Sleep doesn’t come easy to those who wait with bated breath, and in The Hole all breath was held and then sputtered pitifully before disaster.

  Ricket, in the restless vice of nightmares unbidden, thrashes now from side to side. His breathing is quick, and his dark braids cling to clammy russet skin. Beneath the lids of his eyes, the dreams that ensnare him twitch against the thin flesh.

  “Hey—” A voice cuts through the darkness but doesn’t reach him there writhing in the sheets. “Ricket.” Sterner now, edging through the seams of subconscious.

  Water. Hands breaking the surface — not his. Smaller. Paler. A voice like thunder but soft as sleep: “Echo. Echo. Echo.”

  It sticks under his nails like dirt. There’s blood in his throat, in his ears, and in his eyes.

  In the soft lowlight pooling in from the loading platform, Rivin comes to kneel besides the stacked cot of the tearful child stuck in the throes of dreams that seem too real and too vivid. The tram lies on its side like a dead beast, gutted and rebuilt into bunks.

  Every inch of wall is claimed by graffiti that’s crawling up the panels. Rust has been patched with stickers and the faint stain of handprints that will never wash away. The room is thick with the scent of metal, sweat, and feet. It’s as much of a swamp as the world bleeding along outside.

  “C-can’t forgive, won’t—won’t—” Ricket continues to thrash, murmuring feverishly. “Nonono—it won’t forget—it-it-it—”

  “Damn it, Ricket.” It comes out sharp, but the hands that accompany it don’t match the bite in his voice. They’re steady when they grip the boy’s shoulders and careful when they shake him awake. “Wake up!”

  Ricket jerks up with a gasp, eyes snapping wide open and chest heaving like he’s just broken water—just caught breath after drowning. For a moment, his arms flail like he’s still fighting a current or something ghastly in the dark.

  Rivin catches them to pull the younger boy in, pinning him to a heartbeat that tethers him like an anchor. “Easy,” he mutters into damp braids. “You’re awake. It’s over.”

  But it isn’t over. The dream still has its claws in him, and so Ricket whimpers, trembling fingers curling into fabric and stomach churning with the leftovers of grief still hot on his tongue. “You were just dreaming,” Rivin murmurs.

  “I-It never feels like a dream…” Ricket whimpers into his fist. After a long moment and only once Rivin feels the tremors in the boy's thin frame begin to soften does he drop his arms back to his side. “Did I wake you?” he asks through sniffles.

  Rivin shakes his head. “Couldn’t sleep. No use now.” He pulls the blanket back over the boy’s knees, and his gaze flicks around the bay as if taking inventory. There’s Mouse’s corner cluttered with dresses, disguises and face paint. Slink’s mattress was singed at the edges and stained with neon and grease. Chip’s cot—too neat and tucked away, like he’s still trying to force some order back into the world.

  “There’s breakfast ready if you want it.” Rivin’s rising to his feet now, not looking back over his shoulder.

  Ricket nods his head quickly, nearly tripping up over the sheets as he scrambles to stand and follow the eldest out and onto the platform, dragging the fabric after him like a shawl. Rivin doesn’t say anything further; he simply returns to a chair, already askew from the table, where a mug with something steaming awaits. There’s cut bread on the counter, freshly squeezed orange juice, and warm porridge simmering on the stove.

  “Eat.”.

  Ricket quickly fills a bowl and watches the steam swirl up and into the damp air. He fills a glass of juice, grabs a slice of unbuttered bread and sets himself at the table. The platform feels too big whenever it’s just the two of them. Big enough to drown him. He feels bashful now, mindlessly stirring his breakfast so that the metal sings against the ceramic.

  Rivin appears to be focused on his own mug but glances over the rim. “Want to talk about it?” He doesn’t usually ask about Ricket’s silly little dreams or his fragile nightmares. But his brow is quirked, and his eyes are silver moons that spotlight the boy across from him.

  Ricket also doesn’t like to tell, for sometimes his dreams were beyond him—terrifying in ways he could not comprehend at only eleven years old. Ways that felt as complicated—to him—as loving someone that didn’t exist yet and losing them to slaughter each and every night.

