I stared at the empty doorway for a few moments, then got up to shut the door with a screech of rusty hinges.
Why wasn’t I more excited for Oren? If Prometheus had information that could help him, it would change his life. The life I’d ruined by revealing his secret, the one he didn’t even know he had. If I’d never come along, Oren would never have known what he really was.
But if he were cured—it would change everything. He wouldn’t have to hate me for what I’d done to him. I wouldn’t have to feel that same disgust, imagining the things he’s done, every time he touched me. I’d be able to kiss him and not taste blood.
And yet. If he were cured, there’d be nothing tying him to me. He’d no longer be forced to stay close to me, leeching my magic to stay human.
I tried to shove thoughts of Oren aside and sat back down on the bed. I piled everything Basil had left behind back into its box, but for the books and the journal. Leaning back against the wall behind the cot, I sorted through the tiny pile. There was an encyclopedia of plants, languages, animals, geography, and basic science—everything a city boy would need to survive beyond the Wall. It was marked with the same line of ownership as the journal. The other books, however, had no seals of ownership. Either he’d gotten them later, elsewhere, or he’d stolen them from the Institute and not given them a chance to claim them. One, a heavily worn paperback, was a handbook on aerodynamics. Another was a small, thick book on magical theory—it was ancient, nearly falling apart. Probably from before the Renewable wars. And the third—I stopped and reached for it, frowning. The last one was a book of stories. Basil had never shown much interest in stories beyond those he made up to tell me as a child when I had nightmares. At home, he was never that interested in reading at all unless the books were about machines and magic, because he dreamed of becoming one of the vitrarii, the glassworkers who created the circuitry to carry magic.
I opened the book to its title page. Myths and Legends from Long Ago, it read. Collected and presented by one Tiberius L. Minton. I skimmed some of the pages, which were filled with odd tales of imaginary creatures, supernatural powers, and pantheons of petty gods and goddesses. It wasn’t until I started flipping through the rest of the book that it fell open, and I realized that one of the pages had been dog-eared and marked.
My heart skipped as I saw the name printed there in the title of this particular story: “Prometheus and the Fire of the Gods.”
For a wild moment, I considered the idea that the leader of the city was some kind of legendary being. Then sense reasserted itself, and I realized that he must have taken his name from this story. And that Basil had been trying to figure out why.
I kicked the blankets away from my legs, trying to keep cool, and started to read.
Prometheus was a figure in the stories from a culture I’d never heard of, an ancient race called the Hellenes. It seemed that in their time, Renewables were considered to be divine, descended from a pantheon of gods and goddesses that lived on high and dabbled in mortal affairs for their own amusement. Prometheus predated this all, part of a group called the Titans, from whom the Hellenes’ gods were descended.
According to the Hellenes, the time before Renewables was lost in a terrible darkness. Men were cold, hungry, and—I swallowed, sick to my stomach—cannibalistic. Mankind knew no better because there was no fire in their lives. There was a footnote there, but most of it was worn away at the bottom of the page. Something about literal versus figurative translation, but beyond that I couldn’t read.
Prometheus saw mankind struggling and destroying one another and felt sorry for them. And so he stole the fire of the gods and delivered it to them. And after that, mankind was enlightened and could lead normal lives. The phrase “fire of the gods” had been underlined, but there were no notes to explain why. I reread the passage, searching for some kind of clue as to why the city’s leader would choose this figure as his namesake. From the description, it sounded as though fire was a metaphor for magic. Without it, men became savage shadows. But this city was here long before Prometheus came to power, according to Olivia and Parker. So it wasn’t as though he had saved them from being shadows, or created this haven in the midst of the darkness outside.
I turned the page to see a gruesome woodcut depiction of a man—Prometheus, according to the caption—sprawled on a rock, having his stomach torn apart by a bird of prey. The same bird, I realized, that figured on the badges of the officers. Eagles.
I kept reading and found out that the gods were infuriated by Prometheus’s intervention. They punished him by chaining him to a rock for all eternity and sending a giant eagle to peck out his liver every day. And every night he’d regrow it, so he could suffer the same torture the next day.
I shuddered, shutting the book with a dull thud. What kind of man would ever want to model himself on that? And why name his personal police force after the creature that tortured his namesake?
The kind of man who uses Renewables as batteries. The kind who killed my brother.
Part of me just wanted to flee, get out of this city while I still could, but an even larger part of me wanted to unravel the mystery of it, take it apart, see what made it all tick.
On a whim, I opened the book again. There was an index in the back listing all the entries alphabetically. I slid my finger down the columns until I found the one I’d been looking for: Lethe.
I flipped back to the right page. It was a story about a girl named Persephone in the Underworld, but I wasn’t interested in her. I scanned the sentences until the word popped up. “... the river Lethe, whose waters allowed the dead to forget their earthly lives and cares.”
I pushed the books away, head spinning. Had my brother found something in these stories that I’d missed? They were about a mythological figure, not the real man in power. If only Basil were here to explain. Trying to retrace his steps was like trying to assemble a puzzle where most of the pieces are missing.
If only Basil were here.
