Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Adrian
“What good are gods who leave you to starve?”
It took us three days to clear the rubble.
I told no one of my discovery as we worked.
I simply moved away from the impact I'd found and busied myself with tossing rocks of varying sizes down to Tiberius as I had before.
The miners worked just as hard, breaking up the stones and grinding them into a powder to create a paste which they informed us would fix the cracks in the tunnels, giving them more support than they even had before.
Tiberius just nodded along, pleased at the report and the process it defined, as Mosi, Roiben, and I continued our work.
When we'd finally finished, sweat soaking through our clothes, backs aching in protest, Mosi and Roiben wandered off to sleep or work or whatever they busied themselves with. But I stood in the center of the tunnel, where the rocks had fallen, and stared into the darkness on the other side.
“It intersects with the tunnel coming from the eighth arch in Sanctuary further down,” Tiberius told me, his voice low as he approached so the miners behind couldn't hear us. “It used to be used to deliver goods but hasn’t been in centuries.”
My jaw tightened as my fists clenched at my sides.
This tunnel intersected with one running from the eighth.
That meant beyond this darkness, somewhere in the maze of the Underground, was a way home.
If I could reach that intersection and make my way down the eighth, maybe I could find Sanctuary again.
Maybe I could see my family again. Maybe—
“You’d never make it,” Tiberius said suddenly and my gaze snapped to his. “There are wards in place. Magical walls that keep anyone from getting in or out of the Underground, especially through Sanctuary.”
I just raised my chin to him, not uttering a word, and thought of the note with Milo's name on it now taking up space in a drawer back in my apartment.
Is that what had stopped it from getting through?
A ward? Some magical wall that sifted through every item that went through it, sending back anything, or anyone, that didn't belong?
Such a thing didn't seem possible. And yet Zya had tried to warn me.
She'd known. Now, it seemed, Tiberius did as well.
“You aren’t the first to try, Adrian, and you won’t be the last. But if you must, at least I can say I tried to warn you.”
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the dark passage with only the miners hard at work behind me for company.
I turned away quickly and made my way back through the abandoned passage toward the elevators.
I couldn’t try anything yet, not while the miners were still working.
But they would break off at the next shift, shuffling back to their quarters for the evening, and no one would return until morning.
That was when I had to try. That was my only opening. I wouldn’t waste it.
For now, I went back to my apartment and took a shower, changing out of one administrator’s uniform for another.
I found a small drawstring pack in the closet and placed the clothes I'd fallen into the Underground with inside of it. I wasn’t sure why I was taking them, why I even wanted them at all, but it felt nice to pack something, to pretend as though I had anything with me worth taking.
And more than that, packing made it feel real.
I was leaving. I was going home. Finally.
“Adrian?” someone called my name from the living room.
I recognized the voice immediately.
“In here, Darius,” I called back and listened to the footsteps against the soft carpet as he made his way through the common area and into my bedroom. I'd just closed up the pack and swung it over my shoulders when he made it to my door.
“We were going to get a drink and thought you might—” he froze, eyes falling on the pack over my shoulders, brow furrowing in response. “What’s that? Where are you going?”
“Home,” I answered, breezing past him out of my bedroom and into the hall.
He followed me, as I expected he would.
“What do you mean, home?” he asked, confused.
“I mean home, Darius,” I said, whirling to face him so fast he nearly ran right into me. “Sanctuary. Remember?”
He blinked at me and I could see the hurt flash within his eyes.
“Of course I remember,” he replied, his voice barely a whisper. “But you can’t go back, Adrian. It isn’t possible.”
“There’s a tunnel down on the ninth level.
It goes right to the eighth archway in Sanctuary.
It’s abandoned, Darius. No one uses it anymore.
But it’s open. All I have to do is follow it and it'll take me home. Home, Darius. To Maurice and Warren and my mother and Dahlia. To your parents and Graham and Sophie and Harrison. Don’t you miss them? ”
“I—yes, I miss them but—”
“So come with me.”
His eyes went wide. He shook his head and stepped back from me as if I had become something to fear.
I'd never seen that expression on Darius' face before.
I'd never seen him so scared. Even when he woke up, hungover after a night of drinking all the excess wine the House of Valin's guests left over, to find a black bar had solidified in the center of his forehead.
Even when he'd discovered he was being Culled, when we'd walked all the way to the twelfth arch together, when he'd witnessed that strange ceremony and watched members of our society crossover to the gods and disappear forever.
He hadn't seemed nearly as frightened then. So why was he so scared now?
My head cocked to the side, brows furrowed.
"Darius," I said firmly, trying to imbue him with some courage of my own. Home was nothing to fear.
“We can’t, Adrian,” he told me, pleading. “We can’t leave. We’re not meant to. No one ever has.”
Not meant to…something within me reared back at the words. Something inside my very soul raged and snarled against the idea of being told, yet again, what I couldn't do, what I wasn't meant to do.
"No one had passed all ten Trials in a thousand years either," I replied, gritting my teeth hard to keep the bite from my tone.
He just stared at me, seemingly stunned by my attitude about the matter, my determination to return home. His shock, compounded with that rising thing inside of me, triggered a fury I hadn't known I'd been harboring.
“Did you even try?” I snapped, irritated with his hesitation, in wonder at how this was even a debate for him.
I'd presented him with an option, with a chance to go home, and he was balking.
He was turning away. “When they Culled you and brought you here, did you ever even try to get back to us? Or did you just lie down in defeat and accept the fate they told you you must?”
His lip quivered but he held firm as he spoke again.
“There was no way,” he told me.
“I’m telling you there’s a way,” I shouted at him. “I’m telling you right now there’s a way out, a way back. And you’re…hesitating.”
“I’ve built a life here.”
