by Erik Hyrkas
They walked for miles, and eventually the ceiling became lower and lower. Hunter took to walking in the river for periods so he didn’t have to remain hunched over. Eventually, they both had to walk in the river to avoid crawling.
“There’s a light ahead,” Hunter said over the wind.
There was bright light filtering through the wall before them. The ceiling was sharply declining, and to reach the hole, they both had to crawl through the shallow water. But the cavern was wide enough that they could still move side-by-side.
They reached the hole, which wasn’t much bigger than a basketball. Brit looked through it first and saw that it looked out upon the Silver City in the distance. Below them, twenty-five yards away, was the entrance to the mine. There were now two enkelis guarding the mine. They were wearing masks, which was something that Brit had not seen before.
“I can’t fit through that,” Hunter said.
Brit pushed on the solid stone. “I don’t think I can either.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Why are those enkelis wearing masks?” Brit asked.
Hunter took a turn staring through the opening. “I’m not sure, but I wonder what those balls do.”
Brit pushed Hunter out of the way to get a look, and she saw two new masked enkelis from the platform carrying a bin of white balls, each no bigger than an orange, into the mine.
“If we can move this rock, we could climb out.” Hunter grunted with exertion as he pushed against the rock on the side of the small gap through which they were peering.
“Be careful,” Brit said. “What if the whole ceiling collapses?”
Hunter pushed harder, and the boulder slid a fraction of an inch. Dust fell from the ceiling and Brit cringed.
“Help,” he grunted as he pushed harder.
Closing her eyes, she pushed against the same boulder as hard as she could. It broke free, rotating a few inches; but rather than falling outside, the stone had spun so that heavier end was closer to them. The egg-shaped boulder fell directly toward Hunter, then tumbled and came to rest in the middle of the river.
“Fuck!” Hunter said.
“Are you okay?” Brit asked.
Hunter grasped his ankle and groaned.
Brit shined the light on his leg, which had a bloody gash. “That scrape looks bad,” she said.
“It fell on my foot,” he said through gritted teeth. “I think it is broken.”
Hunter slid down to a sitting position on the boulder that they had liberated from the opening. He was panting and letting out small groans.
“Fucking fuck fucker,” he moaned. “It fucking hurts.” He soaked his ankle in the cold water. “I’m not going to be able to walk,” he said through gritted teeth.
“The amulet might heal you,” Brit said. “It healed my feet when they were cut up.”
Hunter nodded. “Possibly, though the bones may not set right. Even then, it will take weeks of sitting here before I can move.”
Brit looked out through the larger opening they had made. The two enkelis that had carried in the bin of white balls were now carrying out unconscious slaves and laying them on the grass. She couldn’t tell if the slaves were dead or unconscious, but either way, they didn’t have six weeks to sit here when Jax might be in danger.
She pulled out the ilo. “We should have power here,” she said.
She pointed it at the wall and swiped her two fingers along the edge. A portal instantly appeared. This time the stairs leading down were white.
“This might be the way to Earth,” she said. “You should go.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Something stupid,” she said. “Go! I’ll leave it open for a few minutes to give you time to come back if it isn’t Earth.”
Hunter nodded. “You should come, too.”
She shook her head. “You know I can’t. Please hurry.”
Hunter crawled to the portal and looked back at her. “I’ll be waiting for you,” he said. “Next week, I’ll host poker night.”
Brit nodded. “We’ll be there,” she lied.
Hunter smiled through the pain, turned and crawled into the portal. Brit waited for many long minutes, and when he didn’t come back, she swept her hand across the surface of the ilo and the portal winked out of existence.
Brit turned back to the gap they had created in the cavern wall. More slaves were being laid on the grass outside of the mine. She pulled out her halo and set it on the stone. She didn’t want it knocking her out when she came closer to the mine boundary.
There wasn’t much cover between her current position and the guards, but they weren’t looking in her direction. And they wouldn’t expect an unarmed human to sneak up on them, she told herself. With great care, she pulled herself out of the cave and onto dry ground. The opening was bigger now, but not so big that it was easy to get through. She hoped that Jax would fit.
There was a strong odor in the air, and it made her lightheaded. She wondered if this is why the guards wore masks. Maybe they were gassing the slaves in the cave so they couldn’t put up a fight.
She was unarmed, unprotected, and alone against multiple strong, well-armed guards in armor. Her only assets were surprise and having nothing left to lose. She grabbed a fist-sized rock and took a few deep breaths, then she held her breath and crept forward.
She crossed the twenty yards in moments. The two guards were talking.
“There are a few left barricaded in the deepest level, but once they are pulled out, we can begin to transfer all of them to cells,” one guard said with a gesture toward the dozens of slaves on the grass.
Brit smashed the rock into the back of his head and he collapsed. The other guard turned and she jumped on him, pulling the mask from his face.
He gasped in surprise, then collapsed to the ground. She quickly held the mask over her own face and inhaled. She had broken the straps when she pulled it off him. The guard she had hit with the stone stirred, and she quickly slid his mask off. He stopped moving. She felt each of their necks and was relieved they weren’t dead. She didn’t want anybody dead, not even the enkelis. After all, they were slaves as much as she had been, their task merely different.
