Chapter 10 #2
I stood under the gaping hole in the ceiling and stared up into the darkness.
The candles below had been rearranged, righted and relit after I'd fallen on top of them.
I stepped between them, careful not to let my baggy jumpsuit catch on any of the flames, before stopping in the middle.
I clenched my fists as I stared up into the abyss and allowed myself to think of him again for the first time.
Was he still up there? Had the fate he'd won by sacrificing me been worth it? Did he return to Sanctuary, the first to ever return from the tenth Trial? Or had he been taken somewhere else as well? Did he know I was alive? Did he care?
I closed my eyes and took a breath, my fists clenching with the fury building within me.
“Pardon me, Chosen,” someone spoke suddenly in the silence.
I whirled to find the same priest from before. The one who'd stared at me, wide-eyed and stunned, when I'd fallen through his ceiling. He was bowing to me now, the long billowing sleeves of his white robes scraping against the stone beneath him.
“I didn't know anyone was here,” he explained, backing toward the exit.
“Wait,” I said and he froze. “What did you call me?”
“Chosen,” he repeated. “Your success in the Trials indicates the gods have chosen you for a great fate. The word is used in some of our most ancient texts.”
Chosen. Fallen. Betrayed. There seemed to be quite a few titles for what I'd become. I glanced around me at the dark shrine, the candlelight flickering upon the coarse stone, the rusted and worn artifacts from days long gone.
“Great fate,” I scoffed. “The gods have thrown me in a hole to wither away for all eternity. This isn't my fate, priest. It's my grave.”
The priest flinched.
“You have been chosen to lead,” he tried, eyes flashing with confusion, as if he truly didn’t understand. “You have been sent for us—”
“Have you ever seen the sun?” I snapped and his lips fell closed. “Do you have a family, friends, people who love you?”
“The gods love me.”
“Is this love?”
I threw out my hands, gesturing not only at the pathetic little shrine set up to worship gods who had forgotten him long ago, but to all of the Underground as well.
“You're no more than slaves to your gods,” I spat the last word with all the disdain I could muster.
“You work all day every day for a society that lives in ignorance of your existence. You scuttle through dark tunnels like rats, wasting away without sunlight or fresh air. I read the manual Tiberius gave me. There’s a reason the life expectancy here hardly surpasses middle age, a reason the only old people here are the immortal ones.
We weren't made to live in darkness, priest. You would think gods of light might understand that.”
With a final hiss, I stormed past him, out of the temple and back into the hall beyond.
I wasn’t sure what I'd expected. It wasn’t as if that dark spiraling void was going to reveal a way back.
That way was closed to me. There would be no rising back from the depths into which I'd fallen and no sending word to the people above.
There had to be another way. I would just have to find it.
“There you are,” someone snapped, their tone curt and obviously displeased.
I sighed before I even looked up, already knowing who waited to scold me.
“I’m not in the mood today, Tiberius,” I groaned but stopped short when I realized he wasn’t alone.
The giant man stood with his arms crossed, expression set firmly in a glower.
Behind him stood two more men, both of their hands straying toward the swords at their belts.
The motion made me remember them. They'd been there the day I arrived.
They'd come with Tiberius when the priest had run to fetch him. They wore the same gray of the supervisors but not a loose fitting jumpsuit. Theirs were molded leather armor over tighter fitting pants which allowed for freer movement. Their sleeves stopped at their triceps, revealing the ten solid bands on their arms beneath. My gaze rose to meet the one’s nearest me and his jaw clenched.
“You’re Fallen too,” I said dumbly, blinking at them.
“Did you think it was only the two of us?” Tiberius asked, raising a brow as if amused by my ignorance. “After two thousand years? Please, Adrian, you aren’t that special.”
I snarled but kept my attention on his men.
“Who are you?” I asked them.
“I'm Mosi,” the one farther away spoke. His skin was dark and his head shaved. He had piercings from cartilage to helix on his left ear and one single stud in his right. His voice was like molten honey and his dark eyes flashed with danger when he spoke. “This is Roiben.”
