Three prisoners escaped, and the guards made a big deal of dragging their bodies through the Pit cells, demonstrating their victories and quelling any further uprising. They didn’t notice the lack of fear, didn’t see the eyes roll or hear the snickers mocking them. They only knew the comfort of their positions, because it was the only way to keep them, but anyone who survived for more than a week knew the guards were replaceable, and that their risk of death was much higher than any Pit fighter. But the Quartet didn’t care, it was an easy job, so there was a sea of Grounders to fill the vacancies. 

One night, they were all decorated in their victory chains: necklaces, bracelets, earrings and charms, and led into the Pits in a neat line for the Master Champion’s Brawl, a melee fight meant to thin their inventory of fighters, where the weight of winning chains they entered with acted as a heavy noose more than a breastplate shield. The fight was more about clearing the roster for bored sponsors seeking a new season of the same game than it was about offering fighters any sort of benefit or freedom, but still, there was a promised purse, and for some it was enough to survive their debt, so they wore their chains like warnings, like prideful trophies, swaying with each lumbering step over the cold sand as the stadium cheered.

Adon and Y had spent every waking moment since their survival of the last champion brawl knitting the cheap metal rings into strange, rattling imitations of chainmail chest plates, the weight distributed, backs somewhat protected from shanking knives. They unfurled their costujmes and fought together, hands clasped tight, and in the mayhem, they made their escape, fueled by the steroids guards had injected, meant to put on a show for pending sponsors. 

They ripped through guards and ran past opponents, racing through the battlefield obstacles of sponsor-favorites and fallen foes. Y stabbed a cruel guard they’d always hated as she passed, slicing her knife across his torso, Adon hiccupping a greasy laugh at his yelp and stabbing with his own knife because Edip had tried to kill Adon in his sleep (and worse) at least four times that they knew of, though he was only responsible for one of Adon’s tallies. Edip owed most of the pits and his fellow guards took every opportunity to remind him by making Adon recite his mental ledger, loud and often, which only fueled Edip’s hatred and abuse of his role, regularly sending Adon out into fights that weren’t his by accident. 

Adon threw the howling man off him and followed Y, crawling through an empty water overflow pipe they would have drowned in if the rains came on time. Expecting the water any second, they emerged miraculously from the Pits with newfound beliefs in gods not called Igor, covered in blood and dust and slime. They snuck through the Quartet halls of the Ground, working their way through the stilted maze toward the Arcade, then the Wells, and finally out into open streets. They always moved toward the monument of the Broken Bridge, an ancient bullet-train drawbridge that had gone up one day and never come down. There, they were supposed to find refuge, but they only found the floor of a small apartment with Carolyn and Harmony, who Y had known in the Arcade. But a floor, a plushy, carpeted floor, with no bugs, no mold or mildew, no choking dust or coughing wheezes, only each others’ crying and Caro’s tapping keyboard, Harmony’s clicking mouse as she edited photos, and the occasional smell of brownies.

They’d escaped the Pits, laying low for weeks, but they both knew the cold ground was a similar hell, especially as the rains began. It wasn’t long until the apartment paradise was flooded, Caro and Harmony inviting them to the Arcade, but Adon and Y were still Pits refugees, their debts still owned by the Quartet until they could gather up enough for an anonymous bond credit fee that would pay off the bounty. 

They would probably die on the Ground, but at least they had choices: run or kill, light the fire or freeze, take the shoes or leave the corpse. Here, the blood on their hands was theirs, and Adon survived only because Y didn’t mind it one bit. Whatever part of himself he’d refused to sacrifice in the Pits, the hope to be a warm person again someday, the desire to care, keeping a reason pocketed in his heart, to face Lu—all of it eroded within the year, and soon he was just another Grounder, cold as Y, hands just as bloody. There was nowhere safe for fugitives of the Pits but six-feet below the ground where even the dogs wouldn’t dig. 

☆

His first year as a Grounder, Adon collected more tallies than his four years in the Pits. He buried his collection of chains, literally, refusing Y’s offer to sell them, then unburied them and kicked the box under the table by his bed to remind him of all the reasons Aphy was right. He was corrupted, contaminated. He would hurt them by association. 

