When I was three, I wanted to be a princess. But there are no princesses in the High Valleys. Everyone knows that's only in fairy tales.

Just a few months ago, I wanted to work as a scientist in Erreliah, my home and the shining capital of the world of research. Instead, my mother sent me to the city of Karsix.

Now, all I want is to stay alive.

It's curfew in Karsix, and the underground city wears a darkness so thick, I can feel it. It renders my pale skin invisible, and my long black hair blends into the solid shadows. As I finish shoving my shirts and leather pants into my satchel, my hands shake. Taking a deep breath, I wipe them up and down the side of my leg, as if that will somehow steady them. Focus, Leavi. Panicking is pointless.

I have a plan.

I will make it out.

I will not get caught.

Snapping back to my task, I grope for the cloth-wrapped instruments I stole from the laboratory earlier that day. One falls, and I startle at the glass piece's muted tink! In the silence of my empty dormitory, it feels like a million alarms announcing my escape.

Every possible way this could go wrong flashes through my mind.

Crossbows click in unison as I race for the exit. 'Ready... On my mark... Fire!' Agony runs through my back as the bolt pierces my skin. I fall to the ground, screaming out. They call, 'Stay back! She could be infected!' Blood drains onto the ground, slipping from my dying body like hope from my foolish plan—

Or, instead, I'm alone in a tunnel, darkness swallowing my plague-ridden body. Blisters cover me inside and out, pressing on my lungs as I rasp in my last breaths—

Or maybe snow frosts over me, the numbing cold of a topside winter lulling me to a final sleep—

I shove the thoughts away. That won't happen.

I have a plan.

I will make it out.

I will not get caught.

I stoop to recover the fallen test tube. My fingers flutter over its sides, searching for cracks. I only stole what I needed, and if I break it now—please, please, please don't be broken...

My pent-up breath escapes in a relieved sigh. The piece is whole.

I gingerly wrap it back up, placing it on top of everything else. With my hands empty of a task, I stare at the bag through the dark. Despite the blackness, I feel like I can see it. I've memorized every inch of the crisp leather, down to the tiny scratch from the journey here. I don't mind the flaw; my mother is the one who fretted over what my new luggage would look like when I arrived in Karsix. No, I memorized that bag for a different reason.

Before the move here, it mocked me across my old room, representing everything I didn't want to travel toward and everything I didn't want to leave. Now that I need it, though, I've fixed on it, a single light of hope in the obsidian tunnels surrounding the city. As I sling it over my shoulder, the panic bleeds away for a moment, leaving a cold stone of truth settling in my gut.

This is it. Everything that represents me is here: every scrap of paper, every leather-bound book, every testing instrument, everything I've ever known all jammed into one paltry bag. I even stuffed in my favorite book and the now-pointless lab coat. They take up too much space, but I can't bear to leave them.

The future I imagined for myself is disappearing like ashes sinking into a river. I'm throwing myself into the unknown, risking my life to get topside in the winter, a choice that might kill me as easily as the Blistering Death could here.

My hand pauses on the doorknob, the metal cool against my sweating skin. What am I doing? I should play it safe, keep in the quarantined areas, listen to the authorities, bide my time. I should do what any rational, mild-mannered citizen would. Behave.

I swing the door open. My foot crosses the threshold, and I resist the impulse to look back. It wouldn't do any good; the path behind is just as obscured by darkness as the one ahead.

A deathly hush pervades the dormitory building. My colleagues are shut up in their rooms, almost as though the quarantine curfew fades them into the corpses they so desperately wish not to become. One among thousands, they whimper that the odds must be in their favor, cowering in the hopes the disease won't touch them. I refuse to leave my fate up to odds.

I have a plan.

I will make it out.

I will not get caught.

I slip out the back door onto a street just as morgue-like as the building I left. Cat-footing my way down the alley, I run through my plan one last time. Over the wall separating me from the residential area, then west out of the research quarter. South down Butcher's Avenue. Then the Dead District will be all that's left between me and the Lesser West Tunnel.

"All," I scoff. But that tunnel is the only one that won't be guarded. After all, infected cadavers should be sentinels enough.

The air is too still out here. The atmosphere presses in on me, and I tug at my jacket collar. In the darkness, imagination reigns, and I can almost see the contagion in the air, invading my lungs with every breath. Unconsciously, my foot takes a step back toward the safety of my dormitory.

