by Jenny Moyer
“Why cirium?”
“It’s the only substance we can’t conjure.” He moves his fingers. “Or conjure through.”
The element hums along my senses. Purest cirium. It would take every gram I’ve ever mined to create just one of these hands. “Is this rare? What they did to you?”
“I can’t—”
“How many?” My voice is a bare whisper. “How many Conjies get cirium?”
Pain fills his brown eyes. “All of them.”
His answer stuns me into silence. “I thought … I thought cirium was used only to protect the city.”
“If I tell you what you want to know, they won’t just take my hands.”
Dram coughs, over by the forge. A guard is walking toward us. When I look back, Gabe is gone. Gabrielein. The Conjie with secrets too deadly to tell.
I came here hoping the heat of the forge would thaw the ice inside me, but now I’m on fire. A lifetime of mining nine to produce shackles for another human being?
“Five minutes to curfew,” the guard says.
“Thank you,” Dram says, cutting off my reply that wasn’t as polite. He touches my elbow. “I’ll walk you home.”
Silence stretches between us as we pass the mill and thread the dirt paths between the houses. My mind is a storm, as if I’m seeing through new eyes.
“Talk to me,” Dram says as we reach my door.
I want to tell him. My teeth ache because I’ve clenched my jaw so tightly, holding back the words. Congress disguised the cirium used for Gabe’s hands. They want the truth hidden, and they have no idea I don’t need to see cirium to know it’s there.
What Gabe told me is enough to incite rebellion. Subpars have served at the outposts for over a hundred years, dying in our efforts to mine the one element that can preserve Alara.
I mustn’t tell anyone, not even Dram.
“Rye?” he studies my face, trying to read me as usual, but I’m getting better at hiding secrets.
“What if my dad’s right, and we really are all prisoners here?” I muse, looking toward the boundaries of our camp.
“It’s been a long day, Orion.”
“They took your father away, Dram!” I hurl these words because I can’t say the ones I want—and I need him to feel the same sense of betrayal I feel.
He looks like I sucker punched him. “We each have a role,” he says after a moment. “My father refused his.” There’s hurt in his eyes still, but confusion too. “What did Gabe say to you?”
For a moment I can’t answer him.
“He said there are places you can see the sun rise,” I say. The diversion works, and Dram smiles.
“We’re going to see it,” he says. “The new vein you found will get us to four hundred grams.”
My gut twists. We are so close.
I want to be free, like the Conjies.
Instead, I mine the element that Tempers them.
SIX
305.82 grams cirium
THE TUNNELS STRETCH the width of our camp. Some, like tunnels one and two, are wide passages in the Range, tall enough for a man to walk into. Others, like three and six, are just holes in the ground. Nine was blown open with flash wands. It is the deepest of them all, and the most unstable. It is mine.
Dram and I suit up in the Rig with the other cavers. Since we go farther than the rest, we require more equipment and protective gear. We stand beside the rigging wall in our own corner of the windowless wooden structure, double-checking each other’s packs and gauges. The other teams eye us from across the room. They treat us with a sort of reverential awe, but I think they’re just grateful we’re still alive so they don’t have to be the ones going down nine.
Their suits are varying shades of yellow, and light up inside the tunnels. They’re tagged with transmitters that emit a pulse on a frequency the techs can track. Dram and I wear black to blend into the dark caverns. Light-up suits would help us see, but we can’t take the risk, nor do we wear transmitters. The creatures down nine can track the transmitter pulse even more effectively than the techs at Central. All cavers carry knives, but ours have double-bladed tips for splitting open the skulls of flash bats. Only people die easily down nine.
Dram slides a freshly sharpened blade into my arm sheath. “What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Freedom.”
“That sounds dangerous.” He draws my hair aside to check my tank.
“Don’t you think about it?” His fingers brush my neck, and I try not to notice how good his hands feel. Lately it’s been getting harder.
“I think about the caves and the work. And Friday nights,” he says.
“Don’t you want more from life?”
