90
Echoes
"An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. Every murmur struck her with new terror…" – Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
It was dark. That darkness, together with the lashing of the wind and the rain it brought with it, made it almost impossible for Miyako to see where she was going. She had no idea where she was. That last big blast seemed to have rattled her mind. Where had Hawkmon gotten off to? She called for him, but the storm tore the words away as they left her mouth.
She walked onward, struggling to maintain balance in the face of the terrific wind. Lightning flashed, followed immediately by thunder, but then the darkness returned and she was, if anything, blinder than before. Again she called for her partner, and again knew that no one would be able to hear her over the screaming wind.
Her foot caught on something and she pitched forward. Instinctively she put her hands out before her to break her fall, but they didn't find the ground. Her stomach hit the earth and the breath was knocked out of her. She found her head hanging downwards, her hands against a vertical surface. Lightning struck again, and her confusion was replaced by terror when she saw that she was half hanging off a cliff. If she hadn't tripped when she did, she could have walked right over the edge before she knew what was happening.
Quick as she could she scrambled backwards, away from the chasm. She was shaking all over. The storm, the fall, and the revelation of what she had escaped had left her nerves shredded, and she was soaked by the cold rain. Where was her partner? If Aquilamon were here, she would never be in danger of falling to her death.
Miserably, she picked herself up off the ground and paused, shivering. After what had happened she didn't dare try walking about again at random, but she couldn't very well stay where she was and let the storm have at her. As she hesitated, a brief lull came in the wind, and in the comparative silence she thought that she heard a familiar voice calling. Straining her ears against the storm and her eyes against the darkness, she waited, hoping for confirmation.
"Miyako-san!"
It was either nearer or louder, because now she was sure that the voice was Hawkmon's. At first, peering in the direction it seemed to be coming from, she could only see a blackness alive with unseen wind and rain. But then a flash of lightning lit the sky behind her, followed by another and another, and in the glare she could just make out what could be her path to safety. If she put the cliff's edge squarely behind her, there was a rugged mountainside about ten meters from where she stood, and – if her eyes weren't playing tricks on her – there was a fissure in the rock wide enough to be a cave entrance.
Fervently thanking the lightning which had saved her twice in one night, Miyako began trudging towards her newfound shelter. She thought she heard Hawkmon call again, his voice distorted in the storm, and she wondered if he was lost outdoors as she had been.
"Hawkmon!" she yelled back, and she was just barely able to hear her own voice for the first time. But there was no response. She picked up her pace. Possibly her partner was already waiting for her in the cave. If not, she could at least use it as a safe haven from which she could conduct her search for him. She couldn't think straight or hope to find anyone in all this cold and rain.
There was no need to fumble around looking for the entrance; she had passed into the cave before she had even realized it. The rain and wind were still loud, moaning and whispering past the open fissure, but she no longer felt them biting into her. Still shivering, she tried pulling her thoughts together. How had she gotten here? The storm had caught them suddenly, but how had she been separated from Hawkmon, and where was he now? She could no longer hear him.
She weighed her options. Her partner was nearby – probably still within earshot – but looking for him out in the darkness of the storm would be near impossible. She looked into the deeper darkness of the cave, wondering how far back it might go, and whether there was any chance that Hawkmon had already found it.
"Hawkmon?"
Her voice echoed through a black space whose size and shape she couldn't begin to determine. But she got a response.
"Miyako-san?"
It wasn't the voice she had been hoping for, but it still sent a wave of relief through her. It was Ken's voice, sounding a little distressed, maybe, but in the same gentle tone he always addressed her with, and more than welcome in this strange place. He was apparently deeper into the cave and not out in the storm. If only she had a light!
"Ken-kun? Where are you? Are the others with you?" She remembered that they had all been together before the storm's sudden fury had left her groping about in the dark.
"Miyako-san, can you hear me? I can't see you."
"Give me a second! I'll try and find you." She found the rough wall of the cave with one hand and kept it within reach as she made her way slowly forward. Before long, though, she noticed that the wall was sloping away to the left, whereas Ken's voice seemed to have come more from the right. "…Ken-kun? Are you still there?"
No answer. She would have to leave the wall. The thought of being left in the dark again was panic-inducing. With both hands outstretched she moved slowly forward in what seemed to be the direction Ken's voice had come from.
"Over here, Miyako-san," Ken said again, convincing her that she was on the right path. "Hurry. Wormmon is hurt."
For some reason that struck her as an odd thing for him to say. There wasn't much she could do to help, the way things were. But she knew Ken was just scared, and that both of them would feel better once they were together.
"Do you know where Hawkmon is?" she asked the space in front of her. "I heard him, but I didn't find him!"
"I…I thought he was—"
Ken's voice was abruptly cut off as Miyako's reaching hands came up against something. She'd been hoping to feel the fabric of Ken's shirt through her gloves, but instead she gave a start as she realized she had found only another rough stone wall. She didn't think she could have been mistaken about where his voice was coming from, but here was the wall under her fingers, and no sign of Ken.
"Ken-kun?" she called, her fear beginning to grow again. She didn't hear an answer. Her hands felt over the cave wall as she tried once more to navigate. Just how big was this cave, anyway?
