Freed

by Holly Hook

  Table of Contents

  Freed (#3 Flamestone Trilogy)

  FREED

  (#3 Flamestone Trilogy)

  By Holly Hook

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Holly A. Hook

  Freed

  Copyright © 2016 Holly A. Hook

  Chapter One

  Supply

  “All right, Weslie. We need to gear up.”

  I turn in a circle, surveying the mess around us. The cracks in the rock walls. The dust, still settling from the explosion. The dim, flickering lights overhead and the open door to Garrett's office. The giant pile of rocks now blocking this level's entrance to the mines.

  Jaden, the Dwellers and my stepfather are on the other side of that with no quick way to reach us. Weslie stands there, catching her breath. She's even paler than normal. She won't take her gaze off the cave in.

  “Weslie,” I say. “I'm sure Jaden is still alive.” I don't see any blood—red or green—seeping out from under the rocks. Jaden pulled Garrett into the darkness before the explosion went off. They both must have run from the dynamite. They're probably both still alive.

  Probably.

  “Jaden!” she shouts. It's as if I'm not here.

  There's no response. Either he can't hear us through the rocks, or he's too far away. Or Garrett has managed to kill him. It's one of those possibilities, but I don't bring up the last one to Weslie. Instead, I grab her arm and bring her back to the present. “Weslie,” I say. I have to keep her calm. She's reliving the loss of her brother all over again and we can't do that if we're going to rescue our friends from the lower mines. “I saw it. Jaden and Garrett ran away from this before it exploded. They're not under these rocks. On the other side of them, yes. And Jaden's better able to deal with being in the dark than Garrett is. He can see in the dark now and the Dwellers can't make him sick. Garrett's blind in there.” I feel better listening to my own words. Even if Jaden did sell Antoine to the Dwellers, he saved us from having to go down to Shaft 17 to certain death. I don't want to see him die, mostly for Weslie's sake. The two of them were good friends before his betrayal came to light.

  Weslie faces me. Her lips are thin. Her eyes, watery. She's lost so much.

  “He's alive,” I tell her.

  "You think so?" she asks.

  "I'm sure." I hope I'm not lying. "He'll find us if he really wants to. He was able to lead us here, after all. Now we need to figure out how to do the rest."

  My stomach rolls. Ironically, we’re going down to Shaft 17 anyway. But at least it will be on our terms, not the Flamestone Society's. We'll be operating the elevator, not them, and we'll head down without the Dwellers.

  “I hope you're right,” she says. “You have to be right. I can't do this anymore.” Weslie checks the tunnel that leads back to the caves. “We should grab everything we can before we head down. I’m not looking forward to this.”

  “I understand if you don’t want to go.”

  Color rushes back to her face. “I’m going. My boyfriend is down there. Just like yours.”

  I turn towards the storage room. The door is still unblocked by the cave in. Barely. I think I can open it. Garrett’s office is also unblocked. “Weslie, you’ve been down here before in the mines. Do you think there’s another way Garrett can get around the cave in? Get here?” Only the elevator and the entrance back to the caves offers any way into the processing office.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “He does have the Dwellers to cart him around. They might be able to find a way. We still need to worry about him.”

  “You have his gun,” I point out. She's still holding the small pistol.

  “I do. But he could always find something worse.”

  “If he comes back, we shoot him,” I say. The words fall heavy and cold on the floor. I'm planning to do what my father did. What Steven Wompitt did. I'm planning to kill the leader of the Flamestone Society.

  This whole time, my father did the right thing and I refused to go to the prison to visit him all these years. There was only that one precious time where he tried to warn me that I had a real monster in my midst. And now my father must know I'm missing, too. There's nothing either one of my parents can do. I'm not even on Earth anymore.

  “I agree.” Weslie still holds the small silver pistol, the one Garrett threatened us with. "Elaine, I'm not sure if I can, you know, kill someone."

