Halari held her breath, scissors quivering as she moved them closer to the berry’s stem. The little black fruit was glossy, like a bead of tar or a drop of rain about to fall from a corner.

Unlike those, however, these berries were a bit more terrifying. She breathed slow through her nose, chin tilted down towards her. No need for a stray drop of moisture to hit the berry and make this more difficult than it had to be.

The little fruits, she called them dozerpops, were an effective sedative. She’d seen a whole bistag topple over to sleep just seconds after eating one from the stem on a dry evening.

She’d also seen one blow a cute, little dust bunny’s face off when it took a bite during a rainy afternoon. Through some reckless experiments, Halari discovered that applying pressure to a berry produced some light fizzling. Add water to the pressure and they exploded.

Halari clipped a couple dozerpops off the main plant body and wrapped them in a dry rag, which she stashed in pocket at the side of her satchel. She rose, brushing herself off and stretching her sore legs.

“Let’s get these home,” she muttered, patting her bag gently. She was not too far from the edge of this small grove and her waste crawler sat just outside the tree line.

She turned and took one step, then froze at the sound of light, wet fluttering just behind her. Halari spun, rifle coming up with its barrel pointed deeper into the woods. She searched, breaths heaving, for a glimpse of yellow in the trees, some sign that those freaks were around. Hunting her.

A large beetle, roughly the size of her fist, crawled around a nearby tree trunk into her view, then fluttered again, spraying its warning oil out in a fan.

“Oh my…” Halari relaxed with a deep sigh, lowering her gun. She glared at the beetle. “Betrayer burn you, asshole. Scared the shit out of me.” It buzzed at her in return before fluttering off.

In the two nights since the trade off, those golden figures and their haunting breaths had invaded her dreams, turning the best ones sour. She shivered, recalling last night’s vision where she’d just been riding on her trawler, content in the black wilds, before the engines failed with the noise of that fluttering wheeze. The ground turned yellow, horrible and sick, and she’d sunk into it, all while the wind mimicked those freaks’ breaths before she was swallowed in gold.

Waking to a cold, soaked pillow and shaky arms was an equally unpleasant experience.

Halari shook herself free of the nightmare and trekked back to her vehicle, but she made sure to shoot another nasty look over her shoulder to where she thought the beetle flew as she passed the tree line. Her trawler’s engine thankfully roared, not wheezed, to life and she rolled off back to the Quarry on secure, unchanging black rock.

She tried to avoid Telero, who was cleaning his mine tools in the front yard of their home. The sight of him brought an ich to her skin she couldn’t scratch or salve, but he looked happy to see her, even waving her with oily fingers.

Please don’t talk to me, she begged, not trusting herself to keep from snapping at him. Halari did her best not to scowl at the traitor, instead she forced a sharp nod before going inside and heading straight for her room.

She put the dozerpop berries on her windowsill to dry off in the day’s light, then plopped onto her bed and began to disassemble her rifle.

Poor thing was dirty, especially the barrel and trigger mechanism, both of which had some powder buildup. She slid the bolt out completely and placed it on her bed, then began on the trigger assembly.

Then somebody knocked on her door.

Halari groaned. Only one person in the house knocked with two quick taps. Of course, he wanted to bother her today.

“Yes, Pada?” She turned her attention back to her gun as her father walked into the room.

“Well, good afternoon to you too,” Fedro said, snark matching hers. “I heard that monster of yours roll in and realized that it’s been a couple days since we’ve had a good talk.”

Fedro was a taller man, about the height of his eldest, and sharp in features, much like a good pickaxe in the mines. He sometimes, rarely really, joked how grateful he was that Halari inherited her mother’s softer features. His recessive hair tone, which had once been a dark green like hers, was grayed, giving his dark blonde top a metallic sheen.

“You’ve been busy, Pada,” Halari said, dabbing at a stubborn streak of grime on a part of her rifle. “Viri told me about that shaft collapse.”

“Yeah that was a bad day,” Fedro grunted, then settled down on to her desk.

Oh great dragon he actually wants to talk, Halari realized with a soft sigh.

“So…” Fedro said. “Find anything interesting out there?”

Halari almost gave him the usual ‘cool rocks’ or ‘unusual stick,’ but she caught herself and snapped her head up to look at him. She had found something interesting out there. But could she tell him?

If I can’t trust my own Pada, I can’t trust anybody. Halari stared at her father, who was looking back with a mildy confused expression, probably caught off guard by the lack of her normal indifference.

“Can you close the door, please?” Halari asked, setting aside her gun parts. “I need to tell you something.”

Fedro, confusion becoming concern on his sharp face, obliged. Only when the latch clicked close, did Halari dare to speak and only in a low voice just above a whisper.