  Skin sloughing off bone. Blood spitting through teeth. A crimson smirk he can’t blink away.

  Ricket flinches at the echoes still clinging to his skull, now glaring hard at the sludge in his bowl. It’s tasteless. Which is to say, better than Chip’s cooking.

  “I’m already forgetting.” He sits a little straighter after a moment and decides to let the pressure escape by sharing. “I can’t make sense of it. It’s mostly blood, sometimes. Y-You were there. Your head was bleeding. But it wasn’t yours?” He both sounds and looks far too small as he brings his knees to his chest, toes resting over the edge of the seat. “Sometimes it’s just colour—or light.” He looks up. “Do you dream, Riv?”

  The older boy flits steely eyes away. “Sometimes.”

  Ricket nods his head. He reads between the lines. “Your mother?” Steel glare snaps back twice as sharp — shock intermingled with flickers of agony unprompted. Ricket rushes to pacify, tightening his grip on the ladle. “You—you talk in your sleep…” He lies. Won’t admit that he’s seen her in the folds of his eyelids, felt her brush back dark hair with cool fingers, seen the flash of a scab eating away at her cheek. He won't admit it was a guess wrapped in dream weaving.

  “Ayo, early birds~” Slink whistles under the doorway, floating in towards the offerings on the bench. “Ohoho, aren’t we spoiled this morning? All the food groups? Wow. Just wow.” Slink fills a cup and slurps it down to the bottom. His lips are rimmed with pulp by the time he lowers the glass. “Last supper, sire?” He’s biting into bread now.

  Rivin is grateful for the interruption. “Last rations. So lap those crumbs off the floor.”

  Slink only waves the bread like a sceptre, “Heard you dreaming, Ket.” Ricket slumps further in his chair. “Write that shit down; I’m getting invested.”

  “You’re SO loud!” Mouse groans, stomping into the room and still dressed for bed, her dark blonde curls aloft and wild around her head, and she’s draped in the sequinned shawl she’d bartered all her best trinkets for.

  Chip follows closely behind her, wearing a ratty cotton blanket like a cape around his shoulders and yawning through a tender smile. “Good mornin’,” he salutes with two fingers, blinking away sleep.

  “Good,” Rivin sounds sarcastic. “You’re all awake.”

  “How could we sleep with knucklehead over there crying bloody murder?” Mouse huffs, feigning irritation; she rolls a cramp out of her wrist before helping herself to breakfast, passing Chip a full glass he immediately downs.

  “Seriously, Ricket. Not exactly the mood-setter I wanted this morning,” Chip follows up.

  “It’s not his fault he dreams—constantly—of our grisly demise,” Slink snickers.

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t inspire good faith.”

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  “Lalala, eat your porridge.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ricket can only murmur in response, bashfully scratching the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “…Anything useful?”

  “Don’t make it worse, Slink.” Rivin scolds.

  The sound of children spilling into the waking hours returns to the platform as the crew fill their bellies and wet their parched lips. Rivin hears the dishes clink in the sink; the sound of metal has him to his feet, and shortly thereafter they all begin their morning rituals and make their way deeper into the old transit hub and into The Pit, the lowest part of The Hole.

  The air grows thicker with damp and oil; water pools in puddles from overflowing buckets. “Slink, this place is a cesspit.” Rivin pinches his nose, glaring at the untamed moss on the walls, much of it scorched. Slink only merrily sorts through a pile of scavenged gear and repaired traps combined, snorting, “It adds to the aesthetic!”

  “What’s aesthetic?” Ricket pipes in from the doorway.

  “Like the whole—” Slink waves his arms around, gesturing towards the scrapyard. “Wait, do you mean the word?” Ricket nods. “Uh, well—it means... this!” He gestures to the room once more, beaming.

  “Cesspit.” Rivin reaffirms.

  Mouse giggles from the corner, and it sounds like sunlight in such wet darkness, her gloved fingers already reaching for the shelf lined with sticker-heavy bombs before Slink quickly bats her away. “Don’t touch Daisy. Or Petunia. They’re moody today,” he warns and then quickly shoves three explosives into the pack presently hanging off his hip.

