Seven K-guards gathered around the edge of one of the decommissioned metal pits that had once been used to store and process water. There, at the very bottom of the pit, body twisted like a broken doll, lay a man with dirty overalls. An engineer. My stomach twisted; in rage, in hopelessness. Too late. A severed line hung above him—he must have fallen when it snapped. The twisted limbs told me had fallen— but the dark hole in his chest told the rest of the story.

The gunshot was for him. They shot a man laying broken in the bottom of a pit.

A slow, bitter rage seeped through my bones as one of the guards flipped a coin in the air, and another laughed. If a K-guard was injured in the Belly they brought them up to a higher level—there were no true doctors in the Belly. When my arm was crushed, it was sawed from my body. A few people, like me, trained to try and bring some semblance of medicine to the Belly. But even if I had been here before he was shot, I knew I couldn't have saved him—and somehow that made it even worse. I watched in silence, waiting, hating them and myself in equal measure.

When the K-guards finally left, I crept forward through the smog— and then froze. Opposite me, from beneath a massive boiler, a figure emerged from the smog. I watched as she hooked her harness to one of the ropes and climbed down into the pit— the way the K-guards should have. Yaneli's stern face flashed through my mind, but I pushed it away. A true doctor helped others, and even if I'd never be one, I still had to try.

The figure disappeared into the pit by the time my fingers clipped into the harness. I landed like a cat on the bottom, silent, wide-eyed and wary. The figure looked up at me—deep-set eyes, a wide forehead, full lips. Smoky. An engineer I knew from another section by name only. I followed her gaze to the dead man, and a pang of sadness shot through me. Yute. Laying with his limbs askew and eyes glassy I barely recognized him as the kind man who sang silly rhyming songs when he worked and gave a piece of every meal to a mangy one-eyed cat that roamed the Belly.

Smoky stared at me, and then, instead of yelling or asking me to leave, she said in a raspy voice, "Open the box set in the wall over there. Then take out the hose, but be careful not to turn on the electricity, or we'll join him."

She turned back to Yute, and I nodded, both relieved and surprised she hadn't told me to leave. I wasn't sure if she knew who I was— and wasn't sure I should tell her if she didn't—so I just kept quiet and did as she said. The screwdriver built into my mechanical arm opened the metal box, and I pulled out the hose and started a gentle flow of water.

"What happened?" I pulled off my bandana and lent it to her as she gently washed Yute's face free of blood. All around us the machines pounded and roared—the Belly didn't care who lived or who died. Just like the k-guards.

She didn't look up from washing his face. "His rope snapped. We weren't supposed to be in this section, but they decommisioned it. Why would they ever need the extra parts?" She swallowed hard. "The K-guards didn't even give him a chance to explain. They just shot him where he lay. He didn't deserve that."

So they were looting. Shit. Even I didn't loot; it was a Letter Trial level offense. No wonder she'd hid.

"I'm sorry." I reached out and laid a hand on hers. She started as if she'd forgotten I was there, and turned her head. "Remember that ugly cat Yute always fed?" I said. She let out something like a choked laugh, so I went on. "And he always sang the most beautiful songs... remember that one Christmas he and Xyla sang together? It was like the whole Beast stopped to listen."

She stared down at him, quite for some time, voice soft when she spoke. "How do you know Xyla?"

Even here, standing over a dead man, the lie came easily. "I know her engineering partner, Yaneli. And she sometimes sings at our section's gatherings."

Smoky nodded. "I remember Yaneli... We worked together, the two of us, on the quarantine for Level N. Strange days, back then." She shook her head, something dark crossing her face. "Reminds me of now."

It wasn't the answer I was expecting. Everyone knew about Level N, or as we all called it, the Dead Level. A deadly sickness had broken out, and unable to stop it, they'd quarantined the entire level. Every single person had died in order to protect the rest of the Beast. But Yaneli hadn't worked on it. Even so I didn't correct Smoky—she was grieving, and if acting as a doctor taught me anything, it was that people said strange things when grieving.

"Would you like me to say a prayer over him— or maybe sing a song?"

Smoky gave me a sad smile. "I think Yute would have liked a song."

Xyla had always been the singer, not me, but I tried anyway, singing one of the funeral songs we sang when a baby was stillborn or an accident in the Belly claimed an engineer too early. It was about Old Earth— about green grass and tumbling rivers and snow capped mountains. All the things humanity had lost but hoped to find again on Second Earth.

Smoky stood when the final note faded into the roar of the Belly. Together we stared down at Yute. She had cleaned his face, closed his eyes and folded his arms, yet even with the look of calm on his face, I wondered how she could stand here so quietly. She looked only tired, like the way Yaneli did after we worked a double shift. There would be no time to mourn or rest—she would need to go apply for another engineering partner before the day was even done if she wanted to receive her rations.

"Well, I think that's all we can do for him," Smoky finally said. She turned to me and lifted my flesh hand. I half expected her to give me a knife or some other weapon, for her eyes to blaze and demand we find the guards who did this and make them pay. Instead, she pressed a single coin into my palm. "For your help."

"No, I didn't—"

But she'd already turned, strapping back into the harness and climbing up the wall. "Ask Yaneli something for me," she called back to me as she scaled the wall. "Ask if she remembers— and regrets it."

"Remembers what?" I called after her. "Regrets what?"

But she didn't answer. I was left alone, in a pit with a dead man, and when I lifted the coin, the Admiral's face seemed only to stare at me in disappointment.