The Man from the Unwritten Sky

Chapter 1: The Voice in Tunnel Nine

At 2:13 in the morning, Nila heard her own voice speak from the far end of the railway tunnel.

“Keep your hand off the wall.”

She stopped. Her fingers were only six centimetres from the concrete.

Behind her, Manav looked up from a reel of cable. His torch lay on its side, throwing a long shadow across the curved tunnel roof.

“What?” he asked.

They had come to measure a strange tremor reported by train crews. Nila was checking the wall while Manav helped set up their equipment.

Nila stared ahead. Beyond their orange survey lamp, a concrete wall blocked the end of Tunnel Nine. It had been built eleven years before either of them started working on the railway. There should have been no one behind it.

She had heard herself often enough in training recordings to recognise her voice. Even the short, hurried way she spoke was the same. But she had not said anything.

“Did you play a recording?” she asked.

Manav raised his hands. He held an electrical connector in one and a piece of bread in the other. He had been trying to eat without getting grease on it. “On what?”

Her recorder was on a tripod behind him. It was recording, not playing anything. Her phone was zipped inside her jacket. No one else was supposed to be in this service tunnel.

A freight train approached on the main line above them. Nila felt its vibration through the soles of her boots before she heard the wheels. Outside, rain was falling over Veyapur, where workers were loading cargo at the harbour.

She waited until the train had passed.

“Who’s there?”

Her words echoed back along the tunnel. No one answered.

Manav put down his bread. “You heard someone?”

“I heard a voice.”

“Where?”

She pointed towards the wall. He stood slowly and looked past her.

There could be an ordinary explanation. Someone might have entered before the security guard let them in. An old maintenance speaker might still be connected. Sound could be misleading in a tunnel.

Nila investigated noises and vibrations for a living. Usually, the strange sound turned out to be an ordinary machine in a place nobody had thought to check.

She picked up the survey lamp. The wall was four metres wide, with damp patches around its edges. A faded number nine was painted on it. White mineral deposits covered the bottom of the number.

At midnight, she had photographed the wall and checked its temperature. Her earlier readings showed that the tremor was strongest here. She had attached one vibration sensor to this wall and another to the side of the tunnel.

The sensor on the end wall had gone dark. Its small red light was out.

“Dead battery?” Manav asked.

“I put a new one in this evening.”

“Loose connection?”

“Maybe.”

Neither of them moved towards it.

Nila lowered the lamp so its beam fell across the concrete from the side. A black patch surrounded the sensor. It was about the size of her palm. It did not look wet, and the light did not seem to brighten it.

Her voice spoke again from ahead of them.

“He is coming through. Please listen carefully.”

Manav stepped back. He had heard it too.

The voice sounded like Nila, but now she noticed something wrong with the way it spoke. It paused in the middle of “carefully,” as though the speaker did not know how to say the word.

“Who are you?” she called.

“Do not let him take you home.”

The lamp flickered.

Manav caught her sleeve. “We should go.”

“Yes.” She wanted to know who was speaking, but she was not going to stay beside that wall to find out.

She backed away and reached for the recorder. Manav gathered the loose cable without stopping to wind it. Their boots splashed through water beside the track bed.

Then someone knocked on the other side of the wall. Three blows. Uneven and weak.

Nila stopped.

“No,” Manav said. “Keep moving.”

“Someone’s behind it.”

“There’s a hill behind it, Nila.”

The knocks came again, quieter this time. She could not be sure what she was hearing. But it sounded like a person who was running out of strength.

She turned the lamp back towards the wall.

The black patch had stretched into a line. It ran from the floor to just above her head. As she watched, the line widened.

The concrete did not crack or fall away. Yet a gap was opening in the middle of the solid wall.

Daylight shone through it.

Nila stared. It was the middle of the night. There was a hill behind the wall. But the light spreading across the floor was daylight, and she could see shapes moving beyond the opening.

Water poured into the tunnel.

Manav shouted something. Nila could not make out the words. Pressure built inside her ears, as though she were dropping too quickly in a lift. The air tasted of metal.

