The water under the platform was still boiling.
Caleb pulled himself up onto the cracked tile ledge by the elbows. The runoff steamed off his trousers in long white twists. Every breath dragged ozone and copper through the back of his throat.
A few feet from him, Iharu sat against the railing with his scatter-gun across his knees. The redhead was watching the white fog at the end of the platform the way a man watches a door he locked but isn't sure he locked all the way.
Hiro had not moved from the handrail. His rifle hung at his side. He was breathing in shallow even bursts that did not sound like breathing.
Kikaru had her back against a shattered ad pillar that was advertising a brand of soft drink Caleb had never been able to afford. Her plates were scorched. Her left hand was pressed under her ribs the way a person presses a wound they intend to keep from bleeding through their fingers. She did not look at him.
Nobody had spoken in maybe a minute.
Then the dark at the end of the platform spoke.
"Help me."
It was Hiro's voice.
Hiro's head came up so fast Caleb heard the muscle in his neck. The recruit looked across the platform at the mist with the expression of a man hearing himself from outside his own skull. His mouth was closed.
"Please. I dropped my rifle. I can't get up."
Hiro made a small sound that was not a word and was not crying.
"It moved up the line while we were on the ground," Caleb said.
"Yeah."
That was Iharu. Iharu did not look away from the fog.
"It's using the steam to mask its body heat," Caleb said.
"Yeah."
Caleb got his knees under him.
The pain in his right shoulder where he had ripped the muscle tackling Kikaru out of the path was running through his arm like a long thin wire. The cold under his sternum was eating into him in slow even bites. He'd lost the rifle in the flood. The phase-dagger from his belt was the only blade left.
He drew it.
"What are you doing." Iharu, finally looking at him. "You have a knife. Sit down."
"Keeping it busy."
"You have a knife."
"I know."
"Caleb."
"I know, Iharu."
Kikaru's voice from her ad pillar, dry and tired in a way he had not heard from her before. "Hold the platform until the surface divisions secure the breach. Don't shoot wild. Slugs will ricochet off the supports."
She did not say it like an order. She said it like a person reading the rules card out of a board game.
Then she added, much quieter, "The surface divisions don't know we're alive down here."
"Yeah," Caleb said.
He walked past Iharu.
The chat in the corner of his cracked visor was scrolling too fast to read. He caught one comment in the blur:
GunnerFan: 80k watching a Rank F stream. Insane.
RedLine: he's gonna die. he's gonna die guys.
User402: this isn't a stream this is a snuff feed
A handle he didn't recognize: thirteen-year-old account that had not posted in eight years: get up scrubber.
He kept walking.
***
"Caleb."
The voice from the fog had switched to his own name.
It was still Hiro's voice. The pitch was right. The cracking on the second syllable was right. The mimic had not heard him say his own name out loud, which meant it had something else feeding it the audio. He did not have the energy to think about what that meant.
The thing stepped out of the steam.
It was bigger than he remembered. The plating on the legs was glowing the wrong color, a sick orange that meant the internal temperature had not cooled off when it went into the water. The water had cooled around the creature instead. That was what made the platform run hot under his boots.
It opened its mandible.
"Caleb."
"Don't," he said.
It charged.
He went under the swing.
His hand moved before he'd decided. The phase-dagger went up under the segmented joint behind the knee, into the membrane, past the guard, with the heel of his palm driving the blade home.
The blade went in past the guard.
Something in there went pop the way an over-tightened cable goes pop.
The creature shrieked at a pitch that bent the floodlights. Black fluid sprayed up his arm to the elbow and through the canvas of his sleeve. The fabric started smoking. He smelled his own hair burning before he registered the heat.
He ripped the blade out and went backward.
His legs got him about three steps and then stopped working.
He hit the tiles on one knee.
The creature was dragging the ruined leg, the joint hanging at an angle that did not match the rest of its body. Steam was rolling off the wound in a steady upward column. Its mandibles tried to find his name and got the consonants wrong.
It came at him again.
***
"Iharu," Caleb said. His voice came out flatter than he meant. "The pillar."
Iharu's head snapped to the support column the creature had cracked when it had first come up from the water. Caleb saw the math happen behind his eyes, faster than he expected from Iharu. Then Iharu was up off the railing.
The scatter-gun came up.
"Move."
Caleb tried to move. His legs were not interested.
The first round hit the cracked section at the base. The concrete made a noise concrete should not make. The second round took out the rebar that had been keeping the section honest, and the column began the slow tilt of structural failure.
The platform tile under the mimic's good leg gave.
It looked down.
For a second, in the orange glow of its own carapace, Caleb saw the thing look down at the tile under its foot with what was probably not understanding but read in the moment as understanding. Then the floor went, and the pillar came after it, and a slab of upper-platform concrete weighing more than a transport rig came down on top of the slab that was already falling, and the boiling water at the bottom received all of it with a sound like a wet collapse.
Steam blew up through the gap.
The platform shook.
Iharu got an arm under Caleb and hauled him backward by the strap of his suit. Caleb did not have the muscle to help him. They both went down in a heap against the rusted handrail.
The mist settled.
Nothing came back up through it.
For about ten seconds, the only sound on the platform was Iharu breathing too fast through his nose. Then Iharu said, "Holy shit."
Caleb did not answer.
He was looking at the corner of his visor.
The viewer count had climbed past one-fifteen and was still climbing.
Engagement points the algorithm could not have predicted. The kind of climb that buys a month of someone else's choices. He let his head fall back against the rail. The metal was cold against the base of his skull, which was new. His skull had been hot since the staging yard.
He registered, distantly, that he was probably about to throw up.
He did.
He turned his head sideways and emptied his stomach onto the cracked tile next to him. There was nothing in it. The thin acid burned coming up. Iharu made a small disgusted sound and shifted six inches to the left.
"Sorry," Caleb said.
"Don't be sorry. Be alive."
Caleb wiped his mouth on the back of his glove.
Across the platform, Kikaru had not moved from her pillar. She was watching him in a way she had not watched him before. He couldn't read what was in her face from across that distance and through the steam, and he was not sure he wanted to.
The viewer count finally settled.
He let his eyes close.
Somewhere up at the surface, a collection agent's terminal would tick over before midnight. His mother's door would not get a knock. His brother's machines would not get powered down.
He was too tired to feel anything about it.
That would come later.
For now, the platform was holding. The water was cooling. The dark at the end of the tunnel was empty.
It was enough.