“That is our life, Rye.” I shuffle back a step and realize he’s hiding a grin. “Of course I think about leaving this place. You think I’m going down nine just for fun?” I must still wear a disgruntled expression because he clasps my Oxinator strap and pulls me so close our noses touch. “We’re almost there, ore scout.”
“Almost free,” I whisper, but I can’t seem to find the certainty I felt before.
“Cavers up!” Owen calls. He thrusts open the doors, and we all shuffle out toward the sign that proclaims our Subpar motto. I put my hand on a wooden sign support, worn from the touch of hundreds of cavers before me. Dram lifts his arm, and the weight of his extra belay devices and climbing lines shift with a jangle at his belt. I know the moment he taps the beam because I hear his soft exhale—a habit he doesn’t know he has. He touches it twice. Once for him and once for his mother, who should be here too.
Other cavers emerge from the Rig, tap the wood, and head to their tunnels, flowing around us like we’re rocks in a stream.
“Orion…,” Dram says, his voice low.
I don’t answer. He knows I need this moment, here, where we spread the ashes of our fallen. I stare up at the metal sign, and it creaks in the breeze, as if it’s speaking the words it holds.
WE ARE THE FORTUNATE ONES.
Our daily reminder before we descend into darkness and danger. Most people didn’t survive when the flash curtain fell. It is our duty—privilege—to secure a better future for the generations to come. Every gram of cirium we bring up is another bit of protection against the radiation Mother Nature hurled down upon us more than a century ago.
At least, that’s what they tell us.
Tunnel one’s team wanders over, their suits as clean as when they were first issued. They brush past me, tapping the wood with gloved hands. Steady hands. One’s nothing like the other tunnels.
“Nos sumus fortunati,” a woman murmurs. Maybe our motto’s easier to believe in Latin, as if it holds power, like a spell or an incantation. If we say it enough, perhaps it makes it true.
“Nos sumus fortunati,” I whisper.
We’ve been betrayed. The realization burns through me, a fiery ember drifting over dry tinder. I want to tell Dram, but he would confront Cranny. He’d challenge the commissary and be on the next hover to Cordon Four. And Gabe, the poor Conjie, would likely be sent with him—along with me. Dad and Lenore would never be free of this place.
My silence protects us all.
We will mine 400 grams. We’ll earn our Rays and forge lives for ourselves on the other side of the flash curtain. I tell myself this over and over, but the flames still spark inside me.
I draw my glove over my hand, recalling the hinges of Gabe’s mechanized fingers—the faint hum of cirium I sensed. The fire in me blazes.
“Do you think the rumors are true,” I murmur, “that the tunnels are nearly depleted?”
Dram looks at me hard. Cranny penalizes this kind of talk with ration cuts and even, one time, striking a miner’s week’s worth of ore weight from the Cavers’ Log.
But Subpars can sense the presence of cirium … and the lack of it. Late at night around the fire pits, when the fires have burned low and the ale has numbed all sense of caution, we speak of it. Of what will happen to the outpost when
there’s nothing left. Of what will happen to us.
“You sense it better than anyone here,” he says softly. “So you tell me—do the tunnels still have cirium?”
“Nine does.”
“Then we’ll find it.” He buckles a strap across his chest. “Why are you thinking about this?” Suddenly he curses. “Flash me, here comes Cranny.”
“Scout, Marker,” calls Cranny. “The commissary wants to see you and the team before you descend.”
Jameson strides toward us, framed by two of his guards.
“Sir,” I say, nodding to the commissary. I lift a hand toward Dram. “You’ve met Dram. I’m afraid the rest of my team is the ash you’re standing on.”
His mouth drops open, and I see Dram shake his head. Cranny bristles in his too-tight, wrinkled uniform.
Jameson recovers his composure. “How unfortunate. So it’s true, then—tunnel nine is the most dangerous.”
I hold his direct gaze. “They’re all dangerous.”
“Well, then, I commend you for your bravery. Given the choice, a lesser person might turn away.”
“Given the choice, Commissary, I’d never go down another tunnel again.” I slide my axe into my holster, nod curtly, and stomp toward nine.