He found an abandoned warehouse full of obnoxious orange duffle bags, and after Y helped him inspect for corpses, gas leaks, and drag Medo through for any other hazards, Adon began converting it to a stubborn greenhouse lit by the soft cold glow of pink grow lights. The first Grounder raid he survived made Adon bury all that was left of himself and his hope to build a life beyond his grit-jawed determination to get Aphy and Mess through school and his bitter promise to survive. There was only Adon who had survived, but he couldn’t help but feel no part of himself had really made it. He was a pile of broken glass, quick to cut, unable to be repaired.

He watched Mess and Aphy from afar, usually after a long night at Nyx’s bar or helping Y with problems he never asked enough questions about. Keeping himself alive was more about keeping Mess and Aphy safe. He filled in vacancies at Nika’s track during open races, refusing to compete with Phaios or Xeri, but getting a decent wage as a pace partner for the amateur string of racers. Y always had advice, but rarely got on a bike unless it was only the three or four of them on the track. 

Adon took remote translation jobs, occasionally ascending to Chroma District in his orange coat to meet with CAPT test editors and explain that several of his reading comprehension section edits were not slang or jargon, but essential to the dialect. He’d learned several languages in the Pits, and following Y’s advice to be more useful alive than dead, he no longer played bookie, but translator for Uppers coming to invest in Arcade spaces. Many more people wanted him alive than dead, and after another year, he and Y walked into an ARC facility and sent their anonymous payments to the Quartet bounty system, wiping their names and clearing their debt. They still couldn’t use their original ID codes, but they wouldn’t be actively hunted by bored Sec-Offs anymore.

Adon almost enjoyed his work sometimes.

He strode into one meeting with a Grounder called Hector, who was introducing sponsors of his Game room, a safe space for Arcade kids to hang out in while their parents worked the strip, only to find Heather blinking at him. She looked as shocked as he was. She didn’t apologize and Adon didn’t ask for one. He mediated between parties more than he usually did, haunted by the obscure question of what might have happened if Lu had options five years ago? If there had been game rooms instead of tracks, instead of traps in Gideon’s house, would he have felt more hopeful? Would he have escaped sooner? Adon had seen the court videos, and sometimes he imagined shooting a Heranika ghost gun right through Gideon’s dumb face, but always in his mind, there was Lu standing between them, begging the broken Adon made of glass to stop.

Heather, who turned out to be Hector’s wife, wrote an address on a napkin and tucked it into Adon’s pocket when he left. Adon followed it, but when he knocked on the Mids door that was supposed to have been his, no one answered. Mess should be at school anyway. Adon turned away slowly, he wouldn’t come again. He stopped in the nearby dining caravan to see what his few credits could buy in the Mids, and found Aphy laughing behind the counter, purple hair bright and healthy, apron crisp and clean, flirting with a coworker in the kind of safe working conditions Adon had never known, not a camera or scowling manager in sight. 

Adon relaxed, limping transfixed toward the counter, too conscious of every scar and knotted muscle, the annoying lock of hair that kept falling into his face because Y had cut it too short and he didn’t have enough ear to hold it back, the pervasive tremble in that numb pinky, or the way the bright Mids lights highlighted how much he needed to get his eyes checked, all of it was suddenly worth every inconvenience in the face of her free smile. She was warm in all the ways he would never be, and he felt only grateful. He stood at the counter, watching her until she sidled over with an annoyed sigh because he could have used the kiosk screen to order. 

Aphy pursed her lips at his coat and chain, his pink hair from letting Nika, Xeri, and Y play truth or dare without Phaios there to help fend them off when they tapped into his moonshine. She stared at his stubby finger, eyes raking over him as her face pinched to remain passive, the judgement obvious as her gaze lingered on the dozens of white lines around his neck and jaw, the tallies tattooed over his equally scarred arm peeking out as he extended his hand so she could scan his ID band. She beeped the scanner over it, frowning finally at his face, “what can I get you… uh… sir?”