A hand came through the gap. It caught the edge of the concrete, slipped, then reached again. A second hand appeared, followed by a man’s head and shoulder. He struggled to squeeze through the narrow opening.

He fell onto his knees on the tunnel floor.

For a moment, Nila could see past him. There was a strip of pale ground on the other side. Tall black structures rose from it. Above those structures hung an enormous body of water.

A sea, where the sky should have been.

Something huge moved through it. She saw enough of its slow movement to think it might be alive, but it seemed far too large.

Then the man fell forward, blocking her view. The gap began to close, with his coat still caught inside it.

Nila put down the lamp and grabbed him beneath one arm.

She pulled. He was heavy, and his boots dragged through the water.

Manav dropped the cable and took his other arm.

The man made a weak sound of pain.

A grey object fell from his hand and rolled towards Nila. She stopped it with her boot. It was about the size of a plum, with raised ridges across its surface. She could feel its warmth even through her sole.

“Again,” she told Manav. They pulled together.

The coat tore, and the man slid free. The opening shut with a sharp hiss.

Nila looked up. The wall was solid again. No broken concrete lay on the floor. There was no crack where the gap had been. The painted number nine was still there.

The sensor fell from the wall.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke. Beside her, Manav was breathing hard.

The stranger lay on his side between them. Under his torn coat, he wore a dark garment that fitted closely around his body. Clear fluid was leaking from a split near his ribs. It looked faintly gold under the lamp.

“Don’t touch that,” Nila told Manav.

He kept his hands away.

She knelt beside the stranger’s head. His face was narrow, and dark, wet hair lay flat against his skull. He might have been thirty or forty. Something about his jaw looked unusual, but she was too shaken to work out what.

“Can you hear me?”

He did not respond.

She checked his breathing, following what she remembered from her first-aid course. His chest rose too quickly, stopped, then moved twice in quick succession.

“Call control,” she said. “Tell them we have an injured person and water entering the tunnel. Keep everyone else out.”

Manav already had his radio in his hand. “What do I say happened?”

“Say what you can see.”

He hurried back towards the entrance to find a clear signal.

Nila took disposable gloves from her kit and put them on. She folded a clean cloth and laid it against the tear in the stranger’s clothing. She used very little pressure. She could not tell whether the fluid was coming from his body, the garment, or both.

His eyes opened.

A thin, transparent layer swept sideways across one eye. Nila stopped moving.

His pupils were not round. As they narrowed in the lamplight, they drew in from both sides.

He spoke in soft sounds she did not recognise. Beneath his voice was a lower vibration. She could feel it through the hand she had resting near his shoulder.

“I don’t understand you.”

He tried again, then looked towards her boot. The grey object was still beneath it.

She moved her foot and picked the object up in her gloved hand. It was hotter than before.

The stranger caught her wrist.

He had four fingers.

She looked closely. None appeared to be missing. The fingers were arranged differently from hers, and his hand looked complete.

Nila nearly pulled away. He released her immediately.

With an effort, he touched a pale band around his forearm. A light appeared inside it, then faded.

“Wall,” he said.

This time Nila understood the word. It came out in a rough male voice, spoken with difficulty.

“Yes. We’ve moved you away from it.”

“No.” He swallowed and looked at the concrete. “Other side.”

Manav came running back. “A response team’s on the way. Control wants us out. A train driver heard a pressure bang on the main line.”

Nila glanced at the water spreading across the tunnel floor. Tiny points of light were moving in it.

They were not reflections from the lamp. Each one changed direction when another came near.

The stranger saw them. His expression changed to fear.

He caught the edge of Nila’s jacket. He did not pull her towards him; he seemed to be trying to make her listen.

“Close,” he said.

“The opening? It’s already closed.”

His breathing grew uneven again. The band on his wrist flashed twice.

“Listen.”

The word came out in Nila’s voice.

From behind the sealed wall came a deep, slow knock.

Nila looked towards it. This did not sound like the weak blows of someone asking for help.