Chapter 25: What the Undertide Returns

The first thing Hana saw, coming back, was light.

Not the inverted glow from below the Undertide's floor — not that cold and sourceless illumination that had no intention of warming anything — but ordinary gray morning light falling through the maintenance passage's upper hatch in a column the width of her shoulders, and at the top of it, Kenji's face looking down with an expression she had never seen on him before and would not have had words for even if she had.

She climbed. Her arms were correct. Her legs were doing what legs do. She was counting rungs out of habit and reached fifteen before her head cleared the hatch rim and the salt air hit her with a comprehensiveness that made her understand, for the first time, how completely the Undertide had no smell — only the absence of smell, the specific negative of it, the way a room smells after everything has been removed.