Chapter 25

There was no sound. Unless she focused, she couldn't even hear her own breathing. Her flashlight tried valiantly, but the water and the darkness beyond swallowed the light greedily. Cool water sat just below her waist; her skirt clung to her legs.

Drip. A drop of water fell from the ceiling, rolling down her back like the stroke of an icy finger. She flinched, and then mentally chastised herself for that display of weakness. She tried to, at least, but then the earth groaned and her thoughts froze.

She . . . she needed to get out of here. There was only one route she could take now: forward, deeper into the water. The thought made her shiver, and she told herself that her reaction was because of the cold, nothing else. She trudged forward; her legs dragged in water that felt like slime. Ripples radiated out before her, bouncing off walls, rolling ahead into darkness and not returning. The uneven texture of the stone walls decorated them in patches of odd shadows.

The water reached her stomach now. She gritted her teeth at the sensation and moved forward. Strange pains were blooming in her legs: numbness. The cold was getting to them, and her muscles began to complain as she forced them into action. She hoisted her purse onto her shoulder, keeping her precious evidence safe, holding the flashlight high in her other hand.

And still the path went downwards.

The water was just below her chest when the purse scraped against the ceiling; for as the floor sunk, so had the ceiling. She made her biggest mistake then: looking up. Her eyes didn't widen, but only because she didn't let them. If she were to jump, she would have surely sliced her scalp open on the rough rock above.

What was that?

She . . . For a moment, she thought something had slipped past her legs unseen. Just when she was about to attribute it to nothing, it came again: a fleeting touch, like the brush of a fish's fin. Fine. That was fine. Nothing wrong with fish. It may not even be that; it could be her skirt, swaying under the surface.

The air is stale down here. Poor circulation, the analytical part of her brain said. Yes, that was normal. Caves were not very open to the world. Air could remain trapped down here for years.

She continued onward. At the very least, the water appeared to have stopped rising. She trudged onward through an unending tunnel, both ends of which led straight into darkness. She couldn't feel her toes.

Poor circulation implies a poor redistribution of oxygen, her mind chattered. Also true. Carbon dioxide could pool in these areas like liquid.

Although the floor no longer went downward, the ceiling was still lowering. She swore it was touching her hair. As she stared into the distance, the space between ceiling and water seemed to get even narrower.

There was an incident several years ago. Some teenagers had discovered an underwater tunnel that led to a small cavern above water. The first visit went as planned, and the teenagers left without harm, vowing to return the next year.

Something made the surface jump, and water whipped her on the neck. The shock stopped her legs and without the momentum, she couldn't seem to get them to work again.

The next year, the teenagers returned. They travelled through the tunnel to the cavern. But they hadn't realized that their previous expedition had used up most of the oxygen in the cavern, and it didn't renew.

Did . . . did her flashlight flicker?

When they surface and realized there was no air, they panicked and tried to swim back.

Her lungs were burning, straining like a balloon about to hit its bursting point.

But the first one drowned, trapping the rest –

"That's enough!"

Her voice rang through the tunnel. Her body slumped, chin breaking the water's surface. Something – fear? – burst out of her in a ragged gasp that burned her throat.

"Calm down," she hissed to herself. There had been a way in; there would be a way out. Naegi knew about the cavern. She was fine. Everything was fine.

She kept going. She had to.

The tunnel stretched out into eternity. She wondered more than once if the light from her flashlight was dimming. Then she saw it: a slope of rock that extended out of the water beyond. She scrambled towards it, nearly tripping, feeling like she was walking into sunlight as she surged up that slope and out of the water.

She stumbled into a small room. two tunnels, including the one she had used, split from this place –

She hadn't seen this room before.

Her legs felt like they were about to buckle, but she made them hold strong. None of this made sense. Where was she? How did she keep entering these new areas? Was someone toying with her? That was the only conclusion she could draw, because it certainly felt true.

She started to move forward, then faltered. Which path should she take? Did it even matter? Because if past experience was anything to go by, it didn't seem to.

Stop. There's a logical explanation for this. I just haven't figured it out yet.

In the worst-case scenario, Naegi would alert Togami and the entire police department would come down here looking for her. Things would be fine. She was fine.

