I stirred restlessly. The cave was dark, and I could hear the pounding of my pulse in my ears. Something’s wrong. My breath caught as the figure of a man materialized in the entranceway, only a few feet away from where I was laying. I reached out and snatched my knife from the ground beside my bed, my fingers trembling against the handle.

I raised into a crouch and prepared to spring forward. “Who the fu-”

“Anabelle, stop!” the figure whispered. “Stop, it’s me!”

The knife clattered to the floor. “Nico?” I gasped.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Is your roommate home?”

“No… she’s out working.”

“Good.” He crouched down on the cave floor, his face close to mine. “I have to tell you-”

“This isn’t allowed, Captain,” I interrupted, my voice betraying my bitterness. My heart throbbed. Even in the dark, I could tell his hair had grown, a reminder of how long he’d been gone.

“Hold on,” he said, holding up a hand. “I know I disappeared. There was an emergency up north, and I just returned last night.”

I felt the knot inside my chest loosen. He hadn’t apologized, but I hadn’t expected him to—his duties to Bellgate would always come before me. “An emergency?”

He frowned. “I shouldn’t say, but…. it was a jailbreak in one of Keon’s high-security prisons.”

A hand flew to my mouth. “A riot? How? I heard those facilities were guarded around the clock.”

“They had help from one of our inside men, a guard, but it was messy. The guard and over half of the prisoners were shot and killed. Our troops had to launch a rescue before Keon’s reinforcements showed.”

I frowned, thinking of Bellgate’s troops crossing Amberasta with a hoard of high-profile political prisoners. “That sounds very dangerous. Were you seen?”

Nico paused, then shook his head. “Any guards who saw our faces were killed immediately. We split up into small groups after the incident, but the king’s men are scouring the countryside as we speak.”

“He will be suspicious. I doubt that the prisoners were in any condition to disappear by themselves.”

“I know. They will suspect a rebel cell, but our men were careful not to be followed.”

“Are the prisoners coming here?”

“Yes, but slowly. Some of them needed medical attention, so we had to hide them in the cities.”

“You risked your life,” I said hesitantly.

Nico paused again. “Anabelle, of course. But I’ll be stationed here for a while. Tell me, how are you? What happened while I was gone?”

I narrowed my eyes. His tone was far less brusque than I was accustomed to. Did something happen while he was deployed? Shaking away the thought, I filled him in on my first month in Bellgate. He listened quietly, and I felt myself re-adjusting to his presence as if he had never left. When I was finished, he seemed to contemplate what I’d said. “Are you happy here?”

“Yes. It’s better than I could have imagined. But, I must know…have you spoken with the elders?”

“Yes, but I did not mention your involvement. All they know is that I suspect Keon staged the robbery. They don’t know how we can distribute the news without proof. Once the allegations reach the king, he’ll just deny them.”

I raised my eyebrows. “It sounds like they’re doing nothing.”

“Well-”

“Nico, we have to spread this. Even Bellgate’s people think that Solokia started the war. Surely you agree?”

“I do,” he sighed. “The truth is, the elders think that our primary responsibility should be defense and concealment. They’re responsible for over nine thousand people, and the number grows every week. If we draw attention past the border, we will be destroyed.”

I threaded my fingers together. “They plan to wait out the war.” Nico nodded. “Then we must find a way to spread the word without compromising Bellgate’s anonymity.”

He looked at me closely. “We? Involving yourself will open you up to more pain and responsibility.”

“Listen to me. Keon will not stop until he has taken all of Solokia. Millions will die. After he is comfortable in his world denomination, who is to say that he won’t turn his attention to the land past the borders? And by then, we will have no one left on our side. What’s the point of any of this if we’re not going to oppose him when it matters?”

“All right. I will support your efforts,” he said. From the tone of his voice, I could tell he was as genuine as he had ever been. “Come with me tomorrow. I’m going to Bushnell to look for supplies. Why don’t we see if we can salvage something that may help?”

“Bushnell… that’s for storage, right? I thought it was off-limits.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be with me.”

“Won’t people be suspicious?”

“The hierarchy doesn’t run that deep. We traveled together, so it’s only natural that we would keep in contact. Besides, right now, I don’t care about what the others think.”

I titled my head. Again, something about his tone was different: almost sorrowful, like a melody played after a fierce storm. “What happened while you were away?” I asked, fully expecting him to brush me off.

For a moment, there was a heavy silence, and I worried that I had offended him. Finally, he lifted his eyes to meet mine and spoke. “I’ve seen prisons before, but nothing like this. It was where Keon kept the dissenters: the serious threats, like resistance leaders and Solokian spies. The APF tortured them, and when they died, they were left to rot, still shackled in the same cell as their living cellmates. The smell was atrocious. So many of the prisoners lost their sanity there, Anabelle. Most were more dead than alive.”

I felt sick. I touched Nico’s arm in a gesture of comradery and realized he was still wearing his military fatigues. “Will they send you back to the site?”

“I’m not sure.”

My mouth turned sour. The elders may choose “passive resistance” for themselves, but they’re more than happy to move Nico around like a puppet. “Then I’ll go with you.”

“Anabelle-”

“I’m serious.” I pulled him to face me. “Once we figure out how to spread the news, I’ll train with you. I’ll do whatever is necessary. I couldn’t bear it if you died somewhere without me knowing.”

He shook his head slightly. “Why?”

“I might not know everything about your past, but I know enough. We’re Historical Amberastans. We were both there the night of the robbery, and we both ended up in Karakul. The secret that we share…” I took a deep breath. “We need to stick together. Right now, at least, we’re the only ones who understand.”

