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“Garrett…” Maxwell closed his eyes to keep the tears stinging in them from falling. If Garrett could tell this story without crying, then Maxwell could listen to it without crying.
“My father sold us out.” Garrett’s hand spasmed painfully tight around Maxwell’s for just a moment. “And then they sent him down there to die with everyone else. So now I’ll never even know why he did it.”
But Maxwell knew why. Garrett wouldn’t want to hear it, and he was too upstanding a person to understand it, but Maxwell did. A man who had lost his wife and his livelihood didn’t want to see his sons throw their lives away on a lost cause, and he’d tried to bargain for their release or end the uprising before it started, Maxwell was sure of it. And while Maxwell hated the betrayal and the thought of the men who had burned to death in the way station below them, he couldn’t help but be thankful that at least Garrett’s father had managed to get Garrett out.
The elevator stopped.
“Last one. Story’s over anyway.” Garrett turned away and tried to let Maxwell’s hand go, but Maxwell tugged him back with a frown.
“No, the story ended with you still in a holding cell.”
“Oh.” Garrett looked back at him and shrugged. “The guard told me what happened. And held me as I sobbed, actually. Like I said, he wasn’t so bad. He kept me in there overnight until he was certain I wasn’t going to do something stupid, and then he let me go. I left with Leon the next day and haven’t been back since.”
This time when Garrett pulled away, Maxwell let him go, but internally, he seethed. Garrett shouldn’t be here. Someone else should have done this. Garrett’s geographical expertise wasn’t worth re-traumatizing him over. At the very least, Leon should be here with him. Why had Leon Hess, who supposedly loved Garrett like a brother, sent him into the bowels of this mine with only Maxwell for support?
When Garrett returned, he looked almost the same as he always did on a mission. Focused and confident. But he was paler than usual, and Maxwell saw the tension in his shoulders.
Garrett closed the gate behind him and pulled out his gun. “Alright, get ready. No telling what we’ll run into down there.”
Maxwell racked his brain for something—anything—to say to him after everything Garrett had just revealed to him. To apologize felt trite and ridiculous. To tell Garrett he was here for him whenever he needed it felt a little late. He just wanted to tell Garrett how much he cared about him as though that would help, but he didn’t even know what the words were to say that.
So he just nodded and pulled out his own gun. They’d talk about it when they got back to Carta. Maxwell needed Garrett to know how much it meant to him that Garrett would share that with him, and he needed Garrett to know he wasn’t alone. He would just have to figure out how to say it.
As the elevator dropped slowly down the shaft, Maxwell forced the conversation out of his mind by focusing on the cool metal of the gun in his hand and the eerie silence beyond the elevator’s creaking and grinding. He strained his ears for the sounds of people or bustling, but he heard nothing, and when the elevator shivered to a halt, he saw no lights down the tunnel that gaped in front of them.
“If there are any survivors, they’d be here,” Garrett said just a hair’s breadth louder than a whisper. He jerked his head to indicate that Maxwell should follow him as he eased the door open. “They’d have heard the elevator, so they know we’re here.”
“Should we announce ourselves?” Maxwell stepped off the grated metal of the elevator after Garrett and onto the dusty concrete floor. The outlines of a few boxes and the level’s elevator console were visible in the gloom, but that was it. “So that they know we’re not a threat.”
“That’s what I’m debating.” Garrett pulled out his flashlight and drummed the tips of his fingers over it but didn’t flick it on yet. “Stay close.”
Maxwell obeyed, staying hot on Garrett’s heels as they walked into the darkness. Their eyes adjusted slowly as they left the elevator light, but there was only so far that human eyes could adjust to complete darkness, and Maxwell’s eyes had never been the best. Soon, he felt like he was following Garrett by the feel of the bulk of his body more than any visual anchor. But Garrett kept walking steadily forward.
“Did you hear that?” Garrett stopped.
Completely focused on Garrett in front of him, Maxwell didn’t run into him at his sudden stop, but he also certainly hadn’t heard anything. “No.”
They stood in silence, and Maxwell realized by the feel of a very slight breeze on his skin and the absence of some subconscious oppression that they’d entered a larger room. Much larger by the feel of it, but Maxwell couldn’t tell by how much.
And he did hear something.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Something soft and ill-defined, here and there. Breathing? Scuffling? Whispers? Maxwell swallowed. All three?
In the silence, Maxwell even heard Garrett lick his lips beside him. “I’m going to announce us.”
Maxwell nodded as though Garrett could see that. “Alright.”
He heard the shifting of Garrett raising his arms, and then light exploded on them.
A series of loud sounds tore through the silence around them as light after light after light burst into existence. Maxwell flinched and raised his arm to protect his eyes which stung and blurred. The lights turned on in a semi-circle before them so bright they blinded him.
“Identify yourself!” A loud voice boomed from somewhere in front of them.
“Resistance,” Garrett shouted back.
Click.
“Fuck.”
