Page 43 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

Max looked a little pale. I wouldn’t blame him if he hadn’t talked about this much.

“He sold about two-thirds of the slaves to another mine, the ones perceived as less culpable. The other third—the ones he decided were the ringleaders—well, never left.” He coughed.

“So. Uh, are you gonna be warm enough in that, or do you want my jacket?”

I just stood there, mouth hanging open. Fucking hell, how long had my boy been here? No doubt enough time to be haunted by the vengeful specters of all those dead slaves and tortured—twice.

I felt ill. Except he’d seen just as bad, if not worse. Had it done to him. It was me who’d seen nothing. Done nothing. Experienced nothing.

I was the liability, I reminded myself, as if that helped anything.

“And, oh yeah, one more thing,” Max added. “We’re splitting up.”

I moaned. “Do you want to die? Have you seen a movie?”

Max grinned a little as he stepped back into the surreal moonscape of the open pit, and I, after only a moment’s hesitation, followed. “I won’t die and neither will he, nor you. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Sure I can,” he replied. “I’m in business. Underpromise and overdeliver.”

“How exactly do you overdeliver on keeping us alive?”

“You’ll find out when it happens. Anyway, you’ve got a knife, a gun, and this.” He dug into the inner pocket of his leather jacket once again and pulled out a silver whistle on a cord.

I looked at it. “Rape whistle?”

“Your term, not mine. I have one, too. Three short blows if you get into trouble. Of course a gunshot will probably be another key indicator.”

My stomach flip-flopped.

“But in any case, we’ll meet back here in fifteen,” he concluded.

“But how? Max, I get lost in my own neighborhood sometimes. There are no signs or maps or?—”

“The way the slaves did it.”

“And that would be…?”

“By the stars. You can almost always see Polaris.” He pointed up, then down, kicking aside some more rubble.

Curiously, I followed with my eyes. “And by the sound. The way the wind changes direction, picks up in some places, goes still in others. And by these pilings of ore they made. See? They used more of this yellow-green pyrite on the north side, more of the silver molybdenite on the south, and gradually replaced the colors as they went in either direction. Sometimes they’d arrange it in patterns and use other colors.

Blue veins for a safe place, or red veins for a danger zone.

To the overseers, it was the perfect camouflage. ”

“How do you know all this?”

Max paused, his eyes flickering with a memory quickly extinguished. “An old friend.”

I nodded.

“Took me a long, long time to earn his trust. And before you ask what exactly happened to him… don’t.”

I shivered. Max handed me his jacket without another word and his flashlight, too, before producing another one and clicking it on. The beam of light cut through the darkness but faded after a few yards.

“That reminds me.”

He turned again, and I bit my lip.

“Did… did he ever thank you? You-know-who, I mean.” I looked down, scratching a line in the dirt with my shoe. “He’s kind of bad at that.”

“He is, and he did. Not that he owes me a thank you for the act of not being a scumbag. You don’t, either.”

I looked up again and smiled. “Well, thank you, anyway. For, you know, it all.” I bit my lip again, then went for it. “And, Max?”

“Yeah?”

“If we get out of here—if we get out of here, I… I need your help with something else. Someone else. My brother. He?—”

He held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I know where he is.”

I gaped. “You do? How ?”

He shrugged. “Same reason I know everything else I know. I find out.”

“Where is he?” I asked in the smallest voice I could muster.

“He—”

“No,” I blurted out. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to know. Not yet. I’m barely keeping my anxiety in check long enough to do this .”

“Fine,” he said with a half-smile. “One at a time, right?”

I tried to give him a half-smile back. “One at a time.”

He nodded and turned. The implication was, this isn’t goodbye . I didn’t believe him, but even if it was, I’d come to understand that goodbyes weren’t always the end.

Max started down one of the paths leading up to one of the terraces.

I watched until his light disappeared, then took a deep breath and started down another narrow path angled downward, trying to catalog every marker I saw.

The first marker had about 90 percent pyrite veins.

The next one had about 80 percent. If I kept following, maybe I could find my way back, at least…

but these things were twenty years old. How much could I really trust them?

Meanwhile, the disconcertingly cool air carried the scent of copper, earth, blood, greed, and of the lives lost to all of them.

It was hard not to sense a lingering presence here.

Something worse than thugs with high-powered rifles aimed directly at my hippocampus.

Something that seemed to stain the very molecules I breathed in and out and make the shadows cling to me so tightly I couldn’t shake them.

I didn’t believe in ghosts, though—well, no, that was a lie. I absolutely did.

I was still shivering, but a drop of sweat trickled from my brow, stinging my eye, blurring my vision.

I blinked it away, wishing the temperature would make up its mind.

Not to mention, I should have set a timer on my phone.

How was I supposed to keep track of when to turn back, and—well, shit.

I was failing at this spectacularly already, and I wasn’t even dead yet.

I won’t die and neither will he, nor you.

Really? I was relying on Max, someone I’d only definitively decided wasn’t evil a couple of days ago, to ensure that?

Not like I had a choice.

A glint of metal caught my eye. A rusted cart, its wheels locked eternally.

Beside it, a pickaxe, handle splintered, head tarnished.

I ran a finger along the edge. Had some slave once picked up this thing and turned it on their overseers?

Made a run for it only to die because, as had been repeatedly impressed upon me, none of them ever made it out of the mines alive?

A crossroads veered downward, below a rise.

I hesitated, then chose the left route, where the air grew heavier, striving to pay attention to how the wind and the markers changed.

Up here, though, half of them appeared to have been kicked or blown aside.

Even more troublingly, the light seemed to be dimming.

My mind was working overtime now, spinning scenarios straight out of a campy horror flick.

Discarded corpses, husks of souls? Faceless, undead monsters, flesh rotting and peeling, out for revenge?

It was your fault too, they’d screech, dragging me off to hell, and they’d be right.

In the face of that, a bullet to the head sounded downright charitable.

Besides, as grim as all my cartoonish, imaginary horrors were, chances are whatever real threat Resi had dreamed up was even worse. And that definitely made me feel better.

A sudden clatter and a rush of air, and I whirled around, heart pounding.

Nothing.

Trying to distract myself, I swept my flashlight along the rough-hewn walls, tracing faded markings.

Symbols of warning, of depth, of danger.

A couple of blue copper agates caught my eye, arranged in a carved-out section of the wall.

On the other side, a red deposit. An arrow, maybe, if I squinted. Warning or direction? And to what?

A flicker of movement drew my gaze upward.

Something swooped down from a far-up perch, screeching.

I flinched back with a gasp, nearly dropping my gun, my weak, sweat-slicked fingers fumbling buffoonishly on the trigger.

As my heart raced, another dark shape emerged, then another, tiny little black missiles seemingly aiming at my head.

Bats. Harmless bats.

I stumbled on farther, heart hammering against my ribs.

A sharp stone jabbed into my palm as I caught myself on the wall, but I barely noticed the sting.

I had to keep moving, to remember the dizzying array of ores and deposits and arrows and indicators, of everything that might mean something.

My eyes darted frantically around the bifurcated passage I’d landed in—not so much a tunnel, more of a ledge shooting off in two different directions. Choose, the ghosts whispered.

From the left passage, a sudden rush of cool air clawed at me, and I crept forward onto the narrow ledge, the echoes of the bats’ screeching still ringing in my ears.

And when it finally stopped, I heard footsteps. Not ghosts. Real, human footsteps. Real danger.

I couldn’t turn back, so I had to choose.

And a minute later, I found myself greeted, predictably, by a body like a wall and a bag over my head.

Not again .

But this time, I had a good grip on the gun.