The Darkness in the Light

Chapter Eleven

When I opened my eyes again I was kneeling next to Jax, our arms around each other. I took a deep breath and pulled him closer, resting my head on his shoulder.

"Thank you," I murmured. He didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then I pulled back and got to my feet, helping him up. Instead of letting go he pulled me close again. I felt the warmth between us travel through my body. Carefully I took what I had just learnt and bundled it into a tiny handful before shoving it into a box deep within my mind. I would unpack it later when I was calm and relaxed. Which wasn't right now.

Looking around, I recognised the piles of black clothes as his bedroom.

"What do you want to do?" Jax asked.

"I don't know. I don't know what to think, and I don't know if there's anything I can do. I just want a distraction, I think."

"Distraction it is then. Do you want to go find Gemma?"

"Yeah, I think so."

He nodded, holding out his hand. I just looked at it.

"Do you ever just walk somewhere?" I asked.

"Sometimes. But I'll show you why I don't usually walk from here."

He dropped his hand and walked out the door, and I trailed behind him. We went into the dark hallway, the same as it was outside Gemma's room and my own room in the one instance I'd been there. The only difference between here and Gemma's rooms were that all the lights were out.

"Why are lights on in some places and not in others?" I asked.

"To save electricity. I keep the lights in the inhabited hallways on a motion sensor, but up here they're just permanently off. I'm the only one that comes here, and I don't need them."

I guess I didn't either, it seemed. We walked down the hallway, and eventually it opened out to a little living room with benches and seats spread throughout the place. Opposite the hall was an opening to two large staircases: one heading up, one heading down. Across the seating area was a set of double doors that Jax approached and threw open.

We came out onto a balcony far above the markets that were bustling below. Jax leant on the rail, and I stood next to him.

"When I first built this place, it was just me. What was happening above was crazy, like an apocalypse I'd never seen coming. I started clearing out all the caves with a mix of manual labour and darkness. Then the other monsters started being driven further into the tunnels, and they started to try and make their home here. So I blocked it all off, and soon one thing led to another, and I started to have a vision for this place."

His gaze was out over the people below us, and for the first time since I'd met him he seemed a lot older than he looked. His eyes were sad, reliving the world he'd lost long ago, and the changes he'd made to try and get a piece of that world back. He took a breath and continued his explanation.

"I wanted it to be a safe haven, a glimpse of the way the world used to be. I think it's the way I held onto the past. But I don't think the world will ever return to what it once was. I couldn't replicate my old world, so it became Rewes instead. I stumbled across my first victim, rescuing them from another monster in the sewers. Then somehow more and more people needing saving from the world above, and I found myself becoming the monster in the drains."

"What was it like?" I asked, "The old world, I mean."

"I was only young, maybe fourteen, if that. It was amazing, but I never thought any different at the time. I didn't cherish it enough. It wasn't perfect, there was pollution and corruption and taxes much like now. But people walked the streets without fear constantly dictating their lives, and regardless of their age or gender. Mothers would take their children, all their children, to the shops or to the park while the men worked, it was never the men doing everything while the females stayed home. Many women even worked themselves, and lots of households shared duties between the mother and the father, taking turns working and staying home with the kids. Some families even sent their kids to stay with strangers. There were groups of people whose job was to care for larger groups of kids while both parents or single parents worked."