Look, I wouldn’t even mind not having figured out the formula—notreallybeing a genius—if any of it actually helped me. But it didn’t. The only thing this whole revelation meant was that Louisa could, and would, still find a way to track my chip, perhaps with Erica’s help, if not her father’s. Andwhenshe came, she’d come alone. The police weren’t on her side anymore, or her father’s, and even if they had been ontheirside, they sure wouldn’t be onmine. No, I wasn’t a genius at all. All that little experiment in Max’s lab had earned me was the privilege of watching Louisa be split open and torn apart.
So we were still doomed, but at least we’d know why.
Well, that’s science for you.
Though the only light sources remained Resi’s lantern and the stars, they were enough to reveal behind the fence, to my surprise, not a tunnel, but a massive hole, an artificial Grand Canyon ripped out of the earth, with veined ridges running along its sides in infinite concentric circles like some kind of tessellated surrealist nightmare. I shrank away from it. I couldn’t imagine how long it would take for her to drag me to thebottom of this purgatory on foot, and I’d surely be dead before I found out.
Luckily, she knew another way: via the massive, windowless steel elevator clearly designed for ten-ton mining vehicles—or dozens of tattered, coughing, dust-covered slaves.
She’d ensured, of course, that I didn’t catch a glimpse of the code on the gate, and she did the same here. All in all, she clearly had a connection to this place, though I couldn’t yet guess at what, since she’d have been barely out of her teens when it shut down. At any rate, she seemed bizarrely serene as the two sections of the door united with one enormous shudder.
Was that it? Wasthatthe last I’d ever see of the world above? Of the stars? Would it be Louisa’s too, if she made it here, oblivious to what she was doing?
Only one way to find out.
As we descended into the pit, my stomach sank along with the elevator, and I could practically feel the air thickening, tangy and heavy, piles of oxidized pennies marinating over two decades in moldy pools of toxic processing chemicals. It blocked out every other scent completely, though I wondered if Resi, hiding out here, had gone blind to it.
The elevator, unlike the outside, was flooded with naked fluorescent light, aluminum walls painted the color of gruel, closing in on me with a kind of institutional homogeneity I remembered well from other similar places I’d been thrown in.
Resi squeezed my arm and bounced a little. “You know how cute I think you are when you’re trying to outsmart me,” she whispered. “So what’s the new plan? Huh?”
Well, if Louisa and I were both doomed anyway, I supposed I could just try to knock her down with the blunt force of my body and run—or at least slowly hobble—away. But I doubted my ability to even do that. I was leaning on her heavily now, her tiny frame enough to serve as a crutch for my nearly uselessleg, though her fingers still looped through my chain. The short walk across the open desert, combined with the dozy effect of the painkillers, had been barely a mile, but it had taken nearly all I had.
Meanwhile, the journey to the bottom took about five minutes. When the doors finally opened, my eyes widened, gazing up at the blanket of stars covering the enormous copper-plated bowl that trapped us, the potential paths winding up and up and up. Escape? Minus the elevator, it would be my only chance.
Resi’s voice echoed through the pit. “Just think,” she said with an ironic giggle, squeezing my bandaged hand hard enough to make me wince and try to yank it away before I remembered resisting wouldn’t help. “How many times did they threaten to throw you in one of these places? And now here you are.”
She just laughed and urged me along the perimeter of the pit, glancing at the display on her phone, which must be useless for communication down here. “Where do you think your girl is now, Starling? Trudging her way intrepidly through the desert? Gosh. Maybe she’ll just die out there and do my job for me. What do you think? Come on. Speak, my Starling. Converse. No? Nofair. I took your muzzle off for a reason, and now you’re not even talking.”
“How delightfully ironic, ma’am.”
She just giggled and kept dragging me.
Traveling over a dusty path that may have once been a road, we were approaching one of the structures located over a ridge at the bottom of the pit. Though the mine was open, I knew there were outbuildings down here—offices, processing plants, and storage for equipment, both human and mechanical. The light was dim, and I suspected our walk wouldn’t be long, but she probably should have blindfolded me somehow anyway. There weren’t many signs—it wasn’t as if the workers had beenable to read them—but there were corners, changes in elevation, differently surfaced walls where the raw copper ore clung, and where countless grimy hands had once felt their way through the pit that had become their home and their tomb. Paths to find my way.
Water dripped in the distance, cascading down the torn tiers and pooling in deeper auxiliary pits, its muted roar marking places where moisture gathered in abundance.
When I could, I paused to inhale deeply, trying to separate the aromatic layers—the mustiness of damp earth, the acrid hint of copper and other even rarer earth metals, and beneath it all, the faint, forgotten scent of something else I recognized. Something I’d encountered in one of my old professor’s experiments.
Quietly, my heart fluttered. I stomped it back down before it could show.
“I know what you’re doing, you know,” whispered Resi.
Did she? If so, I was impressed because evenIwasn’t sure yet. Not like I didn’t have ideas. But like always, it was speed chess, calculating and recalculating with every new piece of data. I pulled my senses back from the vast, empty cavern to focus once again on the structure she was leading me to.
I should have known.
A mausoleum carved into the earthen walls. A patchwork of weathered stone and corroded metal blended into jagged contours. Dim, flickering lights cast shadows on the rusted metal door, once impenetrable, now askew, groaning with every gust of wind that flew through. Beside it, a crude sign bore the same logo as the one on the fence by which we’d entered, unreadable under a layer of pulverized tailings and dirt. Above, wooden scaffolding clung precariously to the rock, frozen in the act of expansion, as if the owners had aimed to destroy even morelives but thanks to some economic downturn had never got the chance.
Around the structure, old mining equipment lay half-swallowed, while faint trails pounded out by countless feet led past them into darkness or winding up toward the distant rim. The air hung heavy with the scent of earth and sweat, mingling with the acrid tangs of metal, blood, and fear. But as she threw open the door, none of those were the scents I cared about.
Roughly half of the fluorescent lights hadn’t burned out or fallen to the floor and still survived to irradiate the pile of harsh metal bedsteads stacked haphazardly on top of each other, stained with years’ worth of blood and agony. Oh, for fuck’s sake, the rusty, bloody chains, shackles, and collars the slaves had worn on their ankles and wherever else their overseers had found it convenient to put them were still heaped in lazy, careless piles around the room—the chain I wore now almost certainly had originated here. It may not be ironic, but Resi had one hell of a sense of humor.
Meanwhile, she pirouetted inside like a newlywed into her brand-new dream home. Evidently, the place, when the mine closed down, had been used for storage after the remaining slaves had either been worked to death or sent elsewhere. Because the smell I’d recognized was coming from the corner, under the pile of chains, leaking out of an old, battered box. Acetylene. Used for cutting and welding metals, no doubt. But thanks to my old professor and certain experiments he’d forced his slave to help conduct, I knew it could be made to serve another purpose. Two purposes, actually. And if Resi knew what those were, she would never have brought me here.
The question was, would she find out? And how could I get to it? She was already fingering my chain, glancing around curiously for somewhere to attach it. Here, she didn’t lack for options. My muscles balked, but I forced them into obedience.
“You look”—I swallowed, tugging her subtly in the direction I preferred—“different, ma’am. Under the light. Almost beautiful.”
