Elbows pushed against her, pressing her forward as the masses reached a point at which it seemed they could go no further. Florence looked to turn back, but it was already too late. More people had run up behind them, slamming into their backs as she had slammed into the backs of the people in front of her. They were part of a mass of people attempting to claw their way forward at all costs.
She felt very small, and compressed even smaller. Florence gasped for breath. Her footing was slipping out from under her. She was being carried along by the Fenthri tide. Nora and Derek were nowhere to be found, and Powell had somehow drifted out of her line of sight. She was going to die here, drowned in an ocean of panic.
Her heart raced into her throat, preventing her from even calling out. All there was to see were shades of shifting gray, illuminated by the tunnel’s dim lighting. Her ears filled with the groans and grunts and cries, dizzying her mind.
A hand, sure and strong, calloused from years of work, wrapped around her forearm and yanked. Her shoulder popped and her skin bruised instantly from the force. She was threaded through the line of people—barely—to reach her friends on the wall.
Powell held her tightly, preventing the masses from ripping her away from the group again. Derek and he shared a linked arm as Derek held onto Nora with the same might. Florence gasped for breath in the small space Powell created between his chest and the wall for her.
“We have to go along the outside. There’s a door ahead, a worker’s tunnel, and I have the key,” Powell shouted. “When I open it, you have to run. You have to run as fast as you can. Don’t look back, don’t think, just trust me and run. If you fall, you will be trampled.”
Derek and Nora gave fearful nods. Florence looked up at Powell as he sheltered her from the writhing masses at his back.
“Run, and I’ll run with you.”
He gave a nod, and they pressed forward.
They squeezed in a chain, hands wrapped along elbows, along the outer wall. Derek’s nose exploded with black blood as a man behind him pushed his face directly into the wall. Florence was nearly smothered once as someone tried to turn her into a ladder to see above the masses.
“Why aren’t they letting us through?”
“Let us through!”
“Why isn’t the door open?”
“There are still people here!”
The chorus of shouts was deafening, a cacophony of fear and pleading agony.
Powell reached the door and pulled out the key. Florence positioned herself near his side, Derek and Nora pressed behind. As soon as he saw they were all there, he disengaged the lock, and let loose the floodgates.
They sprinted. Florence didn’t look back. Her lungs and legs burned, but her magic kept up. It made her faster—nearly faster than Powell, who was half a head taller.
“This way!” Powell veered left.
They followed.
“Down!” He gripped an iron ladder handle, vaulting over the edge into the darkness below as though it was nothing more dangerous than measuring gunpowder. His hands flipped their grip, his booted feet met the ladder, and he slid into the darkness.
Derek and Nora followed, Florence skidded to a stop. She couldn’t see the bottom of that yawning blackness. She couldn’t see where the iron ended.
But she could hear the screams behind her. The front of the pack was mere steps away. She had to make the leap of faith.
Florence jumped onto the ladder, her feet landing on a rung. She shifted her hands onto the outside, releasing her feet as well. Her stomach shot into her mouth as she free-fell and Florence had to expend every conscious thought on arching her feet around the outside of the ladder, pressing in with as much strength as she could muster to slow.
The iron burned against her bare flesh, catching and ripping. Her arches shot daggers of pain up into her calves. But she didn’t stop.
She fell for a seeming eternity before she finally let out a scream. She was falling into those endless pits she’d seen on the train. The infinite strip mines that spiraled down further and further into the earth, stopping only when they had been exhausted, when the Harvesters had taken everything they could. She was going to fall to her death, and die in the darkness fate seemed determined to condemn her to at every turn.
Two hands grabbed her waist, pulling her from the ladder. They fell together in a heap of momentum. Florence opened her eyes, but was only met with more darkness, darkness so black that she couldn’t even see with her improved Dragon sight.
“You’re all right,” Derek soothed, standing her.
“We have to keep moving,” Powell stressed. “We’re losing time.”
They linked hands once more and marched forward into that endless blackness. The sounds of the other fleeing people began to fade as they were filtered into the worker’s tunnels, splitting at forks and dividing into smaller, equally hopeless packs. Men and women were behind them, but their lead was growing. Florence chose to focus on the sound of Powell’s hand sliding against the rough-hewn walls, instead of the screams behind them, begging for deliverance from the endless black.
Florence had to put faith in the Harvester before her. This man approached these tunnels with years of knowledge and all the fearlessness of a Raven jumping into the Underground. His mind was likely spinning a mental map not unlike Arianna’s would be. The latter thought gave her more hope. If Florence thought of him like Arianna, she could find the faith she needed.
