Chapter 15 #2
I trailed after him, eyes wide as we skirted the mountain of materials. “That’s… a lot,” I muttered, unable to hide my awe.
He glanced at the crates, then at me. “They have to keep up with all this… expansion.” His tone was flat, but I caught the flicker of something in his eyes—pragmatic, maybe a little wary.
“How many caves like this are there?” I asked.
“Ten, last I heard. And that doesn’t count the processing rooms further in.”
The sheer scale was dizzying. “They’re planning to build out a whole new world, then.”
He only nodded, gaze already fixed forward as he led us into a tunnel that branched off from the main chamber.
We veered right, following a narrow, sloping corridor that curved downward in a tight spiral, dragging us deeper into the heart of the mountain.
The noise intensified, echoing off stone walls—metal on metal, the hum of machinery—like we’d wandered into the throat of some enormous, restless beast.
The air changed, too. Gone was the tang of fresh dirt, replaced by something older, stale and almost metallic. I wiped sweat from my brow, longing for the cool ocean breeze. Or better, the calm, green breath of the jungle.
At last, we reached a set of double doors. Hayden pressed his palms against them and shoved, the heat spilling out like a physical force. I flinched, blinking against the blast.
He didn’t hesitate, just shrugged off his jacket and strode into the swelter. “These are the furnaces,” he called back, voice echoing off the black iron giants looming overhead. Their chimneys disappeared through gaping holes in the rock above.
I pulled off my own jacket, wishing I could shed even more. My mouth was already parched.
“They’ll give us suits for the heat,” Hayden said, scanning the room.
He steered me toward a wiry man in a dark orange uniform, who stood near a worktable, tablet in hand. The others who’d arrived with us formed a loose half-circle. The man finally looked up, his eyes narrowing as he counted us, thumb poised over his screen.
“Good morning,” he said, voice brisk. “Restrooms are open. If you already know the drill, go suit up. If you’re new or need a rundown, hang back. I’ll walk you through it.”
I glanced at Hayden, uncertain. He nodded me toward the doors up ahead. “Go there and grab a suit. I’ll fill you in on what you need to know.”
I slipped away from the group, heading for the marked doors: one for men, one for women. Inside, the air was blessedly cool. A row of toilet stalls lined one wall, with benches and broad mirrors for changing. At the center, a heap of bulky white suits waited.
Three women clustered near the pile, struggling with the thick material. As they pulled the suits over their clothes, I couldn’t help noticing how they resembled puffy spacesuits from an old picture book, complete with a transparent face shield.
I grabbed a suit and stepped aside, fumbling with the zipper. The women’s voices lowered when I entered, but a few sentences still carried across the room.
“—not that I’m ungrateful, Jemima,” one said. “I’m not. But the more I see of this place, the more I have my doubts.”
“I don’t know. Any alternative would just seem so… farfetched,” a second woman replied.
“More far-fetched than them going to all of this trouble for nothing in return?” the first woman retorted.
I froze. What are they talking about? I moved a little closer to them, as more women spilled into the room and the trio dropped their tones lower still.
“But that’s the definition of charity, isn’t it?” the second one replied. “Doing things for free. You know there used to be charities in the old world, too.”
“But none of this comes free, does it?” the third woman cut in, her voice low. “People are giving up their children. And look at us: working ourselves ragged for them. Took four months just to get this damn bronze ring.”
The second, more optimistic woman let out a sigh. “Still… can you really say we’re worse off? If they hadn’t picked us up after the flood, we’d have nothing. Probably not even be here at all.”
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have come,” the first woman shot back, bitterness roughening her voice.
“It’s not like we had a choice. Hell, if they’d dropped us in a desert, it would’ve been better than what we left behind, at least for a while.
All I’m saying is, don’t kid yourself that any of this is charity. They’re not doing it out of kindness.”
“But you don’t know that for sure,” the second woman replied, though her voice wavered just enough to betray her own doubt.
The first woman gave a low laugh. “No, none of us know for sure. Yet. But every day, these people are feeling more like opportunists than charity workers.”
There was a long silence. I found myself holding my breath, their words swirling around in my mind.
I’d sensed something odd about this place from the beginning—just from my few interactions with Anna.
But “opportunists”—that was a sharp word, the kind that lingered.
Did they really seek out the desperate, gathering up those who had nowhere else to go?
Was all this—tracking disasters, chasing the floodwaters—really about helping?
Or was it less about providing aid, and more about turning desperation into opportunity?
What kind of people would do that?
And even if that were true, why? What did they gain by bringing us here, when they’d already thrived for generations on their prosperous main island?
They certainly didn’t need our labor; their own population numbered in the tens of thousands.
Most of the work assigned to us seemed focused on expanding these new islands anyway.
So why go to all the trouble and expense of building out more platforms, just to fill them with outsiders like us?
It didn’t make any sense, and the questions swirling in my mind felt suddenly overwhelming.
I stepped closer and laid a tentative hand on one woman’s shoulder. The three of them turned, their faces tightening—wary, as if they expected trouble.
“I—sorry,” I said quietly. The room was growing crowded now, filled with the sound of shuffling fabric and whispered voices. “I couldn’t help overhearing what you said. And… honestly, it rattled me too.”
The first woman—the one with long, dark red hair and striking blue-gray eyes, probably in her thirties—cast a quick, nervous look around the changing room. “It’s probably better for everyone if you just forget what you heard,” she whispered, her voice clipped.
The second woman, the hopeful brunette, gave a tight nod, not quite meeting my eyes. “There’s no sense in turning things over and over,” she said. “We’ve got a roof, and we’re eating. That’s more than we had before. And—”
“I know,” I said quietly, “but I’d still like to hear what you think.
I’m new here, as you can probably tell.” I held up my gray ring for emphasis, then turned back to the redhead.
