Dane pointed to a shadow on the horizon. Cora looked out over the wasteland but only saw the same monotonous stretch of scrubby bushes and parched soil she’d seen since they’d landed.
“That shadow?” she asked. “That’s it?”
“It’s the entrance to the mine,” he said. “Well, more of a quarry, really. A giant pit. You’ll see for yourselves.”
The path was well trod, marked with footprints of the slaves who had walked in bare feet this way earlier in the day. Almost all the prints were larger than hers and Rolf’s, and more than one was bloodstained. In the two weeks they’d been in quarantine, she hadn’t made any friends among the other slaves in the tent, thanks to Dane. Most of the slaves were much older anyway—gaunt women and hulking men who kept their distance and looked at her with no kindness.
“What kind of root do you mine, exactly?” Rolf asked. His twitchiness had returned since they’d landed, and he blinked extra quickly.
“Marron root,” Dane said. “This moon’s soil can only support that one crop. We boil the roots down for food; it’s the main staple, along with nutrient capsules the Kindred bring on their supply drops, but Ellis keeps a tight fist on those.”
They approached a small hut at the edge of the gaping chasm. It was little more than a shade tarp, really, housing a handful of deputies who nodded to Dane. He went to them and exchanged a few words Cora couldn’t quite make out, but she recognized his joking tone, the way they slapped him on the back. In the Hunt, she’d heard about the way Dane had weaseled his way from the bottom to Head Ward. Charming, manipulating, placating. Clearly he was trying to do the same thing here—and apparently succeeding.
“Ellis.” One of them spit in the dirt loud enough for her to hear. “That bitch.”
“Keena’s no better,” another said. “And all the tent guards. They act like they’re so superior to us, guarding over a bunch of wife slaves in those fancy tents, while we’re out here sweating our asses off. They’re hoarding supplies, I know it.”
They continued to talk, until their grumbling died down and Dane turned and signaled to Cora and Rolf. “Get over here. Stop dawdling.”
Cora took a deep breath and stepped up to the edge of the chasm. She had never been great with heights, from the time she was a little girl, climbing trees with her brother, Charlie. What she wouldn’t give to be back there again. On Earth. With Charlie. Sadie barking at them from down below.
Was Earth even still there?
A pang clenched at her heart, and she closed her eyes. It was. It had to be. According to the Kindred’s algorithms, there was almost a 70 percent chance that Earth still existed, a number she clung to desperately.
She thought of her family. The truth was, even if the Kindred were right, even if Earth was there, humans were still living on borrowed time. The humans and animals on Earth needed her just as much as the ones scattered throughout the universe did, even though they went about their lives with no knowledge of the Kindred or the Gauntlet. Earth wouldn’t be there forever. Rainforest destruction, air pollution, warfare, biological weaponry, oppressive dictatorships, melting ice caps: sooner or later, humans would destroy their planet. She had to prove humanity’s intelligence so that they would have a chance for autonomy off their planet.
She opened her eyes and approached the edge of the mine. Her stomach churned in an unsettling way, but she forced herself to look down. The chasm plunged dizzyingly deep and made her vision telescope in a light-headed way. Hundreds of slaves balanced like swarming ants on rickety scaffolding, picking at the exposed ground, monitored by mine guards stationed at the ends of each scaffold. The bottom of the pit was a slurry, sulfurous mix that released a noxious gas. Bile rose in her throat.
She pulled back, dry heaving into the scrubby bushes, sick with the fumes and the strain of weeks spent in the quarantine tent. For so long she had been furious at the Kindred, and yet for all their sins, the Kindred hadn’t done anything this awful to them. What was it Cassian was always saying? The Kindred don’t enslave. The Kindred don’t incarcerate. The Kindred don’t kill. Those are uniquely human practices.
And now, looking out over the swarming ants’ nest of a mine with the smell of sulfur thick in her nose, she realized he was right.
She felt Dane’s presence beside her. “You two are on tier eight.” He handed them work assignment papers. “Give this to the guard there. The quota is fifty marron roots a day. Once you’ve mined them, you turn them in to those deputies, and they’ll release you back to the slave barracks. No picks or shovels allowed, only bare fingers. Ellis is smarter than to arm her slaves.”
She flexed her fingers. “Let’s just get this over with.”
He smiled flatly. “Don’t worry, songbird. You won’t last long. Neither of you.”