She ran into the mine, hoping to get to Jax before anybody knew she was there. When she came to the lift at the center shaft of the mine, the two guards that had carried the bins of white balls into the mine were now dragging two unconscious slaves toward the entrance. The guards were walking backward as they dragged them, and Brit hid in the side passage as they passed. She cursed herself for not grabbing an armilon from one of the guards she had knocked out, but then she wondered whether she could have used it if she had.
When the two guards were past, she slipped onto the lift and rode it to the level that led to the cave, and hopefully to Jax.
The ground was littered with small white balls that slowly hissed. She suspected that they emitted some form of knockout gas that the guards had to resort to using this deep in the cave, so deep the slaves’ halos were off the power web. She wondered if, in the future, they would extend power deeper to prevent slaves from ever being off the grid.
She ran down the passage to the spot she had spent years digging to reach the cave. With easy familiarity, she ran along the cave corridors, ducking and scrambling as necessary until she came to the river.
There were dozens of unconscious slaves lying about the river, and many of them showed signs of injuries.
Jax, Marcy, Avrox, and Peter were lying on the ground near the stone table they had made. She put her extra mask on Jax, and he stirred. Avrox and Peter also opened their eyes, though it looked like it took a huge amount of effort.
“I have the ilo,” Brit said and held up the device. “We can get out of here.”
“Quick, activate it,” Peter whispered. “While we have the strength left to move.”
Brit swiped two fingers around the edge and the portal opened.
Peter crawled toward it.
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br /> “Help Marcy,” Brit said.
Peter paused and looked back. “I can barely move myself.”
“I’ll help,” Avrox said.
“What about destroying the power core?” Jax whispered.
“When we’ve regained our strength, we can come back,” Avrox said. “The detonator is ready. All we need is the strength to carry it to the core.”
Brit noticed a glowing green globe resting on the table next to a map.
Peter and Avrox dragged Marcy into the portal. Brit pulled on Jax, but because her mask’s straps were broken, she could only use one hand, and right now that free hand held the ilo.
“Hold the ilo,” Brit said.
Jax took it gingerly in his left hand as she pulled him slowly to the portal edge and the glowing white stairs leading back to Earth. He seemed to be regaining strength now that he was breathing through the mask, and he managed a few unsteady steps.
With a heave, Jax made it onto the stairs. Brit had only long enough to heave a sigh of relief and the portal winked out of existence. Brit stared in horror at the spot Jax had disappeared. He was still on the stairs and she hoped that he wasn’t lost in the space between worlds when the portal closed. The ilo had run out of power, but this was an easy problem. She only had to get to a higher level of the mine and she’d be able to escape too. Then she remembered that Jax held the ilo and that it had no power for him to come back.
She sat on the water’s edge waiting for him to return. He’d find a way, wouldn’t he? Minutes turned into hours, hours into more hours. She grew hungry and thirsty. The unconscious slaves around her didn’t stir, so she didn’t dare remove her mask to drink the water. What if she passed out face first into the water and drowned moments before Jax returned?
She thought back to Rennox and the underground city. She would have to find her way back there without the guards following. She thought of her halo back on the egg-shaped boulder that had injured Hunter. She had left it there so that the guards couldn’t incapacitate her with it, but if she didn’t make it back, she’d starve.
Brit's situation was growing dire. The idea that Jax was stuck between worlds as she lived out her remaining minutes became too terrible to consider. She wasn’t giving up on her own life, she would fight to survive, but she would live whatever remaining time she had believing that Jax was free. This wasn’t how she dreamed it would be when she returned with the ilo, but if she believed Jax survived, then this was a small victory over the enkelis. Jax was home, and Avrox was there too and so Peter wouldn’t be able to take the ilo back easily. Another small victory.
Brit stood and looked around at the unconscious slaves. There was nothing she could do for them. They had fought against the enkelis because of her messages, and now they risked imprisonment or death because of her. Her eyes returned to the green basketball-sized globe, and she knew what she had to do. On the top of the bomb was a clear depression in the shape of a hand. She was sure that placing her hand on that spot would activate it. She wondered how long she’d have before it went off and whether it would kill her.
She studied the map on the table next to the bomb and saw that it showed the way to a place she had never been, deep in the cave. She grabbed two fresh light globes from a pile, checked that they worked, and then shoved them into her pocket. She had to use her left hand to hold the mask, so carrying a light, the globe, and the map was a challenge. She studied the map, then tucked it into the waist of her pants, so that she could set down the bomb and look at the map at each intersection.
It was slow going, and the deeper she went into the cave, the warmer it became. She was steadily descending, sometimes at steep angles. She was terrified that she might drop the bomb and it would detonate prematurely.
