7.2 km from flash curtain
“MEREDITH,” VAL SAYS, “may I present Orion Denman, your newest Delver.”
An older woman turns, and color drains from her face. “You’ll have to forgive me,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “It’s just that … I feel I’ve stepped through time. Ferrin was your age when she came to us. You look just like her.”
The white-haired man at her side steps forward, scrutinizing my features. “You’re indeed Ferrin’s daughter,” he says. “You have her features.”
I like to think I have her heart or her courage.
They stand before a wall of ports, each marked by a tiled pathway etched with a number. Meredith stands atop a chipped 3 carved into the stone.
“This was your mother’s tunnel.” Her words pierce me, like a knife slipped past my armor.
“My mother mined the Barrier Range,” I say. “Seven was her tunnel.”
“Before that. Before she was sent to Outpost Five. She grew up here, in the Overburden.”
Mom is preserved in my mind in hazy, light-filled images, snippets of memories that are painted with feeling more than visual representations. Her smile, the way her hand felt on my cheek, and now—like it’s been summoned by Meredith’s words—a sort of lost look in her eyes, when she’d stare toward the curtain. But now I know—she wasn’t looking for the curtain at all. She was trying to see her home. The Overburden.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Because it’s a dangerous thing to know. Her silence kept you safe, Orion.”
“I’m not sure that lies keep anyone safe.”
“No, but they keep people alive. And in a world like ours, that’s often the best one can hope for.” She ushers me into the port and a cage-like door slides behind us. It descends, and scents of earth and musty air rush up around us.
“Why did she leave?” I ask.
“Our system is a careful construction of roles and boundaries. One must adhere to them, or we are no longer effective. She could not comply.”
She could not comply.
I picture Mom dressed as I am now, the Congress’s Delver. Noncompliant. I feel like I’m retracing her steps and it’s bringing her back to life, a moment at a time.
“Your mother is a bit of a legend. She was the best Prime Delver we’ve ever had. I’m hoping you possess her same skill.”
“She died before she could teach me to mine.”
Meredith cocks her head and studies me. “Biology is an interesting thing,” she murmurs. “I’m hoping you’ve inherited your mother’s … instincts. Things she understood that no one ever taught her.”
“I won Fortune because I captured a gull and followed it out of the cavern. I tracked moles to the soil. I cheated.”
Meredith nods. “That’s precisely what I’m talking about.”
The port groans to a halt, the sound echoing in the cavernous depths. She lifts her chain of office before a sensor and the metal bars pull away to reveal the yawning maw of a tunnel. Bare bulbs flicker from the rock ceiling.
“The Congress is busy finding ways to survive in a world with flash curtains. We are focused on taking back the world.” She touches a pulse transmitter projecting from the stone. “We reclaim this land one passage at a time, mining eludial soil in an effort to control the flash curtain. If we forge a path to the eludial seam, it will be possible to destroy it altogether. It is essential work. The most important work.”
A Delver approaches us, a girl my age, with curly black hair streaming beneath her skullcap and skin a shade darker than the dust smeared across her cheek.
“This is Cora, our Prime Delver,” Meredith says. “She’ll show you what you need to know.”
Cora’s gaze flicks down my body and up. “This is the Scout?”
Meredith’s eyes bore into the girl. “This is Orion Denman. Ferrin’s daughter.”
“Huh.”
“Teach her how to survive down here, Cora. Train her as if she’s the next Prime.”
Cora lifts a dark brow. “Well, then. I’ll try not to let her get eaten by a termit.”
“Cora,” Meredith says, her tone a warning.
“Right.” Cora waggles her fingers at me. “Future Prime, come with me.” She turns down a narrow corridor. She’s tall, and I have to double my pace to keep up with her.
“Did I do something to upset you?” I ask.
She huffs a snide laugh. “I get that you’re a Subpar, so you’ve got mining and climbing skills, but I’m curious about your level of sense. It doesn’t take much to figure out why I’d have a problem with you.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Ah, well. It’s like this, Ferrin’s daughter: there’s only one leader here, and it’s not you.” She points to the short cloak hanging halfway down her back. “I’ve earned this Prime’s cape, and I’m not giving it up. I don’t care who your mom was.”
“I’m not trying to steal your cape,” I mutter.
