Abyss (Leviathans)

Chapter 1

ONE

CARLA

Atrophy unacceptable. Begin load-bearing action.

It was the quiet that got through to me.

Even when the lights dimmed and the rest of the women finally ceased their chatting, leaving the room in the closest semblance to quiet that it ever got, the metal walls still reflected the sounds of their breathing, the occasional soft sobs of someone crying over the sudden, abrupt loss of the families we had all left behind.

That crying was the worst. I didn't have a family like some of them, and yet their crying hurt.

They were distant, like a television screen with the volume turned all the way down, yet they were still there.

The noises of life, of pain, of suffering, were a weight that pressed down on me, making the burden of my own sadness too heavy to bear when reflected in the black reflection of the abyss inside another person's heart.

I'd given up.

I knew it; it wasn't like I was unaware of what I was experiencing.

That voice wouldn't let me pretend.

Atrophy unacceptable. Begin load-bearing action.

My hip ached where it was pressed into the floor, a surface that was like quicksand, pulling on the concrete lump that used to be my body.

My bones were full of wet sand. The last time I tried to sit up, the weight of them threatened to snap my spine even as the daggers of movement stabbed into my joints, sharp pains to remind me that bodies were not meant to just lie there, hour after hour.

Lyssa's soft grunts as she worked out made it even worse.

I knew I could get up. I managed to do it, just enough to ease the hunger in my belly or the demands for release from my bladder.

But as I lay there and heard the vibrant determination of Lyssa striving, of her working hard to live her life the way she wanted, each sound was another layer, another brick of weight pressing down on me.

Atrophy unacceptable. Begin load-bearing action.

Logically, I should do that. Sara had explained to me that I was in a neuro-somatic feedback trap, that my lack of movement had altered my brain chemistry, creating the exact environment in my head that was holding me to the floor.

Sara could explain what was happening to me and how it would get worse if I didn't fight through it.

Lyssa could demonstrate the solution and try to prod me into following it.

But no one had helped as much as Milly.

Milly had sat there and gently touched me.

She didn't demand I move. She just was next to me, putting a hand on my shoulder, brushing my hair, stroking her fingers up and down my back.

She was there with food and water when I needed it, so that the effort of eating was small enough to overcome.

She didn't judge me, explain myself to me, or tell me what I should do.

She wasn't loud or demanding, and she didn't cry at night like some of the others, weighing me down further with her pain.

Milly had begun chipping away at the darkness, creating a hole in the surface through which the small speck of her light could shine.

So it wasn't the silence that got to me.

I noticed it first.

The lack of grunts or sobs, a room empty of other women's sounds, voices that were the backdrop of my existence for the time we had been caged in this horrible trap of a room, brought me out of the abyss, the soft awareness of my own breath being the only breath I could hear.

The smothering weight of other people's emotions, their despair and sadness, was gone.

That in itself was different, a sensory strangeness that caused my mind to focus and pay attention.

What really got to me was the fact that Milly wasn't there anymore.

I opened my eyes, and there was no one.

The room, which had been our cage for weeks, or maybe months, I couldn't be sure as I had lost my grasp on time, was empty.

The door at the far end was open, exposing a hallway.

It wasn't a particularly interesting hallway.

It was made out of the same metal panels as the walls, boring and unimaginative, like the architect had decided that one style was the most efficient and never deviated from that design.

What caused me to sit up and stare wasn't its uniqueness, but simply that I'd never seen that hallway before.

I'd never seen that door open. They'd always gassed us unconscious before they came into the room.

Everyone was gone, the room was empty, and the door was open.

"Milly?" I whispered, my own voice hoarse and strange to me.

I was still getting used to hearing it again.

I'd only started talking to Milly in the last few days, after what felt like eons of silence.

I pushed my way up to my feet, the density of my bones unable to hold me down against the single thought that filled my mind with a single-minded urgency.

It didn't matter. I could melt into the floor, slip away, and it wouldn't matter.

Milly wouldn't just leave me there. The rest of them, sure, they were out for their own survival.

I didn't fault them for that. But I couldn't imagine for one moment that Milly would get up and leave without peeling me up off the floor and taking me with her.

Someone had taken her.

Or maybe she had left me, slipped away with the rest of them.

That thought threatened to pull me back down to my knees,

Movement detected, the voice in my head said. Reward dispensing.

A small section of the wall slid up, a small round tray extending as a reward cube tumbled down into it.

My stomach rumbled as the scent of it hit my nose, salty with a little sweet, heavy-handed on the umami flavor.

It was my favorite. I picked it up and bit into it, the cube melting in my mouth like cotton candy, turning into a liquid as soon as it entered my lips.

The other cubes didn't do that, just the ones dispensed specifically for me, and only lately.

I didn't know why. Sara had a lot to say about it, but I didn't listen.

Heat filled my belly along with the delicious liquid, and I felt a burst of energy as my body came alive with the influx of nutrients. Whether Milly had been taken or had left me there, it didn't matter. What mattered was getting out of this room.

Atrophy unacceptable. Begin load-bearing act-

The voice cut off midsentence, something it never did before. I waited for a moment, but it didn't resume.

I put a hand on the wall, leaning on it as I made my way around the room to the door.

It hurt to walk, my body aching as I moved it.

I put one foot after the other as I exited the room. There were only two directions to go, and I turned left, keeping my hand on the wall to keep myself steady. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't know what I would do when I got there.

All I knew was that I couldn't stay in that room anymore.

The door was open; it was time to get up and go.