"Living just for the sake of living is aningless."
Lu Li flipped the fish over the fire.
"I like that about you," Friday said, casually tossing him a fourth fish. She shook the water from her hands and returned to the fire. "You always say sothing philosophical."
"And that moved you?"
Lu Li set aside the three cooked fish and took the last one to gut it.
"No," Friday ward her hands by the fire. "Look around. Do you see a way out of here?"
Lu Li tossed the bloody entrails into the subterranean river, rinsed the fish in the icy water, and returned to the fire.
"The river."
"Only fish and boats can go against the current. We can't," Friday remarked, skewering the three cooked fish on branches.
The grim reality remained unchanged: they were trapped in a subterranean cavern.
Lu Li skewered his own fish on a branch, then took the three ready ones from Friday and set them over the fire as well. Water dripped from their tails, hissing as it hit the hot coals.
The grayish fish skin gradually took on an appetizing hue.
As the fish cooked, Lu Li watched the turbulent current at the edge of the rock ledge.
The water surged past with a roar, as though bursting out from beneath the smooth stones. But re seepage couldn't create such a powerful current. The river had to have a source upstream.
And Lu Li had to find a way to get there.
The first fish was cooked. It wasn't quite done, but Friday preferred it rare.
She took the fish, concealing it beneath her cloak, and soon the sound of chewing followed.
The ordinary sounds of a human al.
"Hic!" Friday tossed the fish bones and the branch into the fire. "I'm full. The rest is yours."
In silence, Lu Li waited for his fish to cook through before he began to eat.
The three fish restored so of his strength. Once he'd eaten, Lu Li started preparing to leave the cavern.
"I'd wait a little longer if I were you," Friday said, seemingly reading his mind. "You want to jump into an icy river with a near-fatal wound?"
Her words easily convinced him.
The Book of the Apocalypse had enhanced his endurance, but it hadn't healed his wound.
For now, Lu Li needed to recover.
"We're in luck. We won't starve," Friday said, as if to reassure him.
That certainly solved the most imdiate problem in the cavern.
Exhaustion washed over Lu Li, and he went back to his coat to get so rest.
When he woke, he saw Friday sitting with her back to the fire, fishing in the turbulent current with a makeshift rod fashioned from branches. A pile of similarly sized fish lay beside her.
Lu Li ate a few of the roasted fish and fell asleep again.
He felt constantly weary. Though he slept for long stretches, he had no way of knowing whether six or twelve hours had passed.
The only way to mark ti was by counting how many tis he'd woken up.
The third ti he woke, Lu Li checked his wound and the anomaly detector. The device's inner workings seed to have been damaged by the water; it was no longer functioning. At the very least, it was completely silent.
His wound, at least, had already scabbed over.
After eating, Lu Li drifted back to sleep.
Sleep made up the better part of his existence in the subterranean cavern.
When Lu Li woke for the sixth ti, Friday was no longer fishing. She was leaning against the wall, calmly reading a book she had fished out of the river. A pile of dead fish lay beside her.
The book, now dry, was swollen and wrinkled, but still legible.
On his tenth awakening, Lu Li discovered that Friday had apparently grown tired of roasted fish. Their al was now the hind leg of a young bull or sheep.
By his fifteenth awakening, the nu had reverted to fish, but a new piece of cookware had appeared in the cavern—a small pot.
Lu Li had ntioned that plain, salted fish couldn't be very tasty. Friday hadn't believed him, but she ended up not touching a single bite of the fish he'd prepared. When Lu Li woke for the sixteenth ti, she had fished out several spices.
By his twentieth awakening, the scab on his wound had fallen off. Lu Li gave Friday a questioning look, and she gestured for him to remove his bandages.
After unwrapping the bandages, he saw angry pink scars spreading across his chest like a spiderweb. He touched them gingerly. Beneath the skin, lacking the support of his sternum, was a hollow void, like the taut skin of a war drum.
Regardless, the wound had healed. It was ti to find a way out.
"I'm going to check the river," Lu Li told Friday as he re-wrapped the bandages around his chest.
"I'll stay here and fish you out if the current starts to carry you away."
That was the answer he'd been hoping for. Lu Li began to stretch.
"We're deep underground, beyond the reach of evil spirits, so you don't need to worry about the darkness," Friday added.
A minute later, Lu Li had taken off his boots. He sat on the edge of the bank, dipping his feet into the icy, turbulent water. Gripping the rock, he began to lower himself in.
The river was shallower than he'd expected; the water only ca up to his chest. It was wider, though, with much of its breadth hidden in the darkness beneath the cavern walls.
The cavern was like an island in the middle of the subterranean river.
Once he'd grown accustod to the breath-stealing cold, Lu Li took a deep breath, subrged himself, and began to pull himself upstream, hand over hand along the narrow rock wall.
His first attempt ended in failure. He made it no more than five ters before the current forced him back.
Hauling himself back onto the island, Lu Li sat by the fire to warm up, analyzing what he'd learned. The cavern walls sloped upward at an incline, much like the streets of Belfast.
If the river channel didn't change and the surface was ten ters up, he could make it before running out of air. If it was twenty ters, he could surface just before he drowned. But thirty ters... that was no different from several hundred.
He didn't have the lung capacity or the strength for that.
Lu Li didn't rush things. Over his next few waking periods, he continued to explore the river, managing to get about ten ters upstream at his furthest. He'd nearly gotten lost once; if he hadn't spotted the distant glow of the campfire in the oppressive dark, the current would have swept him right past the island until he drowned.
His twenty-third awakening.
On the surface, it could have been early morning or the dead of night.
Lu Li made a hot at broth, adding salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar. When the at was nearly tender enough to fall apart, he threw in so carrots and broccoli. He ladled the finished stew into a pair of empty tin cans.
"Here's hoping you find your way to the surface today," Friday said, raising her can of stew and clinking it against Lu Li's.
Lu Li raised his own can, tapping it gently against hers.
After finishing the warming stew, Lu Li subrged himself in the subterranean river. Following the route he had now taken dozens of tis, he began to fight his way upstream.
The violent current tugged him back, the icy water leaching the warmth from his body.
But step by painful step, Lu Li forced himself forward.
After a minute, he had covered ten ters. But then, the ceiling and floor of the tunnel began to converge.
The passage was narrowing. Moving forward beca more difficult... and more frightening.
Soon, the walls might close in completely, leaving only a gap a few centiters wide.
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