and hand delivered by one of his imps. "You are hereby summoned to present your ideas on reforms for the Demonic Congress," it had read, with all the pomposity he'd come to expect. Not this time.
Warren placed the scrap of paper aside, and stood up from his desk. Perhaps it wasn't even from Hades, he thought hopefully. Hades had his own staff now. Maybe one of them was acting as a private secretary, and had sent the note without oversight?
No sooner had this thought entered his mind, than an image of poor Pog swam into his mind. Hades was a stickler for detail and lived by his fearsome reputation - when Pog had spoken out of turn in front of the congress, he'd been sentenced to forty years in the furnaces.
