Burning Night: A Tale of the Everburning City

Epilogue II: Adrian

Adrian felt his skin prickle, the hair on his arms stand on end, and his heart begin to stammer. He was sweating, fidgeting, and glancing around the elevator as if there were an exit he hadn't noticed before.

Beside him, a gorilla of a man glanced at his expressed distress, and smiled. "You haven't been down here in some time, corporal," Lieutenant Jerome Vargas said.

Adrian shook his head. "No, sir. I haven't."

"Does it feel like coming home, in a way?" the lieutenant asked.

"No one thinks of the Undercity as home," Adrian said. "Especially not the people who live there."

"That had better change," came a voice that sounded more like a growl made by a mouth full of gravel. Adrian turned his head to look at the woman Lieutenant Vargas had introduced as Deputy Bureau Chief Agrias Sunbane.

"Estoban has made a lot of enemies by setting up residence down here. I have a small mountain of complaints from Distribution and Civil Development. Research isn't getting its quota requirements for rare metals, and even the Lord Captain is needling me to slow down the development process so that we finish the current Reclamation," the shadow said bitterly, as she picked dirt out of her fingernails with a knife.

"We aren't making the quotas?" Adrian asked.

The question took him back to his life, only months before. Whips slick with blood, screams as a man was held down and his fingers burned off. Nervous looking overseers staring at a corpse with the skull melted inside, wondering if they were next.

Adrian knew the quotas. All of the Undercity knew the quotas. The demands of the Bureaus breaks bones and drives gangs to murder each other in the dark.

"Official edict of Parliament. Rare metals are hard to find, which means excessively labour intensive. I'm glad we get to be humanitarians right now, but this might not mean a speck of ash if we don't survive the Sixth," Agrias said bitterly.

"I hope you don't take this personally, ma'am," Adrian said. "But throw yourself in the Bore."

"Keates," Lieutenant Vargas warned.

The shadow eyed him appraisingly, and her feet shifted slightly. Adrian could see her opening motions, the moves that followed, and in the motions that didn't end with a knife in his chest, nothing but the bloody haze of a painful fight.

"Don't you dare reprimand him, soldier," Agrias said to Lieutenant Vargas. "I deserved that one."

She turned to Adrian and added "it's easier to think of the hard choices when it's someone else suffering the consequences. Apologies, corporal."

Adrian nodded and breathed a slow sigh of relief.

"By the way," Agrias added. Adrian could see the amused smile on her face. "I'm not sure I'd win if we did this in a training field."

"I don't see a lot of ways out of the first three moves. Without the lieutenant here, I doubt I'd see any," Adrian admitted, nodding politely.

"Who was your teacher?" Agrias asked.

"Currently, Sergeant Ignio Demos. My training instructor was Sergeant Emily Varnell," Adrian said.

"Varnell?" Agrias said, whistling. "Even I know that name, and the army usually makes my teeth ache. I'd almost believe Redgrave gave you some pointers. You'd make a good nanny."

"Thanks," Adrian said awkwardly, rubbing his head.

Adrain, to his relief, was spared another awkward exchange as the elevator jerked to a halt, and the doors opened.