Chapter Two #2
The enormous man they called Tiberius took two steps forward before reaching out and grabbing my arm.
I tried to wrench away but his grip was like a vice.
He held me there easily, examining the black band peeking out through the scorch marks in my sleeve once before reaching up and ripping the entire sleeve from my arm.
I gasped, pulling away as the excess fabric pooled around my wrist, but it was too late.
He'd seen the bands and now his eyes narrowed as he stepped back away from me.
His gaze ran over me in new appraisal as his jaw clenched and a little vein popped out upon his forehead.
“She’s…like us then,” the same man who'd spoken before said now. His eyes were wide just as the priest’s had been as he stared at me in shock. “She’s Fallen.”
I nearly snorted at the accuracy of the title.
“Who are you?” I demanded. I crossed my arms and raised my brow in an attempt to look fearless despite how close to quaking in my boots I was at the fact that I'd just survived almost certain death to land in this strange world far below the bowels of Sanctuary.
“Tiberius,” the leader finally spoke. His voice was low, his tone clipped as though he'd rather be just about anywhere but here.
I narrowed my eyes, prepared to demand more of an explanation than that, when recognition hit me. My jaw slackened as I stared at him with new appreciation.
“Tiberius the Triumphant?” I asked, blinking in shock.
How had I not seen it before? He looked exactly like his bronze statue in the Hall of Heroes.
Even the size of him, which I'd always thought was an exaggeration, was proportionate to the man standing before me.
But he'd lived over a thousand years ago.
Fifteen hundred to be precise. So how was he here now?
I dropped my hands to my sides and stared at the men behind him again. Maybe I hadn’t survived that fall after all. Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was the afterlife and a welcome from such heroes would be the only honor I was given for surviving nine out of ten of the gods’ Trials.
His snort brought me out of my thoughts and back to the present.
“Not very triumphant in the end, as it turns out,” he answered. The corner of his mouth quirked up in some joke I didn’t quite understand. “What’s your name?”
“Adrian Bexley,” I told him, still stunned by the hero of a forgotten age standing before me. “Am I dead?”
“No. But give it time and you might wish you were.”
I blinked at him and he sighed.
“Welcome to the Underground, Adrian Bexley.”
He did not smile, but the men behind him did. The two in gray, dressed like he was, grinned broadly as the priests behind them bowed deeply in welcome.
“The Underground,” I repeated, even more confused than before.
“Come with me,” Tiberius said before turning and making his way toward the door again.
I hesitated for only a moment, glancing back at the hole I'd fallen through and the world above I was leaving behind, then I followed.
His men and the priests cleared the way as we passed, nodding to me in greeting as the massive hero escorted me out of the strange temple I'd landed in.
My mind was working furiously to keep up.
In all honesty, I could still hardly believe I was alive.
We stepped out into a hallway even darker than the temple had been. These walls were made of stone the color of deep charcoal rather than the lighter beige and they jutted out at odd angles so I had to twist sideways in places to avoid striking my shoulder or thigh against one of them.
Tiberius, despite his bulk, moved effortlessly in the narrow path ahead of me, dodging the stones as if he'd memorized where they were long ago and barely needed to look to avoid them as he passed.
I could hear two pairs of footsteps following behind us as we walked and knew his men were there.
The thought of their proximity should have made me uneasy, vulnerable as I was squeezed between them and their master with no weapons with which to defend myself.
But before I could properly panic, we stepped out of the dark passage and into a well lit atrium.
I blinked against the sudden light, letting my senses adjust once more after so long in the dark, and then stared up in wonder at the ceilings at least thirty feet above me.
Lights flickered there, bright and plentiful in an effort to combat the dark charcoal stone walls and cobblestones below.
Metal railings descended from the ceiling where a few men in bright orange hats were working on some of the lights that were out, repairing them.
I dropped my gaze to the enormous cavern surrounding me to find hundreds of people, all in gray clothes that were a few shades lighter than Tiberius’ crossing back and forth.
They entered doors carved into the sides of the cave or shot off down hidden passages in all directions.
Most of them carried papers with them or packages of some sort.
I just stared, mouth agape, at the sheer size of the bustling crowd around us.
If this is the afterlife, it’s awfully crowded.
I waited a beat, expecting Dante’s response, and felt like a fool when it didn't come.
Severed, that's what the voices in our heads had called it.
That was what had been done to our bond, our connection.
It had been broken. He had broken it. I felt the truth of that like an open wound seeping into my soul.
“Who are these people?” I asked, staring at them all as they passed, transfixed.
“Runners,” he replied and then clarified. “Messengers.”
“For?”
Tiberius reached one of the larger doors.
This one was set not into the wall but into a building constructed into the side of the cavern.
The building itself took up one entire portion of the walls and was made almost entirely of glass so that those on the street could see anyone inside and vice versa.
He strode through the door and down the hall without hesitation, leaving me to hurry after him to keep up.
“Us,” he answered as he reached a door at the end of the first hall and ducked inside.
