by Coralee June
There, crouched in a hole barely big enough for a child, let alone a grown woman, was Mia. I nearly choked on the bile rising in my throat. She looked sickly and scarily thin. Her sunken cheeks gave her beautiful face a haunted expression. “Maverick!” I yelled, not knowing what else to say. She needed medical attention, now.
Lenny rolled his eyes as he stepped between the door and us. “Back up. We’re going to get the information from her. She knows where the cure is. We’re gonna bleed the boy dry!” he screamed, spit gathering on his lips. He sounded absolutely insane. “You know this bitch? Aha!” He started clapping, the smacking sound filling the small space. He was rocking back and forth with glee, stomping his feet on the ground as he whispered to himself, “Let’s get her out of here and play. I found a fun way to make her talk.”
He reached in his pocket for a key, and the moment Huxley saw the tool for Mia’s freedom in his grasp, he lunged for Lenny and immediately started landing punch after punch to his scruffy face.
Lenny’s goon lifted Heat to my skull, causing a frenzy to erupt in the crowded space. Jacob yelped and tried to yank me back. Maverick shoved past Patrick to intervene. But it was too late. Time slowed, and his pudgy finger pressed on the trigger. The last thought I had was how much I loved these men.
He engaged the weapon, and I closed my eyes, prepared to die.
But nothing happened. He clicked it again. Nothing. I was still breathing in the stench of the air, but now I was even dizzier, my thoughts felt slow. Cyler growled. “You’re so fucking lucky you’re holding a dud.” At that, all my men overtook Lenny and his goon. Huxley was still landing punches while Patrick and Jacob tackled the other guy, ripping the weapon from his hands. Within seconds they were pulling Mia out of the hole and were shoving the two of them back in it, firmly locking the door in place as blood poured from Lenny’s mouth.
I started to sway, not quite sure what was wrong with me. I fell to my knees to get a better look at Mia. She wasn’t awake, but she was alive.
“Mia?” I called out while stroking her white hair out of her eyes as the guys caught their breath. She started to wake up, but I could see the fog in her eyes. I could easily wrap my fingers around her arm. What did they do to her? Where was Chief Aarav?
“Agrio?” she croaked out.
“I’m here,” I said with a whisper as tears rolled down my cheeks. How many times would I have to watch those I love kiss the brink of death? She wore her suffering like a cloak that wouldn’t keep her warm. She looked like she should have died long ago. Around me, my men were cursing and moving out of the cramped tunnel.
“’Bout time you got here. Almost died before I could give you a clue,” she whispered.
“What clue?”
“That frigid bitch,” she started coughing, like a laugh got caught in her throat. Instead of a chuckle escaping her chapped lips, it was sickness that poured out of her. “Stonewell. She has the boy. Told me to tell you 88982. She said you’d get it.”
I went still. That didn’t make sense. I didn’t understand what she meant. I stalled while staring at Mia, watching as she slipped into further disappointment at my lack of a reaction. She’d been holding on to tell me this, and I had no fucking clue what it meant.
I listened as the noises faded and a shrill scream met my ears, was it me? Everything felt so distant. A hand landed on my shoulder as I turned around to face Patrick. “Come here, Ash. Let Maverick do his thing.” I stood up and somehow managed to find Jacob’s hand just as Huxley was knocked out—by Cyler. Huxley was in his overprotective mode and was itching to open the hole and continue to beat Lenny to death. Huxley had scratches running down his cheeks from his fight with Lenny and a good bruise forming on his face from Cyler. I winced. Even though I knew there was no deterring Huxley when he got in that headspace, knocking him out still felt a bit excessive.
Cyler shrugged. “Can’t kill him yet. Need to get intel.”
“Will he be okay?” I asked Patrick while looking at Huxley.
“Hux?” Patrick said with a chuckle, though it was a dark tone. “He’s been hit way harder. He’s fine.” Hux might have gotten better about losing himself to his episodes, but some things never changed. He couldn’t get past his devotion to those he cared about.
