315.82 grams cirium
I WAKE TO the glow of infirmary lights.
Cranny sits at my bedside.
“You’re a special girl, Orion.” He smiles like a bully pulling his fist back for a punch.
“So you’ve said.” My head feels like it’s stuffed with rags. I’m in the back room, isolated from the rest. My father must be in the main room, the infirmary aides with him. I’m hooked to an IV, and there’s a catheter tube running from between my legs to a bag of urine hooked to the side of the bed.
“How long?” I murmur. My voice sounds rusty.
“Since you came up nine strapped to an ore cart? Three days.” He sets a used syringe on the bedside table. “I used Serum 61 to wake you. I’m impatient to talk to you.”
That explains the sting in my hand. How like Cranny to use a needle when his voice would have been enough.
“These must have been a surprise…” He picks up a vial from the bedside table. Inside, a wriggling ore mite claws against the glass.
I shrink back. “Why is that in here?”
He tips the jar, flipping the mite onto its back. Rows of pronged legs kick the air. “A reminder that, no matter how bad things seem, they can always get worse.”
“That sounds ominous,” I mutter, forcing myself to sit up. Every muscle in my body is tensed, though I doubt I could run if I wanted to. I’m not even sure I can walk.
“Graham is crippled,” Cranny says.
“What?” My thoughts collide. What does Graham have to do with me?
Cranny shrugs. “He refused the treatment that would dispel the mites on his leg. The parasites worked their way into his tendons and knee joints.”
“Why would he refuse treatment?” Cranny doesn’t answer. He stares at the ore mite wriggling on its back. “What do you want?”
“A confession,” he says.
My stomach knots. There are many things I could confess. “About what?”
“Whose idea was it? For you all to bring out the same amount of ore?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My heart slams against my chest, like it wants to escape as much as the rest of me. “I came up with nothing.”
“Actually, Scout, you had a hundred fourteen grams’ worth of cirium in your ORU. Same as the rest.”
“I don’t know how that happened.” That, at least, is no lie. Ennis must have weighed and loaded it just before Dram sent me up. I wasn’t empty-handed after all.
He tilts the jar, and the mite wrestles itself right side up. “I think you’re a schemer and a troublemaker. Tell me what I want to know.”
“I have nothing to tell you.”
Cranny’s lips twist. On an animal, I’d read it as a sign it’s about to attack. “Stand up.”
“I can’t stand,” I murmur breathlessly. “There’s a … a catheter—”
Cranny lifts the bag, and I hiss with pain. He pulls it toward him, and I stagger to my feet, holding on to the bed for support. A sob breaks from my lips.
“Please,” I whisper. “It hurts. Everything hurts.”
“Like I said,” Cranny murmurs, “things can always get worse.” The light is back in his dark gaze. It reminds me of the hunger of flash bats—creatures who will die just to keep their teeth in their prey as long as possible. “Give me a name.”
I can’t believe this is happening. If I call my father, he will attack Cranny and be sent to the burnt sands. If I tell Dram, he will kill the director. He will become ash that I wear around my neck. My eyes dart to the closed door. No one can find us like this. I can’t risk having the people I love retaliate against the director.
Anger replaces my fear. A rage so powerful that, for a moment, I think I might just murder Cranny myself. All the lies they’ve told us. All the brainwashing about what we’re really doing here.
“Last chance, Scout,” he says.
“I have nothing to tell you.”
He hooks my catheter bag back, and I nearly cry out from the pain. Tears prick my eyes as I crawl back onto the bed.
“You disappoint me, Orion.” He unscrews the vial.
Fear gnaws a pit in my stomach. “I’m the best ore scout you have.”
“Maybe you’re too good,” he says softly.
“I’ve done everything the Congress wants!”
Cranny’s eyes trace the scrapes and bruises on my face. “Poor, naive girl, you have no idea what the Congress wants.” Glass clinks as he drops something inside the vial.
He sets it beside the bed. At the bottom of the glass, beneath the mite’s clicking claws, lie four curving metal Rays—the symbol of how much ore I’ve collected.
“The Congress revoked your Rays.” He drops the words like a bomb, and I feel the shock and then the utter annihilation of my hopes. Without my Rays, those precious 400 grams, I will never, ever leave this place.
Cranny walks from the room and pulls the door shut behind him.
I press my battered face into my pillow and scream.
* * *
“Wake up, Orion.”
My eyes fly open. An anxious infirmary aide hovers over me. “You’ve been summoned to the Rig,” she says. “All the cavers have.” She doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Where’s my dad?”
