Red Sky: Chapter 40
I stayed awake feverishly planning for the next day, worried that Renn had already ruined my plans, worried that Cyclops would ruin my plans in a different way. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t afford to sleep. Now that I had the tunnel there was too much to do, too much to figure out. I was on the clock no different than the ten-hour clock I would be on once my plan was set into motion. I had one night to figure out how to subdue both Renn and Cyclops.
*
The shield to my cell lifted and I stepped forward onto the walkway. Looking to my left, I waited for Renn to emerge. He appeared and noticed I was staring at him. He acknowledged me. I smiled back and picked up my shake.
“I’m not hungry. Do you want my shake?” I didn’t give him a chance to answer and walked towards him. Renn’s arm lifted to stop me. I stumbled, my shake falling to the floor colliding with his shake creating a mess of purple at our feet.
I swore under my breath and quickly dropped down to clean up the spill.
“Can you help?” I asked Renn who was standing above shaking his head at my clumsiness.
He bent down as I used my shirt to soak up as much of the purple as I could, chasing after it as it ran back towards the open cells.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Renn said, upset.
“That’s as good as we can do,” I said after several seconds of mopping.
I helped Renn back to his feet, putting my arm around his back.
“I guess neither of us is going to have anything now,” I tried to lighten the mood. It didn’t work.
Hades screamed from below. I don’t know if it had been directed at us or if he was following his usual routine, but I quickly moved back to the front of my cell and both Renn and I turned with eyes forward.
The order to march was given and we filed out. I had left my empty bottle at Renn’s feet. I glanced back and saw that Renn was holding the two shakes. He tried to give the bottle back to me, but I ignored him. We had already caused enough commotion without being seen passing things in line.
We made our way down the stairs and through the doors of the prison block into the processing room. One by one, we walked outside. there was always a brief wait as each inmate tried to get in one last sip before throwing their shake away. Renn said my name a few more times. I still ignored him.
We reached the door and my hands were empty. I shrugged and pointed to Renn behind me, “he has my bottle.” It was a minor transgression. Big Shoes was working the door. He let me go.
I heard the clank of the two bottles as they hit the bottom of the bin. Then I heard Big Shoes' voice. “What is that?”
“What?” I heard Renn say.
“Sticking out of your uniform. What is that paper?”
“I don’t have anything sticking out of my uniform.”
“Yes, you do, it’s in your waistband.”
I heard the buzz of the collar. Renn dropped to the floor. Big Shoes pulled something from Renn's uniform and was examining it. I heard the crinkling of paper. Big Shoes was reading. The other inmates watched the scene play out. I didn’t. I didn’t have time to turn around. I was in a hurry to get to the mine.
“You inmates just won’t stop believing in ghost stories, will you?”
Big Shoes must have been referring to the paper. If I had to guess it looked exactly like one of Com’s manuscripts.
I didn't have to guess.
“It’s not mine,” Renn pleaded.
There was the shuffling of extra feet, guards surrounded Renn.
“He planted it on me.” I assumed he was pointing at me. The guards didn’t care. He was the one with the contraband, so he was the one that would be sent to the box. Those were the rules of the prison. After twenty-eight months on the red moon I knew those rules very well.
I listened as Renn was dragged off, still screaming, still saying awful things about me, accusing me of setting him up. I didn’t turn around. Renn no longer existed to me. We both would have our fates, but our futures were no longer entwined.
*
“You can’t save your partner.” I could tell Cyclops was upset because his real eye was bulging again. “I thought you would understand. He needs to pay for what he did.”
“I need time.” I let Cyclops fill in the vagueness of my statement.
He looked at me guardedly.
“Once he’s released from the box, he’s yours.”
Cyclops went from guarded to satisfied.
“But I want an exchange.”
“Exchange?”
“He’s my partner, who knows what they’ll give me once he’s gone. I’ll probably have to work alone for weeks, maybe a month. I want a third of your ore until he gets out of the box”
Cyclops’ satisfaction turned to confusion. He knew I was up to something, but couldn’t figure out what. “I need the rest,” I explained.
“When do we do the trade-off?”
“We don’t. You punch in my code each day.”
“That’s risky. If one of the guards notices...”
“They won’t,” I cut him off. "That’s the deal. Otherwise, I let him know what you have planned as soon as he gets out of the box.”
“I thought 33 was your friend.”
“He was. But Renn’s my partner now. If you’re going to take him from me, I need compensation.”
Cyclops was still trying to figure out what I was up to. Without knowing about the secret tunnel there was no way to put the pieces together.
“I hope whatever you’re doing is worth it. We’ll punch in your code while he’s in the box. You have three days.”
I only needed two.
Even as we were talking the clock ticked in my head. It was my one practice day and I couldn’t waste it. His ore was important because if I didn’t come back with any Qalladium after mining alone for a day they might shackle me with another team or, worse, put me in the box. There's increased scrutiny on an inmate who works solo in the mine. I was already Hades’ favorite inmate. I didn’t want to do anything that would give him an excuse to punish me again.
*
I barely fit through the opening of the secret tunnel and it somehow got smaller after that. The further I crawled, the more the walls closed in. For hours I muddled through that tunnel. Max had his partner to keep him company. I had no one. After an hour of crawling I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to make it back if I didn’t find the other mine because there was no way to turn around. I would be forced to crawl in reverse, unable to see or feel where I was going.
After four hours of crawling, I hit a solid wall with a hole near the top. I pointed the freezelight in my mouth to the ceiling and glimpsed a giant fiber alloy tube. It was much larger than the tubes in the secret tunnel, much larger than the tubes we used in our mine, exactly as Max had described it. The journey had taken too long, but I had made it. I punched through the wall and somersaulted onto the floor, landing hard on my back.
The tunnel was taller and wider. They must have had several hundred inmates working down there. I peered straight ahead. A black abyss greeted me. I took a second freezelight from my bag and twisted it on. Holding the two freezelights up, I still couldn’t penetrate the abyss. The new mine beckoned me, I could hear it faintly calling my name, but I knew it would have to wait until the next day. I had to stick to my plan.
I looked at the tiny hole in the wall. Four hours wasn’t good enough. A lot of those hours had been spent clearing loose debris. And the knapsack nearly killed me, bumping into the ceiling every time I tried to speed up. I needed the tools in that knapsack, but my body wasn’t going to survive another time through if it was on my back.
With one last look into the abyss, I twisted off the second freezelight and put it into my knapsack. I tied the knapsack around my ankle, making sure to get a really tight knot. I bit into the other freezelight ready for practice run number two. Four hours. I could do better than four hours. I might even make it back in time to do some mining.