  "I'm not, either," I say. "But...I've got to do what my father tried to do. We need to stop the Society. Garrett's the last leader."

  Get in the elevator, Garrett said. He didn’t care if I lived or died. He doesn’t care how all of this must be making my mother feel. My stomach gets upset just thinking about her back home, going out of her mind and not knowing what's really going on. Garrett might have told her I ran away or something. “I can’t believe he’s blaming me for all of this.”

  “Yes. It’s all your fault,” Weslie says, opening the supply room door. Her voice drips with sarcasm. “All your fault. That's what they always say when they do something wrong.” She turns on the light. It’s flickering now. We’ve probably damaged some of the wires in this place with the dynamite, even though there can’t be very many. It’s my hope that the light stays on. If the Dwellers do find a way around, we need something to hold them back. Something better than our torches. I remember the lanterns I saw in there. Weslie might know how to use one. I’ve never worked in a mine before.

  “What should we grab?” I ask.

  “Anything. Everything we can carry without being slowed down. If something starts to chase us down there, I don’t want to be its lunch.” Her voice gets quieter. She's about to take another spiral into panic. Once she gets down there in the real depths, all the progress she's made defeating her fear might get undone in seconds. My fear of heights is nothing compared to her fear of the dark and the underground.

  The supply room is untouched by the explosion. Only the wall on the far side is cracked. I hope this place doesn’t cave in. I head over the shelves with the rations. We need something more than the jerky Ned packed for us. The worst part of our journey is about to begin.

  “And grab a few canteens,” I say. I remember reading something about the lower depths on Earth being hot. It might be the same in this world.

  “I’m sure it is,” she says. “The lower mines do get pretty warm from what I've heard. And if this new one is below where I used to work, it’s going to be a sauna.” Her voice is shaking. Weslie doesn’t want to go down there. I don’t blame her. Neither do I.

  But Shawn and Talia and Travis are probably down there, digging out that vein of Flamestone for the Dwellers. That is, if Jaden was right about the people he saw coming through the processing office, being moved to new locations. They could be collapsing from exhaustion right now. They could be choking on toxic gases or getting heat stroke. Or worse—facing the monsters from deep within this world. And we're here, going through supplies.

  They might even be dead already.

  You can't come down here if you're going to die, too, Shawn says. I'm glad I still know his voice. Even though I got to this world only days ago, it feels like years.

  I open one of the ration tins. It’s got something that looks like Spam inside. Dried bread with peanut butter. I take several tins and stuff them in my backpack. It bulges and I have to shove my Megapede jaw back into the rear pocket. “Should we take any of the pickaxes?” I ask, facing the crate of them.

  Weslie's two shelves away from me, shuffling through another box. The blue stripes on her furs shine in the weak light. “There will be some down there. Believe me. If we need one, I’m sure a worker will lend us one. Gladly.”

  “Good point.” I snatch two of the canteens and put them in my pocket with the pincher. My backpack’s going to be hea
vy, like an army pack. Great. I might fall over and die from this if the other things don't get me first. “I need to drop some weight here.”

  “Drop the Flamestone,” Weslie says. She holds up a shovel and studies it, then tosses it down. It lands with a loud, metallic thud. “There will be lots of that so far underground if we need any. It gets thicker the lower down you go.”

  I take my pack and I dump out all the Flamestone out of it. The orange ore glitters in the weak light. I ditch my notebook, too. My pens. I'd forgotten they were still in there. I feel a pang dropping one of my last connections to the regular world, but paper won't do us any good down there. My notebook flops open to reveal the writing lesson I'd been given Jaden the night before we learned of his betrayal.

  “I’ll get us two lamps,” Weslie says. “We should keep our torches just in case, but lamps are much better in mines, believe me.” She holds one up and studies it. “I think this is one of those safety lamps. It’s designed to go out if we get to an area where there isn’t enough oxygen. It'll give us warning. And...there are gas masks here. I'll grab three of those and stuff them in my pack. There might be toxic gases down there."

