He steeples his fingers. “Five years of work credits.”
My eyes bug out.
Five years of work credits. That’s enough to buy myself real beauty. Legs polished, hips reshaped, skin flawless. I could get out of this place, be something. I could look like I belong up there, flawless and untouchable. But I don’t trust him, not one bit. His eyes gleam too much, like he has a trick hidden up his sleeve.
“What’s your cut?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.
He leans back, smirking. “None of it.”
I stare at him, waiting for the punch line “None?”
“I don’t need the money. I want aboveground access to the IS.”
I knew it. This shit could get me killed. “Information, huh?”
He nods, his expression hardening. “I had—have a sister who left nine months ago. Pregnant and all. Just here today, then gone. And she’s not the only one. Young women and men have been leaving the mines. Their families are being paid ridiculous sums. But no one ever sees them again. They send notes, sure, but they don’t sound like themselves. Like they’re…I don’t know…happy in some different world. I think my sister found a new sector. One with abundant resources.”
“You think someone is secretly making a new sector? That would be world news. That’s an insane theory.” I lean in.
“Look, I can only get so far in the IS before I’m blocked. But someone got terraforming permits, someone is manufacturing human skin, someone is systematically shutting sections of the underground down—choosing people.”
“Oh my God, you think it’s a controlled burn.”
The Burn was a natural catastrophic event. Controlled burns are not.
We are in full tinfoil hat territory now. Controlled burns are heavily rumored, loosely connected events whispered from sector to sector like old war songs.
You’d hear it in passing, under someone’s breath:
That wasn’t an accident
That wasn’t a drought.
Every explosion that took out a transit hub, every electrical surge that shut down half a city block, every mysterious “supply chain interruption” that left kids starving in the Half-City someone always said it was a controlled burn.
And it was ridiculous. Right?
Except I frequent the information system quite a bit, and sometimes the numbers added up too clean. And the people who spoke the loudest about it tended to go quiet shortly after.
It was probably nothing.
It had to be nothing.
He shrugs slowly, but he looks scared. We should all be. If this theory gets out, it’ll cause mass hysteria.”Somethingsinister is going down. They’re going to blow this place to chunks and I need to know where everyone’s going.”
For the second time in three days, the wind is knocked out of me. Does he want me to stop a controlled burn? With what, my tits? This is insane.
“What if I can’t find anything?”
“You will. I’ve never tried a Diamond before.”
The room suddenly feels too small. “Josh says…” I shake my head, unsure why I even brought his name into this. “I hear that my Diamond status won’t matter up there.”
He shrugged. “Josh is an idiot. Your Diamond status will get you access no one else has. And this burn feels different. Official.” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Iku-level shit.”
He pulls a slender wand out of a sack, and I flinch. “What are you doing?” I lean back.
These wands they use to determine your percentage are cheap; they aren’t actually mod detectors but nickel detectors. Nickel is the most common alloy.”