It took Cora and Rolf ten minutes to navigate the rickety ladders down into the chasm’s belly. It seemed that the highest-value slaves got choice slots near the top, where the air was fresher and the dirt looser. By the time they had descended below tier five, then tier six, then tier seven, Cora realized that the newer or weaker the slave, the closer to the sulfur-sludge they were stationed. Tier eight was second to last. The only slaves below them, at the very lowest rung, were Armstrong’s criminals, who were chained to their individual slots. And below them, half sunk in the sludge, floated a few decaying bodies.
A deputy stationed at the end of the scaffolding held out his hand for their work assignment papers.
“Slots ten and eleven,” the deputy read, and then handed them each a roughly woven basket and pointed along the rickety row toward two open stations. “Go on. Move.”
Cora and Rolf balanced precariously on the swaying scaffolding as they passed the other slaves on the tier. None of them spoke or acknowledged Cora and Rolf, just like in the quarantine tent. Their faces were hollow and sunken. When one woman slipped from the tier above and crashed to theirs, Cora hurried to help her stand. The woman, empty-eyed, just crawled to the ladder, returned to her slot, and kept digging with bleeding fingers.
“This must be what humans become,” Rolf observed, “when all hope is lost.”
Cora gripped the scaffolding railing. “Yeah. This is why the Gauntlet matters. The Gauntlet is hope. The Gauntlet is how we create a safe world for your baby. For Sparrow. Like we talked about with Lucky’s journal.”
“Not if we’re trapped here for the rest of our lives. How many days until it begins?”
“Twenty-six, I think,” she said. “Maybe twenty-five. It was hard to tell in that tent.”
“Either way, that’s not a lot of time to stage an escape and get all the way to Drogane,” Rolf said.
“Keep moving!” the deputy yelled.
They continued past slot number seven, then eight . . . and Cora stopped in surprise. Slot nine was occupied by a child. Or rather, by the abnormally short slave she’d seen watching them from the shadows. Standing, the slave seemed even shorter—barely four feet tall. The slave had its back to them, facing the wall of dirt. What Cora had thought, in the shadows, was a cloak was actually a dusty jumpsuit with a hood and long sleeves. Cora couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman.
She stepped closer and set down her basket.
“Hello?” she said. “I’m Cora. This is Rolf. I think we saw you in the tent—”
The slave slowly turned. A hairy face looked out from beneath the hood. Huge brown eyes. A wrinkled, leathery forehead. Cora nearly leaped in surprise.
A chimpanzee.
Of course. The hairy arm. The gnarled hand. The chimp was bigger than ones she’d seen at zoos, and it carried itself more upright. It peered at Cora almost suspiciously, unnaturally cognizant, and then returned to its digging.
Cora was too stunned to speak.
She turned to Rolf and whispered, “You said the Axion experimented on animals to make them more intelligent. Do you think this is one of them?”
Rolf blinked. “It’s possible. It’s clearly more advanced—maybe even
halfway to being intelligent.”
The chimp flinched, then kept digging.
“I think it heard you,” Cora whispered, and then cleared her throat. “Can you understand me? Do you speak? Are you intelligent?”
The chimp reached out a long toe and scrawled in the dirt:
ARE YOU?
The chimp threw them a look Cora swore was sarcastic and then dropped another marron root into its basket.
“You two! New slaves!” yelled the deputy stationed at the end of their scaffold. “Get digging. You have to reach quota before nightfall or you sleep out here. And stop bothering Willa.” He adjusted the cloth over his nose, but from the look on his face it didn’t do much to cover the sulfur smell. Cora briefly wondered who he’d pissed off to get assigned so deep in the pit.
Reluctantly, Cora and Rolf took their slots, but Cora kept throwing glances at the chimp, who the deputy had called Willa. The wall of soil was extremely compact, nearly as dense as concrete. She had to crumble it away with her fingernails, and by the time she’d exposed half a marron root, two of her nails had split. The oversized sun shone directly into the pit, baking them. They worked for an hour, then two, then three. Sweat soaked through her clothes. Into her basket the marron roots went, one by one, as the day dragged by.
“Willa,” the deputy called. “Time for your water break. Let’s go.”
The chimp pushed back her hood and jumped straight onto the edge of the scaffolding. Instead of squeezing by the other slaves, she simply swung hand over hand to the end and then scaled the ladder to the water bucket.