Heart Glass

Part 6

Raid removed his mask, holding his breath as he wiped sweat off his face. His muscles throbbed from swinging that pick at the rock wall for two hours with little stopping. He could go on for another ten, as he had many times before. Gaib stood beside him, as always, panting. He was new—only two months in. He couldn't last very long before needing to stop.
"I wish I could take off this suit and not have to mine with it. It traps all the heat," Gaib mumbled.
Raid empathized with him in every way—he hated the suits. But he didn't want to die. He certainly hadn't reached the point of other miners who had taken their suits off while mining on purpose.
"Keep it on. It's the only reason you're still alive," Raid said after pulling the mask back on. "Maybe when you're older, you can invent air conditioned suits, get rich, pay for removal of your triangle, and move to the Shine." He chuckled—because it was practically impossible, despite how much he wanted that for Gaib. It was secretly everyone's dream in these mines. It had happened a few times to the first generation of Wrecks—Raid's father had told him stories about his grandmother's discovery of coriglass' many uses. How she'd enhanced coriglass into touch-sensitive material that sent signals of information and stored it—and in this way could be used to make anything from tablets to office buildings to new limbs for amputees. She became incredibly wealthy and was temporarily restored to her citizenship rights,which she'd longed for since the country had been conquered and everything had changed. It didn't last very long, though, and she was sentenced to death for doing something King Horace found threatening, while the rest of her family—Raid's father Nicholas and grandfather Marcus—was shipped back to Beta, doomed to mine until the end of their days.
Raid remembered his plan and his left side throbbed all over again. He felt like an amputee sometimes. His coriglass scar that ran from just below his ribs to the edge of his thigh wasn't meant to be painful sixteen years into his life—his father had explained to him once that they were psychological, like phantom pains. Raid just wasn't sure what it was he was missing.
Gaib looked at him, smiling like he'd just thought of something funny (or random, as he was in that premature stage of comedy, and it sometimes took Raid everything not to throttle him) and caught the grimace that came with the pain.
"Hey. You've been going pretty fast. Maybe you should take a break."
"I'm fine, Gaib."
"I saw it that time, I know I did. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Raid snapped.
"Fine, fine!" Gaib sighed and kept hurling the pick at the earth.
Raid looked around for Knights. He hadn't seen one in ages—he suspected they'd left to eat lunch earlier than they were supposed to, shirking their duties, as it was common for them to do. Raid didn't blame them. He'd probably hate watching miners as much as doing the actual mining. Ah, no, never mind.
It was now or never.
"Sweet. Nice Dia vein, here." Gaib scrutinized the shiny material blanketed by dirt and other forms of rock growing on it like a mold. Those who'd never mined Dia would barely recognize it as the raw material for the fabulous, stunning coriglass, though it still sparkled a bit. "Oh, darn—there's simply too much Dia here for me to mine, today. Want some for your quota, Raid?" He flashed another bright smile in Raid's direction.
Raid wasn't sure what to do with Gaib's puppies and rainbows disposition sometimes. He smiled back. "Thanks, Gaib, but..." He slipped on his Bladers. "I'm taking off."
"Oh! Off to the Knight's camp for water again?"
"Not this time, buddy." Raid watched Gaib's face turn pale.
"You're really going to the Shine?"
Raid nodded. "I have to find some sort of cure for my dad. Would you take care of him for me?"
Gaib pressed his lips together. "I...I...what if..."
"Just make sure he eats and drinks. Or, at least drinks. The water I got yesterday should last until I get back. Keep the Knights away from him."
"I will," Gaib said, his baby face showing fierce determination. Raid sighed. He was doomed.
"I'll try to be back on time," Raid swung his bag onto his shoulders and turned around. He took a single step, which pushed him thirty feet. He zipped down the tunnel, bright coriglass lights shining on his path. Leaving for the Shine was a stupid, stupid idea...but he wasn't the only one with stupid ideas.
Deep into the tunnel, one coriglass light didn't function. Miners rarely went this far—four miles down from the regular area, where the poisonous natural gas was thicker and the Dia was fewer.
Unless they were part of the Corignis.
Raid stopped at the broken light, his Bladers humming and lightly vibrating, like a hover car ready to accelerate to thrice its speed down the skyline. He was grateful they had held on so long with a pittance of sputtering. He stepped inside the hole, ducking his head.
Something tackled him.
"Wait! Agh--" Something shoved him against a wall in the darkness. Hot pain flared in his chest. He shouted, muffled against the rocky cave wall.
"Stop!" The huge body was torn off of him and he heard grunting and expletives.
"You are supposed to wait until my cue, you fool!"
Raid's heart leaped to his throat. A Shiner accent! What was a Shiner doing in the Corignis headquarters? Had the headquarters been moved--or worse--exploited?
He scrambled to his feet and tried to escape out the dimly lit hole he'd come through.
