Kleiosighed then, a long sound that emanated from his very lungs as he turned away to peer back at his maps once more.
“The longer I live, Dante, the more I question that Evil and Good are so simple a concept as what we believe them to be.”
Chapter Twelve
Adrian
“What good are gods who leave you to starve?”
– Last Words of an Unknown Third Ringer Sentenced to Death for the Crime of Heresy, 1891
It took us three days to clear the rubble.
I told no one of my discovery as we worked. I simply moved away from the impact I'd found and busied myself with tossing rocks of varying sizes down to Tiberius as I had before. The miners worked just as hard, breaking up the stones and grinding them into a powder to create a paste which they informed us would fix the cracks in the tunnels, giving them more support than they even had before. Tiberius just nodded along, pleased at the report and the process it defined, asMosi,Roiben, and I continued our work.
When we'd finally finished, sweat soaking through our clothes, backs aching in protest,MosiandRoibenwandered off to sleep or work or whatever they busied themselves with. But I stood in the center of the tunnel, where the rocks had fallen, and stared into the darkness on the other side.
“It intersects with the tunnel coming from the eighth arch in Sanctuary further down,” Tiberius told me, his voice low as he approached so the miners behind couldn't hear us. “It used to be used to deliver goods but hasn’t been in centuries.”
My jaw tightened as my fists clenched at my sides. This tunnel intersected with one running from the eighth. That meant beyond this darkness, somewhere in the maze of the Underground, was a way home. If I could reach that intersection and make my way down the eighth, maybe I could find Sanctuary again. Maybe I could see my family again. Maybe—
“You’d never make it,” Tiberius said suddenly and my gaze snapped to his. “There are wards in place. Magical walls that keep anyone from getting in or out of the Underground, especially through Sanctuary.”
I just raised my chin to him, not uttering a word, and thought of the note with Milo's name on it now taking up space in a drawer back in my apartment. Is that what had stopped it from getting through? Award?Some magical wall that sifted through every item that went through it, sending back anything, or anyone, that didn't belong? Such a thing didn't seem possible. And yet Zya had tried to warn me. She'd known. Now, it seemed, Tiberius did as well.
“You aren’t the first to try, Adrian, and you won’t be the last. But if you must, at least I can say I tried to warn you.”
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the dark passage with only the miners hard at work behind me for company.
I turned away quickly and made my way back through the abandoned passage toward the elevators. I couldn’t try anything yet, not while the miners were still working. But they would break off at the next shift, shuffling back to their quarters for the evening, and no one would return until morning. That was when I had to try. That was my only opening. I wouldn’t waste it.
For now, I went back to my apartment and took a shower, changing out of one administrator’s uniform for another. I found a small drawstring pack in the closet and placed the clothes I'd fallen into the Underground with inside of it. I wasn’t sure why I was taking them, why I even wanted them at all, but it felt nice to pack something, to pretend as though I had anything with me worth taking. And more than that, packing made it feel real. I was leaving. I was going home. Finally.
“Adrian?” someone called my name from the living room.
I recognized the voice immediately.
“In here, Darius,” I called back and listened to the footsteps against the soft carpet as he made his way through the common area and into my bedroom. I'd just closed up the pack and swung it over my shoulders when he made it to my door.
“We were going to get a drink and thought you might—” he froze, eyes falling on the pack over my shoulders, brow furrowing in response. “What’s that? Where are you going?”
“Home,” I answered, breezing past him out of my bedroom and into the hall.
He followed me, as I expected he would.
“What do you mean, home?” he asked, confused.
“I meanhome, Darius,” I said, whirling to face him so fast he nearly ran right into me. “Sanctuary. Remember?”
He blinked at me and I could see the hurt flash within his eyes.
“Of course I remember,” he replied, his voice barely a whisper. “But you can’t go back, Adrian. It isn’t possible.”
“There’s a tunnel down on the ninth level. It goes right to the eighth archway in Sanctuary. It’s abandoned, Darius. No one uses it anymore. But it’s open. All I have to do is follow it and it'll take me home. Home, Darius. To Maurice and Warren and my mother and Dahlia. To your parents and Graham and Sophie and Harrison. Don’t you miss them?”
“I—yes, I miss them but—”
“So come with me.”
