by Lisa Jade
“Oh, sorry,” she mutters, “do you mind?”
“No. Go ahead.”
“You should probably take off those dirty clothes. I don’t know if you’ll fit any of my stuff – you’re a little broader than me – but I might have one of Jay’s shirts lying around here somewhere.”
I decide not to question why she’d have his shirt in her room. It’s none of my business what they get up to. But as she digs around and passes me a grey scrap of cloth, I wonder about it. I’m not great at picking up on social cues, but I hadn’t felt any spark between them.
But then again, I was a little distracted.
That thought echoes in my head again, that preposterous notion that I could be part of something much bigger than myself. That I could be something more than just a Millchild with a penchant for insulting people. I shake the thought aside.
I turn away and pull off my hoodie and shirt, surprised at just how bad the stains are. In all the commotion I’d forgotten the fight altogether. I gingerly touch my busted lip; it hurts, but it’s so minor that it’s easy to forget.
“Oh, my god.”
I freeze as a pair of small, icy hands touch my back, sending strange chills up my spine. We don’t touch each other back home – never on bare skin, anyway. But she ignores my apparent discomfort, searching my skin with her fingers. I can hear her muttering.
“Um, excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed you. But your back… I can’t believe it.”
Briefly, I try to remember if I’ve ever seen my own back. It doesn’t seem likely. Nel would have, but she’s never commented on it. My eyes are drawn to Pan’s svelte physique, the soft curves of her body. Maybe she’s just not used to someone who’s built like me, all muscle and edge, without that softness that screams femininity.
But then she loops an arm around my neck – gently, to my surprise, like she’s scared she might hurt me – and whispers in my ear.
“What do they do to you there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your back. It’s scarred.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How did you get those? Do they beat you at the Mill?”
“No…”
I clear my throat.
“Not always. Only if you break the rules, and that was a long, long time ago. They haven’t laid a hand on me in years.”
“So the scars?”
“Mostly old. Some are from working. When you swing an axe all day, sometimes you catch yourself, or someone else.”
She bites her lip.
“And what about these ‘rules’? What are they?”
“Basic stuff. Cheek, violence. Running away. Things you’d deserve a good clap around the ear for. People learn quickly.”
I tug on Jay’s shirt, fighting hard to ignore the masculine scent emanating from it. How did I get into this mess? Pan watches me with those eyes again, that infuriating, pitying look filling her otherwise pretty face.
“I’m serious,” I tell her, “this is normal. A parent will beat a kid when they’re bad, right? To show them what they did wrong. It’s fine. Besides, I’m practically a baby compared to some of the guys there. Some of the old guys, you should see them. Their bodies are like patchwork.”
I swallow the rush of admiration that builds in me at the thought of those workers, then shoot my brightest smile at Pan.
“So it’s fine.”
She opens her mouth to speak again, but I turn away. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. She’s making me question things I don’t want to question, making me doubt things I never intended to doubt.
The bed is soft. Much softer than my crappy little campbed. My back immediately seizes. I’ve gotten so used to sleeping on hard, cold, and thoroughly soaked surfaces that this bed provides little in the way of comfort.
I look up at the ceiling and imagine I can see past it. The sheet metal and rivets fall away to reveal the rusted, corrugated ceiling of the bunker. I close my eyes and try to remember the sight of a moonlit sky, the gentle sound of incoming rain. As Pan settles down in the next bed over, I imagine that her snuffly breathing belongs to Nel. I’m home.
But then I breathe in, and instead of the stink of two dozen unwashed bodies, I’m greeted by the stale, empty scent of the tunnels. The dream fractures.
CHAPTER TEN
I wake out of instinct the next day, even without a Guard to scream me awake. It’s like my body has adjusted to wake with the sun. Even when I can’t see the sun. Pan watches blearily from her bed, and her expression makes it apparent that she’s not normally up so early.
“It’s not even dawn yet,” she mutters.
“Sorry. Habit.”
She opens her mouth again, as though to tell me to lie back down. But then something falters, and instead she simply tosses her blanket off. Oddly, she’s still just as charming this way. It’s weird. I don’t care what people look like; it’s a non-issue. If someone can do the job they’re meant to do, I don’t care about anything else. But Pan’s on a whole new level. Even with her crimson hair in an unkempt mess around her face, and her body barely hidden by a scrap of material, she’s gorgeous. Envy pangs in my chest, and I move to silence it. I’m not about to start primping.
“You don’t have to get up,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.
“I probably should. Jay always tells me I sleep in too late. Everyone else will already be awake. This is why I normally don’t eat breakfast.”
I fight to keep my face blank at that, not wanting to give her more reason to pity me. We don’t always do breakfast at the Mill. Or lunch. You get one guaranteed meal a day, take it or leave it. I never cared much about that – but Pan’s the bleeding heart type. No doubt she’ll see an economic decision as a terrible cruelty.
I pull on yesterday’s dirty clothes, much to Pan’s dismay. Apparently, that’s not the way they do things. The scratchy material of my familiar grey hoodie is comforting, though. It’s some tiny trace of home in this big, sterile place.
