Page 147 of The Mask Falling

Not the basement. The bottom of the pit.

Through a solid ache in my skull, I tried to think. Clearly I was deeper than the Passage des Voleurs.

Head rolling, I groped for my headlamp and switched it on. It was cracked, and the battery ran low, but a wavering light revealed yet more dripping tunnels.

These ones seemed natural. Caves, not quarries. Behind me, water cascaded down a curtain of flowstone, stinking of sulphur. I struggled away from it, heels sliding on the damp floor.

“You have got to be joking.” I pulled at my collar, gasping for breath. “Wasn’t the f-fucking reservoir enough?”

A blurred memory returned to me. Grabbing onto something —slippery rock—and hoisting myself up, out of the torrent of foul-tasting water, onto what I had thought was an escape to higher ground. I had scrambled on my stomach through a rabbit hole of a passageway, driven on by the will to survive. Then the plummet. My head must have struck a rock.

Somehow, in my last bid to live, I had found a way between the Passage des Voleurs and this cave system, buying me some breathing time.

I needed to utilize what I had left. To stay calm and think.

The Passage des Voleurs must slope downward. Right now, water would be pooling at its end—rapidly, if the lake was large. If my theory was right, it would not be long until it rose enough to fill these caves, as well as the human-made tunnels that must not be far above me. I could only have been unconscious for a few minutes, or it would already be here.

Palms sweating, I turned my lamp upward. More water torrented from the opening I had fallen through. It was moving faster than before.

My labored breathing punctured the silence.

I was below the bottom of the earth. I would run like a frightened rat through these caves until the lake caught up with me. That was how it was going to end, after everything.

My hand clammed into a shaking fist. Screwing my jaw shut, I staunched my bloody head on my sleeve and got to my feet.

Water was starting to cover my boots. If it was rising, there was nodownin these tunnels. Nowhere for it to drain. There was onlyup. I forged on, half running, boots splashing. I was almost in the next cave when I sensed another presence in the æther and slowed down.

A perfect circle of ice lit the cave. In the dark, it had an eldritch glow, as if hit by moonlight.

Close to it lay an Emite. Too weak to do anything but exist, it was a ruin of papery gray sarx, swarmed by its corrupted aura. Lidless white eyes stared into mine. It had entered this realm right below the beacon of the colony, but found no flesh to sustain itself.

This had been a Rephaite once. A god. I wondered which family it had been from, whether it would have been an ally or an enemy. Unable to grab me, it let out a sound like a wounded animal and crumpled. All I could do was retreat from the chamber and leave it to starve.

Murky water swilled around my knees. It was so cold. My thighs ached with the effort of wading. I retched more than once, but dread forced me onward, into the infinite black. My calf was ablaze where I had caught it on the rusty gate. Numbness set in everywhere else.

A tunnel took me upward again, a short way out of the flood. Before long, I came to a pool. A lower tunnel, already full of stagnant water. The moment I saw it, I stopped.

It could be a way out.

Darkness or drowning. Hell or high water. I let out a strangled shout of frustration and knotted my fingers in my hair, panting. I tried to hold my thoughts together in the cracked glass of my skull.

There was one other way. My shaking hand went to my pocket, where the silver pill waited, offering an escape from the nightmare. Better than the excruciating pain of water piercing my lungs. That could not be the last thing I felt. It couldn’t. My eyes pressed shut. My shoulders heaved. I started to undo my pocket, fingers slick and clumsy on the fastening.

No.

Somewhere in the black roar of the water, a clear thought. My hand wrapped into a fist again. The pill was certain death. If I could just swim, I had achance, slim though it was. If not—if I died now—then Suhail Chertan had killed me. By stealing my ability to swim, to control my panic, he had murdered me from a country away. No one would ever find my body.

Cold sweat drenched me. I took the vial from my pocket and threw it into the tunnel behind me. This time, I would fight for my life until my last breath. With trembling hands, I stripped off my sweater and removed my heavy boots, then buckled my backpack on again.

Damn Suhail all the way back to the Netherworld. I had come this far. I had crossed the Couloir des Noyés and destroyed Senshield and seized the crown of London and I was still alive. I meant to stay that way.

Shaking uncontrollably, I crouched beside the pool. Behind me, lake water was bubbling up the way I had come in, like vomit from a boiling stomach. My body rattled like a bag of dice.

My headlamp failed. The abyss was here. All I could hear was the rush of the approaching flood. All I could see was the same crushing blackness I had only just survived before. I heaved in a breath and plunged headfirst into the pool. My fingers scrabbled at rough stone. Without any light, all I could see was Suhail.Perhaps the Underqueen would care for a drink.

My chest tightened to the point of agony. Already out of breath. I thrashed my way back and broke the surface with a gasp. My lamp sparked on for an instant, long enough for me to see that the cavern was now half submerged, the lake crushing my air pocket. It was too late. More water sprayed from the ceiling, blinding me. I screamed into the void. Not for help. None was coming. Hair plastered to my face, fingers jammed into my ears, I waited for the end.

I wanted you. I wanted us.I whispered my confession, willing him to hear.I’m sorry. I was a coward, too.

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