“It’s an honor.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“You do realize that if you’re made Prime Delver, it means I’m either dead or severely indisposed.”
“I suppose that puts a dent in our budding friendship.”
“No friends down here, Subpar. It will go easier for you if you remember that.” She lifts a black rectangular instrument from a heap of equipment piled on the ground.
“Depth gauge,” she says, dropping it into my hand. “And pulse transmitters.” I clip the tech to my belt. She lifts a flash rifle and caresses the barrel. “Meredith is a purist. She doesn’t believe Delvers need the tech Ordinance provides.” She tosses me the weapon. “She’s wrong.”
Lights illuminate at my touch, the gun’s biotech reacting to my heat. This is way beyond the Dodgers’ guns. This looks more like something a Strider would use. It feels foreign in my grip, but Cora’s going on about some creature, and I remind myself that any weapon is a good weapon.
“… and it will shoot the head off a termit at thirty meters.”
“A termit?”
“Self-camouflaging mammal. Sharp teeth.” She lifts a brow. “They don’t have those in Westfall?” I shake my head. “Huh. Lucky bastards. Well, you won’t see them unless you’re wearing these—” She draws a pair of goggles from the crate. “They’re heat-sensing.” I loop them around my neck, and she walks away.
“Let’s go,” Cora commands.
“What about the…” I glance over the rest of the gear. Rope, harness, bolt gun, flares, medkit, and nutri-pacs.
“Leave it,” Cora calls. “I want to see if the stories about you are true.”
Whatever myths this Delver’s heard about the Scout, I’m not above food or med supplies. I stuff them into my pockets, strap on the bolt gun, and jog to catch up to her.
“Whatever you did to get here,” she says, “none of it matters. Only this tunnel matters. Try not to die. I hate training new Delvers.” She catches hold of a lip of stone and pulls herself up. Beneath her Prime Delver designation, she wears a patch with a wave on her sleeve.
“You were in the Trades?” I ask.
“If you understand the Trades, then you know what I’ve done to get here. Ferrin herself could return from the dead, and I’d still not let her take Prime from me.”
A sudden thought occurs to me. “Was my mother commissioned in the Trades?”
Cora’s expression hardens. “No. Her family bought her commission, like everyone else down here. Well, everyone but me and the Ghost.”
She’s enjoying my confusion. I can tell by the way she drops bits of information as if she’s slapping ore mites on me and waiting to see if they’ll explode.
“Ghost?” I ask. Boom. She grins.
“How do you think we carved these passageways? Congress uses adapted Conjies like rock plows.” Boom.
“Adapted Conjies,” I murmur. “Those who can conjure this close to the flash curtain? I thought that was a rare ability.”
“Technically, they’re called Forgers. But it hardly matters now. There’s only one left. I’m taking you to her.”
“A Conjuror? There’s a person down here?” She shrugs and pushes her goggles up on her head. “What happened to my mother?” I ask. “If she was some important Delver here, why did she leave to go mine in Outpost Five?”
“She didn’t ask to leave. No one volunteers to serve in the outposts. She disagreed with Meredith—questioned things. When she was discovered with that Conjie, it was—”
“What?” I feel as if she’s suddenly speaking underwater. Her lips move, but I can’t make out the meaning of her words. “What Conjie? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know his name. Anyway, they sent her away after that.”
Sent her away.
“And the Conjie?”
“What happens to all Conjurors, I suppose.” She reaches for the ledge.
“Cora.” I grab her arm. The girl is a blur of motion, and I need her to be still this one time. She knows things. Things more important than flash rifles and termits. “Who was the Conjuror to her?”
“Her Ghost.”
Her Ghost.
My mother grew up in the Overburden. She was commissioned as a Delver. And she had a Conjie slave.
Cora is climbing again, which is fine, because I’m not sure I want her to see the emotions flashing across my face. Truth is a commodity here, and I’m not ready to trade mine. I follow her up the rock face, mindlessly gripping handholds, hungry for more. I barely register the slick stone beneath my fingertips, the water seeping through a tear in my glove. For the first time since she died, I feel like I’m getting Mom back, instead of losing more of her each day. By the time we reach the top, Cora’s gasping for breath. We settle against the wall, our knees drawn up.
“Well, they didn’t exaggerate your climbing skills,” she mutters.