“What the hell was that?” Dram says, falling into step beside me.
“People have died to keep him safe in his protected city, and he pats me on the head like an obedient dog. Fire, he’s lucky I didn’t punch him in his perfect, shiny white teeth!”
“I think he was trying to be kind.”
“Kind?” I whirl to face Dram. “This isn’t kindness!”
“They give us food, shelter, protection from the flash curtain—”
I rip my axe from its holster and point at the tunnels. “This is slavery, Dram.”
“It’s our way to serve honorably, Orion. It’s what our people have always done.”
I snarl out a curse and leap for the sign supports. Wood creaks beneath my weight as I climb and hoist myself astride the top beam.
“We are the fortunate ones,” I call. Dram narrows his eyes on my face. My voice is too loud, and I’m drawing all kinds of attention up here on my perch. The sign sways beneath me, and I give it a tap with my axe. Iron pings against the dented metal, and I long to hammer at it till the sound carries across the outpost.
“Two days ago, I watched a man melt from the inside out. Where was our fearless director then? Hiding with all the rest of them behind the cirium-plated walls of Central, while we Subpars dodged cordon shards and waded through containment dust.”
The look on Dram’s face shifts from frustration to fear as the crowd of cavers grows beneath me. He stiffens, his gaze bouncing from one face to the next, gauging the threat like he’s walked into a gulls’ nest. Anger pumps through me, like a heart that is too big for my chest.
A caver blows his whistle. One blast. Stop. Not safe. It’s Graham. He stands in the midst of the others, eyes fierce in his wrinkled face, the whistle still gripped between his teeth.
But I am remembering the screams of my team when the gulls tore at them, and the memory drives me past caution. I’m afraid the rest of my team is the ash you’re standing on.
“Congress sends us to our deaths and calls it duty. They post a sign outside hell and call it privilege.” I can’t look at Dram. I know he’s begging me to stop.
But last night I met a man with cirium hands that weigh more than Dram and I will mine in our lifetimes. More than our mothers brought up before seven claimed them. Subpars are dying, and it’s not to protect a city.
“We are the fortunate ones,” I call, louder this time, thrusting my axe at the sign. “This is what they tell us, over and over till we believe it.” I stretch across the beam and swing my axe at the chain.
Twang! The piercing metallic sound rings out across the outpost and the sign breaks loose, dangling from the weathered beam like a useless limb.
I’m going to pay for this later, but right now, I welcome the flush of elation, the adrenaline singing through my veins.
When I look down, I see every caver gathered beneath the broken sign. Owen pulls out his axe and hammers the handle against the ground.
Pound. Pound. Pound. I feel it like a heartbeat.
Graham does the same, and it’s just like the way we applaud our dead on Burning Days.
The others join in. Reeves slams his handle down again and again. Beside him, Lenore thumps her axe, a twist to her lips and a hardness in her eyes I’ve never seen before. I imagine it’s the look her father wore when he stood in this place and told Cranny no.
People stream out of the lodge to see what the commotion is. I watch Ennis pound his axe with gnarled fingers that should have earned rest by now, and Roland, whose father was sent to Cordon Four a few years after Arrun Berrends. More and more cavers join in, till the wooden sign supports creak beneath me. The enormity of what I’ve done settles over me like lead weight.
I find Dram in the crowd, but he’s not hammering like the rest. His gaze is fixed on the man with a rumpled uniform and hard lines bracketing his mouth. Beside Cranny, Jameson stares at me with an expression I can’t read.
The adrenaline that hummed along my veins freezes instantly.
I knew I would pay for this act of defiance.
But now I know that they will, too.
* * *
I read off coordinates to Dram. “Marker, please.”
“Mark.” He aims his light gun at the floor of the cave and presses the trigger. The sound of steel on stone rings out, and a bolt of yellow light glows in the darkness.
