The Cave

Sia woke up and clamped her eyelids shuts.

Open them, the voice in her head screamed. Her hearts fluttered. The reprieve had been short-lived, and she shouted back. “No, I don’t want to.”

Fine! It doesn’t matter. Nothing’s changed. You’re still in the cave. Don’t pretend you can’t feel the cold earth under your fingers, or the damp bedrock against your back. I know you smell the foul air. It clings to your body like rot. You’re gonna di-

She shot her eyes open as a screw you to her inner voice, but her courage backfired.

As soon as her eyes popped opened, she was met with the never-ending darkness. The first time she woke up in this prison, she had had a full-blown meltdown. There was no way to orient herself, or gain her bearings, no way to feel connected to her surroundings, and remember… She was alone in the dark. Always the alone.

How long had she been here? Days? Weeks? It was impossible to gauge.

Her momentary bravado spluttered to a sopping halt. Every waking moment, incessant deprecating thoughts plagued her mind, and nothing kept them at bay, not even sleep.

Desperate to escape the caustic ruminations, Sia stretched her eyes open, eager to catch a sliver of light, a shadowy outline of something, anything, but it was pitch black like. every. single. waking. moment. Had she gone blind? She sighed, trying to relax her nerves, but fear radiated through her limbs.

The frayed threads containing her self-control were splitting open. Her insides degraded little by little and overflowed into a jittery shake. It was as if she was trying to cover up a raw nerve with a dirty bandage. Then the voice kicked in.

Not her usual obnoxious self-talk, but an echo of the past. It was deep and soothing and triggered a pleasant memory of damp earth in the morning. A familiar voice telling her to Breathe Sia, breathe. She heard him repeat over and over. Don’t be afraid. Be brave.

The voice had helped her get through the first few hours, days, when she woke up in this dank place, but now it sparked anxiety. Something wasn’t right in her head. Breathe Sia, Breathe. Don’t be afraid. Be brave.

“I don’t want to breathe,” she yelled. Her voice hoarse from lack of water, her throat burned like a spewing volcano.

Was he even real? She thought. Did she know him? Who was he calling? Her? Was she Sia? She didn’t even know.

Exasperated, she let out a controlled hiss. “Remember…” How did you get here? Are you on the run? What’s your name? All these unanswered questions made the stones in the pit of her stomach grumble, and out of anguish she screamed. “Help! Please, someone?” It was pointless. No one would hear her raspy murmurings.

“This is where I die,” she croaked Sweat pooled at the base of her neck. Yes! This is where you’ll die. Alone, she thought.

No! The seams keeping her together snapped. I won’t wait for death, half-starved... Her thoughts toppled over each other, stoking her brain with fear. “I decide, I decide,” she said frantically, pawing the ground, and felt the rucksack by her side.

White noise filled her ear canals as she rummaged through her bag. The strident uproar reached its dissonant peak when she squeezed what she was looking for, her gun. The cold metal, however, shocked her back to her senses, and just as quickly as she had grabbed it, Sia dropped it.

Breathe Sia, Breathe. Be brave.

Sia swallowed. Her hands trembled at what might’ve taken place, of what might still take place if she let fear control her.

It’s the hunger, she thought, I’m delirious. She continued to search through the bag incapable of processing the mounting dread. She felt the empty water bottle, the heart-shaped locket, and finally her last protein bar.

Sia tore into it without thinking. A last-ditch effort to believe she’d been a victim of a starved mind, but as she wolfed down her last bite, the remorse kicked in and oddly it smelled of putrid flesh.

It clings to your body like rot.

She couldn’t pretend anymore. The evidence of something foul lingered in the air.

Her leg…

Too dark to know the full extent of the damage Sia had been unable to bring herself to touch it, but judging by the smell, she believed it was an open fracture.

Luckily, the food had had the desired effect and gave Sia a sharper focus. “No one is coming to save you,” she stammered. “Save yourself and crawl out of here. Leg or no leg…” She said the words out loud, hoping to muster the courage.

Three short breaths later, she pushed herself to her side, and pain exploded. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Her entire body convulsed, and she vomited her protein bar.

Be brave, Sia. Be brave. The man challenged her now.

“Get up!” She scolded. “Come On! Crawl! Crawl!” she shouted, and started to shimmy in a direction. It didn’t matter where, as long as she was moving, though deep down she prayed it was towards an exit.

The pain raged somewhere in between her screams and her fainting, and when she woke up, she crawled some more. She would die crawling, she thought dizzily as her leg flopped from side to side.

In between blackouts, a faded outline emerged at the far end of what must’ve been a tunnel. Keeping to the edge of the wall, the pale glimmer of the large circular opening hurt her eyes, but she followed it until she was bathing in it.