"Stones! I'm sorry--I just--nowin really comes out this way--'cept Knights--'Ey! Come back!"
A huge hand grabbed Raid's shoulder. "Wait, please. We cannot let you leave like this."
Raid was confused at this point, because he'd never heard a Shiner accent so laced with...kindness. Although, that same voice had been chastising some Wreck a moment before.
"What?" Raid squinted at whoever was grabbing him in the darkness. He'd be eliminated for wandering so far without even having his tools, plus he had contraband bladers...
His bladers.
He lifted his foot and turned the air pressure on maximum with a turn of a knob. The bladers shook and he instantly shot to the ceiling, raising his hands above his head to stop himself.
"Whoa!" the two men shouted.
"I'm looking for the Corignis!" Raid shouted. "Are you a part of them?"
"Kid! You're gonna get hurt!" The Wreck voice came again. His accent was so thick that even Raid heard it.
"Please! Come down!" the Shiner voice begged. "We are the Corignis. I am a Scout of the Corignis--and this gentleman, Ordan, is a Warrior of the Corignis. I do apologize for his rudeness!"
Raid clenched his teeth. They sounded like they were telling the truth...but that Shiner accent...
"Show yourselves," he said with the hardest voice he could summon.
"The torch, Ordan."
"You took it."
"I did not--oh, I did! I shall light it, then."
A click echoed around the cave. Raid blinked against the light, urging his eyes to adjust and quickly analyze the two men, whose dark hair was flying from the air pressure from his bladers. One of them was huge and stout, the other was lean and tall. Neither of them wore the coriglass armor typical of Knights, but black leather clothing. They carried old fashioned pistols that Raid had only ever seen once or twice in Beta's forbidden contraband bazaars.
The tall one opened his mouth and Raid knew instantly he was the Shiner. His teeth were bright white and glittering with the latest Shine fashion: coriglass enamel. His ivories were flashy and fascinating, especially when compared to the Beta's elderly with their rotting, yellow teeth, but freaky considering that Raid might have mined the very Dia inside his mouth.
"You may call me Cork," the Shiner said with an elegant diction that almost distracted Raid from how antithetic the name was. "Do come down so that we may discuss your presence in this cave like gentlemen."
No Shiner had ever spoken like that to Raid. He pondered how to carefully lower the pressure on his Bladers without falling to his death on the rocky ground below. Then he heard wheezing coughs come from his Bladers.
His stomach dropped like a bomb.
"Stones!" he gasped as he reached for the knob on his bladers, but they sputtered again and again and he fell two feet.
"Kid!" Both men bellowed.
Raid looked around for something--anything--to grab, but while reaching towards the wall, pain flared in his chest and he winced his hands back, hugging himself with a strangled groan. The Bladers sputtered again, and this time fell like a boulder, straight to the ground. He braced himself and covered his face.
He landed sooner than expected, in a pair of arms he inferred were much more comfortable than a stony cave floor. His torso throbbed with pain again and again. He opened his eyes a tiny bit and found that a blurry Wreck, Ordan, had caught him.
"You okay, kid?"
Raid grimaced. "You broke my ribs earlier."
The feeling was all too familiar, and not a bit less crappy. Memories flashed through his mind of the times when the Knights had gotten sick of their job and decided to take it out on him. He remembered with sharp clarity the horrified, pained expression on his father's face when he'd found Raid later.
Raid's vision swam, but he could swear he saw a faint echo of his father's concern on Cork's face as he scrambled over to him. The Shiner.
"Oh! We've gotta bring him to the medics." Ordan made a face like a giant pouty dog. "I'm sorry."
"Please resist blubbering, Ordan." Cork turned around, navigating the rocky path in the cave with a single glance, his coriglass torch in hand. "Hasten!"
Raid quickly got off of Ordan, muttering his thanks and half-running after Cork, pain shuddering through him every time he took a breath. Ordan tromped behind them.
"Kid!"
"Wait! I didn't come here to get my ribs broken. I came here to see if I can use the Corignis tunnels to go to the Shine."
Cork turned to analyze him with a raised eyebrow. "Do you bear a death wish?"
"I know it's risky. But my father is sick, and I need a Shiner doctor to heal him. He'll be dead in days."
Ordan stepped up to his side. "Hasn't the Corignis come to help? We usually find sick people and help 'em."
"They tried. It's Wreck Fever."
"Ah," Cork closed his eyes. "We will see whether Commander Noble will let you complete a task so dangerous. He may simply send men into the city for you. This is not the first time someone has come to us for help with Wreck Fever."
"I don't want your help, Shiner. Just your permission, and I'm not even sure I want that. It's not like you own these tunnels," Raid said.
"Well, no, not me," Cork said. "But Commander Noble does." He continued down the jagged path. "But a word of advice, young man. I am not the only Shiner here, nor is Ordan the only Wreck. I would try to drop the labels. Not all of them are as forgiving as us."