Before she entered the new tunnel, her flashlight happened to illuminate the wall near her. This wall wasn't flat and featureless like the ones in the water-logged tunnel. There were images – eyes – carved into the stone. Just eyes, dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds of eyes. They stretched to all corners of the wall and covered the ceiling. She turned her head away and kept going.

The tunnel widened. She could have walked side by side with a person now. it gave her comfort, because this section of the underground seemed more lived in. The walls had a slight pattern to them instead of being bare: there were ridges, shelves almost, that cut through them horizontally and divided the wall into thirds. But she soon regretted noticing that because just as those primal instincts had relaxed, she realized those weren't stones sitting on the ridges.

They were skulls.

Not human ones, thankfully. They must have belonged to animals, because humans didn't have sharp, skinny teeth. She couldn't tell what creatures they had belonged to, but whatever they were, they had protruding jaws and massive eye sockets. It physically disgusted her to think about them, to think about why they were here.

The mouth of the tunnel ahead had a metal frame for support. She examined it briefly, looking for decay. Her background knowledge told her that the decay of biomaterials was hampered in caves, but abiotic substances? That was something she didn't have expertise in. If she had to guess though, the amount of moisture present would provide good conditions for rust formation. In that case, it was reasonable to assume this place wasn't abandoned, as the frame was acceptably clean.

They'll find me. There must be a better map out there than what Tanaka has.

Still, it would be best if it didn't come to that. If Komaeda or one of the others found her, that would be disastrous.

The path went down again.

She stood at the very top of the slope. The thought of going further down, of getting even further from the surface, was very unwelcome. But this was the only path available.

She hadn't really noticed before, but in the parts of the cave she had tread so far, the floor had been deliberately smoothed. Now, she realized that, because this slope was not even. Her heels caught and slipped dangerously, and she nearly sliced her forehead open on a point on the wall.

The slope did not descend as deep as the one that had led to water. As she realized this, as she realized the floor before her had leveled out, it felt like someone had removed a large rock from her stomach. She had no interest in wading again.

The cave had narrowed again. The passage was no longer rectangular, but diamond-like. Wooden beams held up the edges of the diamond, making her squeeze through their openings. It was slow-going and –

Crack.

She whipped around at the sound –

But the damp, uneven stone made for poor traction. Before she knew it, her foot had caught on something and the world went topsy-turvy. Her arm met the stone wall and scraped, and she could feel the flesh peeling away.

She landed hard on the ground, unable to hold back a cry of pain. The arm of her jacket was torn and ragged where it had scraped against the cave wall, and her blood had splattered the wall. She didn't need to examine her arm; she could feel exactly where the wounds were.

She stayed there in the dark, holding her wounded arm close to her body, flashlight pointed towards where she thought that sound had originated. Seconds passed. Minutes. Nothing. No sign of what had caused her to startle. Whatever she had heard, it must have been earth settling or something otherwise benign. Nothing was down here with her.

She laid her flashlight on her lap and with her uninjured arm, gathered up what she had dropped. Then, she forced herself to her feet, her arm moaning in pain as her muscles contracted and shifted the flesh around them. Her pulse was heavy in those wounds, the pain coming and going like the tide, worsening whenever she took a step. She ended up wrapping her tie around her arm, the pressure helping to dull the pain.

She staggered forward, wary now, her arm reminding her every second why she needed to take it slow. Ahead, her flashlight lit up a rectangular opening and she wanted badly to run towards it, toward the the end of the tunnel.

When she finally reached that opening, she found herself in another round room. This one had seen life before. There was an altar in the centre, about chest high, with what appeared to be a large stone chalice anchored to its stand. On either side, a rectangular pillar rose from the ground, each decorated with writing. And beyond them, leading out of the room, was another seven exits.

As she looked at each exit one by one, as she failed to recognize any of them, a heavy feeling settled on her shoulders. Her legs were wet and sore, cramping now that she had stopped moving again. Her arm still stung, with the nerves sparking occasionally just to make sure she didn't get used to it. Her body felt stretched like an elastic band, aching and yearning to coil up. She checked her phone again: no signal.

two in the afternoon. She and Naegi had arrived around ten. She'd been here for four hours. No wonder she was exhausted. At this rate, who knew how long it would take to find a way out.

