RECAP: As the Consortium Civil Defense Force begins a crackdown following a devastating burner attack inside the Protectorate, Iver must hire Abis, a seedy xolo (a human smuggler) to help her get out of Avalon undetected.
Iver reactivated the alarm system of the Norn Foundation headquarters and stepped out into the silent, deserted gallery. The side door slid closed and locked behind her. She’d raided the Foundation’s storage lockers, taking discarded clothes left by newly arrived migrators who had been gifted Protectorate-standard garments. She was certain the brown-grey shawl, loose tunic and baggy trousers crammed inside her gearpack would help her blend in once she arrived in Teris.
She had also found an old locator among the clothes in one of the lockers. It was useless inside the Protectorate, but once she was in the outer districts, Iver planned to input the coordinates the mystery pinger had sent.
It was just past midnight. The galleries and plazas on the commerce levels of Constellation Spire were mostly deserted aside from cleaners and servicers, and even they were scarce tonight. Iver wasn’t surprised, given the raids on migrator communities following the burner attack.
She stepped onto an autowalk bound for the tram station, a lone pedestrian in the middle of the night. She would have to rush to make the meeting time with Abis on Vselenneya Spire’s sublevel – while not looking like she was in a rush. She took a deep breath, grateful for the spire’s soothing, blue-tinted sundown lighting as she tried to tamp her nerves. She wished she could have heard her brother’s voice again before leaving Avalon, but her mother was still preventing her from speaking with Phaen.
As she alighted from the autowalk near the tram entrance, a figure caught her eye. She intentionally looked away from the tall male on the autowalk about fifteen meters behind her, attempting to look casual. Iver took the escalator to the station, trying her best to avoid glancing back as she boarded the waiting tram. She was the only occupant. Optimistically mundane public announcements – stock market data, treasury yield updates, and earning reports – projected across the interior of the car, subliminally urging citizens to forget the recent tragedy and return to earning and spending.
The tram stopped at Triomf Spire and Iver exited to transfer. As she was about to step into the connector tunnel, she saw someone out of the corner of her eye exit the tram two cars back. She was certain it was the same man from the autowalk. Iver reached under her shirt and tapped her tacbelt, releasing her cam m-drone. She slowed her pace slightly as the tiny drone zipped back down the tunnel toward her suspected tail.
She groaned when the close-up image of the man transmitted to her neurolink. The dead eyes, the frigid features; Dalwin’s enforcer Empyc was following her.
A flash of panic rippled through her body. Even under normal circumstances she would feel uneasy about dealing with Empyc. She cursed herself for ignoring Dalwin in the hours since the burner attack instead of feeding him a cover story that could buy her time. Now she had to find a way to lose Dalwin’s cudgel without looking suspicious.
She turned the corner and froze when she saw the crisp azure uniform and Triomf Spire emblem of a warder. He was walking out of the upper level tram station toward her. He noted her presence, but continued past her with a nod.
“Good evening,” Iver said as she passed him. A smile crept across her lips as an idea formed.
She quickly descended the few steps at the end of the connector tunnel and tapped her tacbelt to release the electrode m-drone. Iver directed the cam drone to start recording. She maneuvered the electrode m-drone down the tunnel and had it hover directly behind the warder. Through the neurolink she watched and waited for the right moment as the two men passed each other.
Once they were a few meters apart, she triggered the m-drone to blast the warder in the ass. She set the voltage to minimum; her goal was to startle, not incapacitate. The warder flinched, yelping in surprise. He quickly spun around, drawing his raser.
“Halt! You there! Don’t move,” he shouted at the only other person in the tunnel.
Empyc stopped, slowly turned. Iver could see his annoyed expression, staring down the furious warder aiming a raser at him. She wished she could watch the rest of the encounter, but the tram bound for Vselennaya Spire pulled into the station. She recalled her m-drones and bounced onto the tram, surging with self-satisfaction.
The decrepit, rusted lift groaned in protest as it descended deep into the under-levels. The compartment was small, built to hold four people. Abis was standing too close for Iver’s liking. She glared at him and he grinned at her annoyance, looking her up and down.
“It’s a good look,” he said. “You make a quality skid.”
