The Diggers drew their meager rations that night—roots that tasted bitter on the tongue, fungi with nasty textures, spring water with a mineral flavor. It grounded Bullet, brought him back to reality.
A woman, Stitch, was sitting next to him, her cloak bound with root, teaching a young man, Knot, how to mend properly. Her positivity was a moving reminder to Bullet of Spark.
"This ground breathes, you know," Stitch said, tracing his fingers, her trust in him flickering like candlelight. "You can hear its pulse if you pay attention. You'll find out what's driving you. Just don't have it kill you first."
Vest confided his fears afterwards, voice low and grave. "Borers grow more desperate day by day. Hunger will make humans do anything. But we keep planting. Keep fighting. Keep defending to maintain some kind of dignity in all this."
His calm reminded Bullet of Thread in the dome. Of steady hands and quiet resolve.
The guilt returned—Shard, Spark, Patch, Ember, Stitch, Vest. A roster of names, of faces, of people who'd helped him and whom he'd be abandoning necessarily.
The shards suddenly flared and extinguished, casting jagged shadows around the room.
And then a humming machinery erupted, shaking through the earth's very bone structure. Bullet's scar burned like a hot coal.
Red eyes blazed in the dark.
The sentinel.
Its rainbow-hued wings glimmered like sharpened blades as it dove down, metal feathers flashing shard-light. The scream of its folding wings was piercing, capable of splitting the air itself.
It had followed him from Province 618's sands, through the water block of 472, and now into these tunnels. A hunter tempered from the world's merciless peril, and it had finally caught up.
The Diggers bolt and flee, cries echoing through the room. Picks and shovels glinted in shard-light as people fought for weapons, for cover, for anything.
Dirt rained down from the ceiling, stinging Bullet's eyes, clogging his throat.
He stood, pipe clutched tight through the pain in his ribs, through the blood welling from his shoulder. The tunnel lurched around them. Cracks slithered along walls. The shard-light blazed more hotly, searing his vision.
The sentinel plunged low, metal feathers slicing the air with purpose. With every stroke of its wings, gusts blew that whipped the dust into choking clouds.
Bullet sprinted for a side tunnel, earth crumbling under his feet. Every step jarred agony through his broken ribs. Blood flowed behind him, marking his trail.
The sentinel followed, its whine humming against his skull. Those red eyes followed him like the glare of a predator, steady, immoveable.
He ducked through the tunnel's tight passageway, jagged walls scraping his arms, opening new pathways of scarlet within his flesh. His lungs burned as dust clogged his throat. His heart pounded against his broken ribs.
But the pull forced him to fight. To halt this.
He spun, muscle corded despite the pain, and hurled the pipe as a javelin.
The metal cut through the air, its jagged edge reflecting the dim light. It speared the sentry's center with an ugly crunch.
Sparks flared in a blinding sheet, illuminating the walls of the tunnel in harsh white and blue flashes. The sentinel screamed—a cold, metallic shriek that cracked through the whole system of chambers, paralyzing all for an instant.
Its wings jerked wildly as it fell to the floor, gears scraping, circuits sparking. The red eyes blinked, flared, went out.
Bullet pressed on, ripping the pipe free. Blood and sparks from his exploded knuckles. He swung the pipe down on the bird-like head of the sentinel, repeatedly, metal bending to the impacts, circuits becoming a tangle of wires and shattered pieces.
The hum stopped.
The sentinel collapsed in shambles—twisted feathers, fractured gears, sparking circuits—scattered across the ground like the broken bones of some mechanical beast.
The chamber's pulse slowed. The shard-light steadied. But the dust lingered in the air, the tension, and the sour smell of burned circuits.
The Diggers remained frozen, faces pale beneath the erratic light.
Ridge stepped ahead, knife still clenched, boots crunching on debris. Her eyes flashed hard, suspicious.
"That machine was tracking you." Not a question. A reproach. "What sort of trouble did you bring into our house?"
He was panting, ribs screaming, scar burning like flames. He wiped grime and blood from his knuckles.
"Been on my tail since the desert," he gasped. "Through the water. And here. I don't know anything about why."
Vest's gaze was tight, pick gripped tight. "Those animals prey on province-hoppers. People who cross borders they shouldn't. People who disrupt the order." His voice was knife-edged with suspicion. "That what you are?"
Ridge's tone became icy. "They keep us in line. Trap us in our places, our stations. Keep anyone from thinking about leaving." Her knife slanted to one side—not threatening, but close enough. "You've managed to get the watchers on us."
Bullet did not answer immediately. The pull was a force pounding his chest. His scar was burning. The guilt was so heavy now it felt like a weight on his shoulders.
Stitch's trust. The shard of Spark still in his pocket. Ember's words echoing in his mind. All the betrayals, whether intentional or not, that followed him.
The Diggers stared at him—their scarred faces twisted into fear and distrust and the weariness of people who'd already seen too much.
He'd brought death to their doorstep. Just as he'd brought it to every other doorstep.
The Diggers stood shaken, dirt still falling in little waterfalls, shard-light flaring uncertainly.
Ridge spoke at last, her voice bitter and pragmatic. "Borers will smell weakness now." She pointed at the crushed roots, the trampled fungi—collateral damage from the charge of the sentinel. "They'll come for what's left. We hold this ground or we starve."
She looked at Bullet, and her eyes were a challenge. "You're in this now, whether that was your plan or not."
Bullet nodded intentionally, his pipe slick with the sentry's dirt and his own blood. His wounds pounded. The guilt was heavier than ever.
