by Erik Hyrkas
Brit felt exhausted, as if decades without sleep was finally catching up with her. She looked at Marcy, whose eyes fluttered open and then slowly shut again.
“Let’s rest here,” Brit said.
Marcy sunk to the ground without question and drifted off, but the sudden realization that there might be dangerous creatures in the cave, like the ones that retrieve souls and regurgitate them for food, jolted Brit to sudden alertness. She looked around the cave. When she saw or heard nothing, she too collapsed to the floor and drifted off into fitful sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brit woke when she felt a sharp pain in her stomach. She looked around the dimly lit cave and saw Marcy sitting alertly nearby.
Suddenly, she realized that the room was so dim because one of the lights they had brought from the mine was completely dark and the other was barely shedding any light at all.
“Whatever charges these lights must somehow come from the mine,” Brit said. “I think we should hurry back there before we end up in the dark.”
Marcy nodded. She picked up her mining chisel and the remaining working light. Brit grabbed the extinguished light.
“Your halo,” Brit said and then touched her own forehead. “It’s gone.”
They both looked around and saw that their halos had fallen off during their sleep. Maybe it needed a power source as well. In some ways, Brit had counted on the halos being a backup plan for food. She had figured that, when they were hungry, they would return far enough into the mine to not feel hungry or need to alleviate their other needs. She had been scared that maybe the halo would knock her unconscious for being MIA for so long, but she thought it was unlikely as they weren’t out of bounds as far as the device was concerned.
Marcy threw her halo into the river where it landed with a loud splash. Brit wasn’t sure if that was wise. There might still be some way to use them. She tucked her halo into her one remaining functional front pocket.
They climbed back through the cave and to the mine. By the time they reached new light, their remaining light source was nearly gone.
Brit was hungrier than she could ever remember feeling. She didn’t complain, though. This was her plan, and even if she died of starvation, she was going to stick to it. When they were far enough into the mine, the extinguished light flickered back on and the dim light grew stronger.
“There must be some sort of power source in the mine,” Brit said. “We should leave these two here to recharge and get two fresh ones. We can alternate between them with two charging and two with us. We should probably not risk them going out again.”
Brit had terrifying thoughts of being lost in the cave, starving in complete darkness. She broke out of her waking nightmares when she noticed Marcy holding her stomach.
“Are you hungry, too?” Brit asked, knowing the answer.
Marcy nodded.
“The other escaped slaves said they had food, but we might not like it. So we need to find them.”
Brit used her chisel to knock two fresh lights free from walls of the mine and handed one to Marcy. With a light in one hand and their high-tech chisel in the other, they set off back into the cave.
This time they stopped at the bank of the river long enough to drink but didn’t remain to rest. They pushed on into new areas of the mine. Brit marked the walls and floors as they went to make sure they could find their way back. They explored until their lights started to dim, and then they hurried back to the mine. Their lights went dark with twenty yards of cave remaining before the mine. Fortunately, there were no twists or turns and they could navigate by the distant dim light shining around the last corner.
“That was close,” Brit said. “I think we need a better way of doing this.”
“So hungry,” Marcy whispered.
“I know,” Brit said.
Marcy sank to her knees and clasped her hands together. She whispered words too soft for Brit to make out.
Brit picked up the two lights they had brought into the cave and swapped them for the two lights that had been recharging. She sat back against the cave wall to wait for Marcy and pondered possible ways they might explore further. Bringing more lights wouldn’t help beyond the slight variance in how long they lasted and the chance that maybe one of their multiple lights would last long enough to give them a better chance of safely returning.
The surface of the lights was smooth and cool, and when she ran her fingers over one of the lit half-globes, it went dark. She reversed the motion and found that it turned back on. She experimented with this a few more times. Maybe by having one light off and one light on, she could explore further. With any luck, it would not use power while off, much like an unused flashlight. The lights were small enough that she could hold two in her hand by putting them back to back, and she found that they adhered to each other by means she couldn’t detect. In this configuration, only half the globe was now lit.
She was exhausted and weak from hunger, but not so tired that she had to sleep. Now that she had the means of exploring twice as far, she felt a small surge of renewed energy. Then she began to wonder if the halo she had stored in her pocket might have given her that energy. She pulled it out and looked at it.
Nothing about the halo seemed different. She thought about how long she had explored and how long it would take her to get this hungry and tired. This made her suspect the lights lasted around twelve hours, but maybe her perception was off. However long they lasted, she was sure they had explored pretty deep into the cave without finding the other escaped slaves. This planted a small seed of panic in her. They had already lost their halos, and they weren’t going to go much longer without food. She hadn’t seen Jax since her return to the cycle, and she had no intention of leaving until she did. She didn’t need to find the other escaped slaves, but she needed to figure out what they were eating.
“Sleep,” Marcy croaked. She lay down on the uneven, rocky ground.
Brit nodded. “I am going to make one more attempt at searching the cave before I rest today.” She pulled out her halo. “I think this is actually making me feel better.”