“It’s about… Tel,” she started. Fedro perked up and crossed his arms.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“I was out in the city,” she said, “and—"

“Hala, I don’t want to know about your little heretical excursions,” Fedro interrupted with a dismissing wave of his hand.

“I know I know I know,” Halari huffed, “but please, just listen. It’s important. Please.”

Something in her must have softened him, because, not without a huffing sigh of reluctance, Fedro relented. “Fine.”

“I was out in the city, looking for things to trade when the lines restart,” Halari explained. She was somewhat happy to get this out as keeping it in with no idea who to tell was grinding on her attitude. “Just as I was about to leave, I heard voices, which I followed. Pada…” She leaned forward for emphasis, getting more animated with each breath. “I saw the head priest and his followers. Tel was with them. They were making a delivery to some outsiders, giving our food to them. They’ve been lying about everything.”

She stopped to give her father a chance to register all of it. It was a big reveal, city-changing if it got into the right ears. Fedro nodded slowly. Did he believe her? He was always so steady like the rock they mined.

He spoke after a long moment. “Have you told this to anyone else?”

What? That was not the question she expected. She imagined he might be angry first at the accusation against her own family, but he looked… uncomfortable more than anything.

“Nobody else,” Halari said. “I thought about telling Old Bear, but now I’m thinking it might be better coming from you.”

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“Don’t mention this to anybody,” Fedro said, sterner than average. “Ever, do you understand?”

“Wha…? But Pada, this is important,” Halari said. “If it gets in the right hands, we can fi—”

“No.” Fedro raised a rugged palm and cut her off. “Nobody, are we clear? You’ll cause more trouble than you end up fixing.”

Halari lost her words. What was he thinking? This kind of leverage over the Melokide was invaluable, why shouldn’t she tell everybody? Why did he look so worried?

She saw the truth in his eyes, in that look of hope that she’d let this one go… and it made her blood boil.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she asked, standing up from her bed with balled fists. “You knew about this! They’re giving away our—"

“Keep your voice down,” Fedro said. “Things are very delicate right now, and if you go around shouting about this, you’ll make it worse.”

There weren’t any words for this. Halari felt like a live wire hovering a millimeter above a puddle, buzzing with malintent and anger.

So I can’t even trust Pada, she thought.

“Who knows?” she asked.

“All the major city leaders,” Fedro said. “They made contact last year and to prevent panic or war… we decided to play it close to the chest.”

“And they are?”

Fedro sighed. “They’re from the north, east or west, we don’t know. They demanded we give them food, or they’d destroy us.”

“And you just what?” Halari spat. She didn’t even look at him. “Took them at word?”

“We didn’t want to risk it,” Fedro said. “We’re not fighters anymore, we’re miners. My granpada could’ve handled this, but not me. Or you. So just hold this to yourself for now.”

“Pada,” Halari sighed, “we need the foam that their using to pay off that blackmail.”

“That’s not happening, Hala,” Fedro said firmly. “Not until we figure something else out.” He stood, signaling that the conversation was over. “Don’t talk about this to anybody.”

Halari scoffed and turned away from him, already arranging the next steps of her plan. Her resolve was harder now than just minutes before, like clay in an oven.

Fedro walked out without another word.

The dozerpops took twelve minutes to cook on a hot plate while wrapped in foil. Then, she ground them up in a small bowl and applied a singular drop of water to the powder, making paste. This little method she’d figure out through some more reckless experiments that her whole family would’ve chewed her out for. In all fairness, it had almost cost her a finger trying to figure out the correct amount of water to use.

Halari applied the paste to a few darts. She usually used them and her sling to hunt smaller game, but today she pulled out the heavier duty projectiles with longer needles.

Long enough to pierce several layers of clothing if needed.

The gray was fading from charcoal to void when she slipped out in her darkest hunting outfit and circled around the back of home.

I’ll hug the cliff wall, she planned, heading for the rocky face, out of range of any nighttime workers.

“And where are you going?” a light voice whispered from the dark hugging the rear of the house. Viria flicked on her flashlight under her face, casting her soft features in strange shadows. “Definitely not somewhere stupid, right?”

“How’d you know?”

Viria gave her the most poignant, ‘are you for real’ face Halari had ever seen on her sister.

“Are you going to get in my way?” Halari asked.

Her sister scowled. “Only if you don’t let me come with you.”

“Absolutely not,” Halari said, shaking her head. “My whole plan works on being alone and moving quickly.”

“Then I’ve gotta get Pada,” Viria said. They stared at each other for a quiet moment; only the sound of idle mining equipment and the ambient thrum of the Great Tanks filled the space between them.

