CHAPTER SIX: FIRST BLOOD
675 Words
It started with a knife.
Not a rebellion. Not a war.
Just a piece of sharpened metal, six inches long, hidden in the seam of my ragged tunic.
Kida had given it to me.
“For whatever comes next.”
I didn’t ask what she meant.
Because I already knew.
They assigned us to Reactor Shaft 17—a maintenance tunnel used for cooling the upper forges. Tight corridors. Flickering lights. Pipes groaning above us like dying animals.
We weren’t fixing anything.
We were cleaning.
With our hands. Our clothes. Our blood, if it came to that.
The guards didn’t watch this section closely. Too far beneath the overseer towers. Too hot. Too forgotten.
That’s why I chose today.
The target wasn’t random.
His name was Lask—one of the younger guards.
Too confident. Too careless.
The kind that drank from his hip flask during shift rotations and liked to use his rifle stock as a club.
He’d broken a boy’s jaw the day before—for sneezing too loudly.
I volunteered for Lask’s crew during assignment roll.
The other slaves didn’t question it.
They knew.
We worked for six hours.
I watched him the entire time.
The way he walked. The way he turned. The moment he reached for his drink. The rhythm of his bootsteps.
When the lights flickered—just like they always did at cycle end—I moved.
Fast. Low. Quiet.
The knife slid through his side like it had been waiting.
He gasped. Not loud. Just sharp.
I pulled him backward into the waste duct before he could scream.
His body hit the floor once.
Then silence.
I didn’t feel guilt.
I didn’t feel joy.
Just control.
For the first time since I’d been shackled, the choice had been mine.
I stripped his keycard, rifle cell, and boots.
Buried his corpse under coolant pipes using nothing but my hands.
When I returned to the crew, no one said a word.
Korril looked at me once.
Nodded.
Nothing more.
The next day, Lask didn’t report for duty.
Rilka sent a search team.
They found his helmet.
Nothing else.
They beat half the crawlspace looking for answers.
But no one spoke.
Not even the new kids.
Shal Vox found me later, hunched near the broken fan grate.
He didn’t look surprised.
“You’ve started it,” he said.
“Started what?” I asked.
“The shift. The moment fear moves. First from them… to you.”
“It wasn’t a rebellion.”
“No. Just a murder.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
He didn’t answer.
That week, we found a second guard dead.
Burned from the inside out. Sabotaged armor cell.
That one wasn’t me.
Kida smirked when I asked.
“You think you’re the only one who wants to bleed them?”
It spread like infection.
Tools went missing.
Ration trucks derailed.
Cables snapped “accidentally,” crushing overseers under steel beams.
Guards grew tense. Patrolled in pairs. Whispers of dissolution orders reached the upper tiers.
Drahl descended once—walked through the pits in silence. Didn’t say a word. Just watched.
The day after, he had one slave crucified in the upper hall for stealing forge acid.
To remind us.
We didn’t forget.
But we didn’t stop either.
The day I knew things were changing was when Korril—quiet, careful Korril—stepped into the path of a guard who shoved a sick girl out of line.
The guard raised his shock staff.
Korril didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Just caught the weapon with one hand and snapped it over his knee.
No scream. No retaliation.
He sat back down.
The girl crawled away, alive.
They beat him for hours.
I stood at the edge of the line.
Fists clenched.
But I didn’t interfere.
Because Korril didn’t need saving.
He needed witnesses.
And the pit saw everything.
That night, I carved something into the cell wall beside my name.
Not a word.
Not a symbol.
Just a number.
1.
One dead guard.
A start.
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