She closed her eyes.

She . . .

She needed help.

Naegi must have noticed her absence by now. He would have alerted Togami, and Togami would bring others to sweep the cave. They were looking for her.

Hardly noticing she was doing it, she slid down a pillar and hit the ground. She . . . she needed to wait for help. Naegi would find her, and she would let him and even Togami tell her that they had told her so.

I shouldn't waste my batteries, she thought. The cave was quiet enough that she would hear help long before they saw her. She turned off the flashlight and the world snapped into complete darkness.

Kirigiri had investigated abandoned mansions with shuttered windows; she had investigated old, rank basements sealed from the world for a dozen years; she had prowled crowded forest in the middle of the night without a flashlight. But none of those experiences had compared to this. This was a completely new level of darkness, so abnormal, so unreal that bursts of white seemed to explode in front of her eyes in protest. There was a literal mass to the darkness, weighting down her body. Shutting her eyes didn't make it much better.

She was glad it was humid and warm, because now that she was no longer moving, the chill of her soaked garments was spreading to her body. She twisted her skirt, wringing out a few drops. Her soles ached, unused to making direct contact with the ground.

Why . . . why is it warm here?

No, she wouldn't bother with that question. She was no geologist.

There weren't many options for comfort. She peeled off her jacket, wincing when fabric grazed her sensitive arm, and balled it up. It made for an incredibly crude pillow that wasn't much better than laying her head against the ground. She tucked her knees in close and tried to ignore the discomfort. She needed to regain energy for the hike out.

The dark and silence were there when she fell asleep. They were there when she woke. The only sign that time had passed was that her neck and back had a crick in them, and that she felt colder. She groaned; she hadn't meant to doze off.

How much time had she wasted? She managed to pull her cellphone out of her purse and check the time.

Eleven in the evening.

That was longer than she had expected. She hadn't expected to have been asleep for hours, given how much her body still hurt. In the dim light of her phone, she could see dried blood that had trickled down her wrist and stopped. She prodded into it with her other hand; prying the dried blood off hurt like ripping off a bandage.

She shouldn't move. They were looking for her by now. There wasn't much to do but wait.

Time passed. She checked her purse, hoping that Naegi had snuck a snack in there, but there was nothing. There was nothing to do. She couldn't even rouse the will to think.

Time passed.

Four in the morning.

This was normal. Naegi would have alerted Togami at noon, and then Togami would have to take time to organize a rescue party. Once they learned she was underground, they would have to create a strategy to sweep the cave. They'd only been searching for a few hours at this point.

Her throat was dry. It itched, but it was easy to ignore when the throbbing in her arm was worse. It wasn't like she would die of dehydration –

She wouldn't reach that point. She had faith in Naegi and the others. She . . . she might just be a little uncomfortable until then.

The next time she woke up, she knew: no one was coming.

There was no evidence to back up that claim, but instinct wasn't something to dismiss blindly either, and Kirigiri's instincts were well-honed. Something had gone wrong. Perhaps they hadn't been able to figure out how to get into the caverns, perhaps they had gone a different way (she remembered walls and curves popping out of nowhere); whatever the answer, the outcome was the same. They weren't coming for her.

That conviction hit her with startling clarity. It. . . this didn't feel like fear. Fear made the hair on the back on your neck rise, made your heart race and your muscles contract. This felt like the opposite, felt like weights had replaced her limbs and that her heart had stopped completely. She could feel the air in her lungs as it pushed outwards against her flesh.

She rose on weak legs. The flashlight clicked on but – it must have been her mind playing tricks on her – it was dimmer than before. She pointed the flashlight at each exit in turn. Which one was she supposed to take? She couldn't even recognize the one she entered through.

Rip.

She tore a paper out of Komaeda's scripture and placed it on one of the thresholds to mark the path she was taking. There was no wind, so it shouldn't move. She hated this, hated this idea of moving into the unknown and possibly entering an even more desolate section, but she couldn't stay here. If she stayed, she would never get out.

If she stayed . . .

She would die.