"Miyako-san!" She couldn't help but jump at the new voice, even though she recognized it immediately as Hikari's. It came from somewhere off to the right. Keeping in touch with the wall, Miyako began making her way in that direction.
"Hikari-chan? Where are you?" She was afraid that she might not get a response – that her friend might disappear as Ken had before. When the response did come, it startled her into a gasp that almost came out as a scream. Hikari's voice seemed to be coming from directly below her. Not at her feet, but below the level of the cavern floor.
"Thank goodness! I'm here. Help me up!"
Trembling, Miyako crouched and found that she had again been saved from a fall. There was a natural pit in the floor – and Hikari's voice was ascending from it. Miyako wasn't sure she could judge how deep it was, especially in such perfect blackness.
"C-Can you climb?" she asked. "If Hawkmon was here…"
"I can't reach," Hikari answered. "My hands are gone!"
Miyako went suddenly cold, and she couldn't get a response out before Ken's voice spoke again directly behind her: "Miyako-san, where did you go?" He sounded more nervous than before. Automatically, Miyako turned away from the pit, half standing, feeling for him – he had seemed to be standing right behind her – but finding nothing. A hysterical laugh, again apparently Ken's, echoed through the cave, and she couldn't tell where it was coming from. It was followed by a wordless shout – from Daisuke, though its echoes sounded more like Iori.
Am I going crazy? Miyako thought wildly. The storm was preferable to this. There were no people in this cave, only voices. She hurriedly began retracing her steps, but hadn't gone more than a couple paces before she came up against a rough cavern wall that she couldn't be sure had been there originally.
"Where are you going?" asked Ken's voice – no, the Digimon Kaiser's voice, coming straight through the solid rock before her. A little whimper escaped her as she began sidling hastily along the wall. Almost immediately she could tell that she was cut off from where she believed the cave's exit to be. Had she stumbled into a parallel tunnel? Could the whole cave network be some kind of maze?
She turned and tried another direction, carefully testing each step to avoid walking headlong into some bottomless shaft. There were sounds following her that weren't echoes of her movements. There were whispers in many voices, both those that she thought she could identify and softer, more furtive ones that she couldn't. What was being said she couldn't make out, but the tone of the conversation – if it was a conversation – was as vaguely threatening as the hum of a wasp nest.
She came up against another obstruction, a bulge of rock that marked the divergence of two tunnels leading in different directions. If she still had her bearings, which was far from certain, both led deeper into the darkness of the mountainside. From somewhere behind her there was a mocking giggle – Hikari's, but with an alien maliciousness. Miyako didn't know which way to go, or whether to turn around and seek another route… but what did it matter, if none of the choices brought her closer to escape?
A terrible vision sprang into her mind – a premonition of her groping her way through lightless tunnels for uncounted hours, harried by ghostly voices, stumbling into never-yielding stone, chasing echoes and chased by echoes. No glint of light, no kind word or face, no faces at all except the ones that her blinded eyes painted on the darkness.
"I want to get out," she whispered, not realizing immediately that she had actually spoken.
"Get out!" the voices echoed, calling from somewhere down the black tunnels. At random, she chose a direction and began walking. Immediately a voice laughed, and she faltered, unsure of her decision.
"I want to get out," she repeated. "I want to go home." More laughs answered her, the unknown voices rising behind the twisted tones of her friends. "I want out!" she screamed, her last nerve breaking. "I want out! Please let me out!"
At that the laughs rose suddenly, breaking off into shouts whose echoes went shuddering down the numberless tunnels of the labyrinth. In the silence that followed, Miyako stood where she was, trembling in every muscle. And it was then that she heard a new, icy voice say, "Be careful what you ask for."
Miyako jerked about in the direction the voice had come from. She was rewarded with her first glimpse of light since the storm's fitful lightning, but it gave her no comfort. A phosphorescent sludge was oozing out of cracks in the walls. The liquid radiated a cold, dead light of pale blue, giving detail to the darkness without dispersing it. And standing in the rock corridor was the voice's owner. She could not make out his features, but she knew the man was Sato Katsu.
Slowly her memories began to knit themselves back together. It was a sandstorm that she had been lost in, not a rainstorm. Hawkmon had been with her, but they had been separated. But how? Where was he now, while she faced that terrible man and the stuff he was allowing to seep in, alone? Seeping, oozing, like the black stuff of the generators that made energy from pain, and the generator at the Kaiser's derelict base, before Paildramon had stopped its detonation.
Sato didn't come towards her. He lifted some small object up for her to see by the glow of the dark slime – a red feather, its color faded almost to gray in the sickly illumination. He let it drop, and it fell, without drifting, into the substance that was seeping down the walls and pooling at Sato's feet. The feather smoked as in a powerful acid, and burned away to nothing. Full memory returned, and Miyako understood. Her mouth hung open in horror. Tears began to form in her eyes, but there was no time to mourn. The blue liquid was flowing towards her, picking up speed. She took a step back, but found that the cavern had filled itself in behind her. Her back was against a wall.
"H-Hawk-mon!"
It came out as an ever-rising scream, both an appeal for help and a wail of anguish. Her voice broke, but still she held the last syllable, terror and sorrow drawing it out interminably as the deadly flood came on.