Iver was grateful that the outer district clothes were slack enough that she could wear her quantum suit comfortably underneath.
“It’s good you‘re leaving now. The CCDF has magged the patrols in the upper maintenance tunnels. Lucky you gaged me. Not many know about these old levels.” His grin quickly faded when Iver failed to voice her gratitude. “You ever touched dirt before?” Abis asked.
Iver shook her head. LIke most Avalon citizens, she’d never set foot outside the Protectorate.
Abis reached into his gearpack and handed her an inhilator. “The air out there ain’t pure. Lux have a hard time without this.”
The lift jolted to a stop. The doors slid open to reveal a dark, dank passageway, crowded with thick pipes and conduits. Iver’s nostrils flared at the musty smell, more pungent than she was accustomed. She stepped off the lift, halting as her boot landed in a puddle of inky sludge. She scraped the sole on a dry patch of the concrete floor and tried to muster resilience in the face of this excessive filth. Abis activated the lamp in his glove and started moving down the confined space.
“Hope you don’t mind it dark and tight,” he chuckled.
“I’m fine,” Iver lied.
“Five kil to the old maintenance post. From there we ride a shuttletube that’ll take us under the Fabrication Zone.”
Abis took the lead as they wended their way through the gloom of the twisting, tapered passageways. “These service tunnels were decomped more than a decade ago, after they built new ones closer to the surface. This way gruels – there’s easier routes – but it’ll get us direct into Teris.”
“How long have you been a xolo?” Iver asked even though she didn’t care. Despite her aversion to Abis, listening to him helped to keep her from focusing on the claustrophobic surroundings.
Abis chuckled. “Since my nugs started dangling. My uncle raised me – he was a xolo when he wasn’t trading. When I turned twelve he started bringing me with him on runs. Taught me the grind.”
“So he passed on the family business to you.”
“Nah. He was disappeared by the CCDF. They nabbed him for an expired dealer permit. Can you cog it? He snuck skids into Avalon hundreds of times. But it was lapsed cred that took him down. He went into the AlphaSec interrogation center and never came out.”
“I’m sorry,” Iver responded before thinking.
“Sorry,” Abis scoffed. “You lux are always sorry. For what? You’re born with everything but you all act so down-broken. My uncle lived his life, got his glory. No sorry in that.”
“You know, you’re right. I’m not sorry. Your uncle exploited desperate people just like you do. He was served what he sought.”
Abis’ laugh echoed off the concrete and pipes. “That’s the fire you need. Stay scorched like that, you may keep all your parts in Teris. Watch your step.”
He hopped over a shadowed shape stretched across the passageway. When he aimed his lamp at it, Iver jumped back. A partially decomposed body was curled up on the ground, its skeletal hands clinging to a valve.
“Motherfuck.”
“It don’t bite.”
Abis offered his hand but Iver ignored it, stepping over the body on her own.
“There’s more,” said Abis. “Plenty of folks try to make it in without knowing these tunnels.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. In the cramped, dark space, she could feel his breath on her ear. “Want to turn back?”
Iver didn’t flinch. “I’m not going back until I’m done.”
“You ever seen a stiff?”
Iver exhaled, slow and steady. “Let’s make things clear.” Iver waited until Abis met her gaze. “I didn’t retain you to coddle me or condescend. The only thing preventing me from snapping your knee is that I’d never find my way back like the poor migrator behind us. Speaking of corpses, my first experience was at fourteen years old. I found the body of our family’s drudge, after my fickling mother bashed her head in with a statuette. After that it was the body of my older brother – what was left – when they sent him back from serving in the outer districts.”
Abis smiled. He slowly removed his hand from her shoulder and stepped back.
“Sorry for your losses,” he said in an exaggerated Avalon accent. He nodded before turning and continuing into the darkness.
They trekked through labyrinthine tunnels for three hours, coming across five other bodies in various stages of decomposition. The most heartbreaking to Iver were the corpses of a mother curled around a young child. She breathed a sigh of relief when a tunnel opened to a decommissioned maintenance post housing a tarnished shuttletube. Someone had refurbished it enough to operate and cleared the rail it clung to. Abis and Iver climbed into the cramped compartment. There were six seats inside, and Iver made sure she sat in the rear, as far from Abis as possible.