While Maverick looked Mia over, I took stock of my other men. Their eyes seemed heavy, and Patrick was leaning against a wall while clutching his stomach. It was like we were all sick.
Maverick picked Mia up and cradled her in his arms while storming out of the small tunnel, nearly tripping over Huxley in the process. “We have to get out of the caves. The air is poisoned. That's why everyone was so complacent back there. Everyone, grab a body, and we’ll do shifts to get everyone out.”
“Fuck,” Cyler said while grabbing his head. “The tunnel sickness. Had it in the mines, too. There are at least a hundred people in here.”
Maverick cradled Mia while heading back towards the main room. “We’ll get them out. We’ll save them all.”
Chapter Nine
It took the guys four grueling hours to carry everyone out of Lythe. I watched in horror as they moved men, women, and children on their backs up the elevator. Each time they’d get back to the top, they’d gasp for air like they’d been holding their breath.
Maverick found an old building above ground and was setting up people there. He said it would take a while for the poison to leave their systems. Tunnel fever came from some of the natural gasses trapped in the caverns underground. It was like a potent opioid, causing mania, delirium and mostly apathy. It was such a downer that people didn’t care what they were doing, they just existed.
The guys alternated going down into the caverns, working as quickly as possible while taking breaks. Once they got dizzy, they switched shifts and laid down to rest. By the end of it, all of them were dripping with sweat, their limbs shaky. “What happens with long term exposure?” I asked.
“Weaker people die, but it just acts like a long-term high. You don’t think. Don’t feel. It’s probably why Lenny thought he was in charge down there. He got the manic side effects and went crazy. Plus, if he was often leaving to gather more Scavengers, he wasn’t having nearly as much pumped into his system.
The underground city of Lythe was coordinated by anarchy. There was no real leader. No real governing body. Lenny and his goon were just a couple of guys that had their ear to the ground, knew of rumors, and took things into their own hands.
The guys refused to let me help rescue the people down there, so I stayed by Mia. She had a broken arm. We couldn’t tell how long it had been snapped, but Maverick said it was healing wrong, which meant it had been a couple of weeks. On top of that, food rations were sparse. It appeared that they’d only given her the bare minimum of nutrients to keep her breathing, and nothing more.
“How do you get food?” Cyler asked while adjusting his belt. He’d been addressing one of the Lythe citizens. The first men to be pulled from the cavern started to wake up from the waking sleep they were in and frantically asked questions. Some of them had been down there for months and had no idea what was happening. I loved watching Cyler approach the problem that was Lythe. Some of the people living here recognized him, some even were previous citizens of Dormas and were eager to follow his lead. Soon, we had a central station set up in an abandoned building, and the tents set up down below were now scattered around above ground Lythe.
“I don’t remember. I think there were rations down below? It’s all a bit hazy. I know we ate, but…”
“One of the guys handed out food every morning,” a woman explained while cradling her head in her hand. She reached over to vomit in a nearby bucket then wiped her lips before turning back to Cyler. “It’s like he knew what was happening to us but didn’t care,” she whispered. “He just kept bringing in more Scavengers, and I was too...tired...to think anything of it.”
“Can you make him stop moaning?” Cyler growled at another man. Lenny was moaning in the
corner. Alone. No one bothered to help him. We debated long and hard about bringing him back to the surface. When Huxley woke back up, he voted to leave him down there to starve to death, but Cyler vetoed that. He seemed convinced that Lenny had more information.
To keep Huxley from beating Lenny’s skull in, he and Patrick went to find Tallis, Jules, Thurst, and Bowden to explain everything that had happened. Mia wasn’t entirely out of the woods yet, and I knew that Tallis would want to see her.
I scraped my nails along my scalp while trying to make sense of the numbers Mia told me. I had left her bedside thirty minutes ago, determined to sit down and think about the mysterious code she spouted off at me when we had first found her. Was it a delirious musing? Or did it have merit? 88982.
