Pain reverberated up 0087’s arms as the tip of his pickaxe struck a hard vein of stone. He dropped to his knees and pulled at the loose rocks with cracked and dirty fingers. Desperately hoping it was a piece of Gravitrum ore, he wrapped his fingers around the hard stone and pulled it free.
In less than six months, he’d lost the bearing of an ecological warrior willing to sacrifice everything to save a piece of what mattered. Instead, he was just prisoner 0087. His skin was covered in rashes from lack of nutrition and cuts that wouldn’t heal. The mechanical digits on his right hand no longer fit properly and a gap was forming between the prosthetics and the stumps of his fingers.
The guards hadn’t lied about replacing the uniforms. Any time the white material was too stained or ripped by the rigors of the mines, a new one would appear on his bunk the next day. They cared about maintaining an appearance of caring for their prisoners, but that was all it was.
Appearance.
Prisoner 0087 stared at the lump of stone in his hands as if he could see through the grime to the deep violet stone beneath. Carefully, he scratched at the dirty surface, hoping to see the telltale glow that would buy him food for the first time in days.
He no longer cared about maintaining a threatening aura. In hell, a sense of superiority did nothing but lead a prisoner into an early grave. Even pulling himself out of bed to relive his day of purgatory took everything he could muster.
A soft violet light fell across his thumbnail, proving it was one of the stones that would mean food. His mouth salivated at the thought of finally eating a meal, but a voice in the back of his mind reminded him he wasn’t the only one starving down here. He shoved it into his pocket, glancing around to see if anyone noticed the movement.
Luckily, he’d chosen a dark tunnel that few prisoners ever dared to venture down. The passage was not well lit, and many of the fixtures that once held precious light were now dark from decades of neglect. There were divots in the stone floor that were easily navigated in the light but were invisible in the patches of shadow.
Prisoner 0087 found this hallway weeks ago and decided it would be a nice place to die when his body no longer possessed the strength to return to the surface. Most days he only brought his pick down here as a token effort, but rarely used it. It was far easier to just sit and wait for death.
He was so disconnected from reality that he didn’t even notice when the light beside him flickered and plunged him into darkness. Although, he did notice when a faint glow across the hallway filtered through small cracks in the stone, sparking hope for the first time in weeks. The pick felt heavy as he climbed to his feet and stumbled to the opposite wall. With trembling hands, he brought the instrument down on the stone, expecting nothing.
Now the key to his survival weighed heavily in his pocket, pressing against his emaciated leg and digging into what little muscle remained. The stones around him glowed, proving that his was not the only one in this corridor. Prisoner 0087 needed to remember where he was, and how to get back to this place without being watched.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It would be suspicious if he returned with large chunks of ore too often. To preserve his secret and extend his life, he would need to break it into smaller pieces and nurse himself back to health. Perhaps he might even give a shard of the stone to Prisoner 0088. She needed food just as much as he did. If the tunnel held even a fraction of the gravitrum he thought it did…
Prisoner 0087 stumbled down the hall, back toward light and the other densely populated area. The pitted stone around him threatened to steal his footing several times, but within an hour, he found 0088 and convinced her to follow.
“88,” he cracked, the words unfamiliar on his lips after such a long time. “88, I have some of the ore. You shared with me, it's only right that I repay you in kind.”
They sat in a dimly lit cell. 0087 remembered claiming this room for himself in the past, but there was nothing special about it. The small room was nothing more than four walls, and slabs of cold metal bolted into the wall to serve as bunks. At the foot of each bed, a single folded white blanket waited for its owner to return from the mine.
“No need, Jean.” she said, turning away and producing a small shard of stone the length of a fingernail. “I found some and was going to search you out. When was the last time you’ve eaten?”
Jean? The name sounded familiar to Prisoner 0087, but it did not belong to him. Why would this woman assume his name was anything other than 0087?
“Days. I gave my last piece to that child they brought in. I couldn’t let a child starve in the depths of hell.” He hadn’t used his voice this much in a long time. For the past several weeks, he’d communicated through little more than grunts and nods.
“Do you have something to break it?”
In response, Prisoner 0087 wrapped the stone in a piece of cloth and slammed it into the ground repeatedly. With each hit, he felt a shard break away under the cloth. If he turned in the entire stone, he would only eat for a day. The prisoners learned that lesson early on; the guards did not care how large the piece of gravitrum was, each piece only bought enough food for a single day.
It was clear how the Scaladorians saw the human population in their care, and it was not favorably. They were second-class citizens capable of nothing more than menial labor. These mines were a perfect example of that feeling, and their refusal to feed the unproductive doubly so.
“How big does it have to be?” Prisoner 0087 mumbled while crushing the stone again. Overpaying for a meal was bad, but underpaying was worse. If he didn’t meet the bare minimum payment, he would lose the ore and food.
Carefully unwrapping the stone, he removed a small shard less than the length of his smallest fingernail. It was thin, almost like chipped obsidian. Unlike the volcanic stone from Earth, this one did not drink in the light of its surroundings. Instead, the strange ore seemed to bend the light as if natural light was afraid to touch it.
Prisoner 0087 slipped the small stone into his pocket and handed the bundle of cloth to Prisoner 0088. It was hard to think through the fog of hunger, but he knew it was important that he did not know the location of the entire stone. Even interrogation would be useless. If he didn't know the stone's hiding place, he couldn't expose its existence.
“Give a shard to anyone near death. They need to eat just as much as you and I.”
“Jean, you’re being unreasonable. You can’t give away your ticket to survival. You are too weak as it is.”
“No. I will not become the animal they wish me to. They want us to fight and kill over this stone, but I say no. We won’t become like them. We won't become the monsters of the stars.”
The discovery of a simple stone had renewed the hope he thought he’d lost.
Prisoner 0087… No, that wasn’t right. Finding the man he’d been so long ago, even if only for a moment, brought back a level of lucidity he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He wasn’t Prisoner 0087; he was Jean Lemoux. A man branded a criminal by a justice system that knew no justice, and sentenced to slavery by a people that didn’t care about his life.
If it took until his dying breath, he would know true justice. Even if he had to create it himself.
