This was Province 837's hub, pulsing beneath the stone floor. And if campfire legend was to be believed, it was here that something called the First Sowing took place—some ancient and forgotten crop, its legacy turning these tunnels into a slaughter ground.
Bullet emerged into a cavernous area, and twelve faces turned to meet his.
They referred to themselves as the Diggers, and it was easy immediately to see why. They sported their worn-out clothing patched with root fibers and stained with dirt. Their faces were scarred—some by machinery, some by fights, but all of them displaying tales of hard-lived lives in the shadows. Their hands were perpetually dirty, fingernails encrusted with dirt that would never be cleaned off.
Their faces were wary but not immediately hostile. They'd encountered strangers previously, apparently. Enough that they were cautious but not enough to kill immediately.
They grasped their tools as weapons—shovels, knives, picks. Survival equipment that glinted in the shard-light, each one sharpened and awaiting use.
These weren't just survivors. They were gardeners, tending pale roots and fungi in rich clods of earth they'd somehow brought to life down here. Shards were scattered throughout the ground, glowing softly, and Bullet could see how their light seemed to coax things to grow—draws life from the ground through some process he didn't understand.
The air was thick with the scent of earth and sweat. Life forced out of the earth through sheer force of will.
At the center of the room was what seemed to be an altar—a flat slab of stone inscribed with tiny patterns of roots, worn to a high polish by the touch of many. A reminder of the First Sowing, whatever that was. Its surface wore the bruises of hands grasping for sense in a world that offered them only scars and survival.
There was a woman who came out of the group. She was lean, wiry, like a knife blade, a knife scar slashing down her arm. Her eyes were keen—keen as the tools they worked with, keen as the knife sheathed at her hip.
They had named her Ridge. Named after her unbreakable strength, Bullet would soon discover. A leader forged in this tunnel's fire, weighed down by the burden of people who depended on her.
"Speak your business, stranger." Her voice was curt, authoritative. "These tunnels don't welcome ramblers without a purpose."
Bullet's hand went up and touched the scar above his heart—that automatic movement he'd made so many times now. Blood welled fresh from his shoulder. Breathing hurt his ribs.
"Name's Bullet," he croaked, his parched throat from the dust he had breathed in. "Got this mark on my heart, and that's all I know." He waved indistinctly. "There's something driving me forward. Can't say any better than that."
A large fellow moved up alongside Ridge, scars across both arms like he'd fought more battles than a man was meant to survive. He held a pick in the easygoing assertiveness of a man who knew exactly how to turn one into a weapon.
They'd called him Vest.
"Down here, mouths only eat when hands work." Vest was firm in tone but not brutal. "We fought for this country, sacrificed lives for it. You want to share the fruits of what it produces, you give what you have. That is the way it is."
Bullet's scar burned. The pull pushed him on—always on, never to stop. But his stomach was empty, had been for too long. His wounds must be tended. His body must rest, even if for an hour or two.
And maybe, maybe, these people deserved more than he passing through and away as he had at every other place.
"Show me what's to be done," he whispered. A rush of guilt welled up in his chest—Shard's camp, Ember's dome, and now this. More connections he'd need to sever, more weights he'd never be able to equal. "I'll do my share."
They led him to a bed of black, productive soil where clear roots curled through spreading tendrils of fungus. Shard-light cast odd, changing shadows on the walls, so everything appeared rather unreal.
There was a man named Flint—his burned face gleaming faintly in the poor light—tinkering with the position of shards stuck in the earth. His hands were hard and practiced, from the earth with the confidence of someone who knew exactly how fragile their lives were.
A woman named Drift examined the tunnel's stability close by, her pick smeared with dirt, scars mapped across her creased face. Her eyes never ceased their motion, wary, watchful for the slightest sign of danger.
The Diggers worked in methodical routine. Tending fungi. Propping up walls with hurriedly constructed wooden brackets. Trading roots for spring water with people from other rooms.
Their entire lives were bound to this realm's rhythm. It all sat upon the ground at their feet.
Vest sketched as he excavated, day by day moving the dirt in a rhythmic beat. Other rooms weren't so fortunate as this one. Their soil was poor, yielding mere morsels, just enough to keep human life alive.
And it was that absence which had given rise to strife.
Contending Borers—led by one Gash—fought relentlessly for control of the valuable tracts. Tunnels became battlegrounds. Rumors of raids lay thick in the air, tension capping like preblast pressure.
And underlying all, the legend of the First Sowing brooded. Some ancient event, some original sin that had left this land so belligerent.
Vest offered him spring water, its bitter tang cutting through the heaviness of the soil-scent in the air. The man's scars glinted like glass in shard-light as he spoke.
"Sometimes I dream about open fields," Vest spoke softly, his voice distant with tatters of memory. "Rows of green to the horizon. Real sunlight, not this glow." He gestured toward the tunnels that enveloped them. "Probably rubbish. But down here, growing food in darkness? That's reason enough."
His subtle power reminded Bullet of Patch. Of Thread. People extending trust he did not deserve, could not honestly repay.
A growl tore through the room, harsh and acrid.
Cornered, chained like an animal, was a man named Husk. His scars were creased and seeping, his eyes burning with rage and betrayal. He brought Bullet unpleasantly to mind about Maul in Province 618. About Veil in the water block dome.
"Know a destroyer when I see one," Husk snarled, his voice thick with accusation. "You've got that look—the kind that walks in and leaves devastation behind. We'll be paying for having you around. Mark my words."
Bullet bristled, his hand drifting reflexively to his pipe. The throb of the tunnel sounded suddenly oppressive, too much to bear.
"I don't want any trouble," he said warily. "Just hunger and sleep then I'll leave. That's all I have on the agenda."
But even as he uttered the words, he wondered if Husk might see something he did not. Did destruction follow him, or was he the means of it? Cowboy had been slain. Rivet had been slain. How many more bodies would pile up behind him?
Bullet tugged forward with the rest, ground yielding under his palms, resistant fibrous roots snapping loose with effort. But his mind spun with questions his scar did not answer.
"You see there's no young ones?" Vest asked at one point, his pick scraping in a rhythmic beat. There was a puzzle in his voice, as if he could see something wrong but couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. "Nor old ones, either. People just. are. Until violence takes them. Raids, falls, battles. That's the only way out."
Bullet frowned. One word rose to his lips—alien, strange, but somehow fitting.
"Children. People don't have children?"
Ridge snorted, pausing in her work. "Children? That another one of your words you've brought with you from wherever you're from?" She frowned. "Life doesn't work here like that. Never has, to anyone's recollection."
The endless now. A world hanging in scars and soil, where nothing moved, nothing aged, nothing was born. Only brutality could end a life here. The legend of the First Sowing told of blood spilled centuries earlier, and maybe that blood had corrupted all that came after.
Then the blackout happened.
His scar seared like a brand stamped onto flesh. Vision stumbled, went blind. A glimpse flashed before his mind in sharp detail:
A darkened hand grasping a sliver to his chest. His scar searing, newly unhealed. A buzzing like crackling electricity filling the air. A voice—cold, absolute—whispering: "To end its torment."
Bullet gasped, hands trembling in earth, the vision vanishing as it came.
Guilt washed over him like a tide. Had he betrayed them all? Was he like Husk's murderer—killing and destroying everything he came near?