If this is the afterlife, it’s awfully crowded.
I waited a beat, expecting Dante’s response, and felt like a fool when it didn't come.Severed,that's what the voices in our heads had called it. That was what had been done to our bond, our connection. It had been broken.Hehad broken it. I felt the truth of that like an open wound seeping into my soul.
“Who are these people?” I asked, staring at them all as they passed, transfixed.
“Runners,” he replied and then clarified. “Messengers.”
“For?”
Tiberius reached one of the larger doors. This one was set not into the wall but into a building constructed into the side of the cavern. The building itself took up one entire portion of the walls and was made almost entirely of glass so that those on the street could see anyone inside and vice versa. He strode through the door and down the hall without hesitation, leaving me to hurry after him to keep up.
“Us,” he answered as he reached a door at the end of the first hall and ducked inside.
“Us?” I asked.
He plucked a smalluniform, the same darkgrayas his, from a pile inside the closet-like room, and held it up to me.
“This should be your size,” he said, and tossed it toward me.
I snatched it out of the air and stared down at the baggy jumpsuit with a raised brow.
“Mysize?” I asked in disbelief. “And why would I need this?”
“Your current clothes are burnt to shit,” he reminded me, casting a glance over me from head to toe. “And you’ll need it to signify your rank.”
“Rank?”
“You’re a supervisor. Like me.”
Without any further explanation, he pushed past me out of the closet and toward the steps at the back of the hall. I hastened tokeep up, growing increasingly agitated that he was making me rush after him time and time again rather than staying put and elaborating on all of this.
“Doesn’t that sort of position usually require, I don't know, significant experience?” I inquired as we reached the landing and took another set of stairs again. “I just got here and I don’t even really know where here is.”
“The Underground,” he repeated as we took yet another flight of stairs. “I told you that.”
“Yes, very informative. Thank you.”
At the top of the stairs, he strode into a brightly lit hall and pushed through the third door on the right. I followed, stepping into the room before the door could slam shut behind him.
“I thought someone who made it through all ten of theGeist’sTrials could figure out what the Underground means for herself,” Tiberius said as I stopped just within his office, staring out at the busy atrium below through the full wall of windows opposite his enormous desk. “It isunderthe ground. Doesn’t exactly seem like something that needs explained.”
“We're under Sanctuary,” I replied, turning back to him, lips parted slightly in surprise at the sudden realization.
All that time falling and I hadn't gotten very far at all. Then that sudden life-saving stop at the bottom, like magic. This was always what was waiting for me in the end.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where your food came from?” he asked, raising a brow as he settled in behind his desk and kicked his feet up onto it. “Your water, electricity, clothes? Everything you’ve ever owned or touched in your entire life? The very materials used to make it?”
“It all comes from the tunnels. Every week. From—from the gods,” I repeated the explanation I'd been taught my whole life, realizing as I spoke it aloud just how ludicrous it was.
Tiberius raised a brow as well, pursing his lips in disappointment as though he, too, knew I was smarter than to believe that.
“It comes from here,” I amended, blowing out a breath in awe as I turned back to the Runners sprinting through the atrium below.
“There are ten levels,” he said then. “This is the first, reserved for supervisors, runners, and priests.”
I turned toward him, ready to ask more than a few questions on just that information alone, but he continued before I could.
“Level two, below us, is lumber. Level three is water. Four is agriculture. Five is livestock. Six is textiles. Seven is equipment. Eight is supplies. Nine is luxury goods. And ten is mining. The officers, the ones in black, are interspersed throughout all ten levels. There are residences on every level, separated from the work areas. There are common areas on every level as well, though some are more popular than others. This is not like Sanctuary. Anyone from any level is free to move about as they wish.”