The passage narrows, and I have to crawl through on my stomach, holding my palm up in front of me to light the way. It penetrates the dark for about two meters, but the rest is pitch-black. This is the neck of tunnel nine—a tight passageway that opens into the vast caverns beneath. Through my earpiece I hear Dram breathing heavily. He is staving off panic. Tight spaces mess with his head, especially this tube of rock.
“So I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about what happened earlier,” I say—more to distract Dram and cover the sound of his fear than because I want to have this conversation.
“Still not talking to you,” Dram mumbles.
“I was mad,” I say.
“I think you made that clear.”
“I didn’t know the others…” I sigh, trying to sort my rambling thoughts.
We push ourselves through the passage, our suits scraping over stone. My axe catches. I’m pinned in place, my arms stretched out before me. Panic squeezes my chest. I clench my eyes shut and count, one … two … three. Dram’s headlamp moves over me as he pries his fingers around the edge of the pick. He tugs my axe free, his movements painstakingly slow in the confined space. There is no one to free him if his axe catches.
“Do you remember my father?” he asks.
“Of course.” Everyone at Outpost Five remembers Dram’s father. You don’t forget the ones who are made examples.
“When our moms died down seven,” he says softly, “he went to see Cranny. Told him he was through with caving. He didn’t want that kind of thing to happen to me or Lenore.”
“You had just started down five,” I murmur, remembering that brave, lonely boy. Dram’s breath grows more even, and we move slowly forward.
“Cranny gave us their Burning Day free,” Dram continues. “The next day, he personally walked my father to the tunnels. ‘Remember,’ he told my dad, ‘we are the fortunate ones.’”
The tunnel widens, and I push myself to my hands and knees.
“You weren’t the first person to take an axe to that sign,” Dram says.
I realize I’ve stopped moving. “I didn’t know.” All they say is that Arrun Berrends refused the tunnels. I didn’t realize he was the one who put the dents in the sign.
“A day later, they sent him to mine the burnt sands.”
That part I know. The poor man probably didn’t last more than a few days out
there beside the curtain.
“We really are the fortunate ones, Rye. It could be so much worse.”
Now my breathing’s ragged, but it’s not from fear. Anger, maybe—or perhaps grief. My chest is seized in the grip of an emotion I don’t have a name for yet.
I vow right then to take the sign down for good.
I’ll do it for Dram’s father.
And for Dram.
SEVEN
305.82 grams cirium
THE STINK OF sulfur pinches my nostrils, and I draw my neck cloth over my nose and mouth. We’re not deep enough to need our Oxinators yet. I steal a glance back at Dram. He stares past me at the deepening darkness of the path. I sigh and press forward. He’s still upset with me.
A breeze teases the hair at my temples. I lift my hand, and Dram stops behind me. Turning my head, I close my eyes and stretch my senses. A draft of air indicates another passage to the outside—a passage that gulls and bats travel. I don’t hear the rustle of feathers or younglings, so we’ve not stumbled upon a nest. I tug my neck cloth down and sniff the air. The acrid stench of bat guano fills my senses.
My heart pounds. The echo of the light gun is going to reverberate to every bat in the vicinity, but it’s a risk we have to take.
“Marker,” I say quietly.
Dram loads a red bolt into his gun, points it at the ground, and waits, his eyes lifting to mine. I draw my knife and slowly nod.
“Mark,” he says. He fires, and the bolt anchors to stone with a piercing ring. He reloads his gun. Red again.
They come at us all at once.
“Dram—”
“I see it.” He lifts his arm and fires at the nearest bat. The creature cries out, a piercing screech that I feel all the way to my toes. It flaps above us, its torso impaled with a glowing red bolt light. Flash bats swarm in the illuminated cavern. There are less than ten. We may survive this yet.
“Just a hunting party,” Dram says, lunging with his knife. He spears a bat, and the furry brown body writhes on his blade, jaws snapping.
The snout and teeth of flash bats are overly large, jutting out beneath their extra set of eyes. Their jaws are like spring-loaded traps that snap over their prey with enough force to break skin and bone. Dram stabs his double-bladed dagger into the creature’s skull and twists his wrist. Its glowing yellow eyes slowly dim.