The end was not so far. Either I fail and then, well; or I succeed and I'm dead, or, well, I succeed and then I'm dead. There's no other way for it and my time's running out.
I've always loved the air above the city. It's then one biggest others often forget as they grow old. The gentle caress of the cool of the night, buttressed by the forked touch of the full moon. The one man who always knew it was time.When a chance for escape is offered, it's up to General Thorn to turn down the offer. The price Gaius Constans is willing to pay to leave hell is simple…'his last chance to prove his love'.The first time Tyler Chan hit me I was nine.
He was fourteen.
I was the last in a long line of children, the last one to be adopted by the Lords. Unable to have their own, they'd adopted all the background children from the group, until there was no one else.
The last one.
I remember waking up, the heat of the desert sun blazing through the open window, dust motes dancing in the sunbeams. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. And then Tyler hit me.
I went down, the bed beneath me engulfing my small body.We were all piled up in a heap, digging for our lives. Everyone had a shovel and a hard hat, and we were the first to tell each other what we were looking for. Lying on top of the pile were all the people who weren't interested in digging. They got there because someone had pushed them in or they tripped on the way through the door. There were at least twenty on the pile, and, for a while, it seemed like we were digging for them, too. But they were gone, and there was no way to tell who they were. Our only job was to dig for those who were still there.
We made very little progress in the first few days. No one slept much, and no one talked. There wasn't room to stand up straight, because our backs were all the way against the rock we were digging through. We were exhausted, and we were going in circles. Some places had been cleared, and some were just piles of rocks. When we got the rock open, there would be water, but nobody wanted to go in because we couldn't tell if the water was poison or if there were snakes in there. We kept going until the bucket was so empty that there was only a little bit of slop left in the bottom. Then, a little bit at a time, we dug our way out.