  “Pack light,” reminds Rivin.

  “Light? This is light!”

  The dark-haired teen can only sigh as he turns towards his own gear space—military neat with blades lined up on a scrap-metal table, most in various stages of a deep clean. He reaches for a gleaming Halidom long blade, the ichor hilt thrumming beneath his fingers; at the centre cracks a static electricity that doesn’t volt the length of the edge, the charge dying too quickly. That’s okay; it’s not necessary when it gleams so sharply.

  “You’re not going to sharpen it again, are you?” Mouse teases, shuffling her shoulder into Rivin’s as she dons a velvet scarf and sheathes a Halidom dagger into the belt on her waist. She’s etched a fake scar onto her cheek, grinning through moss green eyes freshly rimmed with black liner. “Do I look dangerous?”

  “You look ridiculous.” She only giggles again.

  In the opposing corner, where Halidom tech is stacked on shelves, half-disassembled like corpses awaiting autopsy, Chip drops a magazine and scrambles to pick it up, apologising to the wet walls in earnest. He checks and re-checks the same gun several times, muttering. “Bolts clean…”

  “You should marry that thing,” Slink muses, and Chip blushes to the tips of his ears.

  “She’s reliable.”

  “As if you’re one to talk, Slink,” Ricket huffs before barely dodging a full bucket catching a leak on the crag. His shirt is inside out, and his socks don’t match beneath his cargo shorts. He’s forgotten his weapon—a steel bat wrapped in barbed wire—on the counter three times since he’s left and returned.

  Slink yowls when a barb catches his fingers blindly reaching amongst the clutter, shooting daggers at the braided boy who only grins unapologetically but also with sudden recognition. “Oh, right,” Ricket chuckles, finally grasping the grip and swinging it between his fingers—it spins and lands in a puddle.

  “Your shirt is inside out.” Comments Mouse.

  “It is?” Ricket looks down, catches the seams and momentarily deflates before bristling back up again. “Bad luck to change it back.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Eh, why risk it?” Says Slink, finally lacing up his boots.

  Rivin glances down at the Halidom watch now bound around his left wrist, the face still cracked down the centre — time was mostly useless in the Lowrealm, but it provided structure in this place where all space felt liminal.

  “We should head out soon. They’ll be switching patrols in the Spine within the hour; don’t want to be spotted.” The bustle of the children had settled now as the nervous excitement dissipated into something much heavier. Something that lapped at the back of their necks like swampy breath. “Quick and quiet. We get out of this.” Rivin echoes the night before, tightening his fingers into tense fists.

  Two hours since the nightmares, they begin their way back through to the ticketing station. Slink sets the shoddy defence system of tripwires and traps as they leave, and Chip helps him bolt the door. They can see the neon of flashing lights in the distance, and for a moment in the lull and the loom of adventure and disaster alike, they all hold their breaths, all stare up at the waiting and superficial night sky, and bask in the closeness of home before it’s left behind.

  Before everything changes.

  “You think we’ll all come home, Riv?” Ricket asks, fumbling for the older boy’s hand. Rivin almost twitches away, features already twisting into a scowl that dies before it can bloom to completion. He squeezes small gloved fingers.

  “Don’t be stupid, Ricket.” He doesn’t answer. Not really. Soon enough, they peel like shadows given wings, slinking through the debris and ruin of centuries piled atop themselves. They keep to the outskirts of the vendor strip, sinking low whenever Seraph blue catches their gaze.

  When the Spine thins into a no-man’s strip of narrow land, they come upon stalls turned to shuttered shacks and signs that have long since lost their colour. Graffiti has taken over—scrawled with shaking hands.

  ‘THE SAINTS SWALLOW SIN’, one wall blares in tar-thick lettering.

  Beneath it, bone charms dangle from a nail — teeth and half-melted doll heads threaded onto fishing line. Chip notices a prayer box tucked into the dark — rusted tins nailed to walls and stuffed with scripture scraps written in soot and something else that looks like blood but he hopes is mud.