“Just…” Halari thought fast. “Just give me an hour. Then, call all the cavalry you want, wake the whole city if you want. Just let me fix this, please.”

Viria’s face scrunched up like it usually did when she thought about her breakfast decisions: ashbuds or older ashbuds.

“One hour, Hala,” she said after a minute. “Then we are storming that damn place to get you back. And then I’m letting Pada rip you a new one.”

“I better get moving then,” Halari whispered. She dashed off, protected by the dark of the cliff from poorly timed night owls and their keen eyes.

The Center crept over the tops of the shorter buildings like an angry parent loomed over their child. Halari weaved between houses, slipped through yards, and even got close to the edge facing the Ruins of Atlara on her way to the rear end of the building.

The Betrayer knelt before her, his polearm weapon pointing up to the exact spot where a well-placed climbing hook avoided the outside cameras. She’d spotted this leaving the Betrayer’s statue one day months ago and only for a moment fantasized the exact thing she was doing now.

Rigghhhtt there. Halari tossed her four-prong hook and rope up to the corner, giving it a couple tugs to test its security. When it held, she knotted it around her waist and planted one foot on the wall.

And began to climb.

It was an easy ascent. The manufactured walls of the Center were nothing to some of the jagged cliff faces outside the Quarry, especially the ones she scaled sometimes to grab the occasional vulturix egg.

She wasn’t even panting when she crested the edge, and she sat down to pull it up. She drew her slender sling shot from its place on her belt and loaded up a dozer dart into the pad. She had five, but any guards more than that and low ammo would be the least of her worries.

The Center’s dome side had a large, open slot on its face. She knew that the man who first snuck into the place used this same method, but after their rather… macabre display of his results, nobody in the Quarry helped them fortify.

So, open it remained, only protected by reputation and fear. Halari crept around the circle, back to the metal of its lid, with slow, measured steps. She didn’t commit to move without sliding her heel and checking.

The opening faced the Quarry and was set into the dome with its bottom edge at about her hips. She’d have to climb over it to get in.

Halari peeked around the nearest edge of the slot and into the Center proper. It was an enclosed room, with one door leading into the next part of the building opposite the main gate. There was a large, cylindrical console of technology just below her that looked incomplete, as if some large object was supposed to fit into those grooves at the top of it. On the edges, there were more screens and buttons, most of which were inactive or idling with light purple screensavers.

And there was just one guard.

Who was already asleep at his post, snoring lightly with his head leaned back on the rest.

Are you fucking kidding me? Halari gawked at either their complete stupidity or extreme hubris. Did they really think they had the people so cowed that their “security” could sleep on the job?

Then again, they did. Even her own father showed obeisance at their words, by the Betrayer, her brother worked for and worshipped them! Halari set her jaw and raised her slingshot, aiming at the careless guard’s chest.

She loosed and the dart flew… right into the man’s head rest at ear level. The guard twitched in his slumber, but didn’t open his eyes.

Holding a growl, Halari nocked another dart and aimed. It wasn’t the most accurate tool, but she need its quiet and hard-to-notice ammunition. She lined up carefully, adjusting off her last miss and shot again.

This dart struck square into his gut, and he jerked awake, looking around for whatever had stung him. The dozerpop’s sedative took effect quickly. The guard’s head dropped back on to the chair and his eyelids closed.

Sucker. Halari hooked her rope onto the bottom lip of the slot, tossed her rope down, and swung her leg over.

She was in.

Her feet touched down softly with barely a tap onto the metal floor.

Now where? She hadn’t actually planned farther than this. Where would the Melokide hide the foam. The space only had the one other door besides the main gate. Maybe that way?

She paced around the central console, spying a ruby red button glowing next an empty section of the console that looked suspiciously like a door.

“That’s definitely a don’t touch button,” Halari whispered. She flipped its safety lid and pressed it a few times.

Nothing happened. Probably because of the little keyhole immediately next to it that she hadn’t noticed in her haste. Halari sighed heavily and drifted over to the unconscious guard; the sedative was so effective that his snoring was gone.

She rifled through his robes, finding his boltshot, which she stuffed into her belt, a half-eaten tam and grain bar, and a small loop of string attached to a fob which looked like it fit exactly into the hole.

One turn of the inserted key later and the button began to blink. When she pressed it this time, that section of the console wall slid open, revealing a dimly lit compartment with a panel of buttons at the back.

A lift. Halari hesitated at the threshold of the elevator. Wherever this went, when she came back up, things would not be the same. She’d either be savior of the town or a new cautionary tale. I made it all this way. Can’t turn back now.

She stepped into the lift.