I slept through the afternoon.
When I woke up in a chamber by myself, the girl Kinni was there with more of the tasteless food. She handed me a little woven basket with strips of the dry stuff in the bottom of it.
“What is this stuff?” I asked her, chewing without enthusiasm.
“It’s bat.”
I cocked my head. “What’s that?”
She rolled her eyes. “The flying things that live in the caves.”
The meat was rubbery and bland. I hadn’t seen any flying things in the cave where Jerome had died, but there was so much new information racing through my head that the thought didn’t have anywhere to go. Of course there were cave things that flew. I’d seen them from the underground rivers, flapping up through holes in the roof when the sun set. Of course this is what they tasted like. Because we were people who came from the stars.
It seemed laughable in the daylight. But everything made sense.
“You ever been out of that Hive before?”
I straightened up. “Of course I was out of the Hive. I’m a great Diver.”
She rolled her eyes again, standing in the doorway of the small room. “Great. Getting food for the slavers. That’s wonderful.” She dropped the woven bowl that held the rest of the meat. “Well, this is bat. It’s one of the things we eat. Along with seal and fungus and berries and whatever else we can find wherever we’re running from the monsters sent by your precious Queen.”
“She’s not my Queen,” I snapped.
Kinni shrugged. “Fancy words. But I’ve seen your kind before. Born a slave. We’ve taken some of your people in the past. We tell them the truth, and they smile and nod, and the first chance they get, they go running back to throw themselves at the feet of your masters. Just like your idiot friend did last night.”
My head snapped up. “Gil? Gil went back?”
“Like they all do,” she said. “Lexis thinks there’s some kind of chemical thing that turns your brains to mush. Makes you stupid. Makes you want to go back to being slaves even after you know what the bugs really are.”
The bat meat churned in my belly. “He was as weak as I was. He’ll never even make it back.”
“Hardly matters. If he dies on the way, fine. If not, they’ll kill him as soon as they see him.”
I thought about that. Runners had disappeared in my lifetime. None had ever returned. None that I saw. As if they’d let someone bring that truth back into the Hive. My face sagged. Kinni was right. The Hive bugs would kill anyone returning. Gil had no chance.
But I had to try. For the Queen.
And I had to be smart about it.
And to do that, I’d need more than just the scarred Digger for help.