“What now?”
The words slip out and I bite back on them, but it’s too late. She heard.
“What do you mean, what now?”
“I mean… what do I do now?”
It’s a valid question, even if I’m somewhat frightened of what the answer may be. Does she expect me to rush outside, excited to learn about their precious cause? Am I supposed to support them from the side-lines, or do they expect me to put my life on the line? I can feel the beginnings of regret stirring in my chest, the thought that I didn’t make the best choice yesterday. I’d felt pressured and unsure, and I’d allowed myself to get sucked into something I want no part of. But there’s no going back now.
I thought about it last night. While staring up at the metal ceiling, counting the rivets, I’d wondered if I could run. I’d formulated a rough map of the tunnels in my head, even figured a good time to make a run for it. But I don’t know where my cart is. Or how many people might be here. Jay had been able to match me in strength when he pinned me; if the rest are even half as strong, I don’t stand a chance of forcing my way out.
Pan tilts her head at me.
“We need to go see Jensen. While we’re out, I can show you around, too. If you like.”
“Sure.”
I don’t really care about seeing the views. But it’s something to do, as well as a little bit of info to store in the back of my head. I can imagine Nel’s reaction when I return to her with this, when I regale her with the stories of everything I’ve seen on my travels. It doesn’t hurt to look.
Pan leads me through a labyrinth of tunnels, each one as dark and metal and stale as the next. It seems impossible to me that she could remember the routes through such an endless maze – but then I remember the winding pathways at the Mill, and seeing those for the first time. They’d be just as intimidating, but I memorised those. It’s the same.
“Are you sure about this?” she asks, glancing back, “this mi
ght be a bit overwhelming.”
“I’ll be fine.”
She nods, but that warm smile is gone. Her expression isn’t cold or distant, though – in fact, it’s just as friendly and welcoming as ever. But her smiles have been replaced by looks of renewed curiosity, like I’m a different oddity than I was this time yesterday. She waves one hand, gesturing at the walls around her.
“For the most part, the base is miles and miles of tunnels. We’re buried deep under the city, too deep for scans to find us. It’s the safest place to be.”
“How did you put this down here?”
“We didn’t. They’re old tunnels that used to be used for transport a long time ago. As far as the three leaders are aware, they’re caved in. But we caught them in time. Reinforced them. Used the tunnels and rooms to make a safe place. We have entrances across Thorne, each one guarded like the one you came in through yesterday.”
So she wasn’t just wandering the streets in an effort to save the innocent, then. She was actively guarding the entrance. I suppose that makes sense.
“The only time we ever need to go out is to take deliveries of emergency supplies… like the ones you brought. Rian usually organises that.”
That name, again. Rian’s the Guard at the Mill, the man who sent me here in the first place. So he’s allied with these guys. Working for them. But then…
I stare at the back of Pan’s head, then stop dead.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
She glances back at me, utterly confused.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t think I didn’t see the way that guy – Jay – looked at me. You might trust your computers, but you still don’t know who I am. Not really. It could be an error. It could be a trick. Realistically, I could be anybody. So why are you trusting me with this?”
For a moment she’s silent, and my chest swells with a sick kind of pride. I’ve got you. There’s no logical answer she can give, nothing she can say to justify her actions.
“Because,” she says, her voice soft, “it’s you.”
“But it might not be. I don’t remember this place. There’s no evidence that this Ada girl is alive, much less here now. You’ve got one computer system and a similar eye colour to base your whole theory on. You said it yourself that it might be wrong.”
“Technically, yeah. It could be. But it’s not.”
She turns to me now, those pretty eyes flashing with ferocity.
“You’re Ada. You have to be. Because you’re just like Jay. You’re awkward and you’re direct and you’re kind of careless with your words. Just like him. You’re also honest and brave, though – you’re so similar it hurts. That’s why I trust you. Maybe I shouldn’t, I don’t know, but I reckon that even if I’m wrong, even if you’re not her… I still feel like I can trust you.”
Any sense of bravado I had vanishes in an instant. The desire to run fades, dissipating into the atmosphere like the remains of a floating ember.
“I don’t understand. We only met yesterday. How can you trust me already?”
She shrugs.
“I’m a really good judge of character.”
We open the door into an area much, much larger than any of the others – it’s like a huge storage shed, though when I point this out Pan corrects me, telling me it used to be an old station back when they had below-ground trains. I don’t ask what that is, not wanting to seem totally uncultured.
The area is built up of dozens, possibly hundreds of platforms – any open area is taken up by makeshift shelters, shoddily-made tables, and sheer numbers of people. In a particularly large area to my right people are wrestling, surrounded by a small crowd of onlookers.
It’s brighter in here, too, illuminated by a cool, blue light – and as I look up I see that instead of a ceiling, there’s glass. As I watch it, small shadows flicker across its surface.
“Footsteps?”
“Yep,” she smirks, “the ceiling is made of a special glass. It looks like concrete from the street, but it lets light in here. Makes it warm, as I imagine you’ve noticed.”