“Assuming your suspicions are right, and Fairwell isn’t just saving people out of goodwill…
if they’re not building all these islands just for the sake of sheltering us…
then what do you think they’re really after? ”
The two women exchanged uncertain glances.
“I… honestly, I can’t say for sure,” the redhead admitted at last. “There’s so much we don’t know.
None of us have children, but at first, I wondered if it was about that—about the kids, with their strange 100,000 coins rule.
But why would they want our children? It’s not as if the locals can’t have their own.
And raising all these extra kids can’t be cheap for them.
Maybe it really is just about making sure every Fairwell-raised child gets a certain standard of education.
But…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“That’s what’s so frustrating. It’s all guesswork. ”
I let out a slow breath. “Maybe, for now, all we can do is keep each other informed. Share what we see, what we hear.” There was no sense letting paranoia rule our lives, but it was hard to shake the feeling that real living was on hold.
I just hoped that, in time, things might shift, so that it would feel less about survival, and more like life again.
Already, our old home—where some form of joy and leisure had been woven into each day—felt like it belonged to a different lifetime.
“I agree,” the redhead said, giving me a knowing look. “Should we exchange numbers? Seems like we’re on the same wavelength. I’m Miranda, by the way. And you are…?”
“Tani,” I replied.
The blonde chimed in. “I’m Elize, and that’s Jemima,” she said, nodding to the brunette.
We shook hands, and they helped me add their numbers to my phone, then added mine to theirs.
Miranda glanced around the now-emptier changing room. “We should head out.”
“Yeah.” I shouldered my bag, noticing how many people had already left. I fell in step with the trio as we made our way out to the cavern.
Stepping into the vast space, I immediately noticed the difference the suit made. The air was still thick and hot, but I no longer felt stifled or slick with sweat; it was almost a relief.
Hayden stood waiting nearby, arms crossed, already wearing his white suit. He fixed me with a dry stare. “What, did you move in back there?”
I barely registered the jab. I was too distracted, still replaying Miranda’s words in my head.
We started off in the direction the rest of the group had gone, shoes echoing against the stone. After a few paces, Hayden angled off onto a narrower path branching to the right without warning.
“The manager’s given us a different job than the others,” Hayden said, leading me away from the main group.
I shot him a look. “Since when?”
He glanced over, visor reflecting the orange glow from the furnaces. “Apparently, he clocked that it’s your first day in the caverns. Figured you could use something even more basic.”
I frowned, irritation bubbling up. “Isn’t monitoring already basic? Why put it on the list if I can’t do it?”
He shrugged, voice flat. “This one’s more basic. Wasn’t on the board earlier, just popped up an hour ago. He said there’s enough work for two and suggested I join you. Got the instructions while you were changing.”
“Will this one pay less?”
“Probably a bit.”
I let out a long breath. So much for progress. “What’s the task?”
“Surface repair.”
“You mean on these cylinders?” I looked at the hulking black things, the heat radiating off them like a warning I could feel even through the suit.
“Yeah. A few at the back need patching up.”
“So we have to get right up close?” Just the thought made my skin itch inside the suit.
Hayden grimaced behind his visor. “Yup. Hotter and sweatier than monitor duty.”
We arrived at another set of double doors.
Hayden gestured for me to stay back, then moved into the storage chamber and grabbed hold of a portable platform which held several canisters.
He muscled the whole thing out of the chamber, pushing it beside the nearest furnace.
Then he unlatched a gate in the platform’s railing and stepped through, pausing to nod me in after him.
A moment later we were both on the platform, crammed together in close quarters, the heat almost unbearable.
“Here.” Hayden flicked a glance my way, voice muffled but clear enough. “We’ll use the sealant from those canisters. You’ll see where the walls need it… mostly where they look dry and cracked.”
He pressed the central button on the control panel. The platform’s lift jerked beneath our feet and began to rise, bringing us nearly face to face with the cylinder’s scorched surface. The air was thick, sticky with heat and fumes.
“Up close and personal with a furnace,” I murmured. “Just what I was hoping for.”
Hayden huffed as he passed me a canister. “At least it’s not complicated… Just hot.”
“That’s reassuring.”
He gave me a sideways look, unreadable. “Depends on your threshold.”
I snorted, then tried to focus on the task, mimicking his movements as we sprayed thick black sealant along the battered wall.
It didn’t take long for the monotony to get to me.
My mind wandered—back to Miranda’s conversation, and inevitably, to Hayden himself. Maybe the heat was loosening my tongue.
“So,” I said, breaking the silence, “you came here alone?”
Hayden didn’t answer right away. He worked the valve in his hand, careful and methodical, as if the wall deserved all his focus.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Just me. No family to lose.”
I shot him a sidelong look. His posture never shifted, the hard lines of his shoulders closed off. Whatever else he carried, he wasn’t offering it up.
“But you weren’t always alone,” I ventured, keeping my voice neutral.
He paused, then, with a short, almost dismissive shrug: “Had a crew. Ran a ship—seafarers, full-time. On the water more often than not.”
His grip on the canister tightened fractionally. For a moment, I thought that was all he’d give.
“What happened?” I asked, softer.
He kept his eyes on the metal, voice flat and spare. “Nomads hit us. Middle of the night. I made it out. The rest didn’t.”
The words hung there, stripped bare. For a second, something seemed to flicker behind the visor—a crack in the armor?—but gone quickly.
“You were close?” I said, gentle.
He didn’t look at me. “Closest thing I had.”
The machinery’s low drone swallowed whatever else might have been said. Whatever he’d lost, he kept buried deep. I didn’t press further. There was more than enough heat and pressure between us already.
But as I returned to my patch, the air between us felt different. Heavy with what he’d revealed and all he hadn’t.