Adon blinked at his unexpected tears, croaking “one coffee.” She stilled at his voice and he saw the recognition as her eyes widened, but as she looked over him with new familiarity, her expression hardened, her warmth fading. 

“You’re still alive?”

Adon snorted, “your hair’s still purple.”

Aphy pushed the hot coffee across the counter, “don’t come back.”

“It suits you,” Adon smiled, taking his coffee while Aphy’s curious coworker hovered in earshot. Adon caught the man’s eye and held it while he sipped the steaming black coffee, his smile sharpening. Satisfied at the man’s intimidated gulp, Adon disappeared out the door with a wave, pausing at a park to add the three creamers he’d pocketed. 

He did not return. 

☆

He met several Grounders wandering the cold ground, following Medo’s maps and collecting dogs. He brought most of the strays he found to Bunomus, an ex-Sec-Off dog trainer like Medo, but younger and somehow even more insufferable. He housed or rehomed the abandoned and runaway pets, but several of them followed Adon home and refused to leave, so he scavenged food and clean water, and when they stopped a Grounder raid that definitely would have killed him, he gave himself a tally tattoo and stopped trying to passively get rid of them. 

The cats came next, and they only ruined a few of his plants, so he kept them, hoping they were happy with the mice and bugs. The rabbits were an unwelcome nuisance who snuck in before the deer, and the raccoons were downright thieves, but he didn’t mind them, even when he tripped over a massive opossum Y named Frank and nearly broke his skull open. Seeing creatures who weren’t human reminded him that their animalistic nature was just part of the world, and wanting to survive wasn’t wrong of him, wasn’t something that could be deserved or owed, it was just him being alive. 

When the translation jobs weren’t enough to pay for greenhouse lights and the stipend house rent, or to protect him from the growing strain of Quartet family orders, Adon followed Plies from the track to the docks. They unloaded smuggler ships from Vice, manned abandoned security checkpoints, or ran goods to the Quartet warehouses. It wasn’t long before Aerestes noticed Adon’s quick solutions to automation problems. He warned Adon that standing out among smugglers who were comfortable in their inherited networks of generational loyalty was a dangerous neon-target to hold, and Adon agreed, pivoting quickly away. It was the wandering and learning what Medo’s chalked, carved, and painted symbols meant that led him to the finding. At first because he found things and then found people looking for them, then because people found him and asked him to find the things they were looking for. He was strange enough that they didn’t ask questions, and healed enough that no one considered the Pits when they looked at him anymore. The Quartet wouldn’t advertise that someone had succeeded in escaping. He’d paid his bond. He was free, in all ways but his dreams.

Adon sat in the middle of the cell, out of reach of the manicured hands shaking food at him. They jumped back with joyful squeals at Y’s rabid teeth gnashing at their bread, tours of sponsors come to gloat or mock or feel something at all in their rattling empty chests. Adon glared up at them, all his potential bleeding out of him with each jeering bruise blooming and wilting over his skin in the dank cold of the Pits. He felt his chest tighten, the panic shift from concern to numb disinterest at his own wounds as infections faded or new skin tightened. He quietly mourned all the versions of himself that might have been warm, loved, and hopeful, but as soon as he woke in his warehouse, free of the Pits, the thoughts and memories burned away. Within seconds, he could breathe again, the pain and static of each limb registering with his brain until he was free to roll upright and trudge to a freezing shower that inevitably numbed him long enough to wake the rest of the way in peace. 

The fear of a child Mess chained beside him in the Pits had evolved into a teenage Mess loaded into day-worker railcars, lost in scrappy fights until he was dropped into a wet foundation and never heard from again, added to the jumper stats or friged, a shiny glass brick looking down at him from the wall of ancestors no one remembered. Adon left his head beneath the cold water longer than usual, contemplating his list of careful responses to Quartet inquiries to find things—he had only survived his first group melee stage in thePits because he was pretty enough to buy sympathy, and lucky enough to lock eyes with Sophia Silver just before passing out, and he had no interest in any sort of leash. There was no gratefulness for her magnanimous gesture, there was only the remains of humiliation and his need to be more important alive than dead so he could keep Mess and Aphy in that comfortable Mids house.