“You okay?” Patrick asked as he settled beside me. Jacob hadn’t left my side since the moment we got here. And when Cyler told a few men to go scout food supplies, my broody leader looked like he was itching to go but stayed behind with me instead.
“I don’t understand what Mia was talking about. She said Mistress Stonewell wanted me to know this sequence of numbers. What does it even mean?” I cradled my head in my hand and felt a sob rise up my throat, threatening to make me feel helpless again. “Mistress Stonewell has Payne, but where?”
Patrick rubbed my back as Cyler yelled at a kid to clean out a makeshift pantry. He also ordered a coughing man to go to quarantine, and when he was informed that there was no quarantine, he let out an exasperated sigh. He was in his element.
“I’m sure she went into hiding when shit went down. Word got out that the cure was pumping in his veins. She might be a bitch, but she’s not an idiot. She left a code for you to find her. So think about it. We can figure it out,” Patrick replied.
Just as I let out another huff, Kemper plopped down at the bench across from me and handed me a piece of paper and a pencil. Sliding it across to me, he gave me a small smile before saying, “Sometimes it helps to write it out?”
I slowly dragged the lead of the pencil along the tan paper, digging so deep that it almost tore.
88982.
What could I possibly know about a code?
I kept tracing over the numbers while trying to rack my brain. “It's not coordinates,” Kemper said while staring at the page in front of me. Was it a cryptogram? That didn’t seem likely because what word started with two of the same letter? I felt helpless and angry. Nothing seemed right, and how could a sequence of numbers have so much damn power over me?
I stood up and marched over to a writhing Lenny, despite the low warnings from my men. “Does this mean anything to you?” I asked while thrusting the paper towards him. If he was so determined to find Payne, now was his chance. Maybe he overheard something else from Mia? He scrunched his bruised and battered face in confusion while studying the five numbers like they could somehow cure X and all of the empire’s problems. After a few moments of mindless staring, he directed his gaze back at Cyler, who was pacing the room with a scowl.
“Fuck off. Get me some water, and I’ll talk,” he mumbled.
I wanted to choke him to death on the spot, but instead, I settled on kicking him in the balls. “Answer me,” I insisted as he cried out in pain and cursed me. People were watching, but I didn’t care.
After a few minutes of whining and composing himself, he sighed before drawing his attention back to the paper. “I don’t know what this means. It looks like a code?” I chewed on my bottom lip, mulling over his words while thinking up everything I knew about the Stonewells. A code.
A code.
A code.
Holy shit. I knew what these numbers were.
“Kemper!” I called out while running my fingers over the paper like it could somehow magically take me to where I needed to go. Within an instant, he was at my side, stroking my arm while wearing a concerned expression. “I know what this means. There’s a safe at Stonewell Manor in Master Stonewell’s old office. I was never allowed to touch it, but I know where it is. I bet this is a code to the safe.”
Kemper smiled before giving me a side hug. “That’s my girl. Always so smart.” Cyler caught my excited expression and excused himself from the group of men eagerly taking orders.
“What put that smile on your face? Got some good news for me, Babe?” he asked with a little half smile before crossing his arms over his chest.
“The numbers Mia told me? It’s a code to the Stonewell safe. If we could make it to Stonewell Manor, I bet it’ll lead us to Payne.” This had to be it. Mistress Stonewell always made a big deal about not touching the safe. I wasn’t even allowed to clean it. It was a mystery I’d long ago forgotten about.
“When can we leave?” I asked eagerly. If I had my way, I’d already be in a transport headed to Galla. Between finding this underground city of people and this clue, it felt like I could finally breathe in fresh air. I started tapping my foot, contemplating pacing. The moment I knew what this meant, my body wanted to start running. It was like the safe at Stonewell Manor was a magnet pulling me towards it.
"Patrick and Huxley are still looking for Tallis and Jules. Mia still needs to wake up, and I'm going to set up a few systems here so that people have a better chance of surviving." The moment those words escaped Cyler Black’s lips, I could feel my body slip into despair. We didn't have time. We needed to hurry up and find Payne so that we could find a cure.