Now she mentions it, there’s a pleasant heat in here. Nothing compared to the scorching temperatures of a field during the height of summer, or the burning in your skin when you’re shovelling coal into a furnace. Still, it’s there.
“It’s nice to see outside again,” I mutter.
She seems surprised by that, but I don’t bother to backtrack. It is nice. I hate tunnels. I hate being underground. Back when I was in the Mine, there were times I’d catch the tiniest glimpse of sunlight, when they opened a door or broke through somewhere they shouldn’t have. The rush of joy I’d felt seeing that light was enormous – this ceiling has a similar effect.
“Yeah,” she eventually says, “it’s good for the gardens, too.”
She points to a lush patch of green in the distance. Several people work the land, plucking crops from the dirt and piling them into wheelbarrows. I inhale deeply, but we’re too far away to catch the scent of fresh soil. Shame.
“I can’t believe how many people are here,” I say, “how many of you are there?”
“About sixty. But not everyone’s part of the cause. Most are volunteers and sympathisers. They just help out where they can. Protect the entrances, stuff like that. I’d say the core group is about twenty, if that.”
She starts to count on her fingers, rattling off a list of names I’ve never heard before, but I ignore her and carry on walking. The further we move into the structure, the more I pick up on it. The sensation of lingering eyes on my back. The sound of hushed whispers as I pass by. They scurry out of my path when I near, and I can’t tell if it’s out of fear, respect, or something else entirely.
Of course. Typically, they’ll have heard about their leader’s sister returning. If Ada really was used as a symbol for the Clover, it would be a big deal if she was suddenly alive, right? But the hesitation in their eyes, and the way they shrink from my gaze makes me think otherwise. Maybe they know it’s not been proven. That I could be anyone – including someone who could want to hurt them.
I’ve never had so many eyes on me at once before. When doing farm work, nobody looks to their sides, or bothers to pay even the slightest amount of attention to those beside them. I’m as guilty of that as anyone. So now, my skin is crawling under the gaze of dozens of strangers who regard me with a sort of reproachful positivity.
“Unnerving, huh?”
Someone steps out, and I’m relieved to see Jensen’s face. His previously creased face has smoothed out to reveal a handsome, clean-cut young man. Very different from how he’d presented himself yesterday. But he still regards me with suspicion, maintaining a fair distance from me. Like he thinks I might launch myself at him at any moment.
“Y-yeah,” I reply, scratching my head.
“It’ll die down soon enough,” he says, “everyone’s very excited about Ada’s return.”
“But that’s not…”
“I know. That’s why nobody’s approached you yet. Until we know for sure, nobody’s going to get their hopes up about you.”
“Charming.”
“Don’t blame them. They just don’t want to be let down again.”
“Again?”
Pan hooks an arm over my shoulder, making me shiver under her too-familiar touch.
“Our leaders know about us, Noah. They like to mess with our heads. It can get pretty brutal. That’s why we can’t rule out the whole ‘trick’ thing.”
I nod, but inwardly I’m shouting. Wasn’t it Pan who just insisted I must be Ada?
“Anyway,” says Jensen, “Jay actually sent me to find you. He wants today to be a fresh start. Personally, I think he just feels guilty for pinning you yesterday.”
My wrists pulse at the memory of his hands gripped around them, but I shake the thought aside.
“It’s okay.”
“I know. But we still gotta do this.”
With that he extends one
hand, and the corners of his lips curl. The smile transforms his face.
“I’ve been instructed to greet you formally. I’m Robert Jensen, but people just use my last name. I’m what you might call the tech guy around here. Head hacker.”
“Um…”
“That means I’m good with computers.”
“Oh!”
I take his hand firmly. I’ve seen enough visitors from the city meeting with the Guards at the Mill – so I recognise this some strange, overtly-formal greeting.
Jensen winces.
“Ouch. Good… good grip.”
“Sorry.”
Pan lets out a strange sound that lies somewhere between a chuckle and a squeal, then grabs my hand in hers.
“Like introductions are needed! But whatever. I’m Pan. Technically it’s Penelope, but if you call me that I’ll have your head. Nobody uses their full names around here. I’m Second in Command, technically.”
“H-happy to meet you.”
“I have something for you,” Jensen interrupts.
He reaches behind himself, into the box strapped to his back. He pull something green and heavy from it – I recognise the shape of a Hoverbot and tense. They’ve been known to shoot at Mill workers who misbehave; and more often than not, their aim is spot on.
But as he lowers it to the ground, there are no lights on its surface. No beeping. It’s off.
“What’s this?” I ask, daring to look a little closer. The device isn’t dissimilar from the blue one lurking behind Jensen; I wonder if he’s made changes to this one, too. It’s got four small blades and a series of screens, lights and scanners. I don’t understand what most of them do, but it sparks my curiosity. I’ve never seen one up close before.
“Jay wants to make sure you’re safe to be around,” Jensen explains, “until we figure this out for certain, you need to be watched all the time. So he asked me to fix up this Hoverbot. We’ll allocate you as the user and it’ll follow you around wherever you go during your time here. If you do anything unusual, the Hoverbot will alert us.”