Filaria - Brent Hayward [74]
Dangling, Mereziah grimaced. The fire lingered, but inside him now, destroying once and for all his old heart and lungs.
Detritus clanged, bounced noisily past, tumbling into the abyss.
The catwalk swung forwards and back. Everyone had vanished. Mists closed in.
Mereziah was alone again.
TRAN SO, L14
In circumference, the duct was hardly larger around than his torso, pressing up hard against ribs, shoulders, elbows, belly, knees. After the initial blind ascent, he’d calmed, and slowed, wormlike, and even had a quick, fitful sleep within the snug cocoon — though how long he lay inside, unmoving, he could not tell.
Now, on a horizontal stretch, the duct had narrowed — though that perception might have been an unpleasant trick Tran so’s mind played on him. He was certainly starting to feel vestiges of primal fear nibbling.
The entire time he had been moving through these confines — all night? a full day? — he had seen only one dark glimpse of detail, when a wire of dull light shone straight up through an empty rivet hole. He had seen nothing else, nothing up ahead. None of the junctions, turns, dents that he slowly inched his way through. Only felt the cool, smooth surface, pressing against his body, smelled the metal and dust. Tran so had to trust that he could keep going. There was certainly no way to back up. He had little choice but to persevere, try to ignore the aches, the cramps, the onset of claustrophobia. Ignore the thoughts of, at some point soon, encountering a dead end.
Which, for him, would be literal.
He also needed to piss but could not bring himself to urinate in his own clothes and drag his body through the hot puddle.
Occasionally, stubborn animals squeezed past him, or tried to, forcing their way between his body and the walls of the duct; he felt fur a few times, scales twice, and, once, something slimy and foul rubbing against his cheek. He broke through many cobwebs. Breaths of warm, nasty air were exhaled into his face and sporadic, ambient sounds came at him from muffled locations unseen, beneath or above, from all around.
For now, everything was quiet.
He had stopped to rest.
Was he safer in here? Had it been a good idea to enter this labyrinth, scrambling in a panic up through an overhead panel, while the dark god clawed at him, trying, in its fury, to plunge in, those huge fingers inches behind his feet as Tran so frantically pushed himself forward? He had asked himself these two questions a hundred times as he wormed forward over the next many hours. No one could tell the future, no matter what they claimed. He was still alive, at least. Maybe in an hour, he told himself, I will be in an open space, on my feet, eating, or emptying my bladder with great relief.
Or perhaps I will be wedged tight, waiting for death.
Eventually, moving once more — as the dire thoughts became harder and harder to stave off — through the darkness of the tangy-smelling duct up ahead, he perceived, at last, a source of dim light. His eyes watered. He had to fight to remain calm. Anxiety might make him move too fast, get stuck, just metres from a possible exit.
Then he heard the muffled voices.
This new development gave him pause. What if he had come full circle? Was the angry dark god waiting for him to emerge? Were others there, about to cut off his passage? He tried to think of a plan but wanted so badly to stretch, to move with elbowroom, to breathe clean air, that frustration at the idea of being captured after all this caused surprising tears to sting his already bleary eyes.
Shimmying slower, he was soon able to confirm that the light ahead was coming up through a grille set in the bottom of the duct. This proved that, despite his earlier ascent, he was still travelling through a ceiling. One room’s ceiling is another room’s floor. He suspected he was a level above where he had started.
Increased illumination was becoming uncomfortable, but his eyes eventually adjusted somewhat, and he began to see dusty details: the cobwebs, the