  "Good thinking," I say. I open another crate. More pickaxes. I don't want to think of the conditions down there. “You'll have to carry that. I'm going to have my axe with me. I left it in the office.”

  I eye the pile of Flamestone on the floor. It got me through my third night in the cave. It helped me cook my food. And fed Jaden back in the cave before we realized he'd changed.

  I think of the guy, trapped on the other side of that cave in with only Garrett and the Dwellers for company. I think of that horrible Slimestone tattoo that started working on him as soon as his mission was over. It filled his whole body with that green substance, making him very sensitive to light. Making him unable to tolerate regular food. He’s become like everything else that lives in these depths, eating the Flamestone and each other to survive. He’s become just like the Dwellers, only without their sickening gaze.

  I don’t even know if we’ll see him again or if there’s a way to return him to normal. Weslie’s boyfriend Antoine might know. He’s the guy who experiments with all these ores.

  Or not.

  “I wish we had a third person.” I hike my backpack up again.

  “I wish we did, too,” Weslie says, facing the direction of the cave in. “Once we’re down there, we’re going to have more Dwellers to deal with.”

  “More Dwellers?” I face her.

  “Yes. They never leave the workers alone. You know the ones that were coming at us a few minutes ago? That was only a small group of them. There are probably millions of them down here underground. What I’m saying is that there will be at least another group of them down in Shaft 17, guarding the workers. We’re going to need to figure out a way to get past them and get everyone out of there.”

  My stomach curls into a knot. I hadn’t thought of that. Of course they won't leave their workers alone to make a jailbreak.

  “There must be a way,” I say. “We have light, for one thing.” I pick up the second lantern. "We'll just use one lantern at a time. If that one burns out, we turn on this one."

  “We might have light,” Weslie says. Her freckles stand out as she pales even more than usual. “In most shafts, they use the glowing mushrooms in place of torches so the workers can see. The Dwellers aren’t bothered by those since they're not bright enough. If we had torches down here, we’d all manage to escape to the surface.”

  “Then the lanterns it is,” I say.

  Weslie sets the lantern down next to her pack. “I’ll just have to light it,” she says, pulling out her matches. “I think I remember how.”

  I feel like I’m going to throw up. Shaft 17 will be full of Dwellers. They have a high security prisoner. Antoine. He’s the only one who knows how to stop the whole Flamestone Society thing. The one who has the best shot at it, anyway. He’s the first dangerous person since Steven Wompitt—

  --My father—

  Tried to come down and rescue the workers.

  My father.

  It’s him who first stood up to the Society. Him who founded the settlement I stayed in for a few days. He went back to Earth after he escaped from this place. Then he murdered Garrett’s father, the former Flamestone Society leader. And then Garrett married my mother in revenge and vowed to bring me into the Society. If I hadn’t gone after Talia like he didn’t want me to, I would have had one of those flame tattoos on my arm in a couple years or so. He would have groomed me to join them. It would have been the perfect revenge.

  And as soon as I set this right, I’m going to go visit my father. I don’t care what my mother says.

  “I’m ready,” I say, straightening up and putting my backpack on. “I left my axe in Garrett’s office.”

  Weslie faces me. She’s grave. “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?” I ask.

  “That Garrett’s your stepfather. It must have been so scary, keeping that from Ned.”

  “He would have killed me if he knew. Yeah, it was just a little bit awkward.” I don’t even want to think about that coward right now. We’re down here and he isn’t. He’s probably back in Wompitt right now, whatever time it is, telling everyone that he was right that our mission was going to be a failure. His friend Baxter might be halfway back there by now. That man is even worse. He left us, knowing we were headed to something horrible.

  “Garrett. Was he a jerk to live with?” Weslie leans on a shelf. Her pack's huge with supplies. She keeps the lantern in one hand. It's lit now. A small flame burns inside a metal cage.

