CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SPLINTERING
612 Words
The beatings stopped working.
That’s when the fear started—for them.
The overseers couldn’t tell who was responsible anymore.
They’d torture one, and two more would rise.
Shock one slave, and another would jam the coolant valves and flood a generator shaft.
One of the guards lost his fingers in a welding chamber.
His gloves were tampered with.
They never found out who did it.
Because no one knew.
We didn’t act as one.
We acted as all.
Fear was supposed to be the Dominion’s weapon.
But like all weapons, once dropped… anyone can pick it up.
Commander Drahl changed patrol schedules.
Replaced three overseers. Doubled the food rations temporarily to soothe unrest.
But the crawlspace had already begun speaking in a different language now.
Not words.
Eyes.
A glance meant wait.
A shift of the chin meant stall.
A boot scrape against stone meant do it now.
We never met.
Never planned.
But we moved like one organism with a shared disease: hatred.
I kept marking the wall.
2. 3. 4.
Each number carved into the steel when another fell.
None of us said it out loud.
But we all knew it was me.
Rilka grew paranoid.
Her patrols doubled. She shocked slaves for sneezing too loudly.
Her whip stayed unsheathed, her smile wider—forced.
She struck a girl for dropping a tray of protein rot.
The girl bit her.
Rilka screamed.
The guards killed the girl in front of us all.
But it wasn’t fear I saw that day in the pit.
It was something colder.
Disgust.
Shal Vox stopped drawing.
He just sat now. Listening. Waiting.
When I approached, he said:
“The pit’s changing its rhythm.”
“You feel it?”
“Like the silence before a world breaks.”
That night, I found Kida at the vent shaft we used to hide in.
She was sharpening three blades at once.
“You’re quiet,” I said.
“I’m listening.”
“To what?”
“Everything.”
She paused.
Then looked at me.
“You know what they call you?”
“Tell me.”
“Ghost.”
“Why?”
“Because they say you don’t exist until someone dies.”
The next day, a Varkari official came to inspect the pits.
He was tall. Silver-skinned. Tailored uniform. No visible weapon.
He walked past slaves like we were furniture.
He stopped in front of me.
Eyes like glass.
He tilted his head.
“This one.”
“Yes, Sub-Commander,” said one of the guards. “Subject 873. Problematic. But efficient.”
“Efficient isn’t enough. Bring him.”
They took me to the upper platforms again.
Past the glass room. Past the forge bridge.
Into a chamber I hadn’t seen before.
It wasn’t metal.
It was stone.
Old. Alien.
Symbols etched into the floor.
A throne carved from black crystal.
Empty.
The Sub-Commander walked to the center and turned to me.
“Do you know what you are?”
“A slave,” I replied.
He smiled.
“Not anymore.”
I didn’t flinch.
“You are something born from decay. Molded by hate. And that makes you useful.”
“Useful to who?”
He didn’t answer.
He turned.
“Return him. But keep him close. He’s growing.”
I was returned to the crawlspace in silence.
Korril met my gaze.
So did others.
They didn’t know what happened.
But they knew something did.
Because something in me had shifted.
That night, I carved a new number.
5.
And next to it—something new.
A line.
Not a word. Not a name.
Just a vertical s***h.
A symbol for beginning.
- Writer