• • •
Sleep was impossible. Though I knew that my door wasn’t locked, that I could leave whenever I wanted, it felt so much like my room in the Institute that my eyes wouldn’t stay closed. I found myself longing for the outside, for fresh air and the open sky. Here the air was too warm, too humid. Too close. I’d become used to tracking the sun, to letting nature dictate when I woke and when I slept. Here I just flipped a switch, and the world changed from day to night.
For another thing, I couldn’t stop thinking about Basil and Prometheus and what had transpired between them.
There wasn’t much in my tiny room, just a chest for clothes I didn’t own and the box containing Basil’s belongings. I half-expected to open the clothes chest and find sets of tunics and trousers made for children, like in the Institute. I could feel the weight of expectation bearing down on me like the low ceiling—these people weren’t all that different from the architects. They needed me for their plans.
Eventually I gave up, throwing back my blankets, which were clammy with perspiration. I pulled my shoes on and pushed open my door as carefully as I could, every creak and cry of the hinges sounding like an alarm in my ears. They hadn’t told me I had to stay in my room, but creeping down the empty corridor, I still felt like an intruder.
I hadn’t had enough time to make a mental map of the place. From what the others had said, the spaces in the walls existed everywhere, throughout the city. Around it, beneath it, inside it. But I could at least explore my immediate surroundings, so long as I kept track of how to get back.
There were dim lights spaced at intervals along the corridor, just barely enough to see by. Creating a false night, I supposed. I traced the wall with my fingertips as I walked, listening to the dull echoes of my own footsteps.
I saw a brighter light in the distance. When I got closer, I realized that it was a light from someone’s room, shining through their open door. I hesitated, remembering what Parker had said about giving the rebels a chance
to get used to Lark Ainsley being a flesh-and-blood girl. Moving as silently as I could, I crept up to the wedge of light. Stopping at its edge, I peered inside.
Olivia was sitting on an overturned packing crate, unwrapping her hands. The skin beneath the tape was red, irritated, but otherwise undamaged. I could see her in profile, her head bowed, the light from her lamp catching in her golden hair. She gave no sign that she saw me, focused on her task.
When she’d pulled off all the tape, she flexed her hands, grimacing a little. I’d never thought about the fact that it might hurt the puncher as much as the punched—and Olivia was hardly a large person. A little taller than me, but nowhere near as big as the man she’d decked earlier with one blow.
“Can’t sleep?” Olivia’s voice made me jump. She turned her head a little, looking at me out of the corner of one eye with a faint smile.
I cleared my throat, feeling my cheeks beginning to burn. “I’m sorry. I was exploring. I didn’t mean to—”
She gave a dismissive wave of her hand and got to her feet. Massaging her knuckles, she turned toward me. “What’s the matter?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It wasn’t that I didn’t know, but the opposite: there were so many things the matter that I didn’t know where to start. But none of these things make their way out of my mouth. Instead, I muttered, “I’m not used to there being no nighttime.”
Olivia blinked at me, surprised. “Is that all? You must have arrived in the morning, Lethe time.”
“Lethe time?”
“As opposed to the time Above, in the ruins outside. When it’s day here, it’s night there. Here, I’ll show you.”
“I don’t mean to keep you up,” I protested. It’d been hours since the halls had gone quiet, and everyone else—I’d assumed—had gone to sleep.
She shook her head, lips curving in something a little sadder than a smile. “It’s okay. I don’t sleep too well these days, anyway. I’m not used to sleeping alone.”
Olivia had mentioned losing a brother, but she hadn’t mentioned losing anyone else. A husband? It was hard to tell how old she was, but she didn’t seem that much older than me. Maybe her boyfriend? But she was already past me, leading the way down the corridor. If she didn’t want to volunteer, I wasn’t going to ask.
I soon lost track of all the turns, but Olivia moved with absolute certainty. She knew this place like the back of her hand. She’d called herself a lifer—I tried to imagine spending all my time inside the walls, always living on the edges of the real city.
If I stay, I realized, this will be my life too.
This was how Basil had lived, before he vanished. Before he challenged Prometheus and lost, or before Prometheus found him. I tried to imagine his presence here, the way I always could in the sewer tunnels at home, but I couldn’t.
Eventually Olivia and I reached the end of a particular narrow tunnel that terminated in a metal door. She unlocked it with a twist of its handle. I braced for the shriek of rusty hinges, but this one opened as silently as a sigh. And as soon as it swung open, I realized why.
The door opened onto a wide, slightly rounded platform that was open to the outer city. If the hinges made noise, it’d give away this entrance to the walls. They must keep them carefully oiled.
And Olivia was right—outside, Lethe was shrouded in night.
The sky above, which during the day was lit by thousands of magic lights fractured into rainbows by the mist, was dark. The only hints of light up above were nebulas of pale blue and green, so faint I wasn’t sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. The effect was like nothing I’d ever seen before—nothing like the stars or the moon, or the faint violet sheen of my home city’s Wall when the sun disc set.
Olivia led the way out onto the platform, which I soon realized was the roof of a building. Though the surface was rounded, giving the unsettling impression that I could slide off at any moment, it was actually broad enough that it was as easy to walk on as the flat ground.
