Where they eat.

We walk into the light through a blown out section of wall. It looks like they demolished it to break from these tunnels into another section. The area here is wide open, like a large basement, which makes me wonder where exactly we’ve walked to. Without any landmarks from up top to guide me, I’m completely lost. The walls are exposed brick and broken plaster, but as we move through this open space, the eyes of more cannibals watching us curiously from unlit corners, I see wood support beams. We come into a narrower passage, almost like a hallway, and I pass a window frame looking through into another large room.

“Where are we?” I whisper despite myself.

“It looks like an underground city,” Ryan mumbles behind me.

“Since when is there an underground city in Seattle?”

“Since 1889,” the man ahead of me answers without turning.

We pass by a pristine brick archway leading into a small, well-lit room with a burning fireplace and three beds pressed against the walls.

“That used to be part of a bank in the 1800s. This was all ground level back then.”

“How did it end up underground?” Trent asks curiously.

I glance back to find his eyes scouring the walls, taking in every detail. His hand brushes along a wall to feel the wood of a door frame, the brick of a pillar. It’s a new, strange mystery and my robot is deeply, passionately in love.

“There was a fire. Thirty-one blocks of this area were destroyed. When they started to rebuild they decided to re-grade the streets in this area, since they were built on tidelands and were constantly flooded. The roads were raised twelve feet. In some places they went up thirty. What was street level in a building became basement or underground, where we are now. There were skylights like these,” he points to a metal mesh of squares in the ceiling, some of them still housing small, cracked cubes, “up to the ground level to let in natural light. The entire underground was shut down in 1907 when people panicked over the bubonic plague. Most of it was condemned or absorbed into building basements and shut off. This is the last of what’s left.”

“And this is where you live? All of you?” Ryan asks.

The guy half turns his head to look back at us, his face pure shadow. “Tour’s over,” he says, his voice losing its friendly tone. “We’re almost there.”

They take us down a long, narrow alley—with more broken down storefronts that lead into bedrooms lining the left side, and high crumbling walls lining the right—before turning sharply into one of the rooms. Inside is another wood-burning fireplace carved into the wall, venting somewhere above ground in the cold night air. There’s a round wooden table, a couple of mismatched chairs around it, and three men standing in a corner talking heatedly. They pause when we enter, all eyes falling immediately on me, Ryan, and Trent.

A guy just barely my height steps forward, making me want to step back. There’s a shine to his eyes. It’s unnatural and strange. Foreign in the wild.

It’s hope.

“Is this them?” he asks, his tone hushed.

“We think it might be,” our tour guide answers noncommittally.

“Where’s Andy?”

“I’m here.”

There’s shuffling in the hall as a man pushes through the people guarding us. He’s tall, his complexion darker than most of the pale, white skin I’ve seen down here so far. He strides into the room, scanning everyone inside and taking inventory. The move reminds me of Trent.

“Well?” the short man asks him anxiously.

His eyes meet mine, staying there for longer than I like. But as I look at him I start to wonder if I don’t recognize him. It’s too dark in here to be sure, but I swear I’ve seen him before.

“It’s them,” he says, his voice deep and firm.

Well, all right, he apparently knows us.

“Wonderful,” Shorty says happily.

The guy walks farther into the room to stand beside Shorty. His eyes stay with me the entire time. His stare is starting to make me uncomfortable but I don’t dare look away. I’m an animal from the jungle. I can play the staring game all day long.

“This is perfect,” the short man says to himself, clasping his hands together and smiling. “I’m so glad to finally meet you all.”

“Do we know you?” Ryan asks, his voice uncharacteristically cold.

“Not yet, but we have so much to talk about. We’ll know each other very well soon enough.”

My lips curl back in disgust. “We have nothing to talk about with you.”

The short guy flinches. His teeth flash, and it may be a trick of the light but they look shadowed and sharp.

He steps toward me. The room shifts with him. Shadows build, growing too tall beside him, an army of darkness waiting to answer his call. A cavalry of devils.

“Oh, my dear girl,” he says, his voice going hushed, taking the entire room with it. Everything is pinpointed down to this small man with the quiet voice and the dangerous gleam in his eyes. “I believe you’re wrong. We share the same dream.”

“I really doubt that.”

“You’re wrong.”

“What dream could we ever have in common?”

He grins darkly. “Revolution.”

Chapter Three

I’m sitting down to dinner with a table full of cannibals.

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke—one that ends with something about passing the salt and then everybody laughs, only I’m not laughing. I’m also not eating, definitely not anything of the meaty, protein-packing variety. I wouldn’t even trust a glass of milk, and I. Love. Milk. Love it. The Colonists almost had me selling my soul to them for it. But with the Colonists, believe it or not, I trusted the source more than I do here.

These people will eat your toes while you watch, so it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that the milk on this table came from a person, and while that’s fine for babies, there’s something very sickening about the thought of it now.

“Please, dig in,” Shorty says from his seat at the head of the long rectangular dining table.

Shorty’s name is Elijah. I should probably start thinking of him as that, but I feel like names humanize these lunatics and I don’t want to soften my image of them. They’re polite, more hospitable than my mom on Thanksgiving, but I don’t like it. It’s creepy. Creepier than if they came at me covered in living human blood with bits of warm tissue dribbling from their lips. This right here, this is like Halloween in reverse. This is monsters and ghouls dressed up as preachers and soccer moms.

We’ve been joined by a couple of new people, but I can tell by the seating that the important ones are Andy and Elijah. Andy seems to have almost a celebrity status with the rest of the group. People smile at him, clap him on the shoulder; the few women I’ve seen look at him a little too long. He’s a decent enough looking guy from what I can tell in this light, but good looks and a charming smile can’t account for the reaction people have to him. It doesn’t explain why Elijah has him sitting directly to his right at the table.

Elijah smiles patiently at us. “You’re not eating.”

“I’m not hungry,” I tell him dryly.

“You’re not hungry or you’re not hungry for what we have to offer?”

“Does it matter?” Ryan asks from across the table.

“Quite a bit.”

I push my plate away slowly. “I’ve never been hungry enough for what you call food.”

Elijah’s smile changes. He holds it steady but the tightness around his eyes makes it different. It makes it angry.

“Waste not, want not,” he sings softly.

I shiver down to my toes.

“What did you mean by us sharing a dream?” Trent asks, his curiosity knowing no disturbing crimes-against-nature bounds.

“We want what you want: freedom from the Colonies.”

“How are the Colonies even a concern for you?” I ask.