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"These techbands are of a special design and will alert standing enforcers on Lethe of your location if you come into danger," Marzin said, disregarding him.

A few couldn't help glancing at each other with tight suspicion.

Why keep them in the mines in such a dangerous place but then suddenly care about their safety? It made no sense.

More disturbing was the indication, whether accidental or not, that the Council and enforcers who were going to know where they were at all times. Why did they suddenly care? What had changed?

"If you lose or destroy your techband, you will be judged under Xolis law and punished accordingly," Marzin stated, with little emotion on his face. "Already, your shifts have been confined to the upper levels."

They could see he was finished and there was no way to argue or question this odd new predicament.

Jamie, with her head low and face pale, tugged on Julian's arm and whispered in his ear, "Ask him about Sarah." Julian shook his head, but Aly felt it was a fair question.

"When is Sarah coming?" she asked aloud, ignoring Julian's warning hisses.

The nillium stared back at her again, and Aly barely met his gaze. The way he looked at her for that brief moment almost reminded her of how Blue had looked at her on the bridge, only there was something more dark and unpleasant about it. It wasn't the first time she had seen that look on him. She had caught it once on the ship taking them to the refugee facility, and even still, it made her stomach turn and chilled her to the bone.

"Sarah will not be coming," he replied. "Because she is ill and needs to be strictly monitored."

They all turned silent from shock.

She was ill? No, that couldn't be. She had been perfectly fine on the ship. How could this be?

"That is all I have for you. Let Nihl be in your sight." And with that, he disappeared and the holographic ring went dark. Braxin picked up the silver ring and reattached it to his techband then turned back to his office, leaving them standing there, stunned.

"Fucking bullshit," Ethan uttered quietly. "This is seriously fucked."

"There's no way he's telling the truth, right?" Davis asked. "Like, we saw Sarah, before we left. She wasn't sick."

"And why are they suddenly keen to look out for us? They certainly didn't care to throw us into this cold hell," Cilia said with a sneer. Jamie whimpered and came up close as Cilia put an arm around her.

Kate said something to Julian in hurried French, and he nodded. "Something is off. But there is little we can do right now."

"Seriously?" said Cilia. "They could be doing messed up experiments on Sarah as we speak. And now they wanna watch us every waking hour. We have to do something!"

"Julian's right," Mark said beside Aly. "What? Are you gonna try to call up Marzin again or get in touch with the Council and try to change their minds?"

Cilia opened her mouth to argue but cursed instead.

"You could talk to them again," Aly said to Julian. "Talk to the Council and ask why. Maybe we can't change their minds, but we have a right to know what's going on."

Davis snorted. "Like they are gonna tell us. You heard that golden stiff just now. He barely told us shit. Like the Council will be different. "

"If you are persistent enough, maybe..."

Julian rubbed his face, his tired eyes looking more defeated than before. "I don't know. Perhaps I can see. But for now, we should comply without issue. Let us just do as they like."

Braxin returned with their new shiny techbands. Their old ones were deactivated and shucked to the ground while their new ones were activated accordingly and clasped to their wrists.

"Remember, you lose these ones, and it's more than me who will come after you," Braxin warned. His eyes fell on Aly the longest as he said this ,and she had to turn her back so as not to give him a dirty gesture. "And from now on, you go no lower than level twenty. You disobey these rules, and you will be begging instead to stay on Lethe Maws."

***

The first few days of harvesting went about as slow and challenging as Ryziel should have expected. Getting all of their gear together had been no issue at, nor was figuring out their initial route to the Keep. The first day of actual harvesting, however, proved to be as tedious and time-consuming as Nar had warned.

Without the use of drills and hammers, getting to the necessary minerals took nearly an hour longer than usual. With the use of a dissolver or "liquid fire drill" as some called it, the process was at least much quieter, but even Ryziel's patience wore thin at the end of the day.

The chemical, once sprayed on the surface of a chosen area, would begin to slowly melt the rock away, but it wasn't instantaneous, and the deeper the minerals were buried the longer it took. And though it was meant to react only to rock—being completely harmless to skin or suit—it sometimes took a bad effect on metal if exposed too much and for too long. This being discovered on the fourth day of harvest when Nar's legs started to creak and grind, with one of the bolts coming loose, inevitably, not long after, forcing Ryziel to support the urk back to the lair, a not so pleasant journey.