Beyond the hangar is an inverted forest of stalactites. It glitters in the artificial subterranean dawn. Not only from the water that dribbles along their slick gray surfaces, but from the lights of docks, barracks, and sensor arrays that give teeth to Ares’s great bastion. Supply ships flit between the multiple docks.
“We’re in a stalactite.” I laugh in wonder. But then I look down at the horror beneath and the weight on my shoulders doubles. A hundred meters below our stalactite sprawls a refugee camp. Once it was an underground city carved into the stone of Mars. The streets are so deep between the buildings, they’re more like miniature canyons. And the city spills over the floor of the colossal cave to the far walls kilometers away, where more honeycombed homes have been built. Streets switchback up the sandstone. But over that a new roofless city has spawned. One of refugees. Muddled skin and fabrics and hair all writhing like some weird, fleshy sea. They sleep on rooftops. In the streets. On the switchback stairs. I see makeshift metal symbols for Gamma, Omicron, Upsilon. All the twelve clans that they divide my people into.
I’m stunned by the sight. “How many are there?”
“Shit if I know. At least twenty mines. Lykos was small compared to some of the ones near the larger H-3 deposits.”
“Four hundred sixty-five thousand. According to the logs,” Ragnar says.
“Only half a million?” I whisper.
“Seems like a hell of a lot more, right?”
I nod. “Why are they here?”
“Had to give them shelter. Poor bastards all come from mines the Jackal has purged. Pumping achlys-9 into the vents if he even suspects a Sons presence. It’s an invisible genocide.”
A chill passes through me. “The Liquidation Protocol. Board of Quality Control’s last measure for compromised mines. How do you keep this all a secret? Jammers?”
“Yeah. And we’re more than two clicks underground. Pop altered the topographical maps in the Society’s database. To the Golds, this is bedrock that was depleted of helium-3 more than three hundred years ago. Clever enough, for now.”
“And how do you feed everyone?”
“We don’t. I mean, we try, but there haven’t been rats in Tinos for a month. People are sleeping toe to nose. We’ve started moving refugees into the stalactites. But disease is already ripping through the people. Don’t have enough meds. And I can’t risk my Sons getting sick. Without them. We don’t have teeth. We’re just a sick cow waiting to be slaughtered.”
“And they rioted,” Ragnar says.
“Rioted?”
“Yeah, almost forgot about that. Had to cut rations by half. They were already so small. Those ungrateful shitheads down there didn’t like that much.”
“Many lost their lives before I descended.”
“The Shield of Tinos,” Sevro says. “He’s more popular than I am, that’s for damn sure. They don’t blame him for shit rations. But I’m more popular than Dancer, because I have a badass helmet and he’s in charge of the nitty-gritty shit I can’t do. People are so stupid. Man breaks his back for them and they think he’s a dull-wit pennypincher. Least the Sons love him—and your uncle.”
“It’s like we’ve fallen back a thousand years,” I say hopelessly.
“Pretty much, except for the generators. There’s a river that runs underneath the stone. So there’s water, sanitation, power, sometimes. And…there’s lecherous shit too. Crime. Murders. Rapes. Theft. We have to keep the Gammas slags separate from everyone else. Some Omicrons hanged this little Gamma kid last week and carved the Gold Sigil into his chest, ripped the Red Sigils out of his arms. They said he was a loyalist, a goldy. He was fourteen.”
I feel sick. “We keep the lights bright. Even at night.”
“Yeah. Turn them off, it gets…otherworldy downstairs.” Sevro looks tired as he stares down at the city. My friend knows how to fight, but this is another battle entirely.
I stare down at the city, unable to find the words I need to say. I feel like a prisoner who spent his whole life digging through the wall, only to break through and find he’s dug into another cell. Except there will always be another cell. And another. And another. These people are not living. They’re all just trying to postpone the end.
“This is not what Eo wanted,” I say.
“Yeah…well.” Sevro shrugs. “Dreaming’s easy. War isn’t.” He chews on his lip thoughtfully. “You see Cassius at all?”
“Twice, at the end. Why?”
“Oh, nothing.” He turns to me, eyes glittering. “It’s just that he’s the one who put Pops down.”
