I slipped into the tunnel at the far end of the cavern, the one Victor had mentioned before. My legs ached, my pride was intact by sheer force of habit, and I smelled like someone had bottled guilt, sweat, and coal dust into a limited-edition perfume.
It was the kind of scent that said, yes, I’ve been through something unspeakable, and no, I won’t elaborate unless you buy me dinner first.
Every step I took echoed like a secret trying to find somewhere quieter to die. My heart still thudded with that manic rhythm born from deceit and danger—half thrill, half fatigue.
I’d been down a lot of holes in my life—literal, metaphorical, emotional—but there was something uniquely humbling about trudging through one that smelled like old regret and rat droppings.
I kicked a loose pebble and listened as it skittered away, lost to the dark, like the last shred of my patience.
I tried to keep my composure, but the combination of exhaustion and low-hanging stalactites conspiring against my skull turned my walk into more of a stagger. Once, twice, thrice I tripped, catching myself each time on walls slick as sin.
"Grace incarnate," I muttered to myself. "Truly the image of poise. Someone paint me like one of those tragic saints—preferably mid-faceplant."
Somewhere ahead, a faint light flickered—small, tremulous, like a candle caught in indecision. I squinted at it, half expecting it to vanish like a mirage. But no, it stayed, steady and inviting.
My curiosity, that eternal fool, perked up almost immediately. Ah, I thought, hope—or at least something pretending to be. I pressed onward, my pace quickening despite the ache in my calves.
The closer I got, the clearer the light became—amber and soft, breathing against the tunnel walls like liquid gold.
And then, faintly, I heard voices. Low, murmured, and terribly familiar in that way only conspirators’ voices could be. My lips curled into a grin.
I was perhaps two yards from the opening when I spotted them. My crew, huddled like guilty schoolchildren on either side of the tunnel’s mouth, shadows bending across their faces.
Freya crouched near the front, tense and taut as a coiled whip. Atticus scribbled in that infernal notebook of his even in the dark. Dregan was currently napping on Mia’s shoulder; and Brutus—dear, brooding Brutus—stood watch, his hulking frame outlined against the faint halo of light ahead.
Ah, what a perfect moment for an entrance, I thought. Something dramatic, maybe even musical.
I could picture it now: me, stepping into the light, hair catching the glow like a halo of scandal, voice lilting into some dreadful ballad about beauty and rebellion.
The acoustics were decent, too. I was halfway through planning the first verse when a hand like a brick wall grabbed my arm and yanked me backward.
I let out a very undignified squeak before another hand clamped over my mouth.
Brutus’s voice hissed in my ear, low and gravelly. "Quiet."
I wriggled indignantly, glaring up at him as best I could given that my face was currently mashed against his palm.
He didn’t move. His eyes were fixed dead ahead, cold and alert, every muscle locked tight. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he eased his grip just enough for me to breathe through my nose.
I licked his palm. He recoiled instantly, wiping his hand on his trousers with a grimace. "Saints above, you’re vile."
I grinned, whispering back, "Takes one to know one. Now, would you mind explaining why we’re hiding in the shadows like nervous virgins at a brothel?"
He shot me a look that could’ve carved stone. "Look for yourself." Then he nodded toward the cavern beyond.
Curiosity outweighing common sense—as always—I leaned forward, pressing close to his side to peer around the curve of the wall. The sight that met me was almost enough to make me forget how damp and miserable I was.
The cavern yawned open like a cathedral of ruin. It was massive, circular, and bathed in the honeyed shimmer of torchlight that flickered against the walls in hypnotic waves.
The stone gleamed wet and dark. The air thrummed with heat, heavy with the scent of coal, oil, and sweat—a perfume of labor and despair.
A total of sixteen tunnels branched from the perimeter like the spokes of some infernal wheel. From each one extended a set of narrow rails that converged at the center, meeting at a colossal rotating platform fitted with iron joints and rusted machinery.
Alongside that, crates—hundreds of them—were scattered around the room, each stamped with the Warden’s sigil and brimming with duskmetal. The faint hum of gears turning somewhere below gave the whole space an unsettling sense of life, as though the pit itself were breathing.
But none of that was what caught my eye.
No, what captured my attention were the guards.
Not the armored brutes this time, but robed ones—simple cloth uniforms, hoods pulled low. They lounged about the area in loose clusters, their voices carrying softly over the hum of machinery.
Laughter here, a shout there. I’d seen that posture before—the bored vigilance of men who thought themselves safe.
I pulled back slightly, lips pursed. "Well," I whispered, "this looks friendly."
Brutus grunted—a sound that could’ve meant agreement, disapproval, or mild constipation. I didn’t bother clarifying. My gaze drifted back to the guards instead, tracking their lazy movements. Twelve, maybe thirteen,
Then Brutus wrinkled his nose. The expression on his face was part confusion, part disgust. "Saints, Loona," he muttered under his breath. "You stink."