Cyler must've seen my obvious disappointment because he put a hand on my shoulder before speaking again. "Babe, two days is not going to end us. We have to be smart about this. There's still resistance groups in Galla, and we need to be settled before we can go. I know you're anxious to see Payne, but we need to trust that Mistress Stonewell is taking good care of him and that he is safe."
That was the thing, I didn't trust that he was safe with Mistress Stonewell. She had no survival skills and no sense of loyalty to anyone but herself. She was selfish and ignorant to the world; the only quality of hers that could lend a hand to her survival was the fact that she was mean. Cruel. But that wasn't enough when you were in charge of safeguarding a little boy, especially when that little boy held the key to the cure.
"One day," I argued. If anyone could make it happen, I knew that it was Cyler. He frowned before glancing at Mia, who was still in the corner with Maverick. He kept checking her pulse and feeding her water. Getting her rehydrated was at the top of the priority list. I hated that I was so callous to her illness now, but I was looking at the bigger picture. I trusted that Maverick would bring her back to health, just like I trusted that I needed to find Payne. I needed to save my men.
Cyler let out a long and low sigh before answering me. "I'll try my best, Babe. But we have to be smart about this. What if we led some of the leftover guards to Payne? I'm not making any decisions until we find Jules and Tallis and all sit down and discuss this together." Frustration was bubbling up in my chest, and I knew that I had no right to feel the way that I felt. Cyler was being reasonable, he was being smart. But no matter what I tried, I still felt anxious and helpless. Now that I knew what it was like to act and do, I couldn't stand to sit around.
Kemper was the one that spoke next, his tone gentler than my tough leader. "Why don't you go sit with Mia for a little bit? The sooner she's out of the woods, the sooner we will be able to leave."
I bit my lip and struggled to find that compassion I knew was deep within me. I loved Mia. She was one of my first friends when I moved here to Dormas. I wanted to feel settled and help her, but death made me see the world differently. I saw Mia’s sacrifice as something that needed to be treasured. She fought for her life because she knew that she had a role to play in saving Payne. Her suffering would be for nothing if we didn't get to him in time.
But I feared saying these thoughts out loud. The guys were already worried that I'd lost too much of myself to the violence of Cavil and Ethros. So instead, I nodded and shuffled my way over to Mia, where I knew there was nothing I could do but hold her hand.
> The moment I was by Maverick’s side at her bed, he grabbed my hand and lifted it up to place a tender kiss on my skin. I felt shockwaves of love and compassion flow through me, and I borrowed his selfless views of caring for others for a little bit. I did love Mia, I just loved humanity more. I was at war with myself, at war with wanting to save the world but also wanting to do things the right way. It made me feel naïve and foolish for feeling so brash about everything.
"Her blood sugar is low, I'm afraid to give her too much water, and she's too weak to eat. They have no sugar here, or I would give her droplets of sugar water to at least stabilize her glucose levels," Maverick said before placing a hand on his chin as if considering all the options.
I closed my eyes and decided to focus on one problem at a time. "On our way in, I saw an apple orchard. It's getting colder, but I bet there are a few apples left, assuming looters haven't taken them all. If I got some, we could make her some juice. Then maybe get some sugar in her system until she could eat?" I offered while staring at her frail frame.
Maverick turned to look at me with appreciation. I liked that we could bond over this. I found myself wondering how Lilly was doing. The old woman that taught me medicine and about the human body was good to me. Maverick would've loved her.
"I can also look for some beehives. They're popular in this area, some honey would do her good too." I reached over to feel her pulse and nearly gasped when I saw how slow it was. Mia quite literally would have starved to death in that cave. Anger flared within me, and the need for justice once again came to a head. Lenny deserved to die even though it wasn't my place to decide.
"Do you think you could get some?" Maverick asked, his voice gaining enthusiasm with each word. I could feel him vibrating with the need to act, similar to the way I felt with the need to go rescue Payne. Looking at Mia now, I felt terrible for ever wanting to leave. Cyler was right, we needed to get her out of the woods first.