Marcy looked stricken. “I threw mine.”
Brit nodded and handed Marcy her halo. “Why don’t we take turns holding mine.”
Marcy accepted the halo and clutched it in her palm, then looked into her eyes. “You know that you aren’t going to find Jax in there,” she said in the clearest words she had spoken since regaining her speech.
Brit was about to say that there was no way she hoped to find Jax in the cave, as really it was the slaves she was looking for. She was going to say how important it was that they had help. Then she realized that the cave also represented her only plan to find Jax. What if he was in solitary confinement? Was there any way that the cave or other slaves would help if that was true? She had to believe that Jax was still in the cycle and that the escaped slaves were still in there and willing to help.
“I know,” she said. “But we need help to survive, and the only people I’ve met on this whole planet who might help us were in there.”
“Nobody is in there,” she whispered again. “We’ve searched so much of the cave that there cannot be much more left.”
“Well, I want to make sure that I’ve searched all of it,” she said, and she turned away from Marcy and walked into the dark.
Brit navigated the initial passages quickly as they were familiar to her already, and she eventually came to a small opening that she had never explored. There was a mark on the floor in front of it, much like the marks she made, but it was a V shape pointing its sharp angle away from the opening while the marks she made were more proper arrows. Much of the cave had high ceilings and allowed her to easily walk standing up. This opening would require crawling and probably didn’t go far.
She wasn’t fond of crawling through tight spaces that might lead her into a dead end that she would have to find her way out of by crawling backward. Worse, she had thoughts of slipping down a slope while c
rawling, finding herself face down in a hole and no way to back out of it—and no way for anybody to ever find her.
Brit pushed aside her fears and crawled cautiously into the small opening. The ground was damp and sloping downward, and her fears of slipping into a hole she couldn’t back out of grew. Even as she crawled, she was certain that there wasn’t enough room to rotate and crawl out face first. She couldn’t set her light down because it would roll away from her and leave her in the dark, and she couldn’t crawl holding her power chisel, and so she left it on the ground at the entrance to the opening. The rod wasn’t only a tool for digging. It was her only weapon and the only way to mark the cave floor so she could find her way back. She wasn’t going to explore far into this new passage, she decided, and so she felt that her chances of getting lost were minimal.
The ceiling got lower, and she had to slide on her belly to continue. The thought of how absurd and desperate this was came to her, and she stopped moving and was considering starting the slow backward crawl to the opening she entered when she saw a flicker of light ahead. She quickly extinguished her own light by running her fingers over it.
She heard a low muttering and the occasional clink of glass against glass. Slowly, she inched forward toward the light, moving as quietly as possible. Ahead, the passage opened into a larger cave the size of a living room. A man in cobalt blue leather was hunched over a stone table.
She scrambled forward. “Avrox?” she asked.
The man turned, looking startled. “You!” He grabbed a crude hammer from his bench and ran at her.
Brit raised her hands above her head to protect herself. “I’m unarmed,” she said.
“It is all your fault,” he said. He grabbed her by the throat with his free hand. “I promised you help, and you led them to us.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I haven’t told anybody you are here.”
“A few of the fallen managed to take their own lives, but the rest are now suffering a fate worse than death,” he said. He let out a small sob. “Killing you would be too easy a way out. You deserve much more than that.”
“I don’t understand,” Brit said. “Nobody knew I was down here.” Then she thought back to the vaalia that was mysteriously waiting for her when she came back to the surface and flushed. “Wait,” she said. “When I last visited, did you fill my bin with vaalia for me?”
He glared at her. “Of course not.” He spat. “You are worse than I thought. You are naive and ignorant, which is even more dangerous than malicious. I am the only fallen who escaped.” He raised the hammer and his muscles tensed. “I’m going to do you a kindness that you do not deserve.”
“I know of a way to free the others,” she blurted.
He laughed a cold laugh that held no humor in it. “Fight through legions of enkelis? You don’t understand the magnitude of our Lord’s power and might. Even by your use of the word ‘free’ I know you are lying. You are never free. Even in this place, we aren’t free.” He spat the last word, madness in his eyes. “We’ll never be free.”
“Freedom is something taken,” she growled. “It is not gained by hiding in a hole, waiting for somebody else to dictate your fate and hoping all the while that somebody will grant you that which is only yours to forge.”
“Freedom is an illusion.” He lowered the hammer and turned away. “Death is the only true freedom, and you do not deserve it.”
“I will die,” Brit said. “But I’m going to fight to live my way until that last breath leaves me.”
“Go,” he said. “Do not return. There is nothing here for you, and I will find a new place to hide that neither you or the enkelis will discover.”
She nodded. “Before I go, please tell me why you call yourself fallen.”
He gestured around to the empty room. “We were all born enkelis, and we failed to serve the Lord properly and were stripped of our wings and position.”
“I’ve never seen enkelis with wings,” she said.