Irritated with myself, I surge forward. I'm not in the Dead District yet, I scold myself. I'm safe... as safe as I can be anymore. Even so, I tug my muffler up over my mouth and nose because that supposed safety isn't going to last for long.

I've heard the horror stories. The slums fell to the Blistering Death first. By the time responders realized what was going on, other places were getting infected and resources were stretched thin. Keeping the sick elsewhere alive—and contained—became more important than burying the dead. Now a whole neighborhood is filled with corpses.

My hand skates along the rough stone wall, my only guide in the dark. The toe of my boot rams into the metal garbage bin at the end of the alley, and I bite back a curse. Shifting my bag to my back, I clamber onto the lid, which shrieks in protest under the strain. I cringe but reach for the lip of the alley wall. Stone scrapes my hand as I drop onto the other side of an empty street, stumbling a few paces before catching my balance.

On this side of the alley, soft white light emanates from the brass planters of glow-moss that line most streets in Karsix. The city has yet to make the switch to the brighter oil lamps like Erreliah—a fact I'm for once grateful for, considering the council would switch them off during curfew, plunging the city into solid black.

All down the row, the houses of prominent scientists and politicians loom in the ghostly light. The shuttered bronze-framed windows are empty eyes that trail after me, and the sculpted door-knockers, faces that usually offer a cheerful grin, have mutated into snarling monsters. I shudder and hurry along.

In the research quarter, the buildings stretch taller, clawing toward the cavern ceiling before melting into the gloom. They tower over me like expectant executioners, my pounding heartbeat their drum. In the quiet, my steps rap flat against the pavement.

As I turn a corner, my eyes can't help but wander toward the one stocky, grey stone building on the street, out of place against the surrounding glass giants. A small bronze plaque quietly announces the building as Trifexer's Private Institute for Research and the Sciences.

I wonder what my colleagues will think when I don't show up tomorrow morning. Some will find it odd; I've never missed a day, even when the Death broke out two months ago. Some won't know, having holed themselves up in their dorms for weeks. Some will worry I caught it but will be too scared to come check on me. And my partner, the great and almighty Sean Rahkifellar?

I doubt he'll even notice.

Why do you care? the stony face of the institute accuses. You're the one abandoning them.

In my unease, my fingers creep up to the tarnished chain of the necklace my father gave me.

No explanation, no goodbye, the building sneers. You've stolen their tools and are running off in the dead of night. You'd think you were a common thief rather than a scientist.

Guilt pricks my stomach. We're hardly more than acquaintances, yet the scientists at Trifexer's are the closest thing to friends I have in Karsix. They at least deserve to know where I disappeared to.

Scooping up a loose pebble, I hurry to the entryway of the institute. The rock makes an awkward writing tool, but the scratched white letters show up on the stone wall clearly enough.

I'm healthy. Escaping through DD, LW Tunnel, and heading topside.

- Leavi Riveirre

I pause, then on impulse, add a single line.

May your skies stay bright.

It's an old blessing, back from when our civilization had always lived above ground. I suppose it's something strange for undergrounders to say now, but it seems fitting for some reason. Hopeful.

As I step back onto the sidewalk, I'm hyper-aware of the silence, no longer covered by the scratch of stone on stone or steps on pavement. The lack of noise almost feels like an entity unto itself, like all the sound is being sucked out of the world and gathered to form something malevolent. Streets should never be this empty. Cities are hubbubs of glittering light, flamboyant attire, loud crowds. Not this pressing, weighty, dead emptiness waiting to devour everything it surrounds.

Smothering anxiety rises in my chest, and I break into a sprint, desperate to release the pressure. A shadow in motion, my hair streams behind me. The echoes of my footsteps chase me, and my arms pump, keeping time with my quickening pulse.

Finally running out of breath, I skid to a stop on Butcher's Avenue.

The buildings here are smaller, various little one-story shops. Wares hang in windows: blown-glass trinkets, glassy-eyed windup toys, ticking timepieces. Inside the butcher's, strung-up hunks of meat swing beside glinting knives.

And at the end of the avenue, a street-cleaner boy's broom swipes against the pavement. Our eyes meet at the same time, bodies going rigid. He swallows.

The kid's infected. As soon as the possibility flashes through my mind, I shove it away. There's no reason for him to sneak out to do his job during curfew if he's sick. More than likely, he's here right now to avoid the throngs of people during the day who might be.

