With No Air In My Lungs

Content warning: This story contains content involving asphyxiation, drowning and kidnapping.

I open my eyes and I see what must be ice, enormous and unblinking, floating peacefully in a sea of red that is also itself. It looks at me with its single eye, and into me with a million waves that are tendrils as well, and I want to scream, but I can’t.

All I feel right now is a vibration, not unlike a dream. And that dream is a dream where it talks to me. “Who are you?”, is what it wants me to think it’s saying.

“What brought you here?”

It’s not a question. It’s an order.

Memories hit me like water flooding my throat. This thing is connected to my nerves. It has slid beneath my skin in ways that would make me sick, if I had even one moment to think about them. But. I can’t, right now. All I feel is, I’m burning from the inside out. Peeled away. Made of thoughts I didn’t want to show. And I didn’t know today would be my first time running, but here I am, and I’m already drowning.

---

I blink, and I have to hold my hand up to shield my eyes.

It’s too bright, too wide. And all I’ve done was get off the train, take a walk just out of the station.

I’m okay with all the crowding, even if the crowd pushes me around a bit. Where I’m from, it gets this crowded any day of the week.

But that’s not what stops me. What stills me is this place I see outside.

It’s too big.

Is this how cities look Earthside?

On Luna, if you’re rich, then you could find a spot inside a dome. Empty space above you. But this is not like any of Heinlein’s domes. They don’t have a dome as vast as an entire… an entire city, not one that’s sitting on the surface. One where you can just look up and the black is just… filling your view. Immense, forever.

And beneath it, a city vast and impossible and teeming. And, in the middle: Méliès U. The white tower. A thorn planted deep in Luna’s soil.

“H-hey, is— Luciana? Luce?”

I blink again. A slight person, bald head, no eyebrows, a wide smile, an open stance, and yet something nervous lurking in the tiniest movement. They keep going.

“Yes, hi! It’s Betwixt. B-but, ah, Bet is fine! Nice meeting you!”

I take a good look, and it feels so weird that the first thing I think, after trying to get my bearings and seeing something this impossible, is, ‘I can’t believe my sister’s partner is so scrawny.’

---

”Show me more.”

---

Bet leads me down to a shuttle. All I can do is follow.

It’s all so overwhelming. Se talks and talks and talks and all I can hear is tiny little bits. “Sorry for sending that message out of the blue.” “I’ve just been so worried.” “Meli had an account for me on her PAD, just in case.” “I know a place where we can eat.”

But se mentioned my sister, and my sister has been taken, and the panic rises.

---

”More.”

---

My mother knew better than to stay with a tunnel rat like my dad.

Maintenance in Heinlein pays… enough. Our place was always small, especially for four people. And the arguments were interminable.

I agreed with her, though: Amelia, my sister, was far too brilliant to just stay here. I felt fine being a rat, getting fitted for the jacks and learning the ins and outs of Field Biosupport Maintenance. It felt…not right, but comforting. A constant in my life, just like Dad.

But even I knew that my sister was destined for more. So, yes, I was sad when she left with my mother. It broke Dad’s heart. But I always knew it was the right move.

We kept in touch. Years, basically every week. Until three weeks ago. No ding on the comms. A couple messages going into the void.

Silence.

Then, late, a reply. But it was not Meli. It was Bet, with a request for help.

---

”More!”

---

“So, you think campus security took her?”

“I think so.” Se slides me a screen with her photo, shoving ser cafeteria tray aside.

“Wait, you think they got her here? On university grounds?” I say, looking around. We’re in the cafeteria, right now, on university grounds, the place almost frantic; groups of students with little luck finding tables, scrambling to sit down, putting up study equipment, leaving bags behind.

“Heh. Yep. Not right here, in the—”

“And you brought me here… to show me this… in the same place where the people who kidnapped her are?”

“Don’t worry. First of all, it’s too public and too crowded. Here. See, no cops.” Se pulls up stuff from ser bag. I look at the way the console that pops out is fitted and my eyes widen in recognition. A kit made for running. “I have a plan. To get her out. A-and getting noticed… it’s part of it.”

---

The impossible jellyfish looks at me once more and suddenly its tendrils are pressing on me hard, everywhere, tearing skin, pushing, burning. Dream logic. The tendrils have somehow become my nerves and my dreams and my thoughts and are still tendrils all at once, and I can’t stop this hallucination from shifting around and yet being so real.

I need to breathe. I need to breathe. How do I jack—

”Explain this plan to me.”

I’m drowning again.

---

“Here goes nothing.” Se presses a side of the console and a single light turns up. Ser eyes unfocus. Running. That’s one bit of the plan I know.

