CHAPTER 6 — Another Survivor

Rijan didn't move for a long time after the sound. The exhale from the right passage had settled into the cave like something that belonged there — a baseline, a condition of the air itself — and after the first ten seconds of absolute stillness, when nothing else emerged and nothing changed, he'd made a decision about it. The sub-boss, whatever it was, was not moving toward him. It was simply present. And presence without motion was a thing he could work with, the same way you could exist in a room with a sleeping animal if you understood the geometry of the space between you. He'd backed to the left side of the chamber, putting the stream and the tree between himself and the right passage, and crouched against the wall in the amber half-dark to think. The fruit still hung where it had always hung. He was still thinking about it when he heard footsteps. Not the dry claw-percussion of the lizard creature. Not the stumbling, panicked run of the man in the grey ash. These were careful — deliberately placed, weight distributed with intention, the footfall of someone trying not to make noise. Someone who knew they were in a place where noise had consequences. = Human. = Rijan pressed flat against the wall before he'd consciously decided to, his right hand finding a loose piece of rock on the ground beside him. He held it. Not a weapon — it weighed perhaps half a kilogram, useful only if he was willing to put himself within arm's reach of whoever this was, which he wasn't yet. But it was something solid in a place that had offered him very little of that. The footsteps came from the passage behind him. The same direction the stream had carried him. Someone else had found the cave the same way, or found a different entrance, or had been here longer and was returning. He didn't know which, and the not-knowing mattered. A shape appeared in the passage mouth. Tall. Broader than Rijan by a significant margin. The figure paused at the chamber entrance the same way Rijan had — reading the space, measuring it, not walking into it until some internal assessment cleared. The amber light caught the outline first, then, as the figure stepped forward, a face. A man. Late twenties, maybe thirty. Dark-skinned, close-cropped hair, a cut above his left eyebrow that had dried but not healed. He was wearing cargo trousers and a black long-sleeve shirt with the right sleeve torn away at the shoulder. His forearms were scratched. He was not, as far as Rijan could assess, carrying a weapon. He was also already looking directly at Rijan's position. "You're breathing loud," the man said. Not a whisper — a low, level voice held carefully below carrying distance. Matter-of-fact. "I've been hearing you for about forty seconds." = Caught. Stay calm. = Rijan stood slowly from the crouch, keeping the rock in his hand at his side without concealing it. Concealing it would signal he'd intended to use it. Not concealing it established it as what it was — a precaution, not a plan. "You came from the stream," Rijan said. "Same as you." The man's eyes moved across the chamber — the tree, the fruit, the right passage, the stream, back to Rijan. Efficient. Someone who'd learned to read spaces quickly, or had always known how. "That thing on the shelf is the same fruit I found in a different chamber an hour ago. Didn't touch it then either." = He's been here longer. He's already encountered this before. = "You found another one?" Rijan said. "One tree, one fruit, a passage behind it that I didn't go down." The man's gaze settled on Rijan's left side — the ribs, the way he was holding himself, the laceration on his forearm. "You're hurt." "Cracked ribs. It's manageable." "How?" "Rock ledge on the way down. The fall." The man nodded once, accepting it. He crossed to the stream's edge and crouched, looking at the water, then at the tree, then at the right passage. Something shifted in his posture when his attention reached the passage — a brief, controlled stillness that Rijan recognized as the same recalibration he'd felt himself. "You felt it too," Rijan said. "The breathing." The man stood. "Yeah. It's been consistent. Whatever it is, it's not agitated. Yet." He looked at Rijan directly. "Marcus Vale." "Rijan Joshi." Marcus didn't extend a hand. Rijan didn't either. It wasn't hostility — it was the specific arithmetic of two people who understood that trust was a resource with a cost, and cost required justification. "How long have you been down here?" Rijan asked. "Since before you arrived, clearly. I came in from further north — there's a sinkhole system under the rock formations. Multiple entry points." Marcus moved to the left side of the chamber and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, the posture of someone settling in without relaxing. "I saw the system message when I arrived. Yours too?" "Status interface. Stats. Survival probability at twenty-seven percent." "Mine said thirty-one." Marcus's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes acknowledged the number with the weight it deserved. "I was an engineer. Structural. I've been mapping the cave system since I landed here because staying on the surface for longer than necessary seemed like a way to die quickly." = Methodical. Practical. He's been operating the same way I have. = "I watched someone die up there," Rijan said. "The lizard creature." "I heard it. Didn't see it." A pause. "I'm sorry." The apology was brief and genuine and not followed by anything else, which Rijan found he appreciated. There was nothing to add to it. "The cave system," Rijan said. "How far have you mapped?" "Far enough to know this isn't a single tunnel. It branches." Marcus pushed off the wall. "There's a wider section about three hundred meters northeast of here. I was heading back to it when I heard you." He paused. "It's worth seeing. But I want to be clear — I'm not proposing a partnership. I'm proposing that two people with working eyes are safer than one in an unknown space." = Honest. Careful with language. He doesn't want the same misunderstandings I don't want. = "Agreed," Rijan said. They moved through the cave together with the specific distance of people who had established terms. Not together. Not separate. The amber light faded as they left the chamber, replaced by the grey-white seam-light from cracks above. Marcus moved with a precision that confirmed the engineer — reading the ceiling, noting load-bearing angles, occasionally touching a wall and withdrawing his hand with an expression that filed information away without announcing it. The wider section was where he'd described. The cave expanded into a broad, low-ceilinged space, the stream splitting into two shallow channels that ran along either wall before converging again at the far end. The space had clearly been wider once — sections of ceiling had collapsed in the past, filling the center of the room with debris that had since settled and compacted into uneven mounds. Marcus stopped at the entrance and Rijan stopped beside him. = Something is wrong with the shape of those mounds. = He looked more carefully. The debris at the near end was stone and compacted ash, the expected residue of a partial cave-in. The debris at the far end was different. Smaller. Distributed in a pattern that was not geological. He crossed the room before he'd finished deciding to, stepping around the larger stone pieces, and crouched at the far mound. Five skeletons. Not human — the proportions were wrong, the frames too dense, the skull architecture unfamiliar. But the articulation was intact, the bones still arranged in rough positional logic. Not scattered by scavengers. Not disordered by collapse. They had simply died here, in this space, and remained. Marcus crouched beside him. Both of them were quiet for a moment. "Different decay rates," Marcus said, his voice reduced to almost nothing. He pointed — one skeleton at the near side of the cluster, one at the far. "Look at the calcification. That one is older by a significant margin." His finger moved. "And that one over there — the surface oxidization is barely present. That's recent." Rijan looked at the arrangement again. The spacing between them. The irregular decay. The fact that none had been disturbed by whatever else lived in this cave. = They weren't left here. They came here. Something in this space draws things, and then — = "Those weren't killed all at once," he said. Marcus looked at him. The amber-lit dark of the cave sat between them and the answer that neither of them had yet. "No," Marcus said quietly. "They weren't."