“Your father’s been detained.”
“What?” I push myself up, wincing with pain. The wound in my thigh throbs like it has its own heartbeat.
“The commissary has questions about the cirium you mined.” She lifts the bandage, and I see a row of stitches pulling together swollen skin streaked purple from remnants of venom. She sprays a numbing serum over the area. “The stitches will dissolve in a few days.” She finally looks me in the eye. “You were lucky to survive this.”
“My dad—”
“The guards are on their way to escort you. I need to remove your catheter.”
I gasp and squeeze my eyes shut as she pulls the tube free. “I’m not sure I can walk that far on my own.”
“Someone else already thought of that.” She turns toward the door. “Dram, you can come in now.”
Dram steps through the doorway and freezes when he sees me.
“Tunnel nine and I had a bit of a disagreement,” I say. I try to smile, but my face is too bruised to pull it off.
He doesn’t say anything as his gaze travels over my face. His lips press together, and his jaw tightens.
The aide slips past him. “I’ll stall them as long as I can, but you need to hurry.” She shuts the door softly behind her.
Dram walks toward me, and I drink in the sight of him, though he’s battered and bruised, his left arm bound. He hands me a folded bundle of clothes and turns his back. “Do you need help?”
I slip my feet over the bed and start to stand. “No, I can—” I gasp and clutch the back of his shoulders. No one’s told me the extent of my injuries. I’m discovering them one move at a time.
“Rye…”
“Just give me a second.” I manage to drag my gown off. The effort leaves me shaking. I feel every stitch in my back.
“I’ve seen your body,” Dram murmurs. “In the cavern, when we treated you—and times before that. Let me help you.”
“All right,” I whisper.
He turns. “Just like suiting up in the Rig…”
I stand still, like the doll I made out of old socks for Winn. He guides my arm into a sleeve, his hands tentative—more gentle than I ever am with myself. He maneuvers the cloth around my bandaged arm and draws the shirt closed in front.
“I brought you my clothes. I figured they’d fit over the bandages better.”
I nod, unable to breathe, much less speak.
He struggles to get the buttons through the holes with one good hand. His fingers brush my skin, soft as the fabric of his worn shirt. His scent envelops me.
Dram kneels and slips the pants up my legs. He touches the bandage covering the bite on my thigh, and it takes me back to that moment—when he rolled me over and saw the bat. His eyes lift to mine.
“I was so scared,” he says. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to bring you back.”
My throat tightens. “You did.”
“Ashes, Rye,” he whispers, drawing the pants up. “A few moments longer with that venom in your veins—you’d be ashes around my neck.”
It hurts to lift my arm, but I do it anyway, reaching to wrap my arms around his neck. He curls his injured arm tight about my waist and pulls me to him.
A knock at the door breaks us apart. A guard steps in.
“All cavers to the Rig,” he says.
“We’re coming,” Dram says, glaring at the man. He helps me into my boots, and we follow the guard. Six more flank us as we exit the infirmary.
I try to make sense of their unease. “I don’t know where you think I’m in danger of running off to.”
“Director’s orders,” says the guard beside me.
The guards herd us through camp. Every few steps I wince from the pain. My senses reel, and I fight to stay on my feet.
“Slow down,” Dram calls. “She can barely walk.” He slips his arm around my waist, and I lean into him. I realize he’s got his bolt gun loaded and tucked into the back of his pants.
“Planning to mark a route to the Rig?” I ask.
“Just a precaution. Everything’s changed.”
“What’s changed?”
His gaze slips to the board outside the lodge. The caving roster has been burned, but that’s not all that’s different about it. Between lines of charred wood, I can just make out my name at the top. When I last descended nine, it read 315.82 grams cirium. Now it says 429.21 grams.
I stumble, and Dram hoists me to my feet. Beneath my name is Graham’s: 426.17 grams. And Ennis with 410.26 grams. The last name on the board is Dram: 402.86 grams.
The last trip down nine pushed us past 400 grams.
But that doesn’t mean anything now for me. “Dram, the Congress revoked my Rays.”
“I know.”
I study his face, trying to interpret the odd tone to his voice.
“Four hundred two grams,” I murmur. “You’ve earned your freedom—you should be celebrating!”
“No one’s celebrating,” Dram says darkly. A guard throws us an uneasy glance.
“What’s going on? What happened to you while I was out?”
“Cranny’s placed me under probation.” His eyes meet mine. “These guards aren’t for you. They’re for me.”