“The outpost director sent me down tunnel six when I was nine. I learned fast.” She tilts her head, as if she’s trying to process this new thought with what she’s been told. I realize I may have something to offer Cora, after all. The girl is as starved for information as I am. “Ask me about Outpost Five. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Her gaze shutters. “I told you, nothing from before matters. These passages are all that matter now.”
“That isn’t actually true,” I say. “If you really believe that, then I’m sorry for you.”
“Says the Westfaller who’s never come eyes-to-nose with a termit.” She tears open a nutri-pac and squeezes the rations into her mouth.
“You made it sound like there was more between my mother and her Forger than finding eludial soil.”
Cora shrugs. “Ferrin wasn’t the first Delver to fall in love with an adapted Conjie. He was all she had—for months on end. It would have been more surprising if they hadn’t formed a bond.”
I think of Dram and me. What we forged down the tunnels of Outpost Five went far beyond the partnership of scout and marker. When you’ve held someone’s life in your hands that many times, you end up holding all the other parts of them too—mind, body, and soul. Dram was my lifeline, and I was his—and we are indelibly linked.
This Conjie Ghost was Mom’s soul mate.
We pass beyond the dripstone, the last jagged point scraping along my back.
“What happens to the Forgers now?”
“Fern’s the last of them. Besides her, there aren’t any more. Haven’t been for years. Because your mother was Prime, she was assigned one of the few left. Adapted Conjies were rare then; now they’re nonexistent.”
An image of Roran comes to mind, how he forged a passage beneath the Range. He saved me when he first revealed his hidden ability during a flash storm and then saved our team of cavers when we fled Outpost Five. If the Congress had had any idea what he was capable of … they would’ve turned him into a Ghost.
“You ready?” Cora asks.
“For what?”
“To meet a Ghost.” She strides around a curve in the stone, and my heart stops. Before us rises a cube of cirium, a shiny metallic box smaller than my bedroom at Outpost Five.
“What is that thing?” I murmur.
“The Box. Half-meter-thick-cirium-walled containment cube. Fern’s home.” She strides forward and sets her hand to the side of the cell.
“Why doesn’t she just use her ability to overpower you and escape?”
“She’s tried it—twice. Now we’re life-linked.” She pulls back her glove and points to her wrist. “A bit of tech inside there. She has it too. Now if I die, she dies. Also, they’ve promised her freedom if she complies.”
“Are Forgers ever given their freedom?”
“What do you think?” Cora asks. She lifts her hand before a sensor, and bolts slide open with a hiss. “What did they promise you cavers in the outposts?”
“A place in the protected city,” I say. “If we mined four hundred grams of cirium.”
Cora’s eyes darken. “And how is our fair city?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I earned four Rays, and Congress sent me to Cordon Four.”
“I guess in that way, Eastfall and Westfall Subpars are the same,” she says. “Congress flashes us both.” She lifts a lever, and the heavy door grinds open. In the frail light of a single bulb, a girl sits on a cot, her hair streaming down her back.
“Come, Fern,” Cora says.
The Forger stands, a young girl—maybe thirteen or fourteen—and draws on body armor that matches ours. She wears no equipment, save for a headlamp. A girl with her abilities has no need for rope. She tucks her hair beneath her skullcap, and I remember all the times Dram did that for me.
The girl is pale, her skin like the smooth white skin of ore mites. She moves with a sort of animalistic grace, like she was born of these caverns, her strength rooted in the earth as surely as the stone.
I smile at her. “I’m Orion.”
“I’ve heard of you.” She doesn’t smile back. Her face is passive, like it’s unaccustomed to expressions of emotion. I search her eyes, expecting to see desperation, a place to funnel all the pity I feel welling up within me, but her eyes—a strange mix of brown and blue—remain as empty as her face.
If she was ever a normal girl, that person has been lost to this perpetual darkness, her humanity absorbed by the walls of a cirium prison.
“Do you wish to proceed, Prime Delver?” she asks Cora.
Cora nods, but she’s watching me, like she’s enjoying my reaction to this strange, captive girl. Fern walks past us, and Cora leans in close to me.
“Now you understand.”
I slip the goggles over my eyes, blocking my despair from Cora’s prying gaze. “What do I understand?”
She looks after Fern. “Why we call them Ghosts.”