Souls Below - Rebellion

Chapter Six.

Two days passed without any more visits from the guards, but their presence had noticeable increased, their black armor staining the streets like oil. I kept my head down, slipped through side alleys, merged with crowds when I had to. If they looked twice, I moved faster. When they hollered at the women— which they always did— I kept walking. Shoulders hunched, eyes down.

Dirty creeps. Acting like they owned the sectors, like they were the Makers themselves walking among grime.

I approached The Crooked Wrench with careful steps, boots scraping against broken tile. The usual buzz spilled out into the street—laughter, metal clinking against glass, the scratchy twang of a rusted speaker in the corner. I hesitated just outside, peering in.

“Mira!” my name, shouted just above the chaotic noise. A flash of white hair, a crooked grin, green eyes that saw straight through me. Krane stood at the entrance like he’d been waiting all night. For a second, the air left my lungs. “There you are!” he called. “The others thought you weren’t gonna show.”

His voice carried like it always did—warm, sure, louder than the world around it. I found myself smiling back, despite everything. He drew me into a quick hug as I approached, my cheeks flushing stupidly.

I followed him in, eyes sweeping the room. Too many people packed tight, the air thick with grease and heat and cheap ale. But for a moment, I didn’t care, because so many of them were smiling, laughing. And somehow, that warmth trickled into my chest.

Despite the shitty living, messy work and terrible food choices, people still manged to smile, and enjoy being alive.

Krane dragged me toward one of the stickball tables. Five others circled it—three boys, two girls, all familiar faces I’d never managed to win over. As we approached, the blonde girl looked me up and down, her lip curling like I’d stepped in something and tracked it in.

“Ew. What’s she doing here?” she muttered to the redhead beside her. They both snickered. My smile faltered, gut twisting at the obvious hostility.

“Yo, Krane,” Ryan called out. He didn’t even bother hiding the sneer. “What’s with the baggage?” I stiffened. Of all Krane’s friends, four out of five here didn’t like me. And they never let me forget it.

“Dude, chill,” Krane snapped. “She’s my friend.” The words shouldn’t have stung, but they did. Just as my view towards him had changed, being called his friend sat differently now.

It also didn't help he had a dozen friends. I had exactly one. Being the ward of Jerard Gearmaster didn’t exactly make me popular, people didn’t forget where you came from down here. Especially if your name carried weight.

“We don’t have extra sticks,” Alex stated, shrugging. “Sorry.” He wasn’t. Didn't even try to hide it. Coming from Alex, it stung—we’d had a brief fling about a year ago, despite Krane’s protests. But after I turned him down one too many times for s*x, he started pushing harder. One night, after a fight, I let it slip to Jerard—told him what Alex had been pressuring me for. Jerard didn’t react with rage, he just spoke to me in that calm, steady way of his, talking about love and the respect it should carry. Then he left me to sleep.

Alex ended things the next day. Since then, he’s treated me like I was contagious. I always knew it had been Jerard, stepping in behind the scenes. Part of me was relieved. But another part of me was angry—angry that he always felt the need to fix everything. I swallowed hard.

“It’s okay,” I replied quickly, cutting off Krane before he could defend me again. “Jerard wants me home anyway. No detours.” Krane looked down at me, surprise flickering in his eyes. “You know how he can get,” I added with a hollow laugh, trying to make it easier.

“See? Problem solved,” Ryan muttered. “The weirdo has to go home.” I didn’t react, not visibly, but my knuckles went white on my bag strap.

Weirdo.

“Do you have to be such an asshole?” Krane barked. His voice cracked across the table like a whip. Ryan raised his hands, feigning innocence, a smirk still tugging at his mouth. Krane exhaled sharply, frustration clear on his face.

“It’s okay, really,” I repeated again, forcing calm into my voice. My fingers dug into the worn fabric of my bag. “I’ll see you later.”

“We can meet after if you li—” he was cut off as an arm curled around his. The blonde. She appeared at his side like a bad smell in a clean room, pressing into him with practiced ease. I couldn't remember her name, she seemed intent of throwing shade my direction whenever she could. Especially if Krane was within earshot.