“You’ve seen what enkeli’s wear,” he said. “The armor is more than simple protection but gives us the strength and tools to perform our Lord’s will.”
“They aren’t actually wings,” she said.
“Wings let us fly, and that is the greatest freedom an enkeli can know,” he said.
She looked at the suit he was wearing. It was an imitation of the enkeli suits that the guards wore, only this one was made from animal skin. Then she looked to the stone table and saw an assortment of tools and materials that she didn’t understand.
“You are trying to regain your wings,” she whispered.
He glared at her. “Leave.”
She knelt and ducked her head into the hole to crawl away, then turned one last time. “Thank you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When she returned to the mine, Marcy was praying. The halo was lying on the ground, and Brit picked it up and then leaned against the wall. She was hungry and tired and hoped that the halo would offer her some relief. Unfortunately, the effects of the halo were too gradual to feel.
When Marcy unclasped her hands and stood up, Brit stepped away from the wall.
“You were right,” she said. “Jax is not in there.”
On her crawl back, she had considered digging more in the cave to build a new tunnel intersecting with Jax’s mine, then realized that they could dig for eons and likely never connect. Even if she did manage to dig in the right direction and at the same depth as one of the other mine tunnels, there was no guarantee that Jax was even in that mine any more. She shuddered at the thought of him being in solitary, and then pushed it out of her mind.
Then the thought of somebody in solitary who did not look like he was suffering at all came to her. Peter. She thought of what Avrox had said. Their suits gave them strength. Surely they must strip you of weapons and tools before you enter, she thought, but they hadn’t stripped them of clothing. He wasn’t wearing the traditional enkeli suit, but what if he had some of those tools still embedded in his clothing. He didn’t look famished or in pain, and she remembered his serene smile. He was, in fact, smug.
“Now what?” Marcy asked in her hoarse voice.
“Now I run across that field and see if I end up in solitary,” she said.
“You saw what happened to Hunter,” Marcy whispered. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”
“There aren’t many enkelis monitoring the mines,” Brit said. “They rely on the halos to knock people out who try to run away. Most of the fallen are too afraid not to do their job. We didn’t do our job and the halo didn’t do anything to either of us.”
“So?” she croaked.
“I think that, if there are no enkelis here, I can simply run over there without the halo and look for Jax.”
Marcy looked terrified. “If they catch you…”
“They will catch me,” Brit interrupted. “But probably not right away.”
“Without a halo, you’ll die in solitary,” Marcy said.
“Death would probably be better than what we’ve been doing all this time,” Brit said. “However, I have no intension of staying in solitary. Do you remember what Hunter did when we came here?”
Marcy shook her head no.
“He pulled out a pocket flashlight,” Brit said with a smile.
“So,” Marcy mouthed. Her voice seemed to have left her after talking so much.
“He was in solitary and apparently nobody checked to see what he had on him. They are so confident that nobody can escape, that they don’t bother checking to see what you’ve brought in.”
Marcy shrugged.
Brit held up the small globe of light and the power chisel. “I will bring tools.”
Marcy frowned.
“I mean, the chisel is too big and they would notice that. But if I can bring a small tool, they probably won’t notice.”
“Why?” Marcy asked.
“Because they are arrogant,” Brit said.
“No,” Marcy whispered i
n frustration. “Why?”
“Why go to solitary? For one, there is probably no way to avoid it if I run over to the other mine and start asking where Jax is. Eventually somebody will notice and there’s almost no chance that they won’t catch me. However, and more importantly, I think that the one person who might know how to help us escape is actually in solitary right now, and if we can help him out, he might be inclined to help us.”
“That’s totally asinine,” Hunter said.
Both Brit and Marcy jumped. Hunter was standing there looking at them, holding his chisel and a full bin of vaalia.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” Brit asked.
“Just on my way back with a full load,” he said with a nod to his bin. “Wanted to see some pretty faces before I did another cycle.”
“Marcy,” Brit said, “I think that you should stay with Hunter.”
Marcy pointed at her forehead, at her conspicuous lack of a halo.
“Where did your halo go?” Hunter demanded.
Marcy pointed at her throat and mouthed words that Brit couldn’t make out.
“She threw it away,” Brit said in exasperation.
“How?” he demanded.
“If you are far enough into the cave and wait for it to lose power, it’ll fall off,” Brit said, then looked pointedly at Marcy. “However, as it is our only source of sustenance, I wouldn’t recommend throwing it away. It seems to still work if you hold it, but it doesn’t stick anymore.”
She held up her halo for Hunter to see.
“At least it hasn’t zapped you unconscious,” he said. “You said it loses power?”
“There is some form of wireless power that everything uses here,” Brit said. “From the lights and halos to our power chisels, they all need power. They seem to hold a charge for a little bit so that even as you get too far away from the power they still work, but after a while, they stop working. I don’t know how the mines work, but I suspect the power is radiating from the vicinity of the elevator shaft and doesn’t go very far.”