The other is simple: I am my sister’s twin. Her ID should mostly match my biometrics. I try and wave and the doors open. No fiddling with guest passes, this time.

“And now we’re just going to… walk in.”

But not quite. We know the bios aren’t going to hold up to the scrutiny of a security system. We just need them to catch us, get us into the secure area Bet swears exists.

I’m thinking that while walking down the courtyard, Bet waving at people se knows. “Mel! Mel, hey!” Someone comes over. “Hey! Hey, Yang! How are you?” “Bet! I haven’t seen you in weeks, how are you?”

Another pang of panic. I’m not a great liar; I have no clue what my sister would say. I keep my mouth shut.

Yang comes over. “Mel! How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in—” And then pales, looking past me.

When campus police interrupts the conversation, and the burly agent with the black ‘SECURITY’ vest intimates a “ma’am, you have to come with us,” I feel almost relieved that I don’t have to figure out a lie that works.

---

If this thing is my dreams, now, I wonder: could I dream something else?

---

They lead us all the way into the main building.

The atrium could contain the entire cafeteria and then some more. Wood and gold everywhere, paneling that looks antique but cannot be, unless they pulled it up from planetside. Greenery divides the room, gives places for the students to sit and mingle and rest; and screens fit onto wooden pedestals, showing rotating timetables—which rooms have which lessons, when is the campus shuttle coming next, what professors are holding office hours today and where.

They don’t give me time to read. The cops push us toward a guard station. Someone opens the door and we are pushed into an elevator. We go deeper in. Deeper down.

And when it opens, it feels like this place has stopped lying to me. All the faux veneer, all the wood and green, it’s all gone; just as white here as the tower is outside, sterile except for cameras and guard posts. We walk down a corner, then another. “Get a move on,” says the pale mass of muscle that’s been pushing me. He shoves. I keep my balance. The one who is moving Bet isn’t much different, both in appearance and demeanor. Bet stumbles beside me.

Bet isn’t okay.

Se’s blinking too quick. Ser breath’s too short. A sheen of sweat.

Still standing. But not okay.

Yet. Se pulled serself up, ser eyes still a little unfocused, ser attention somewhere else. Running this entire time.

And, the moment they tried to push us into a holding room—se screamed “now!”

The lights went out. Some doors opened and some slammed shut, and a deep red light replaced the stark white. The sound of something shorting came suddenly from somewhere within the campus cops’ bodies.

We took this moment to run.

---

”I want you to tell me everything.”

Every time I dream it talking to me, its words tear me apart.

---

We keep running, and running and running. Maybe for hours. I don’t stop to check.

At one point, I start dragging Bet. The whole time, se had been giving me directions through the building, but also needed to stay connected the entire time, and whatever it was that se was doing in there, it was definitely not good for ser. Messing with the systems that were trying to pinpoint us, probably, definitely opening new passageways for us to slip through. Se was downloading maps, fragments I could glance at from the tiny screen on the console. But ser senses were focused on the connection. I had to be on the lookout for both of us.

So, yeah, I was basically holding onto ser as tight as I could, trying to keep us safe, and being ser eyes for what was happening around them that se couldn’t see.

I thought I’d feel better, being on the inside and deep in the ground. A little more like home. But we were down several more levels, into maintenance hatches or down emergency stairs hacked to not trigger a prox alert. And you could hear the steps of so, so many cops.

More than a couple times I could hear them rushing down in our direction, and I had to pull Bet away before they could see us, hiding the both of us in makeshift corners. Dipping into tiny conference rooms, deserted labs. At one point, hiding behind whatever they were storing in this enormous underground warehouse—

Pods. Pods full of people, suspended. Oxygen masks and vacant, sedated eyes.

I almost screamed. We wouldn’t have fared much longer, if I had.

Bet startled me, trying to talk—“D-uh—”—and then interrupting serself, straining just to whisper. “D-detention. I found where they put it this time. It’s one level down.”

“What?”

“Your sister’s there. They have flex spaces. They—”

(Another bout of silence. At this point I could see the sweat. Something in ser must’ve gotten on the worse side of wrong.)

“They can put detention wherever they need to, just move the cell equipment and rebuild. They like it to be several levels below, but they don’t want people to know where it is exactly, if I read these memos right. They don’t want people who could get out and know where things are back in. So it gets moved around.”

The tiny console screen changed, and showed a map I had to squint to read, with a tiny yellow dot.

One floor down from us.

“Y-yeah. I found where it is today. We’re almost there.”

---

”GIVE ME MORE!”

Suddenly: yes.

This memory.

---

I could repeat Dad’s lecture word for word.