He gave me a strange look. “I missed you.”

I blinked, taken aback. “Yeah… you too.”

***

When I woke up for my shift at dawn, Nico was no longer beside me, and I stared at the spot as if his body had left a permanent mark. I took a deep breath. Once again, I seemed to have an ally: a guarded, mysterious ally, but an ally nonetheless. Still, with or without him, I must find a way to spread the word about the king’s plot.

I sat up, and a note fell out of the tousled blankets. Come to Bushnell after your shift, it read in bold and dark handwriting. As always, Nico was curt and to the point. I tucked the note into my pocket, leaving the cave after washing up and brushing my hair. Before I reported for my shift, I climbed down to Gibnor’s main ledge to check the day’s news.

There was a crowd around the general store’s bulletin board, and the cacophony of conversation put my nerves on edge. Part of me already knew what had happened even before I saw the newspaper clipping: Amberasta’s army had finally breached Solokia’s great walls. I grimaced. Keon’s men would tear into the cities, and, if history was any indication, they’d seize control at any cost to Solokia’s land and people. Worst, in the process, thousands of mislead Amberastan soldiers would lose their lives.

“We may soon see an end to this war, after all,” someone said behind me, and there were grunts of resigned agreement.

My heart sank. “Then Keon’s bloodline will continue,” I said, shaking my head. “I know Bellgate is isolated, but almost all of us were Amberastans once. Surely you remember how awful it is to live under his rule?”

A man clapped my shoulder. “We all know what you’re saying, but we see no scenario in which Solokia wins. The shorter the war, the fewer Amberastans will die.” There were nods all around. I swallowed my protests, remembering that I was new in the city and that only a few months ago, I too had planned to wait out the war. Instead, I wished everyone inside the store a good morning and climbed back up the stairs for my shift in the gardens.

The hours were filled with long, laborious work and conversation of the breach. When it finally ended, I hiked across the canyon to Bushnell. As promised, Nico was waiting for me at its foot with a notebook and pen.

After greeting Nico, the soldiers on guard let us pass through without a second glance. We walked through the entrance and I gazed upwards, enraptured by the alien landscape. Unlike Gibnor, Bushnell’s cave system was almost completely contained inside the rock formation, without many openings to the outside. Stairs and large caverns had been carved out of the multi-layered rock, and the lack of fans made the air stale. In the dim light, the first chamber appeared to be filled with hulking black shapes. I saw no movement, but I could hear echoed footsteps from above.

Nico took a torch from the wall and held it at face level, casting shadows over the inside of the cave. “Come on. We’ll stay in the left-wing, the oldest quadrant. The residents here prefer to be left alone.”

“Really? I assumed all of Bellgate’s citizens were involved in the community.”

“Not at all. As you know, many people who have successfully fled Amberasta have sacrificed everything. Once here, they keep to themselves.”

“Makes sense,” I acknowledged, and we fell into a comfortable silence, climbing halfway up a stairwell to get a better vantage point at the cavern below. In Nico’s torchlight, what had seemed to be a spiky mass separated into a pile of wicker chairs with their legs sticking out like a spider’s. “Tinder, for when it gets colder,” Nico said. “Let’s go up. That stuff has been untouched for years.”

We followed the jagged stairs to the upper rooms, bypassing several levels. When we turned into another cavern, I felt as though I was entering a forgotten tomb. Old wares were stacked almost to the ceiling, some decayed past recognizability. There was a strong smell of mildew and something sour.

Nico stopped at a pile of tire rims, and I looked over his shoulder as he marked down our location and the words: for pulleys. “We need to go through these rooms more often,” he remarked, “some of these items are still usable.”

I nodded and wandered ahead, coughing as my heavy boots sent up clouds of dust. I started as I noticed a pair of glowing yellow eyes watching my progress from on top of an old cart. I approached slowly, and a moment later, a black cat streaked across the floor. I yelped and hopped back a step. “There are cats here?”

Nico let out a slight chuckle. “They eat the rats.”

I shuddered, remembering Karakul’s rat population, which had regularly eaten through my cabinets and clothes. Now moving more cautiously, I crossed the room to where an antique bookshelf had caught my eye. Its mahogany was pitted and weathered, but it nevertheless maintained a grandiose quality. “Nico,” I asked, “how old is Bellgate?”

He took a moment to think. “It was founded just after World War III, so… about fifty-three years old. But keep in mind, the extreme weather accelerates the decomposition process.”

I raised my eyebrows. That means there are generations of people who grew up here. The thought of childhood in Bellgate was so foreign that it sent my mind reeling. Suddenly, the elders’ protectiveness made more sense—if the king knew that a whole nation of people had been living outside of his jurisdiction for five decades, he would bomb us out of spite.

As Nico processed more items, I explored the rest of the room in search of something that could help our cause. For the most part, the objects were rotten or obsolete, but when I moved a stack of boxes, my eyes fell upon a rectangular machine. My eyes widened with intrigue—technology was a luxury in Bellgate, and it was unusual to see devices other than radios or infirmary equipment. I swiped the dust off of the surface and crouched down. The machine was large, coming up to my hip height, and it had an open slit with rollers that disappeared into its belly. I pulled off the front panel and tried to make sense of the mess of parts. “Nico,” I called, “what’s this?”

He joined me. “I believe it’s a printer.”

I took a moment to remember where I’d heard the term before; it had been years ago, when I was still in school. “Do you think it works?”

“I doubt it, it’s probably been broken down for parts. Why?”

As I stared down at the machine, a hint of a plan started to form in my head. “Because… I might have an idea.”