"Why gamble everything for filth?" he snarled, his voice raw with dust and exhaustion.
Ridge's face twisted. "This land nourishes us. Nourishes us alive. Offers something to trade for water, for tools, for life itself." Her eyes burned with primeval fury. "The Borers have barren land—barely makes do to stay alive. So they take ours. Rob us. Kill us. Take what we've built."
She clamped her jaw tight, hesitated. "The First Sowing—that's where it started. Or so the stories say. Some people poisoned our crop generations ago. Others say we poisoned theirs first. Truth's been obscured in so much blood, nobody knows what actually occurred. Just the hatred that ensued."
Husk snarled in his corner, his chains rattling. "You stole our heritage!" His anger and hurt made his voice heavy. "This soil was our ancestors'. You Diggers are the invaders, and you know it!"
Vest moved forward to block Ridge's knife, still not looking away from Bullet. "Both sides feel like they're fighting for what's theirs. Both sides believe the other one started it." His voice was calm, sorrowful. "The cycle just continues. Blood feeding more blood, year after year."
Knot puffed quietly from beside him, his eyes scared and strangely amazed. "Was told the First Sowing turned the earth red. Told me it's never been pure since. That's why we're all here, killing one another over poisoned earth."
His faith in Bullet was palpable, tangible. And it made the blame a heavier burden—Cowboy, Rivet, Ember, now Stitch and Knot and all of these individuals who didn't need the disturbance that he'd caused.
The shards receded further, and darkness started to twist across the chamber like a living entity.
And then the Borers came at them.
They came with knives glinting in the shard-light, led by a man whose chest was mapped with scars, whose eyes glowed with savage hunger. They named him Gash, and his machete shone like a shard, cold and sharp.
The room was lost in chaos.
Metal clashed on metal. Soil rained from the ceiling in torrents. Shard-light exploded in broken flashes that broke the combat to a strobe of brutality.
The Borers charged, their boots churning up the fertile earth, pulping roots and plants into wet destruction. Their screams were raw—a chorus of rage and naked hunger echoing the tunnels.
Ridge fought like a storm embodied in flesh. Her sword bit deep into a Borer's arm, blood spurting, the ground drinking it greedily. She turned, slicing aside another blade, her strikes economical and deadly. Her eyes flashed with defiance.
Vest swung his pick with savage strength, its point breaking the skull of a Borer with a wet sound. Blood bubbled up from the ground. His scars glinted in the faint light as he swung to face the next assailant.
Stitch plunged her spade into the back of a Borer. Blood seeped from her own arm where she had been cut, but her burns remained solid despite the agony, despite the insanity.
Knot—grizzled but young—brained his shovel into a Borer's jaw. Bone snapped with a sound that knotted Bullet's stomach. The young man's knuckles were smeared with blood as he hit again, his eyes burning with determination and terror in equal measures.
And Bullet fought.
His pipe was a whirl of metal. His ribs sang with each hit. His shoulder bled freely. His scar seared like a burning brand.
He dodged a machete, sparks bursting where metal met metal. His quickness was disconcerting—quicker than the Diggers, quicker than the Borers, quicker than he ought to be.
He crushed a Borer's breast, ribs cracking under the pipe's impact. Arterial blood sprayed across the earth in dark arcs.
Another grasped for him, and Bullet shoved the pipe into the man's throat. Scalding blood burst forth, and the ground beneath them turned to a bog of crimson.
Why am I so good at this?
The question tore at him even as his body moved with trained proficiency. His scar said nothing. Husk's words regarding destroyers echoed in his mind, full of answers he did not want to think about.
Gash charged at him head-on, his machete whizzing through the air in a deadly arc aimed at his neck.
Bullet danced sideways, spinning his body even though agony seared through his shattered ribs. He slammed the pipe at Gash's knee, and bone snapped with a sharp crack that rose above the chaos.
Gash roared, crashing to the ground, his machete falling helplessly at his side. His curses echoed through the chamber as he clutched his shattered leg.
The Borers escaped then, their injured staggering behind them through the tunnels. Red pursued them. The shard-light shook as the chamber finally came to rest.
The ground was torn up—roots crushed flat, fungi reduced to unidentifiable pulp. The air was thick with dust and iron stench of blood.
Ridge nodded, still gripping her knife. Her eyes burned with victory and exhaustion. Vest gripped his pick, gasping. Stitch and Knot leaned on their weapons, their resolve unbroken despite the blood that lay about them.
Ridge moved forward, her voice cutting through the dust that fell.
"You've got training." Her eyes slitted in suspicion and something else—maybe respect, maybe wariness. "Actual training. The kind you get from years of practice or something worse." She gestured toward the corpses. "Normal people don't move like that. Don't kill with that level of...efficiency."
Bullet wiped blood from his knuckles—his own blood mixed in with others'. His ribs protested. His scar flared.
"Your guess is better than mine," he said softly, truthfully. The necessity drove him on, always onward. The guilt was a physical weight upon him. "I don't recall learning any of it. But my body does. Somehow."
The admission lingered there, and he could see the balance of them in their faces. Was he greater threat than asset? Had they made a mistake in letting him stay?
The splinters dissolved to close to nil, plunging the room into virtual darkness.
And the air was thick with the odor of soil and ozone, a crouching electricity that bristled Bullet's arm hairs.
The earth shook.
Four gigantic shapes burst into the doorway of the chamber, and Bullet's breath caught in his throat.
Cragbeasts.