On Luna, he would say, if you skimp on work you lose your life. You have to pitch in, you have to fix your biosupport, make sure it works for you and the people around you, because it’s all that separates you from the void. Without maintenance, all you get—sometimes, suddenly—is moon dust, hard vacuum. And a bad end.

“But, sweetie, If something goes wrong, you mustn’t panic, because—”

Here it is. I was a kid, and I was with Dad, and Dad was working in an airlock. He’d brought me there. I don’t know if he should have, but he liked showing off how good he was at his job, and being just me and him was a new thing, and he didn’t want to leave me home by myself.

And then the airlock safety failed—air, rushing out without the door lock cycle kicking in to stop it. And I remember Dad’s demeanor changing, so suddenly. It just would not register to me that I was in danger, in that one moment, because I had never seen him this calm.

He held me tight under one arm. Then like now, I felt the horrid sensation of air leaving my lungs.

With the other hand, he reached in, popped a jack from a maintenance panel, plugged in.

And the cycle reversed. The air rushed back.

“If something like this happens,” he said, “remain calm, kiddo. No matter what.”

---

I hear her scream. “Luce!!”

“Amelia!! Amelia!”

The alarm system escalates. Lockdown sirens start blaring.

And my sister is right there, in a glass cube, banging at the door.

“Th-ther—“ Bet rasps.

“Can you get her out?” I say, still looking at her.

But when I turn, se’s already on the ground. The console clatters beside ser, only held by the cable connecting it to ser neck.

“Bet!” I pull ser around. Se’s not responding. It doesn’t look like a seizure. I think. But—definitely unconscious.

I hear doors opening, somewhere else. Too close for comfort. The siren comes through them, louder.

“Do you know how they open this?”

I stare at Meli, wide-eyed. “I don’t—they just—I didn’t see them use anything. I think it’s remote or something. Is se—”

I look at Amelia’s eyes, and in that moment I know that her panic needs to not be my panic, and I do what Dad taught me.

I pull Bet’s cord off her neck, kneel by the console beside me.

I am fitted. You need to be able to interface to systems, when you need to repair them.

I jack in.

---

and there it was, what strangled Bet. Mid-run. A towering sea of blood-thought. There’s no air to rush away; there could never be air here to begin with. It looks at me with its single eye, and into me with a million waves that are tendrils as well, and I want to scream, but I can’t.

And, I realize, it is making me think of all of this because it’s buying time. To end me, too.

It was never interested in me, in my story or dreams or thoughts. It’s a machine. It’s all simulated instinct and feedback and goals. And—I’ve never run the way runners do, but there are bits I know. I know that this thing is not that different from a system that runs an airlock cycle. All it has are inputs and outputs. No intent, but reaction. A mass of learning cycles forever seeking likely outcomes.

And the only reason it wants to be in my memories is because, somewhere, somehow, it has built into itself the fact that memories can trap you. It wants to be my dreams, because, if I’m dreaming, it has time to kill me in my sleep.

Okay, sure, that’s not what I was thinking at that moment. These words will come later, after I’m out. In this moment without air, before I can think any of this stuff or remember any of what’s happened, what I do is grasp all of this without words.

And so. I don’t panic. I do what I must. And what I must do is remember.

In this memory, I am a kid, and the memory of Dad is holding me tight, and, then as now, I have no air in my lungs.

I just let his lesson take over. I have to keep my calm. I have to cycle the system, and this will let me live.

I reach for the memory of that airlock jack, and I jack in.

---

(And then the feedback is so much I just pass out.)

---

When I come to, I’m on the ground and I have the worst splitting headache of my life.

So is Meli, but, in her case, I think she’s on the ground only because she was leaning on the door when it suddenly slid open.

I hear doors slamming closed. Others, opening. Some sort of cycle is starting.

“Attention, level B-minus-18. Remains disposal cycle in progress. Unauthorized personnel, please leave before full closure. Sixty seconds and counting.”

A ding. A cargo elevator, primed to go deeper.

Me and Meli, we look at each other.

“Out?”

My head is a mess, but the map I found is still seared in my mind, before I also see it conveniently blinking from the tiny debug screen of Bet’s console.

“Somewhere in there, yes. We’ve gotta go further down, but then, we follow the disposal line, there’s a—“

‘Biological material transport dock’, the map said.

“—a way back up, I think. A way out.”

We both hold Bet up, but Meli’s too weak to do much. I hold most of their weight. Bet’s not responding, but I feel ser breathing.

I press the button. Down.

And in that moment before the elevator doors fully close, I hold my breath.

---

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Vantage Point will be released on March 2. It will be available from our online store, our retail partners, and as a free print-and-play PDF immediately, and from our print-on-demand partners as soon as it’s approved.