The Beginning of the End

The last pieces of brick and shale jumped down the slope in smaller and smaller arcs to land on the concrete around Keiki’s feet. He was still on his back, his heart beating at the inside of his ribcage as though it wanted to be free. He could feel a pain in his side and he pressed his hand against it, softly through his jacket and shirt, and winced. But, he thought, it might just be a bruise.


He sat up in the dim light and resisted the urge to turn on his gauntlet’s illuminator. She might still be there, on the other side of the tunnel collapse. She might hear it turn on. Although Keiki was also sure that she might be listening to him catching his breath. But maybe not.

Regardless of her auditory abilities, Keiki still didn’t risk turning on his light. The filaments that served as Fern’s hair would pick up his signal once he activated the gauntlet in any way. He pushed himself up until he was sitting, his legs in front of him, his knees bent slightly. He saw another eye-sized piece of concrete dislodge from the pile and bounce down towards him. The tunnel might be unstable, he thought.

He rose up to his feet, and dusted off his jacket and pants as best as he could, although they were both already smudged with dirt and blood.

Keiki turned to see that the tiny source of light was coming from further down the tunnel. Just as well. The idea of getting further away from Fern appealed to him. The continued disturbances to the tunnel behind him might be from her trying to dig, perhaps with her bow or with her hands. The tunnel was at least fifteen feet high; tall enough for her to walk without crouching.

Keiki started along the tunnel, relieved that nothing was hurt but his side. Still curious, he unzipped his jacket and then pulled up his shirt (Wyon had thought this was a nice shirt) to see a dark bruise spreading slowly under his ribs. He let his shirt down and didn’t bother zipping his jacket back up. He had no idea how deep the tunnels ran but he didn’t think he’d be going above ground anytime soon, even if he found a way up. Fern might still be slinking around. She wasn’t stealthy, but she didn’t need to be. If she spotted Keiki from a few hundred yards away...

Keiki wanted to slap himself. It wouldn’t come to that. The tunnels would be safe. Safe enough.

A warm air tugged his jacket and hair in front of him. He looked up, better able to see the top of the tunnel, to see the curved steel supports, and the dead row of lights. Were they dead before the tunnel collapse, Keiki wondered. If Jacobstown was deserted, would its sewers be deserted too?

For that matter, Keiki thought, shouldn’t there be water flowing through? He couldn’t see a ridged bottom, or elevated walkways on the sides. There was nothing to suggest that the tunnel had any other utility than being a tunnel.

When he located the source of the light, he stopped for a second. The tunnel had turned slightly, blocking the pit from view at first, until Keiki got a good glance at the dead (broken) omni sitting with its back against the wall, lit by bars of sunlight. The omni’s skin was rusted. Even without leaving the tunnel, Keiki could see the diagonal rupture along the front of its chest plate, nearly severing the omni in two. Keiki could see that the organic parts were gone, probably already picked apart by bacteria and whatever scavengers that might be wandering the tunnels.

It took a moment for Keiki to summon the motivation to step far out to look up. He so expected a bolt to shoot down as soon as he saw the grate above that he flinched it didn’t.

The grate was closed, although the slots were wide enough that Keiki could have slipped through, and it didn’t appear to be damaged. There was half of an omni sized ladder that came down halfway, the rest of the rungs gone. Without some kind of propulsion, an omni wouldn’t be able to reach the lowest rungs of what remained of the ladder. Keiki walked closer to the broken omni and climbed up onto its right leg, lifting himself up to peer inside of the wound.

The way the metal was bent outwards suggested that something had come back out after it’d gone in. A spear with a hook. Or some kind of burrowing, timed grenade. Keiki wondered how much it would have hurt.

Keiki glanced down at the legs and the shoulders to try to figure if the omni was gendered male or female, but couldn’t even tell if it’d been neutral. There was no paint or emblems left on its weathered steel to know if it had been a gesser or a commoner. Keiki thought there was something tragic about how time had so quickly eroded this omni’s identity. Keiki stepped up, his feet resting on the bottom of the wound, to look at the faceplate.

It was an old model, from before Keiki had been born. This omni would probably have completed its term of service by now. They might even have chosen to be a human again, with a new body and life, if they hadn’t ended up down at the bottom of the sewer. Keiki wondered if there was anything he should do, a prayer or an elegy, and instead he ran his hand down over each of the omni’s dead eyes (not eyes; visual receptors. You’re losing it, Keiki), as though there had been eyelids to close. Keiki took a deep breath.

Keiki looked up, checking to make sure that Fern hadn’t somehow stumbled across him and was watching his moment, and climbed back down from the wreckage. He lowered himself onto its left leg and then hopped off to run into the opposite end of the tunnel.