She took a seat on the roof, stretching her legs out and leaning back on her hands.
“This is incredible,” I said, staring.
She quickly raised a hand to stop me, then held a finger to her lips. When she spoke, her voice was merely a murmur. “Most people are asleep right now, but on the off chance someone nearby’s awake, we try to keep quiet up here. The door’s pretty well hidden, but we don’t want anyone getting curious about voices coming from up here.”
I bit my lip. But she patted the ground beside her in a clear invitation, so I sat down cross-legged next to her.
“What happened to all the lights?” I whispered.
“They’re still there,” Olivia replied. “They’re just not shining. At night there’s no magic coming through to light them up. That glow is just from the fungus that grows on the cavern ceiling. Phosphorescence, completely natural and magic-free.”
I thought of Oren, my pulse quickening a little. “What about all the people who aren’t Renewables, who can’t survive without the magic?”
“Enough comes through during the day to keep us going at night.” Olivia tilted her head back, eyes on the ceiling. “Those lights are designed that way. They’re imperfect vessels—they leak. The magic comes into the air through the mist formed when the hot air down here hits the colder air up near the surface.”
“Designed? By whom?”
“Prometheus. He saved us.”
“But—I thought you were all fighting him, that he was the bad guy.”
Olivia sighed. “It’s not really that simple. For a long time, since the Renewable wars, this place was a haven. Huge reserves of magic kept the city running, kept its people human despite the chaos above. The idea was always that by keeping one bastion of sanity in the chaos, at whatever cost, people could survive the fallout from the wars and find a way to restore the land.”
“Dorian—that is, a man I met while traveling—mentioned that this place was experimenting with fixing what the Renewables broke.”
Olivia nodded. “The Star—the giant crystal tower, you would’ve seen it in the ruins Above—was one of those experiments. But it was put up so long ago that by the time the energy reserves in the city began to run out, no one was alive who knew how to shut it down. It takes a huge amount of magic to light that Star and keep the land around it saturated with magic. There’s no insulation there, just open air that lets all the power just dissipate out into nothing.”
“So people moved down here.” I remembered the muffling doors and airlocks and rooms lined with iron that we’d passed through in order to enter the city below.
“Exactly. It lets us keep the magic in. But even that wasn’t enough. The city was dying, bit by bit. They shut down all the machines except the ones that bring us air and water. People were leaving in droves. That was when Prometheus showed up.”
“Who was he? Where did he come from?”
Olivia shrugged. “No one knows. He just walked into the courtyard one day and started talking, and people listened. He laid out an entire framework for how to save the city. He recruited teams to help him, and together they built the crystal lights on the cavern ceiling. So by day Above, the Star keeps the shadows there human. But by night, Prometheus’s inventions siphon the Star’s magic into the lights, and we have our daytime down here. And we have enough magic to live by.”
“He stole fire from the gods,” I murmured, staring at the ceiling, where the crystals lay dormant, waiting for magic.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Something I read.” I swallowed. “So why not funnel all the magic down here? Aren’t you still losing a lot of power by letting the Star shine during the day?”
“If you haven’t noticed,” Olivia said wryly, “there’s not a lot of room down here to grow crops. We need the Empty Ones above to work the farms.”
Horror crept over me. “You—keep them human long enough to grow you food? And let them turn into monsters at night?”
&nb
sp; Olivia didn’t look at me, gazing out toward the far wall of the cavern, lost in the darkness. “They only think they’re human,” she said softly. “It’s an illusion brought by the presence of magic. Without them, we’d all starve. Would you rather they stay Empty all the time, without even the echo of the people they once were?”
I had no answer for that. But I felt sure Oren would.
“Not everyone agrees with Prometheus. But after he saved us, he became the uncontested leader of the city. Renamed it Lethe, citing something about a new start.” Olivia eased back until she was lying on the roof, her blonde curls splayed out against the rusty surface. “Most of us have lived here long enough to know what life was like before Prometheus showed up five years ago. We know we’d all be dead without him, later if not sooner.”
“It sounds like he’s a savior,” I said bitterly, trying not to think of Basil. “Why fight him? Why the resistance?”
Olivia hesitated. “Because in some things, he’s wrong. We know he’s wrong.”
“Like locking up Renewables.”
She nodded. “They’re given a choice. They can volunteer to help Prometheus, or they can be forced. Sometimes the Renewables who volunteer seem to be totally fine. Sometimes they just vanish. But whenever he finds an unregistered Renewable, someone who didn’t volunteer—” Her voice gave out for a moment before she got herself under control again. “They’re gone forever.”
Like Basil. Like Olivia’s brother, too.
I pressed my palms against the roof under me. They were sweaty, and the metal was cool and smooth against them.
“So that’s why you took me?”
Olivia’s head turned toward me. “What do you mean?”
“You think I have the answers, somehow. That I can decode my brother’s journal, figure out what he was planning for Prometheus. How to take Prometheus down, or at least force him to treat Renewables fairly without sacrificing the city itself.”
“That’s the hope.” But her voice was anything but hopeful.
“Everywhere I go.” My whisper is barely more than a breath.
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