Nothing described the sensation of the open air touching her body. At last, she’d made it out of the cave. Tears streamed down her face. It was surreal, like she wasn’t really there. She sucked in as much clean air as her body could hold, but it didn’t feel right. It burned and smelled of decay.

Through her blurred vision, she saw ash particles floating around her. She focused her attention at large, and her hearts sunk into the pit of her stomach.

Smoke lingered like fog and made it difficult to understand what she was looking at, but once she witnessed the horror, she couldn’t unsee it.

Piles and piles of dead corpses covered every inch of the ground. Bonfires burned dark smoke far and wide, and the decimation appeared to reach the remote corners of the land. The only thing still standing within the desolation was a single charred tree.

Not sure how or why this triggered her memories, but seeing the smouldering tree was comparable to choking under water and suddenly coming up for air, gasping for breath. Within seconds, a rush of memories paralyzed her.

Cyaniris led the way, pushing to run faster. The air crumbled like dust around them, pouring from the sky like rain. Behind the heavy curtain of ash and smoke, the sky was ablaze, and Sia could feel the heat melt her face.

Ash filled her lungs, and Sia yelled for Cyan to stop, but his grip was too tight and crushed her hand. She wanted to let go. He was too fast, and she tripped with a resounded crack. Perhaps it was the adrenaline that had made her push forward, but the next step her leg gave out and Sia fell flat on her face.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Her foot was completely askew, but then the pain kicked in. Her leg! The shell protruded at an unnatural angle. In her panic, Sia reached down and tried to pop it back into place, but the agony kicked in and she screamed.

“Sia, run!” Cyan yelled. “Don’t stop now. We’re almost there.”

The heat, the debris, squished them like bugs.

“I can’t, my leg.” Horror pulled his face into a grimace. They weren’t going to make it.

Sia said. “Leave me and go! Stop them!”

The shimmer in his eyes told Sia he would rather die than leave her behind. Without hesitation, he picked her up and ran into the forest where they had found shelter months before.

“I see it,” she screamed, “the cave.”

Cyan sprinted as though his wings could take flight through what was left of the vaporized forest, and reached the safety of the cave.

“We made it, Baby,” Cyan said, “we made it together like said we would. It’s okay, Sia, breathe. Remember to breathe. We’ll be all right. We hold their secret.”

She heard him talking, but it was impossible to concentrate on anything but the sores on her body, and the pain in her leg, and then nothing.

After the memories flooded her brain, Sia screamed Cyan’s name, but he didn’t answer.

What was worse than the unknown was the certainty he was gone. Once the darkness lifts, there is no relief, no liberation, only more despair, she thought, and her chest ached.

“No, no, no, please, not like this,” she wailed, and crawled back towards the darkness. She must’ve missed him on her way out.

After pawing her way back, covering every inch of the tunnel, she finally touched his face. It was broken beyond recognition, but she knew it was him and slumped over his dead body. “I can’t do this without you. I don’t want to,” she said, crying uncontrollably, then she heard the enemy.

The distant sounds were like animals, but different. Their language, their tone and pitch were drilled into her brain. Her body froze with fright. “It’s them Cyan... the aliens.” Her hearts beat out of time.

Breathe, Sia, breathe, Cyan’s voice haunted her. Be brave.

They had promised to come in peace from their dying planet, Earth, they called it, but Cyan was on to them from the start. He didn’t trust the humans. Nobody believed him.

Sia’s pain turned to anger. It was up to her to honour his sacrifice. She kissed Cyan, dragged herself back to the entrance, and grabbed her gun from her pack.

The grim sky revealed the welts covering her arms, and her wings were but nubs, but no damage to her body came close to the agony she felt seeing her people, her beautiful home Cerberus, flattened into rubble and death ready for the plucking by those traitors.

The soft-shells as her people called them were getting closer. She peeked a little further down, and there they were.

A team of five humans explored the wasteland in their protective suits. They looked so vulnerable, and would’ve made such easy targets in the beginning. Small and puny with their soft, leathery skins. But they were smart, and peace was never their intention.

Sia took aim. If she was going down she was going to take a few of them with her, but just when she wanted to pull the trigger she remembered they were looking for something, but what? What was it that Cyan had said? “We have their secret,” she whispered.

Another memory sprung to the surface. She rolled over onto her back, aimed the gun inside the cave, and pulled the trigger. Instead of a bang, a hologram emerged from her pistol. It was the location of the alien vessel, hidden behind the third moon, Little Ida.

They were mining minerals. Sia knew what she had to do. It was crashing down on her, but she had no choice. It was up to her.

She grabbed the heart-shaped locket. Cyan had cleverly built it as a transistor waveform. He had always known it would end like this. “Be brave,” Sia whispered under her breath.

She pressed the locket and spoke. “My name is Clossiana. I am a Cerbernara survivor, fighting the human invasion. If you can hear this, you’re not alone.”