The Belly of the Beast

Ch. 49, The People of Level N

It didn't take long to pick the lock, even though my hands weren't as steady as normal. Nerves prickled the hair on my arms as I tried to think of an explanation for the chain. Maybe it was a room that they hadn't wanted people to enter before all this. Maybe the cryosleep pods were inside? But then why lock them in?

The quiet jilted my nerves more than a screaming crowd. Finally, the chain rattled free, slithering to the floor in a thunder of metal, leaving behind a ringing silence.

Dagger eye's met my own, and I tried to draw courage from his presence. He nodded, and then, together, we pulled open the door.

A scent hit me, different from the musty scent of dust and disuse that hung over the rest of the level. The darkness stretched out into a cavernous space, with lumps scattered at random. I didn't understand what I was seeing at first, but when I did, the breath rushed out of me.

No.

It took Dagger longer. He hadn't spent his life surrounded by the dead, didn't recognize the shriveled, husk like forms in the darkness.

Then his breath caught. "Is that...?"

My chest felt tight, shallow, so that I could barely draw enough breath to whisper, "The people of level N."

I turned my flashlight on. At first the light pooled at our feet, a halo protecting us from the darkness beyond. Then I forced the light forward. Still forms stretched out into the darkness, laying like they'd gone to sleep on the floor and then never woken. The room was some sort of chamber; likely used for celebrations and gatherings. And now it held thousands of bodies. In the distance they looked like lumps, but the closer they were, the easier it was to make out the shriveled limbs, the sunken sockets for eyes.

Neither of us spoke. Two living souls before an army of the dead.

I didn't know what to say or do. It felt as if the place in my chest where I'd once felt things had been ripped out.

Dagger spoke first. "I don't understand."

I wish I didn't, but all at once the pieces fell into place.

This was why the woman in the Chute gave her life to pass the necklace on to me. This was the forgotten tomb. I'd solved her riddle. There was no victory in the truth.

I pulled the folded paper from my pocket and silently passed it to Dagger. His light turned the paper as transparent and thin as the lie they told the people of N.

"They passed out these flyers," I whispered. "Told them they had a solution. Then they gathered them all here. Told them they would be going into cryosleep." I swallowed, my voice and fingers trembling, making my light shake as it moved. "But there was no cryo sleep. They just didn't want them to fight. And then..."

My light fell on a bigger lump, and I saw the sunken face of a child folded up against a larger form. I spun my light up to the ceiling, unable to take any more. I tried to think like a doctor, to push past death and see the human body as only a machine of blood and bones, to understand the bigger message. To learn from death.

You are a Doctor of the dead.

"They... they weren't gathered around the door," I said. "They didn't know what was happening. It must have been..." I choked on the word fast. The beam of my flashlight stopped on a vent system above the bodies. "It must have been a gas." I said, recognizing a faint scent below the scents of death. A scent I'd smelled before— one Yana had warned me about. "You can still smell it. It makes you fall asleep. They would have all fallen asleep... and never woken up." I felt like someone had run a cold finger down my back. Was it better to not see death coming?

The Admiral's face suddenly rose in my memory, the white uniform of precise lines, the unforgiving eyes. What could the Top possibly stand to gain from this slaughter? The necklace pressed against my chest, cold and heavy, and suddenly Xyla's rescue wasn't the only reason I needed to get the necklace to Androcles. Maybe as an A he had the power to bring justice to these people.

But I'd forgotten my partner. He stepped away from me, his eyes were wild and unfocused, as if he couldn't see me.

"I don't understand," he said, shaking his head. "Who would have done this?"

"The only people who could have. The Top." I reached out to him, but he ripped his hand from my grasp, staggering as if he'd been wounded. I followed him out of the chamber and back into the hall, where a single light blazed above us. He only made it twenty feet before he stumbled to his knees, hitting the ground hard. His breath came in tight breaths, and I reached out to him, concerned.

"Dag? What's wrong?" Besides, you know, everything.

He shuddered away from my touch, crawling until he pressed up against the wall. He bent his head, holding it in his hands. I reached out and touched his shoulder. He flinched so hard I pulled back.

"Dag? Are you hurt?" I wondered if the gas could have had some lingering effect on him. But after a few staggering breaths, he stopped shaking, his eyes blazing up and meeting my own.

"It wasn't the Top," he said, voice of iron. "He... the Admiral wouldn't have done this."

It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. When I did, I took a slow breath, and then crouched beside him, next to the wall. I'd spent my whole life wading through the dead, maybe there was some part of me that was calloused to it. Yana had always told me I needed to work on my bedside manner, but the dead never complained.

"Dag," I took a deep breath, trying to see all this as a guard might. "I know it's hard. But this was the Top. Only the Admiral would have the resources to do this, and to keep it silent."

He turned to look at me, eyes distant and numb, the look of a parent who had just lost a child. And, like those parents, the bitter anger came next. "You don't know that. It could have been an accident. Or there could have been a sickness they had to head off. It might have been necessary for the protection of the Beast."

"Dag—" I reached out a hand.

He pushed it away. "Stop! You think you know everything, but how could you? You're from the Belly. You're no one."