He hit a switch, lighting up the control panel, and cranked a lever. With a forlorn squeal, the shuttletube slowly began moving, gliding along the single rail and into the subterranean shaft that would take them under the Fabrication Zone.
Iver pulled the shawl over her face and hunched into her seat. She had no intention of speaking with Abis for the rest of the journey. She silently berated herself for bringing up Kosa to him. It felt like a betrayal to the memory of the woman who raised her and Phaen to have shared that information with someone like Abis. She glared at the back of the xolo’s head as he hummed an unknown tune and the shuttletube skimmed its way toward the outer districts.
After six hours, the shuttletube arrived at the final maintenance post. Abis and Iver climbed a series of ladders, finally reaching the surface ninety minutes later.
Abis took out a device that looked like a modified locator and held it close to the hatch that opened to the outside. Red lights lit up the display for thirty seconds, then went dark. He quickly pocketed the device and punched in the code to the hatch.
“Patrol drone just passed by. We’ve got five minutes to get outside the bulwark before the next fly-by.” Abis pushed the hatch open and climbed up.
Iver squinted in the unfiltered light of the sun as she pulled herself up. The hatch opened onto a wide concrete cleft between two ramparts. Desolate and debris-strewn, it was obvious the area was rarely utilized. The sky was colored a rusty haze and the air smelled as if it had been scorched.
Abis sprinted toward the rampart twenty meters away, motioning for Iver to hurry. She shut the hatch behind her and a swatch of fake rubble slid into place, hiding any signs of the door. As Abis reached the wall he pulled two grapplers from his gearpack. He aimed upward and fired. The grappler’s hook latched onto the top of the rampart ten meters above. Abis tugged the rope attached to the hook, checking its stability, then fired the second grappler. The hook jammed.
“Shit.”
“What’s happening?”
Abis banged the grappler against the wall. He tried firing again but the hook remained stuck.
“How old are those things?” Iver asked.
Abis glared at her as he continued to pull the trigger. He jumped back as the hook unexpectedly shot out, slamming against the rampart wall and clattering to the ground. Iver lunged for the hook and quickly picked it up.
“Let me try – “
“No time,” said Abis as he snatched the hook from Iver’s hand.
“Do you even – “
Abis shoved her away. He wound up and hurled the hook upwards. It landed just on the far side of the wall, catching the edge as he yanked down on the rope. Iver stormed toward Abis, but he tossed her the grappler hilt before she could reach him.
“See you on the other side,” he said as he tapped a switch on his hilt. He hung on as the mechanism quickly reeled in the rope, propelling Abis up the rampart wall.
Iver watched in dismay as Abis hoisted himself over the top and out of sight. She fumbled with her hilt until she found the switch. Gripping tight, she hit the switch, grunting as she bounced off the wall on her way up. She quickly swung her leg over the top of the rampart and rappelled down the far side of the wall.
Abis was crouched against the rampart when she landed. He grinned at her, breathing heavily. Iver kicked his shoulder, sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Touch me again and I’ll… “ Iver buckled as she was seized by a coughing fit.
She grabbed the inhalator from her pack and puffed. The air felt thick, and tasted like metal and char. She looked at the dirty, industrial buildings belching mahogany fumes just beyond the rampart’s outer wall. Squats and hovels that seemed to be built on top of each other clung to the hills in the distance. She could hear the sounds of barking dogs, horns, grinding engines, and distant popping that she guessed was gunfire.
Abis pulled himself to his feet and retracted the hook of his grappler. He snickered when he saw Iver staring out at the unfamiliar surroundings, overwhelmed.
“Welcome to Teris.”
Check out this map to find locations referenced in the story.
If you want to read another story in the From Our Ashes series, check out The Lancer, available on Amazon.
You weren’t joking when you said things were only going to get worse for Iver. The interaction between her and Abis is electric in a bad way . How she uses her trauma as a shield to shut down his condescension was a powerful character moment—it really highlights how "privilege" in this world is just a different kind of scar. Also, the clever use of the m-drone to pit the Warder against Empyc was a brilliant bit of tactical writing. Looking forward to seeing how Iver handles the "metal and char" of Teris.