  “He didn’t let on that he was one,” I say. I’m not comfortable talking about this. I only just found out my father’s real identity thirty minutes ago. Not even that. More like fifteen. And this whole time, I tried to hide behind Garrett when everyone used to tease me about my real father being in prison for murder. A murder, which, I know realize, needed to happen.

  And now a second one needs to happen, too.

  I’ll find Garrett. I have to. I have to finish what my father started. I have to kill him. Garrett doesn't have an heir to take his place, unlike his father. And if he dies here in Selwyn, no one back home will ever know.

  The pressure of it weighs down on me like that cave in. I have to kill my stepfather in order to cut the head off the Flamestone Society once and for all. I have to stop it.

  And we also need to find that Heart of Flamestone underground and light it. We need to burn up all the Flamestone in the world. It’s the only thing that will stop this whole thing from happening again. The only thing that will really free the workers.

  But what will this do to my mother?

  She’s still married to Garrett. She loves him.

  Can I really kill the man she thinks she loves? How will I ever face her again? Either way, I'm doing something terrible.

  “Elaine, you ready?” Weslie asks.

  I jump, snapped out of my thoughts. I put my pack back on. “Yes. Just…thinking.”

  “I had no idea Steven Wompitt got back to Earth. He must have. Obviously.”

  “He’s in prison,” I say.

  “I remember you telling me that. Elaine, I had no idea.”

  And then she hugs me.

  I let her. The furs of her tunic envelop me. We both smell like dust and smoke. It’s sticking to our clothes. It might for the rest of our lives, which might not be that long.

  We release each other. “If only Ned knew…”

  “I don’t care about Ned,” I say. “Great. I guess I’m related to him. Fantastic.” It’s another thought I don’t want to entertain. “Let’s just go.”

  I find my axe sitting on the floor of Garrett’s office, where he ordered me to drop it. I pick it up. I’m not sure what good it’ll do, but I feel like it’s mine to carry. Who did this belong to before I found it? Some poor collapsed worker. The one whose ribcage I stepped on, maybe. One who deserves some revenge, and no
w I’m the person for the job.

  I have to kill the person my mother loves.

  And I have to do this before we return to Earth.

  I’m thinking about murder. Just like my father.

  The axe is heavy as it swings in my hand. Weslie walks up to the elevator. She stands over the folders I dropped and eyes the control panel, the files that contain Shawn and Talia and Travis and Antoine. And the file that has my father's photo from twenty years ago. “There are sixteen levels on here,” she says. “They’re all numbers. This elevator must have been built after I escaped from this place. I don’t remember it being here.”

  “You ran up through the levels when you escaped, right?” I ask.

  “I did. We had stairs. Inclines. I have a feeling Shaft 17 won't have any.”

  “Makes sense. Maybe they built this elevator to control how people move down here.” I eye the control panel and study the buttons. There are sixteen of them, all right. And there's a weight scale on the panel, a needle pointing to 0 pounds. The elevator's empty, it means. Of course. The Flamestone Society doesn't want to bring any workers back up by mistake.

  Then I see it.

  A single black button on the bottom of the panel.

  That must lead to Shaft 17.

  The worst shaft of all. The deadliest. And the one that now imprisons almost everyone we care about.

  “Do we hit that?” Weslie asks. She’s thinking the same thing I am. “I don’t even want to know how far down that goes.”

  “Neither do I.” The elevator gate hangs open, ready for us to board. It still smells rotten. What if the explosion messed with the cables and as soon as we board, the elevator breaks and drops?

  “We should take these files,” Weslie says, pointing to the dropped folders on the floor. Steven Wompitt’s lies on top. It's closed.

  “We already know where our friends are,” I say. “And their files won't say if they've been moved to Shaft 17. Garrett said that shaft wasn't in the records. But just in case they're not down there, I think I can fit them. Stuff them in my backpack."