Season 02 - Episode 03

‘the corridor only’

It takes Ak what feels like a very long time to saw through the pulled taught fabric of his shirt, the only thing keeping him suspended over an apparently bottomless pit. A couple of times, the fabric tears a little under the strain and he falls a fraction of an inch. Each time his body is pulled up short and held fast again by the remaining threads, but his stomach plunges all the way down.

His arms and shoulders are screaming, somehow hurting and deadening at the same time. His face is wet with tears, his breaths come short and sharp but through it all he presses on, forcing his hand to keep cutting.

Finally, his slippery desperate fingertips report that one more cut will free him, drop him into the dark and roll the dice on life and death. Ak pauses, trembling fingers unwilling but then, before he can steel himself once more, the last shred of fabric tears.

He hears it go and instantly regrets the decision to cut himself free. Gravity snatches at him and he begins to fall, dropping the multitool into the silent black below. What was he thinking? He doesn't want this! He should have waited and thought of something else, anything else, anything but this! He clenches everything he has, draws breath to scream, braces his limbs to flail helplessly.

And hits the floor immediately below.

He lands awkwardly, crumpling into a heap, twisting his shoulder and banging his head. For several minutes he lies dazed, spread face down flat against the floor, hugging it's certainty.

Eventually, carefully, he drags himself to sitting.

It is still pitch black but he's aware of a whisper of breeze coming from behind. Twisting about and squinting, he makes out what he thinks is the mouth of a corridor, running away from the void and perhaps vaguely lit in the distance.

He crawls around carefully, feeling out the floor beneath him until his hand slips over the edge. His gasp falls into the black and he retreats to hug himself calm before resuming his search.

As far as he can tell, a small stub of the corridor behind him has survived The Collapse to form a projecting platform just below whatever had snagged his shirt. For a moment, the quite incredible odds of these two pieces of luck overwhelm him. He could have died, should have died. The thought is too big to process.

Instead, Ak pushes the thought away and crawls into the corridor. Only once he is well inside, well away from the gaping void behind, does he rise, in stages, to stand atop shaky legs.

In contrast to the total pitch darkness behind him, it's obvious that there is some kind of light off ahead, muted and dulled by several corners. As he begins to walk, following the corridor, flashes of falling assail him, images and sensations that make him cringe and tremble.

He concentrates only on the dim grey outline of the corridor ahead and the feeling of the floor through his socks. Padding along, he shuts himself down, refusing to think anything at all. There is only walking now, one step then the next, on towards the light.

So focused on this is he, that he doesn't notice the movement behind. Something tiny is scuttling along the ceiling, having made its way down the wall of the great void. All but invisible in the darkness, the thing is betrayed only by a pinpoint red light on its back.

Ak wanders on oblivious. He is far from home, lost and alone, with empty pockets and no shoes. Even through his determined denial however, something draws his numbed attention.

Silence.

Absolute. Total. Silence.

Never in his life, which he has spent buried in people on all sides, has he heard the total absence of sound. It feels soft yet suffocating, beautiful but terrifying. Leaving the void behind, Ak walks on and on, followed all the way by the thing with the little red light.

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