“Us?” I asked.
He plucked a small uniform, the same dark gray as his, from a pile inside the closet-like room, and held it up to me.
“This should be your size,” he said, and tossed it toward me.
I snatched it out of the air and stared down at the baggy jumpsuit with a raised brow.
“My size?” I asked in disbelief. “And why would I need this?”
“Your current clothes are burnt to shit,” he reminded me, casting a glance over me from head to toe. “And you’ll need it to signify your rank.”
“Rank?”
“You’re a supervisor. Like me.”
Without any further explanation, he pushed past me out of the closet and toward the steps at the back of the hall. I hastened to keep up, growing increasingly agitated that he was making me rush after him time and time again rather than staying put and elaborating on all of this.
“Doesn’t that sort of position usually require, I don't know, significant experience?” I inquired as we reached the landing and took another set of stairs again. “I just got here and I don’t even really know where here is.”
“The Underground,” he repeated as we took yet another flight of stairs. “I told you that.”
“Yes, very informative. Thank you.”
At the top of the stairs, he strode into a brightly lit hall and pushed through the third door on the right. I followed, stepping into the room before the door could slam shut behind him.
“I thought someone who made it through all ten of the Geist’s Trials could figure out what the Underground means for herself,” Tiberius said as I stopped just within his office, staring out at the busy atrium below through the full wall of windows opposite his enormous desk.
“It is under the ground. Doesn’t exactly seem like something that needs explained. ”
“We're under Sanctuary,” I replied, turning back to him, lips parted slightly in surprise at the sudden realization.
All that time falling and I hadn't gotten very far at all. Then that sudden life-saving stop at the bottom, like magic. This was always what was waiting for me in the end.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where your food came from?” he asked, raising a brow as he settled in behind his desk and kicked his feet up onto it. “Your water, electricity, clothes? Everything you’ve ever owned or touched in your entire life? The very materials used to make it?”
“It all comes from the tunnels. Every week. From—from the gods,” I repeated the explanation I'd been taught my whole life, realizing as I spoke it aloud just how ludicrous it was.
Tiberius raised a brow as well, pursing his lips in disappointment as though he, too, knew I was smarter than to believe that.
“It comes from here,” I amended, blowing out a breath in awe as I turned back to the Runners sprinting through the atrium below.
“There are ten levels,” he said then. “This is the first, reserved for supervisors, runners, and priests.”
I turned toward him, ready to ask more than a few questions on just that information alone, but he continued before I could.
“Level two, below us, is lumber. Level three is water. Four is agriculture. Five is livestock. Six is textiles. Seven is equipment. Eight is supplies. Nine is luxury goods. And ten is mining. The officers, the ones in black, are interspersed throughout all ten levels. There are residences on every level, separated from the work areas. There are common areas on every level as well, though some are more popular than others. This is not like Sanctuary. Anyone from any level is free to move about as they wish.”
My head was spinning with the information but I managed to get out one question at least.
“And you…supervise all of them?”
“We supervise them.”
“Why—”
“You're a supervisor because of your status as a Fallen.”
“A Fallen?”
“Some call us The Betrayed. Fallen sounds better, though not by much. Managerial skill or not, falling through that hole grants you immediate access to that uniform and all the privileges and responsibilities that come with it.”
I blinked at him, mind racing to understand all that I'd learned in a matter of moments.
“Because of my gifts,” I guessed.
“Yes,” he replied with a nod. “Our abilities make us better equipped to handle the demands of every level rather than specializing in one.
Every day, you'll receive an assignment, delivered to your residence, of which level you'll be supervising that day. Help the workers with whatever they need. Don’t come across as arrogant. They're the experts on their level, not you. You’ll spend your first day with me. But you should know…”
Tiberius kept talking but I wasn’t listening. On either side of him and behind were massive metal filing cabinets, labeled with ranges of letters. A-B, C-E, F-G, and on.
“What are those?” I asked, interrupting him.
He turned to glance at the filing cabinets behind him that I was pointing to.
“Records,” he replied.
“Of?”
“The inhabitants of the Underground.”
I sucked in a breath, hope blossoming in my chest for the first time in days.
“The Culled,” I started slowly, remembering that swirling black void and how similar it had looked to the pit I'd fallen into. “Do they come here?”
Tiberius hesitated, his eyes narrowing, but answered me anyway.
“They do,” he replied, slowly.
“Can you tell me if—” I started, my mouth running dry as I clung to my own desperate hope. “Darius Reed. Can you tell me if he’s here?”
Tiberius didn't move for so long I thought he would tell me no. But then he swiveled, slowly, to face his filing cabinets and reached for the column of them marked P-R.
I held my breath as he flipped through countless folders. My heart beat so hard against my chest I was certain Tiberius the Triumphant could hear it with his enhanced hearing. Finally, after what felt like forever, he turned toward me again, one folder in particular held in his gigantic hands.
“Darius Reed,” he repeated. “Assigned to level four; agriculture.”