Apprehension still flutters in my chest. He looks me up and down, his thoughts likely running similar to mine.

After a tense second, I edge forward. Surely he won't turn me in. He'd have to have a death wish. If a patrolman catches us out during curfew, they'll drag us to quarantine. Then we're both certain to catch the Death.

Still keeping his eyes on me, he resumes his sweeping, shuffling closer to the sidewalk. I take another testing step forward. His shoulders are tense, body angled away from mine. Shff, shff, shff. He follows his broom, warily maintaining the distance between us. The only noises are his sweeping and my footsteps, discordant music for our hesitant dance around each other. We come level.

He takes off.

My heart jumps into my throat, and I rush to the corner. The alley twists, grime and darkness both growing thicker the farther I travel. Rubbish crunches underfoot, and I press my palm to the wall for a guide.

A sticky, viscous substance clings to my fingers. I recoil, wiping my hand off on my clothes.

Unable to bring myself to set my hand back, I take a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. The kid's running home. Must be. There's no way he's going to get a patrolman.

One careful step at a time, my feet navigate the path, toeing trash out of the way and feeling for rifts in the ground. My progress is slow but steady, and eventually, the black is penetrated by faint, grasping fingers of light. I hurry forward.

The alley empties into a run-down road lit by isolated pots of moss. A wooden barricade slices through the cracked pavement, circling to cut off the Dead District. Spikes threaten from wall tops. Rough guard towers break the violent line, and I shrink back into the shadows.

Everything's still, though, the post abandoned. There's no use guarding the city from corpses, and no one other than me would be crazy enough to want in. Dozens of flyers litter the ground, only a few still nailed to the wall. Their faded faces shout mutedly—TURN BACK! QUARANTINE AREA!

I stride across the street. My fingers dig in between the logs as I try to scale toward the tower. The rounded edges make awkward holds. I only make it up a couple feet, sliding down each time. Teeth gritted, I try once more. Five feet up, fingertips reaching for the top—

My foot slips. Nails claw at wood, and one tears, peeling back in half. My feet collide with the ground.

I call out in pain, and bang my fist against the barricade. This stupid wall is all that stands between me and a straight stretch to the Lesser West Tunnel. I refuse to lose to a pile of wood. There's got to be a way over this.

I scan the street, and my eyes light on one of the glow-moss pots. It's about a foot and a half in diameter and four feet tall. That should get me a third of the way up.

I drop to my knees to push the pot to the barrier, but it doesn't move. It's heavier than I expected, a monolith of dirt weighing it down. My eyes scavenge the littered road.

There. A curved iron bar, broken off from the top of another pot, juts up among the debris. I snag it, shoving the point under my pot's base. The other half extends out, angled sharply, and I jump on it.

The pot tips over with a clang, dirt and glow-moss spilling out. Moist clumps squish underneath my fingernails as I excavate the soil, my torn one stinging like jabbing needles.

Fifty feet down the road, a thin beam divides the darkness. My head snaps up. Searching, the beam sweeps away. I redouble my work, scraping armful after armful of dirt from the pot.

I've been making too much noise. They know someone's out here. My gaze flicks to the alley I came from. That would be my safest bet. Disappear into the darkness.

But if they know someone is trying to leave through the Dead District, they'll start defending it. Then I'll never get out of Karsix.

The beam appears again, more concentrated. They're about to turn off an alley.

The pot's hollowed out.

"It's now or never," I mutter.

The patrolman turns the corner.

I launch to my feet, heaving the pot upright. Metal on stone shrieks as I drag it to the wall. The patrolman breaks into a run. My sweating fingers struggle to keep their grip. He's only thirty feet away now.

I push the pot flush to the wall and scramble atop it, catching myself against the wood as the pot wobbles beneath me. It's almost too light now.

Twenty feet.

My perch stabilizes. I stretch for the window of the tower. Mere inches separate my fingers from the top, a tiny and impossible distance.

Fifteen feet away, he stops running. He slings the crossbow off his shoulder. "Halt!"

I set my foot into a hold. I just need to be a little bit closer—

A bolt shoots past my leg, slicing my trousers. I flinch, almost losing my balance. He's cranking his weapon to reload it. I don't have time to climb, I need to be in that tower now—

The bolt hisses as it barrels toward me.