I became frantic, manic. Then frustrated as it took almost half an hour to find a sturdy stepladder amid the wreckage of that warren. Clung awkward to it, finding it difficult to breathe, as I pulled delicately at the light casing.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual. The world fucking with me again. In frustration, I gave it a swat. Still nothing, but now I saw a tiny button up against the frame on the right side. Cursed trying to get my sausage finger in position to push it.

But finally I succeeded—and the casing swung open on a hinge, knocking me on the head. I almost fell off the stepladder, cursing, looked up.

Behind the casing: a blue glow cocooning a sophisticated pass code keypad.

Always here. Never on top of the mountain. Always here.

I didn’t want to exhale. Didn’t want to make a single sound, as if it might all disappear in an unwary instant. Crept back up on the stepladder, examined the keypad more closely.

An eight-digit code.

Could the ghosts of a hummingbird, a salamander solve this puzzle? Game-playing Silvina, but most games had a reason. A way to win. An endpoint.

It felt almost as if it was a matter of faith as much as numbers. What if nothing happened? What if I was wrong about what those numbers were and the system locked me out? Panic then, as I couldn’t remember the address of Silvina’s apartment. Before it came back to me.

I entered the numbers, in their random original order, from behind the eyes.

Nothing, for a horrifying moment. That stretched and stretched.

The blue light turned green. A rumble and crack from the left corner of the far wall. The left panel of stone—waterstained, moldy—pulled inward and slid to the side. Revealing a rough-hewn, square tunnel lit by soft blue emergency lights that lined old-fashioned stone stairs.

A slow ascent into an unknowable darkness. A secret world under the mountain.

No time to absorb this miracle, this ultimate message from Silvina. No time at all.

Because a body was sprawled on the stairs at the edge of the light above me.

[106]

Ronnie Simpson, Unitopia’s last guardian, lay across the steps as if she’d had a heart attack. One arm pinned beneath her. Legs entangled, the left at a right angle at the knee. The laces of the boot had come loose. The back of her head was soaked in blackness. Her face, half turned toward me, had a pinched, mummified quality. She had no eyes, no soft tissue, all the flesh pulled tight. Even under generic gray army fatigues. The way the fabric drew in because there was so little underneath.