Mosi nodded his head to his companion, a tall man with nearly as many muscles as Tiberius but not nearly as large. He was much paler than his companions, his eyes a murky gray that narrowed in my direction as a strand of the dark hair he kept bound behind his neck fell forward.
“Does he speak?” I inquired, crossing my arms in an effort to appear unimpressed.
Roiben simply growled at me, a low tone that sent chills straight to my toes.
“He prefers not to,” Mosi answered with a smile.
“Enough introductions,” Tiberius snapped, impatient as always. “We have work to do.”
“Work?” I asked, raising a brow.
“Come.”
He didn't say another word but simply turned on his heel and stalked off. His companions gave me one last glance before following. I rolled my eyes but hastened to catch up, more eager to get away from the infuriating temple and its priest than anything else.
“What happened?” I asked, guessing that Tiberius’ dark mood was about more than my abandoning my assignment for the day.
“A cave in,” he replied, jaw clenched.
“Which tunnel—”
“Not one of the ones that go to Sanctuary.”
I froze so suddenly Roiben had to halt as well to avoid running into me. He muttered an annoyed curse under his breath before sidestepping me and walking on.
“If it doesn’t go to Sanctuary,” I started, blinking in shock at the potential implications, “where does it go?”
Tiberius hesitated enough to turn back to me. A muscle in his jaw twitched but he just shook his head and kept walking, not bothering to answer my question.
Newfound curiosity spurring me on, I hastened to follow, catching up to him and the others quickly enough.
I didn’t bother asking any more questions.
I could tell, by the set of Tiberius’ shoulders and his imperious mood this afternoon, they wouldn’t be answered anyway.
So I kept my thoughts to myself and followed the hulking supervisors through the halls of the upper floors and back to the elevator bay.
The crowd parted the moment we approached, women pulling their wide-eyed children out of the way as men muttered questions about what sort of task might require four supervisors to attend to, and Fallen at that.
Tiberius ignored them all, his gaze firmly on the elevator doors as we waited for them to open.
Those already in the elevator crowded to the sides to admit us.
I settled in at the back, staring up at the backs of the tall men before me.
Cocking my head to the side, I noticed a tattoo on the back of Roiben’s neck, barely visible above his collar.
A whirling pattern encapsulated in what appeared to be a thin spiderweb.
I stood on my tiptoes for a better look at it but, before I could look any closer, the elevator dinged and the doors whooshed open and we were striding into the dark hallway beyond.
Cursing myself for getting so distracted I hadn't glanced at what floor we were going to, I followed.
But Tiberius and his men didn't turn toward the residences, nor did they walk straight toward whatever specialty this level held.
Instead, they turned away from both, going in the third direction, the one I'd learned from Roxy and her brother sometimes held common areas and spaces for conviviality on some levels.
Level four held a bar that utilized the grains their agriculture produced to create liquor only slightly better than what the Finnegan brothers brewed.
Level eight sometimes threw parties. There was supposedly a restaurant of some sort on level two.
I'd never gone to any of them but I knew now that this level was none of those because beyond the dimly lit passages of the elevator bay, there was nothing.
Just pure, thick darkness so complete I stumbled over a loose stone and nearly fell face first onto the ground below.
“Adjust your vision,” Tiberius growled the reminder.
I blinked rapidly, urging my senses to make the leap into the supernatural capabilities the Geist had “blessed” me with.
Dante and I had practiced with our enhanced senses enough that a simple thing like night vision should have been easy for me.
Unfortunately, I'd neglected my so-called “blessings” ever since I'd arrived in the Underground, choosing instead to put them behind me and do the best I could to forget about them as I'd done with everything else having to do with the infernal Trials and the partner who'd betrayed me.
It took me longer to adjust than the others but, once I did, I found myself striding through the darkened tunnel just as easily as they did.
Roiben’s stride was easy ahead of me. He didn't even turn to see if I was following, just stayed on the heels of his leader, eyes straight ahead.
Mosi hung back beside me and seemed to breathe a breath of relief when I began walking faster, more sure of myself, when I'd obviously managed what they'd all accomplished instantaneously.