“You have a life there! Your parents, Darius. Your sister. Me. Do we mean less to you than what you have here?”
He was quiet for a moment and that silence broke me more than anything had between us so far.
“We can’t, Adrian,” he whispered, eyes moistening with the beginnings of tears.
I stared at them. Darius didn't cry. I didn't think I'd ever seen Darius cry.
Darius was the happy one. The one who turned every negative into a positive.
The one who cracked jokes to alleviate the discomfort in a room.
The steady shoulder I could cry on when the wretchedness of Sanctuary got too much to bear.
But he'd never been this. I hardly recognized the sniveling, whimpering man who stood before me.
“They won’t let you go. They won’t—”
But I'd stopped listening to his excuses. I turned on my heel and stormed from my apartment, already making my way through the sea of people returning from their evening shifts to the elevators beyond.
I walked with a heavier step than I intended, fuming in the wake of Darius’ cowardice. Messengers and priests practically leapt out of my way as I passed, watching me with wide eyes as I stormed by them in my fury. I paid them no mind at all, heart breaking once again by yet another betrayal.
Darius had been my best friend for the majority of my life.
I'd spent months mourning him when he'd gotten Culled. In truth, I’d never truly gotten over the grief of losing him. And then to find out he’d never even tried to reach me, had never even attempted to return home to the people who loved him, to the people who mourned him.
He'd given up on me even when I hadn’t given up on him, despite believing him dead.
Our friendship hadn’t meant enough for him to try.
That hurt more than I allowed myself to admit.
Tears were streaming down my cheeks by the time I made it to the ninth level and stepped off of the elevator I'd gotten into alone. I'd hoped Darius would choose to come with me, that we could return to Sanctuary together, that everything could be as it once was. I hadn’t expected him to deny me. I knew it would have been hard for him to leave behind Roxy. I was prepared to invite her along. But he hadn’t even entertained the possibility of going home, hadn’t even considered it.
Not for a moment. I'd never expected that.
I reached the place where the tunnel had caved in, where I'd spent the last three days clearing rubble with the miners and other Fallen.
I took a moment to stare into the darkness, adjusting my enhanced senses so I could see even without the light to guide me.
Then I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped away my tears, and stepped into the tunnel on the other side.
I walked for some time in the dark. It was impossible to tell how long.
Just as it had been in that spiraling void Dante had pushed me into, it was impossible to tell how much time had passed.
I'd hesitated for a moment, upon entering the dark, at the reminder of that void, that falling, that surety that I was going to die and there was nothing I could do but wait for my own death.
But then I shook my head and, steeling myself, kept walking.
One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, I made my way down that tunnel.
Eventually, it came to a dead end, splitting off on either side.
One would take me to Sanctuary, to the eighth tunnel where I wondered if the Finnegan brothers were selling their illegal liquor at another Lower Ringer party.
I smiled to myself at the thought, homesickness washing over me in a wave so great I hardly thought about the decision as I turned left and kept walking.
I tried not to think about Darius. I tried not to think about Dante or the Trials or the questions I would have to answer once I returned.
I kept my focus ahead, watching where I stepped in the dark as I made my way, painstakingly slowly, toward home.
I thought only of my mother’s scent, the way I knew she would hug me when she saw me again, both of us falling to our knees in a tear-stained embrace.
I thought of my brothers, how Warren would joke that I needed to stop with all the surprises, how Maurice might even smile.
It kept me going, the thought of seeing them all again.
Then I saw it. The literal light at the end of the tunnel.
After so long in the dark, my senses still enhanced, I hissed against it, raising a hand to shield my eyes as I looked away. But after blinking a few times to clear my vision, I turned back and saw it; Sanctuary.
It was exactly how I remembered it. Of course, it should be. It had only been a little over two weeks since I'd left.
The eighth opened onto a dark, unused portion of the Deck.
Some unstable, ramshackle houses leaned up against the inner portion of the walls, a few Deckers walking idly by.
The Finnegan brothers’ storehouse was visible.
A metal and wooden lean to that barely concealed the casks and barrels hidden beneath.
Then I was running, my feet slapping against the stone below as they carried me toward the light, toward home.
I cried out, an exhalation of pure exhilaration as I stumbled over a loose stone and nearly careened into the wall beside me.
But I righted myself at the last second and burst toward the tunnel opening.
I felt the sun on my face for the first time in months, smelled the familiar scent of excrement and the unwashed poor, heard Liam Finnegan calling out to his brother. And then I blinked.
It was all gone.
“No,” I said, stumbling forward in the dark.
It surrounded me once more, the darkness. I whirled around to see pickaxes left over half broken stones piled all around them, carts of stone powder waiting to be carried away and turned into paste. The cave in. I was back at the cave in, back where I started.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, shaking my head. “No.”
I took off running at full speed, adjusting my senses along the way.
Hands shaking, fear clawing its way desperately up my throat, I ran recklessly through the tunnel, turning left once more and bolting down the hall toward home.
I saw it again, went sprinting toward it, and hurled myself into the light.
But it winked out again and I was tumbling end over end back in the darkness, back at the miners’ camp.
“No,” I cried out as I fell to my knees. I pounded the stone below me with my fists until they turned bloody, tears streaming through the dirt on my cheeks. “No, no, no! It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. I was right there. I was so close! I—”
“Adrian,” someone spoke, but I didn't turn away from the dark. I glared into it, chest heaving, jaw trembling, choking on a sob. “Adrian.”
“I saw it!” I screamed, not even sure who I was screaming to, not even sure where I was. I couldn’t be here. Not here. Not again.
“Adrian,” someone said again, more urgently, and then familiar arms wrapped around me and I was shaking within them.
With a great sob, I turned and buried my face into Darius’ shoulder just as Roxy dropped to the ground on the other side to wrap her arms around me as well.