The Edge

Luca: Part Seven

Luca tried to slow his breathing...until his mind started to overthink breathing. What if there was something in the air that was making him hallucinate? What if he was hallucinating due to low oxygen and deep breathing was only making it worse? Luca closed his eyes and shoved the heels of his hands against them. The pressure made him sea starbursts, but that was better than hallucinating his missing sister.

"Calm down," he told himself. He tried to sound stern, but his voice was shaking too badly for that. "Calm down. You're probably just stressed. Maybe you hit your head a little, but..."

Oh, so I might have brain damage? his panic brain replied frantically. Cool. Cool! I love that.

Damn it, this was why his therapist said he needed to stop talking himself out of things. You need to start accepting uncertainty, Luca. If you keep letting it control you, this isn't going to get any better.

"Okay," he said aloud, "I'm hallucinating. I might have hurt myself. Or the oxygen is running out. Or there's something in here. There's nothing I can do about that."

He'd just have to accept that.

There might not have been anything he could do about the hallucinations, but maybe there was something he could do about escaping. Surely he hadn't exhausted all his options, had he? The thought made him close the journal and tuck it away in his jacket. Walking was still out of the question; same with going back up the way he came. The slope was still too much for him to handle, and the entryway had looked pretty shut off. What did that leave him?

Luca looked around, bracing himself for another glimpse of Cassandra as he did. There was no sign of her, thank God, and he had a better idea of the landscape now. There were natural pathways leading through the crystals, spaces big enough for a person to walk through. Caves had more than one entry and exit, right? Maybe there was another way out of there, or to the scientists studying this place.

Should I stay put, or should I try to find help myself?

Luca considered his options and started digging through his pockets. He'd always favored clothes with multiple pockets, because that gave him more options in an emergency situation. Not every emergency situation, of course, and this was disappointingly the one time he didn't have anything that might help with his ankle. But after some digging, he did find a marker.

Please have ink, please have ink, please...

Luca scooted closer to one of the crystals and tried drawing a smiley face. The marker had some trouble with the rough parts of the crystal, but left perfectly visible lines on the smoother parts. Perfect! Luca looked around again, chose a direction, and drew an arrow pointing to that path. Alive, he wrote. Went that way. Now the others would be able to find him, and he'd be able to find his way back if he had to backtrack.

He started scooting along. The path he'd chosen was one of the larger ones, giving him the perfect amount of maneuverability. He tried to stick to paths like that, clear ones with plenty of space for him to move. Luca dragged himself through the crystals, stopping occasionally to mark another rock. He kept his head on a swivel, both to keep an eye out for people and to be sure that the Cassandra specter wasn't following him.

Correction: that you're not still hallucinating Cassandra. She can't follow you. She'd not real. You don't want to make things worse by attributing malice to them. You probably shouldn't even be thinking about them at all. Just don't acknowledge them and keep moving, okay?

Easier said than done. He kept seeing himself and having mini panic attacks thinking it was her for a second. It was proof of his paranoia if nothing else, since they weren't even the same race. Damn it, why? His list of mental issues might've been fairly long, but anything that could cause hallucinations was not on the list. Or it hadn't been before, anyway.