Souls Below - Rebellion

Chapter Thirty-Two

The deeper we walked, the louder the thrum of the city became. A low, pulsing sound—thump-thump, thump-thump—like a distant heartbeat, steady and unrelenting. The hallways twisted around us, turning again and again until I couldn’t tell which direction we’d come from or how to get back. It felt intentional, like a maze meant to protect a secret.

Braken finally stopped in front of a thick, reinforced door. He keyed in a code, and it slid open with a hiss. I followed him inside, blinking at the shift in atmosphere.

The room was large but dim, the air cooler, humming with subtle energy. A desk dominated the back half of the room, wide and orderly, but it was the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling glass behind it that made me freeze.

My breath caught in my throat.

A massive chamber stretched out beyond it, packed with twisted pipes, rusted catwalks, and heavy machinery that snaked along the walls and ceiling. But at its core stood a single, blindingly bright column of white-blue light, pulsing slowly. Immense pistons on either side moved in unison, breathing in rhythm with the soft hum of power.

It was beautiful, terrifying almost, and alive. It felt as if I were looking at the beating heart of the city itself.

“What… is that?” I breathed. Braken stepped up beside me, his expression unreadable as he looked through the glass.

“A reactor,” he stated simply. “It powers the Makers Sector.” I limped closer, pressing my fingertips to the glass. The surface trembled faintly beneath my skin, as if the whole room were vibrating with breath.

“I didn’t know anything like this existed down here,” I murmured.

“Neither did we,” he admitted. “Not until Zinnivia managed to override a few of the old mechanical doors. Most of them were seized shut—decades of rust and neglect—but she cracked them open.”

I turned to him, still trying to process what I was seeing. “It looks like it’s barely holding together.”

Braken gave a dry laugh. “That’s because it is. Pipes corroded. Pumps close to failure. If we hadn’t found it when we did…” He shook his head, letting the thought hang.

I turned to him, still trying to process what I was seeing. “This… was just down here? All this time?”

He motioned to a stack of old, laminated sheets near his desk. “We found blueprints, diagrams, maintenance logs. According to them, there are at least five more reactors like this—interconnected. Each one feeds a different sector of the Lower City. And…”

He paused, letting the words settle.

“They all connect to the spire in the center,” he finished. “The one that powers the Upper City.” I turned back to the view, heart pounding faster now—not from fear, but from the vastness of what it meant.

“If that’s true,” I mused quietly, “then the Uppers need us. The whole Lower City…”

“…is more important than they want to admit,” Braken finished. “Exactly my thoughts.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was heavy, full of implications and buried history. This changed the way the Lowers and Uppers worked, our city was needed for their survival far more than previously indicated.

Braken motioned to the chair across from his desk. “Sit. We’ll finish our conversation.”

I hesitated for only a moment before nodding and limping over. My muscles ached, my bandage sticky with fresh blood, but none of that mattered now. Not when the world had just cracked open in front of me.

I lowered myself into the seat, eyes still flicking back to that pulsing light behind the glass as the door hissed open behind us, a medic worker walking swiftly to my side.

She worked in silence, fingers sure and practiced as she peeled away the bloodied wrap on my side. A sharp sting followed as she flushed the wound, the cool liquid sending a jolt through my spine. I winced but said nothing, my attention flicking constantly to the reactor beyond the glass. That soft, pulsing glow had a pull to it—rhythmic, hypnotic. Like a heartbeat.

I couldn’t stop staring, thoughts and question flying through my head.

‘Did the Uppers know about this?’

‘And if they did… why wasn’t it guarded?’

‘If they didn’t… did that mean their history and knowledge had been lost just as much as ours?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, lips twitching with unspoken questions. What would happen if it shut down? If the spire stopped turning in its tower and the heartbeat of the city went still? Would the Uppers finally fall? Would the Lowers rise?

Or would it all collapse into chaos?

Calian’s voice crept back into my head. “The world outside isn’t safe. The dome protects us, keeps the toxins out. Without it, no one survives for long.”

Was this reactor powering more than lights and lifts? Was it what kept the poison out?

The medic packed the cleaned wound and began a new wrap, her brow furrowed in quiet concentration. I shifted slightly under her touch, trying not to show how the pain grounded me, tethered me to the now, while my thoughts scattered.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Braken’s voice broke the silence, soft and smooth like warm oil. I turned slowly, drawn from the current of questions in my head.

“A… penny?” I echoed. The word tasted foreign, dusty. “What’s that?”

He chuckled, resting his elbows on the desk, hands folded beneath his chin. “Old world saying. Guess they really did strip out all the good stuff from our education, yeah?”

My eyes narrowed at that same careful, practiced charm. Everything he said came wrapped in silk but edged with thorns.

“They took more than just land and air,” he continued, gesturing toward the reactor with a slight lift of his chin. “They erased the past. Gutted it. Whatever was before the dome, before the spire—gone. All that’s left is what they say matters. For the Lowers? Just enough schooling to follow orders, fix pipes, fill quotas. Heaven forbid we ask why the water runs brown.”

I didn’t answer, just stared at him. My heart felt like it was balancing on a ledge. The words echoed inside me, unsettling in their simplicity. I had never even considered asking why the water ran brown. It was just how things were. But now—now I feel as if I wouldn’t stop asking.

“You’re trying to distract me.”

Braken’s smile didn’t falter. “Am I?”

“You said Jerard was part of the rebellion.” He tilted his head slightly, like he was weighing whether to press forward. The pause stretched too long, and I found myself holding my breath.

“So I did,” he spoke finally, softly. “And I meant it.”

The air between us grew heavier. Braken let out a short huff through his nose.