  They even pass the Staircase of Mercy, where fatigued Seraph guards wait to be relieved. The staircase itself wasn’t built for grace — it was built to remind them that they were beneath something.

  There’s a rust-streaked plaque above the arch that says, ‘MERCY FLOWS DOWN.’ Half-devoured by rust.

  The first step is wide stone, pitted and smoothed by boots over aeons; then comes iron, bolted in layers where the Second Collapse chewed holes into the original stairwell. The ascent spirals the outer wall of a freight shaft so high it swallows sound, the darkness above lit only by rings of harsh white lamps — every twenty steps, another circle, like an eye staring through.

  Beyond them and the throat to Halidom was the world above.

  “Stairs of mercy, my ass,” Chip mutters to himself, and Rivin hushes him fast, for Seraphs hear everything.

  The children don’t slow as they splice by, merely keeping their footfalls quick and quiet.

  The air changes as they walk. Thin and sharp at the top and then thick and damp by the time they reach a clearing. Rust stains run like dried blood down the walls, mingling with old graffiti scratched in with nails. Some of the graffiti is scratched over old Halidom propaganda — a poster defaced with black writing that reads:

  ‘MERCY LIED’.

  Slink cracks a glowstick when the darkness continues to swell and they descend deeper into unknown territory over hours, following the map Rivin had memorised the night before, the ink nearly etched into his lids.

  The air grows warmer and drier, and lips begin to stick to teeth. Their shadows pass a Drowner shrine nearly completely eaten by moss — an oil drum filled with murky water, where fish bones and stringy weeds are tied to a pole. He inspects a jar with a tiny fish skeleton floating in oil, brow arched.

  “They say the Drowners leave those to mark safe water,” Chip whispers.

  Slink snickers before kicking the jar aside; it skirts the pathway before toppling into shadow. “Safe for whom?”

  Mouse is already sipping a bottle of water, using the end of her scarf to dab at her damp forehead. “How much longer?” she pants.

  “We’re close,” it’s Ricket who answers, although he shouldn’t know.

  “Not long now. We can rest once we reach the tunnels,” Rivin adds.

  There are old, half-burnt chalk sigils scratched into metal, more and more common the further they descend into the Lowrealm.

  “What’s that?” Slink asks, holding up his palm. They all strain to hear. Whistling. Howling. Wind through tunnels that sounds more like a wail in the dark.

  The children slow their paces as they come upon an opening in the ruin — stacks of several tunnels of varying sizes splintered through a stony, collapsed wall. Water leaks out of several. Algae and lichen hug the stones of a small brook held deep within the earth. Whisperslugs undulate across the ceiling, and as they move, they leave their bioluminescent slime in their wake, humming softly from the ceiling, secrets cooed into shadow.

  “If it squeaks…” One glows faintly with the ripple of a human voice.

  “Mercy trickles… down.” Another chime.

  “Don’t tru… st it.”

  “Eerie,” Slink decides, shoving his fists into his pockets.

  “You’ve got ten minutes to catch your breath,” Rivin informs them, pausing to pull the map from his pack, eager to inspect it once more (although his memory has not yet failed him).

  “Ten minutes?!” Whines Chip, shaking the mounting ache from his legs with little success.

  “He means fifteen.”

  “Now you have five.”

  Up closer, the song of the pipes is harrowing and sad, which makes little sense when it comes to pipes. Rivin notices some more notching on the wall — a single line of graffiti sprayed onto dripping stone, colour weeping stubbornly over divots.

  ROACH WAS HERE — big and bold despite the drip. Rivin doesn’t sit for long, and soon enough he’s ushering them to their feet again, hounding them towards the tunnels. Slink spies a bolt in the pipe that looks too freshly welded to match the others, and his fingers gloss over it curiously.

  Ricket is hesitant, voice quivering when they step into the largest of the mouths. “Have we been here before?”

  Rivin shakes his head. Everything is alien. The walls are wet and soft with swamp. “Never.”

  The tunnel breathes — condensation drips, wind sighs like an old throat clearing, and Ricket mutters again to the drip, “Feels like we shouldn’t be here.”

  “We shouldn’t.” Rivin steps ahead. “So, let’s get this over with.”