“Come on, Krane,” she purred with a dramatic pout. “I want to get a few games in before curfew.”

He hesitated, his gaze still on me. Like he wanted to say something. I knew if I asked, he would come with me instead. My stomach tighten at the thought, of him choosing me over blondie, how it would really piss her off. But I’d already forced a wave and turned; I wouldn't sleep knowing I was the wedge between his friends.

“I’ll see you around,” I muttered, voice tight. I quickly pushed through the crowd before he could follow. Before anyone else could say something I’d have to pretend didn’t hurt. I hit the street and broke into a run.

Steam hissed from the gutters as I passed, blurring the edges of the road. I didn’t stop until the pub was two blocks behind me, the echo of their laughter still ringing in my ears. My chest burned, eyes stung, but I forced myself not to cry. I wouldn’t. I couldn't be weak in a place like this.

But the question twisted through my skull, sharp and poisonous.

'Why couldn’t I just be normal?'

~*~

A few extra days slipped by like ash on water—quiet, gray, unremarkable. I’d gone to see Krane once, taking the long walk past the steel-ribbed wall near the edge of the Makers and Mech sector, hoping to catch him between shifts. But when I got there, his place was locked up tight. Neighbour said he and his dad had been pulled away on urgent work—some emergency rerouting down by the cooling cores.

Just my luck. No one said when they’d be back.

My nights were worse, my dreams had changed. Twisted. Gone from the occasional flicker behind my eyelids to full-blown storms. Vivid things. Cities wrapped in green, with vines clinging to shattered glass, beams of light arching from one high structure to another. The streets buzzed, not with people but with life—real life. Trees growing through pavement cracks. Birds that didn’t scatter at the sound of boots. Places that felt both foreign and familiar, like half-remembered lullabies.

Other nights, I was falling. Or spinning. Sometimes both, like the ground had vanished, tumbling, blending, like I’d slipped off the edge of something real and landed in a dream stitched together with scraps of memory and madness.

Voices echoed. Muffled. Urgent. A name repeated over and over, dragging itself into the light like a half-drowned thing. It never made sense, never stuck—just slipped away when I opened my eyes.

I didn’t tell Jerard. I’d had dreams like this before, not long after he found me. He thought they were fragments, shards of whatever came before the Lower City, believed they could be memories clawing their way back through the fog. But they’d quieted for years.

Until now.

I didn’t want to worry him. He already carried too much, and if I handed him this, he’d only shoulder it without question. That’s the kind of man he was, and I really wanted him to see me as something other than frail. So I followed his orders. Work. Home. No detours.

No mischief.

No Krane, either.

I found myself missing him more than I liked admitting. He was the only person who didn’t look at me like I was a mistake. Like I didn’t belong. Maybe he didn’t know the whole story, but he didn’t care.

Lately, Jerard had been different too, more closed off. The meetings at our place had increased—strangers shuffling in at dusk, leaving just before curfew. Their voices low, their eyes sharp. I’d asked him what they were about, begged even, when he brushed me off the third time.

“You’re not ready,” he would say. Whatever that meant. I wasn’t a kid, not anymore, but he looked at me like I was something fragile. Like if he pulled me too far into the truth, I’d snap.

I finished my shift late that afternoon, arms sore from crawling through the damp crawlspace above the water main. One of the rusted sections had split, and now there was paperwork; Inspections. Reports. Boxes to tick and names to forge. Protocol, they called it. I called it a waste of time.

Boots dragging, I headed toward the maintenance office, already dreading the evening ahead, another night of confinement. Steam leaked through the vents, shadows curling around the corners of our flat. Just me, the silence, and dreams I didn’t want.

I just hoped Krane would come home soon.

The office doors hissed open, metal grinding against metal like the whole building resented my presence. I stepped inside and flinched as they slammed shut behind me, the sound echoing down the bare concrete hallway.