“He was one of the loudest voices. The sharpest minds. People listened to him.” He paused, eyes scanning my face. “They followed him.” I swallowed, my mouth feeling dry, and the floor felt further away.

“What changed?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.

Braken leaned back slightly in his chair. “It’s what didn’t change. He only joined after he lost everything to the Uppers. His wife’s disappearance was the start, I think. No one really knows what happened to her, she just… vanished. One day she was there, the next she wasn’t. No word, no trace, her entire identity erased.”

I stared down at my hands, the bandage on my side itched beneath the gauze. I flexed my fingers like it would help, like motion could shake off the weight creeping over me.

“But it was the death of his daughter that broke him.” My head snapped up. Something in me recoiled.

“Selene,” Braken continued quietly. “She was just a child. Beautiful, soft-spoken. Looked just like her mother.”

Selene. It brushed the edge of something in my mind, feather-light. The ghost of a girl I was compared too. Reminded everyone of their failure, of Jerard’s failure.

“She died from the sickness,” he continued, his voice thickening. I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, to keep me from floating into the hollow space opening inside me.

“Was it… the sickness from the restricted sector?” I asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

He nodded slowly. “The same. It swept through the restricted sector, and killed dozens before anyone could even react. But we were all just another number. Another Lower who didn’t matter enough to save.”

I hesitated. My thoughts churned in muddy spirals. “Did the Uppers… create it?” The question settled like dust, slow and silent and suffocating. Braken let it sit. Let it sting.

Then, with a tilt of his head, “Seems to be the question of the age, doesn’t it?”

He rose and moved toward the glass, folding his arms as he stared out at the glowing tower. “The Lowers were getting bold. Organizing, speaking out, asking too many questions. And we all know how the Uppers feel about questions.” He looked over his shoulder, a gleam in his eye. “So they reminded us who’s in charge.”

“So, you’re saying Jerard wanted revenge?” I asked, voice tight.

Braken turned back to me, slowly. “He wanted justice. But sometimes, in trying to right a wrong, people create new ones. Grief… ” He paused. “… grief rewrites people.” A chill wound through my chest. The kind that didn’t come from cold, but from knowing something inside was about to c***k.

Braken’s eyes gleamed. “Some say he lost his mind. Others say he was finally willing to do what no one else had the courage to. Which is why he blew it up.” He lifted a hand—pointing upward. I followed his gaze.

“The… ceiling?” I asked quietly.

“The divide between our cities. He blew it open,” Braken revealed, reverent and bitter all at once. “A hole to the world above. A way out, and a way in. A message to the Uppers that we weren’t weak.” My vision tunnelled, heart pounding in my ears.

The explosion Four years ago. The fire. The smoke. The screams.

My memory—the one that never came fully into focus—suddenly loomed in the dark corners of my mind, causing my heartbeat to spike and stomach to twist. I gripped the chair to steady myself, my fingers digging into the wood like it could anchor me.

“You’re saying…” I swallowed, my voice cracking. “Jerard did that?”

Braken didn’t speak. He just looked at me, and the silence said enough.

I felt like the floor had vanished and I was plummeting into some deep, unseen part of the truth. My pulse roared in my ears, but the rest of the room had gone utterly still. I didn’t know what scared me more—that Braken might be lying… or that he wasn’t.

The silence after Braken’s last words hung in the air like thick smoke, curling around my thoughts, smothering them. The soft hum of the reactor beyond the glass pulsed in time with my shallow breath, a low rhythmic throb that made the floor feel like it was alive. The medic had finished with my side, but the ache remained—deep, dull, and crawling under my skin like guilt.

Braken leaned back in his chair, the dim light catching the sharpness of his jaw, the cool gleam in his eyes. His voice was quiet when he spoke again.

“It should have been our victory, you know. We were so close.” I pulled myself from the panic at his words, my brows pinched.

“Victory?” the word tasted like ash in my mouth. That day felt anything but a victory.

He nodded slowly, folding his fingers together. “When we finally achieved our goal, when everything changed, we made it further than anyone before us. The Uppers were on the brink of feeling our presence, feeling fear. Then Jerard just… walked away. No warning, no reason. He left everything. All of us.”

A chill rippled across my arms. I looked back at the reactor, trying to focus on its glow, not the memory scraping at the back of my mind.

‘That was the day he found me,’ I thought to myself.

Braken’s gaze sharpened. “He didn’t tell us, any of us. For a period, we all thought he was dead until he was seen at the ration station. Weeks later, after the initial shock wore off, I went to see him. I begged him to return, to finish what we’d started, but he refused. Wouldn’t even let me in the door. I was at a loss, confused and hurt at how quickly he had shifted.” He paused, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Until I saw you.”

My head turned sharply. “Me?”

“You were standing in the hallway,” he continued, voice lower now, almost reverent. “Still healing from wounds I’d only later realize were from the explosion. And for a moment, I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

I stiffened.

“You looked just like her,” Braken noted. “Selene. Jerard’s daughter. You would’ve been about her age too, had she lived.”

I swallowed, the words sticking in my throat. “You wouldn’t be the first to say that.” His eyes studied me with unsettling precision.

“Maybe that’s why he stopped. Maybe… in his guilt, he thought he’d hurt you. Or maybe you reminded him of what he lost, and he couldn’t bear to keep going.”

The floor felt unsteady beneath me, the idea lodged itself in my ribs like a splinter. Jerard had never told me what happened that day, just said I was found, and that I was safe now.

Braken’s voice softened. “He kept you hidden, never told anyone. Not even us. We were his family, we fought beside him, bled beside him. We would’ve understood.” His words hung just long enough to feel like a question. I didn’t answer.

Instead, I asked, “Why did you save me?”