I froze, scandalized. "I’m sorry?"
"You smell like—you know what, I don’t even wanna guess. It’s like wet dust and regret had a baby."
I gasped softly, placing a hand to my mouth. "Oh darling, I’ll have you know this is the scent of perseverance. It’s called ’Surviving the System, No. 5.’ Very exclusive."
He glared at me. "More like ’Rolling in Filth, No. 2.’"
"Oh, come on," I said, pouting. "You try crawling through a drainage tunnel, charming an armed official, and staging a small existential crisis all before breakfast. You’d reek too."
His scowl deepened. "What happen to the correctional officer anyway? We thought you’d killed him."
"Killed him?" I whispered, mock-offended. "What kind of monster do you take me for?"
"A realistic one."
I smiled, teeth glinting faintly in the dim. "Touché. But no, darling, he’s alive. Quite alive, actually. As a matter of fact, he’s on our side now."
Brutus blinked. "You’re kidding."
I gave an elegant shrug, as if switching allegiances were something I did before lunch. "He had a moment of moral clarity. A spiritual awakening, if you will. Happens to everyone eventually. Usually after meeting me."
"Loona." His tone was pure exasperation. "What did you do?"
I tilted my head, feigning innocence. "What makes you think I did anything at all?"
He stared at me, long and hard, the way a man stares at a fire he knows he can’t put out. Finally, he sighed. "Forget I asked."
"Gladly," I said with a grin. "You’d only blush if I told you anyway."
Just then, I heard it. A faint sound rolled through the stone like an answer to prayer or a summons to doom, a low, metallic heartbeat that made the torches tremble and the dust along the rails take a little breath.
I felt it in my teeth first—that odd, hollow rattle that tells you something large and very important is moving where it has no right to be.
Victor, ever the dramatist, produced a cracked stopwatch with more ceremony than sense and clicked it shut like a man sealing a letter to fate, his nod sending a ripple through our little constellation of misfits.
Brutus was already moving, a silent, predatory ripple in a body that rarely wasted motion. He tapped one of our men, the former druglord with sunken eyes and twitching features.
He motioned at him to open the sack he carried. Inside, as if some benevolent deity of contraband had arranged it personally, lay his shotgun and a stolen guard’s cloak, the fabric smelling faintly of smoke and authority.
Freya followed suit, pulling her own cloak over her shoulders like a dark prayer and cinched it tight, Atticus fumbled with his too, awkward, nervous hands making the transformation from prisoner to something resembling a worker.
For a second there was almost rhythm to the motion, like a macabre ballet where everyone knew the steps except the audience.
The rumbling stopped as the train slid into the cavern and paused at the rotating platform. Metal hissed against stone and steam leaked like a secret from its joints.
It was then that the conductor appeared, small as a bad conscience, wrapped in a cloak three sizes too vast for him, goggles perched absurdly on his brow as if he were both blind and determinedly clairvoyant.
He hopped down from the cab with the wobble of a man who’d chosen habit over health. The guards, easeful with the boredom of the privileged, drifted toward him like moths to a lamp, and my ears, traitorously eager, pressed themselves to their words.
He talked in that throaty, practiced cadence of someone who spends his life trading words for trust and trust for coin. Shipment numbers spilled from his lips like pests—dates, weights, slots on the manifest, the slow machine grammar of logistics translated into human rhythm.
"Two dozen crates," he said, pointing with a dirt-scarred finger toward the central tunnel, "They’ll arrive at dusk. The third train will take them to the fourteenth shaft by midnight. Got that?"
He rubbed a thumb along a ledger he produced from beneath his cloak, and the guards nodded as if this were news that could be trusted.
The conductor’s voice softened as he said, "Alright you lot, she’s ready to be loaded up."
The guards glanced at each other, a small, private ceremony of assent passed around them, and then they scattered to their tasks with the mechanical urgency of men who’d been waiting for permission to be useful.
I watched each movement like a litigator watching a jury assemble, cataloguing shift, gaze, and footfall. Brutus slipped the shotgun into a makeshift pocket Atticus had stitched into the inside of the cloak.
His hand hovered over the stock for less than a breath before he whispered, his voice as soft as falling coal, "The second he hops back on, we move."
There was a promise in it, not of victory so much as of motion. "Right," I whispered.
Atticus came up behind us then. "We’ll take them out as quietly as possible."
The absurdity of the request made me grin. Quietly, in a room full of iron, coal, and the potential for cataclysm—why not?
Yet still, I understood the assignment.
Just then, the conductor, oblivious to our tiny vow, climbed back into the cab and began to tend the furnace like a man making tea for king shoveling coal, muttering to the boilers as if each tendered lump were a promise kept sealed.
Victor glanced up at the bend of his stopwatch as if the thing could remember more than the moment it measured, and then he said it—one small word with the weight of a thunderclap:
"Now."