Most days, my job kept me away from people. I liked it that way. Fixing infrastructure meant crawling through forgotten places, listening to the hum of old water lines and air ducts instead of voices. But any time a structural issue risked collapse, we had to report it formally.

And that meant facing Old Woman Merla.

She was right where I expected her—hunched behind a desk older than Jerard’s entire workshop, buried beneath a pile of papers, wires, and half-broken stamping tools. Her cracked glasses drooped down her nose, one arm held together with faded copper wire. Thin lips pressed together in a scowl that looked carved there decades ago.

Just my luck.

I stopped in front of her desk and waited. She didn’t look up, instead, she picked up the top document from her stack, held it an inch from her face, scanned it slowly with her beady eyes, stamped it with a loud clunk, and slid it to the side. Then again with the next one. And the next.

I was going to be here all night at this rate.

Finally, after what felt like a full rotation of the city’s power grid, she folded her knotted fingers together and peered over her glasses at me like I’d just interrupted something sacred.

“Next,” she barked, voice high and nasal, a sound that felt like it scratched directly at my nerves. I stepped forward and handed her the report. “New pipework?” she squawked.

“Yeah.” I tried to keep my voice even. “The large rust patch we sealed last year has corroded through. Needs a full replacement before it spreads.” She sniffed, barely glancing at the paperwork before shoving it back at me.

“Just patch it like last year.” I stared at her, unmoving.

“We can’t. The damage is too extensive for another patch.” Her lips puckered like she’d just sucked a lemon.

“We don’t have the resources for a new section.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“That’s why it’s a request for new pipe,” I insisted through clenched teeth. “For the Uppers.” That made her pause, her squinty eyes flicked back to the document. She read slower this time, her frown deepened with each line, but I wasn’t backing down. I crossed my arms and added, “If you want to refuse it, fine. Just sign off that it was your decision. That way, when the pipe bursts and floods half the city, they’ll know exactly who to ask.”

Her fingers twitched. I could practically see the thought process behind her glasses—the mental math of accountability. For all her bluster, Merla wasn’t stupid.

“Oh... ah... yes, well. That would be… a disaster, wouldn’t it?” she muttered, suddenly meek. She grabbed her stamp with a trembling hand and slammed it onto the page, then scribbled her signature in a jittery line that barely resembled a name. “There,” she said, thrusting the paper back at me. “Take it to the chute in the corner. Wrap it in the cloth pouch. Slide it into the tube. It’ll go straight to the Uppers for review.”

I didn’t respond, just nodded, took the paperwork, and moved to the corner of the room where the pneumatic chute sat embedded in the wall. I slid the report into the cloth pouch, tightened the metal clasp, and fed it into the tube. A hiss, then a powerful whoosh, and the pouch zipped up into the system and vanished.

Gone. Just like that. Off to the levels above, where someone would probably skim it over with bored eyes and decide whether our city stayed dry another week. Merla was already back to stamping other documents as if our interaction had never happened. Before leaving, I glanced back.

Merla hadn't moved. She sat slumped over her desk, her pale, papery skin stretched tight across sharp cheekbones. Beneath the flickering light overhead, she looked like something hollowed out and left to dry. Her thin shoulders twitched, then jolted violently as a coughing fit overtook her. The sound was sharp, wet, and jagged. Her entire body shuddered with the force of it. Her glasses slipped off and clattered to the desk.

She froze, breath wheezing, one hand fumbling across the surface until her fingers found the frame. With shaking hands, she slid them back onto her nose. She didn’t meet my eyes, and I didn’t say anything.

This was life in the Lowers.

The young starved. The old withered. The rest of us? We worked until our hands broke or our lungs gave out, whichever came first, or you died from taking to much Phiz. And if something worse didn’t catch you along the way—disease, exposure, the Guard—then maybe, just maybe, you got to survive another week in this rusted-out tomb of a city.

I turned and left, footsteps echoing down the corridor like the sound of someone walking away from a grave, the hiss of the doors echoing behind me.