He realized, though, when he really focused on them now, that the details were missing. He shivered at the experience of a past self, another version of this same person, who was there before and here again.
He stayed after the others to investigate the bulb. Director Dimah would want to know about this abnormality. Their training said they were to report things like this. There was another reason he stay: to see if the strange worker would return.
The first toll sounded. The white hill followed by the shadow flashed across the worker’s eyes. His hairs stood on end as he remembered how close he'd come to being taken by a shadow. He needed to get back. The worker he'd met must truly have descended, after all. Only the Rahz stood a chance against the shadows.
The worker ripped the bulb from the vine and powder spilled out of a gash his clumsiness created. But his attention went to the sensations the powder produced in him. He felt it inside him, moving under his skin, in his chest. Then into his head. Was he doing this, or was it? No time. He made for the exit.
I can still make it.
At the top of the stairs, the worker heard the second toll echo from the chasm, its vibrations shaking the stone underfoot. He considered hiding back among the stones in the growing room.
There is nowhere to hide.
Words echoed through his mind from the past. A past beyond the previous shift. From a time when he was...young. Maybe they would still let him in. They had to.
Dim earthlight shards guided him across the bridge. Comforted by the light, the worker afforded himself a moment to look to his right, across the short stretch of the chasm to the Great Spire, which rose from the apex of opposing chasm cliffs. A red glow, not unlike those in the Growing Room, shown from an opening far overhead. Are the Rahz watching over me? With a jolt he recalled the previous shift's gaze up to the crimson balcony, and his similar thoughts.
Behind him then came a sound. Like the noisy sleepers in the alcoves adjacent his. A wheezing snore followed by… a hiss. But there were no workers but him to speak of out here, alone, on the bridge.
Two yellow eyes appeared at the far end. The worker froze. The shadow growled. The sound was like a cruel version of their soup bowls harshly stacked by the cleaning worker. If you were behind me, how did you get over there?
When he made to retreat, though, a second set of yellow eyes waited. Nowhere to hide and nowhere to run.
He backpedaled toward the center of the bridge, away from the nearer set of eyes. Two sets of hisses whispered menacingly.
The nearer pair of eyes entered the first earthlight’s dim aura. Carrying those eyes was a four-legged lizard, black as the Abyss, and half the worker's height. Lengthwise, twice. Its forked tongue sliced through the air. Another hiss. Its hexagonal scales now sketched a pattern of light. The worker stole a glance behind him to the other, and its scales too drew a pattern, then faded again to black. The worker had only one disturbing guess: they were talking. And one premonition.
I am about to descend.
A childhood memory sprung into consciousness: the Selection. On his back in a ring of stones, he was being pummeled in the face by a larger boy. Like a beetle flipped on his back, he’d squirmed out of the ring. Since then he was on track to become a grower.
But that stint would be over soon.
The first giant lizard lunged toward him, springing from its hind legs. A shadow of itself came first and the worker tucked his head under just in time to avoid the beast’s jaws. Its front leg, though, caught him on the side of the head. Pain burned through his face.
He was spinning from the blow, off-balance, to the edge of the bridge. White lights engulfed his vision as he tried to regain his footing and find the yellow eyes. His waist slammed into the stone railing. I’m falling…into the Abyss. He caught the railing with both hands, but one slipped. He couldn’t grip it with just one, and he prepared to relent. The Rahz had protected him once, but twice was too much to ask.
He felt somone else's hands on his own. “No you don’t,” said a voice. He was pulled back and collapsed onto firm stone. There was blood on the stone. He touched his face and gasped at his red palm.
The young man laughed. “I guess you’ve never seen blood before. If I’d gotten here a second later you never would have.”
“Thank you,” said the worker.
“Don’t mention it.” He stood and offered the worker a hand. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”
The worker looked closer—it was worker with the scar above his eye! “You work in Growing Room One. But I couldn’t find you today.”
“I’m Kaydin, pleased to meet you.”
The worker winced as he touched his face again. Then he saw the two lizards, each lying on their sides. “How’d you kill the shadows?”
“They are sentinels, not shadows. And I didn’t kill them. We don’t know how to.” He held up his hand. A series of stone rings with sharp points. “I stunned them with my gauntlet and a flurry of earthlight shards. Now, come on.”
The worker took Kaydin’s hand, letting him pull him up as he found his feet. At the end of the bridge the worker bumped into Kaydin.
“We’re not going back to the workers quarters,” said Kaydin. “I hope you don’t regret it, but you left that road behind you when you stayed out past the second toll.”
The next few moments went fast for the worker. Kaydin urged him along the chasm walkway and into a crevice he was forced to climb part way into the chasm to reach. A stone door was slid open for them by a tall man this Kaydin called Gara, with whom Kaydin spoke in whispers as they made their way through the ensuing tunnels. Into another unseen crack and through a crawl space. A cramped stone stairwell. Then light so strong the worker had to shield his eyes. And voices, but they stopped when they saw him.
“So you’ve made it, then,” said an old man, struggling to push himself out of his stool. His hands were on a black-stone table. The small cave around them was mostly bare besides the shards of earthlight, blues and greens. A colony of glowworms lit the far corner where a cluster of turma vines climbed and crosshatched the jagged stone.
“Stunned two of them to get him out,” said Kaydin.
The man limped over to the worker. He rested strong hands on the worker’s shoulders. “We’re glad you’re here,” said the man, his eyes taking on an alluring green below those deep crevice-like wrinkles. “My name is Ry.”
“Me too,” said the worker, “I owe my life to Kaydin—I would have descended.”
There was noise in the stairwell behind. The worker turned, expecting the worst. Instead, two women and a man entered wearing expressions not unlike the worker's peer had the previous shift when he'd miraculously come through the stone door.
“We were watching from the lookouts,” said a man with hair around his lips and chin but nowhere else. “We are glad to see you. Kaydin took a big risk to save you, you know.” The words sprang from him like irritated turma vines.
“There were actually two more sentinels joining from the east bank if you guys weren’t quick enough,” said one of the women. Dark brown hair brushed lightly against her slate-colored shirt, which fastened in two knots across her chest.
“That’s Mav, Maryn, and Bel,” said Ry. “They are all part of Haven. They were watching over you tonight, just as Kaydin and Gara were.”
Watching over me? And the Rahz? Why weren’t they doing likewise?
“Sharp claws on those feet,” said Kaydin, tapping his scar. “And sharper teeth.” He held up his four-fingered hand. “Doesn’t look like you faired too much better, though.”
The