Finally, she came around a corner and saw what she knew instantly must be her destination. The cave opened up into a large, bottomless cylinder shape two hundred yards across with a massive glowing golden pillar in the center. She stared over the edge for a moment, trying to make out where the pillar might connect to a floor, but her eyes could not. The heat was stifling. She looked up and saw the golden pillar disappeared into blackness. She sat down, dangling her feet over the edge of the sheer drop. She thought of the unconscious slaves both in the cave and the surface. Then she thought of Jax. She was determined not to think of her own fear. Her final thoughts would have to be of the man she loved.
She pressed her right hand to the globe and then let it fall. She watched it go. Then she removed her mask and waited. Minutes passed and nothing happened. Brit kept her mind on that first moment she had met Jax on her first day of college. She had spotted him from her dorm window and impulsively waved at him. A few minutes later, he had knocked on her door. His hair was ruffled from the windy fall day and he was wearing a faded superhero t-shirt and a more faded pair of jeans.
The explosion was deafening and blasted her backward. A flair of intense heat and energy roared upward. Whatever she had told herself about accepting death changed that instant. She scrambled backward, still half-stunned. Then another explosion, louder than the first, blasted her back against the cave wall.
Dazed and in pain, she crawled around the corner before a more violent blast doused her in a searing hurricane. Then there was darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Brit awoke to darkness and pain. She fumbled for a light globe and turned it on. She was lying in an unfamiliar cave, and it took her a few moments to remember why. She felt cold, hungry, and more alone than she could ever remember. A small part of her wanted to close her eyes and drift off to wait for death, but she quickly pushed those feelings down. She might die, but she would die fighting.
Using the map, she returned to the base camp. The air still had a tinge of foul smelling gas in it that made her swoon slightly, but she remained conscious. Two dozen injured slaves were all conscious and busy with different tasks in small groups in the dimly lit room. Glowing lichen had been spread around the different surfaces but didn’t provide enough light to see much. From what she could tell, some of the slaves were repairing weapons, some were preparing food, and others were tending to the seriously wounded. She held her light up and it illuminated the room more brightly.
“What happened?” she asked.
A slave looked up from repairing an armilon. “When we awoke, Avrox had already taken the detonator. We’re out of power and we’re not prepared for a recharging run yet. We’ll need to go soon before there is no power at all.”
“There’s no more power,” she said. “I delivered the detonator to the power web core.”
Work around her stopped and slaves turned toward her.
She cleared her throat. “We should make our way out of here while we still have the light. Without power, the lift won’t work. I don’t know how we’re going to get to the surface.”
The slaves began murmuring.
“They’ll bring backup power soon, if they haven’t already,” one of the slaves said. “They won’t be able to power the main defense grid while only on backup, though. We need to get into position.”
Brit was moving toward the passage that led to the mine when she saw something in the spot where the portal had been. There on the ground was a small notebook and a tiny pencil stub. She recognized the notebook immediately. It was Jax’s. It must have fallen out of his pocket as they were carrying him to the portal.
Five of the least injured slaves gathered at the exit of the river cavern, and Brit joined them.
“You’ll have to stay here,” the slave near the front said to her. “We have a small opportunity to free our captured allies in the chaos.”
“Where will you go after you free them?” Brit asked. She thought briefly about asking Rennox and his people for refuge for these slaves, but she knew she couldn’t bring so many slaves back there. The legion might follow them and she would be responsible for the loss of their civilization.
“A transport ship belonging to Kauppias was docked in the city.
Avrox promised that she will give sanctuary to anybody who makes it. The ship is large enough to hold more than a hundred slaves.”
Brit thought of the thousands of slaves she had seen. They clearly knew that they couldn’t all go, and yet this was the hope they were fighting for.
“I’m not staying here,” she said. “I’m able to help.”
“Every enkeli is bigger, stronger, and faster than you,” he said, “and we can’t sacrifice anybody to protect you. This may be our only hope for freedom.”
“I’m not asking for protection,” she said. “I’m going.”
The slave nodded. “It is your life to throw away. Keep up if you can.” He turned to the others. “Let’s go.”
When they reached the mine, some of the lights along the walls had already gone out. Brit had to switch to her backup globe. The smell of gas was stronger in the mine and was nearly overwhelming. She wished she hadn’t left her mask back at the power core. Now she was lightheaded and hoping she didn’t pass out. She feared that, if she did, she would be left behind.
They reached the lift and Brit stumbled onto it. To her surprise, it rose. That meant the backup power was on, but it was clearly not being used for non-essentials. She was thankful that the lift must have counted as essential.
As they rose higher, her head cleared along with the smell of the gas. She felt a strong, fresh wind blowing through the mine and breathed in deeply.
When they reached the surface, two unfortunate guards were waiting for them. They were blasted backward by the force of five armilons.
The slave who stripped the guards of weapons held one out to Brit. “Take it,” he said.
She hesitated. “I’m not sure I can use it.”
“What are you planning to do?” he asked. “You aren’t useful if you can’t fight.”
She took it. It felt heavy in her hand.
“Swing it at your target and it’ll do the rest,” the slave said. “Be careful not to hit one of us.”
Brit nodded. She had no intension of using the weapon at all. It wasn’t that she was a pacifist, but she wasn’t really sure she could hurt somebody if it came down to it.
