╔════════ ᗢ ════════╗
𝐨𝐧𝐞
𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐌
╚══════════════════╝

METAL DIGS INTO Alex's wrists as the Garrison soldier restrains her, knees digging into the stone of the city street. She glares daggers at him over her shoulder, seething, and his smile is so full of smugness that Alex wants to run back to the Underground just to take him with her, see how he fares without his precious sunlight and alcohol and unearned power.

She certainly didn't make her capture easy, and this guy hates her for it.

"Enjoy your night in the slammer," he taunts. "I'm sure your fellow Wall Maria folk will be jealous of the roof over your head—"

"Oi," his partner snaps, a girl with hair so blonde it's nearly white. "She's not just some refugee thief, you dumbass, look at her. She's paler than you. She's from below."

The guy's hands freeze on her wrists. "An Undergrounder, huh?" He laughs, a dry, crackly sound. "Thought you were just a rumor."

People aboveground know about the Underground, in some sense. It's whispered about in passing with tones of disgust and pity. Nobody ventures down there, not on purpose. It's easier for most to ignore its existence, to assuage their guilt with ignorance. Alex wonders what the military tells their cadets about it, about them. Wonders if they even know the extent of the raiding network, if they know Kenny steals from right under their noses even while he works in the interior.

Wonders if Martin and Carly are safe.

Safe is a relative word, really. But she hopes they got back down with the new kids.

She hopes Martin doesn't do something stupid. Like come back for her.

"Just take her to the closest outpost," the girl sighs, hardly paying attention anymore. "They'll deport her from there."

"Y'think we can weasel some info out of her, though? Get a promotion if we take her to the top?" The man yanks her up by her chin-length hair, kept short with the blade the guy confiscated from her pocket. She loves that knife. She better get it back. "Better she rots in a cell than gets sent back down, where she can just come back."

Alex snorts, and the soldier's grip tightens in warning. But it is funny, the ignorance. The military won't waste precious resources on Underground scum. This man—boy, really, obviously a recent graduate on a power trip—is operating on the assumption that things are fair, logical, black and white, right and wrong.

Alex knows better.

She wishes she had ODM gear on her. She could've moved the cart and made a quick getaway. There's no way this guy could have caught her, no way he's spent more time than her zipping through the air with something to lose. But that's not the part she was meant to play today. So here she is.

"Fine," the girl says, waving a hand dismissively and heading for a covered wagon. "But you're staying in back and watching her."

This was not the plan. As the guy manhandles her into the back of the wagon, grumbling like this wasn't his idea in the first place, the first sparks of panic start to kick up in her chest. She's supposed to get deported, sent running down the nearest staircase, yelled at and told not to show her face up here again. She's supposed to pretend to be submissive, make her way under the earth with her head hanging low, and then find Martin and Carly and Kenny and do it all over again.

They're taking her to the Garrison officials.

She cannot stay aboveground, not like this.

The boy took her blade, and the girl even took the pin holding back her short hair—she was thorough, Alex will give her that. She's got nothing to pick the lock on her restraints, and the boy has her boxed in so that she'd have to tackle him to escape the moving wagon.

He's taunting her now, but she isn't listening to his jeers. Her thoughts are bouncing between a long string of expletives and a way out of this, and only one of them is doing any good.

"Bet a raider like you's worth a spot in Wall Sina," the boy gloats. "You wanna tell me where your drop point is, who your connections are? It'll make this a lot easier for you."

"Oh, very professional," Alex says with a wide, exaggerated grin. "I'm sure your superiors would just love that the Garrison is being represented by such an upstanding citizen, threats of torture and all that."

The boy blinks. Clearly, he didn't expect her to talk back. Alex doubts his ability to follow through—this is one of those egotistical boys who didn't rank high enough to join the Military Police. According to Kenny, they only let 40 recruits apply every year, the top ten from every district.

Stupid, Alex thinks, for the best soldiers to be wasted catering to the whims of the rich. But so long as they're not the ones out here trying to apprehend her and her crew, she supposes she can't be too upset about it.

The fool resorts to petty insults about Alex's appearance, caught off guard by her carelessness. "You are pale," he says. "Feel like I can see right through you. When was the last time you washed your hair, downworlder?"

"Downworlder," Alex echoes. "That's a new one. I like it." She bites her lip, thinking. "Probably four or five years ago, now. It's crawling with lice, I'm sure they've hopped on to you by now—"

"Oh, can it," the boy snaps. But with his right hand he reaches up and itches at the nape of his neck. Alex is in his head now.

She washed her hair yesterday.

"Foulmouth the commander like that and he'll have your head."

As far as Alex is concerned, he can have it, for all the good it's doing her right now. Her mind is spinning. Even if she gets out, how fast can she get back to the warehouse without ODM gear, with her hands tied behind her back? Scaling the warehouse tunnel without her arms free might as well be asking for death, and it's not as though the others will be waiting around. She tries to keep track of the turns the wagon takes through the dense, refugee-crowded streets, but the farther they get from the warehouse, the more Alex tenses in her seat.

She doesn't know how to find a way out of this.

Will they really torture her? If they do, will she break? How much pain will it take for her to let Carly and Martin slip, to divulge the drop locations? Would giving Kenny up be enough for a pardon?

She shakes the thought away as soon as it takes root. Crossing Kenny is the most foolish thing Alex could possibly do. He has connections everywhere, and even if he was susceptible to the justice of the government, they couldn't catch him.

She'll just have to make whoever the Garrison officials are think she's useless, stupid, not trusted with any of the raid routes or the names of her peers. Not worth their time or prison space. She needs to get sent back.

The wagon rumbles to a stop outside a tall stone building with Garrison guards posted on either side of a wide wooden door. Without comment, the boy grabs Alex by the elbow and shoves her out of the cart, leaving the girl to deal with the wagon.

Alex is not used to the strange sensation of being indoors, but above ground. Her understanding of a building is one cloaked in darkness, flickering lamps kept alive on hope and spite. Here, moonlight slips through wide open windows and brazier flames sway strongly at regular intervals as the soldier shoves her forward on steady, polished ground.

She ignores the looks from passing soldiers, either switching shifts or retiring for the night, and stares straight ahead. It seems almost too easy that they take her to the thick doors at the far end of the main hallway. The boy pounds three times, quick, succinct.

"Commander Pyxis, sir."

For a few long moments, there's nothing, and Alex wants to sneer at the soldier whose fingers are digging into her arm. But just as she's about to make a comment she'll regret, the door swings open.

Alex finds herself staring at a man who she can only describe as sharp. His hair is dark and neatly trimmed, all the lines of his face are angular, and his gray eyes seem to see right through her and everything she pretends to be.

She shivers.

"Cap—uh, Captain Levi, sir," the soldier splutters, evidently not expecting this turn of events.

The man—Captain Levi—says nothing, only blinking expectantly at the soldier, and it's only then that Alex processes how short he actually is. They stand nearly face to face, Alex only an inch or two taller. But this man looks like he could take a life without blinking. He doesn't need the height.

"Sir, we caught—I mean, Lara and I, we caught this one stealing a horse. An Underground raider."

For a long moment, the captain observes Alex, and she feels like he's peeling back the layers of her skin and reading her past in her veins.

Underground scum, he's probably thinking. Thief. Criminal. Sinner.

Then he kicks the door the rest of the way open, a silent invitation—or instruction, more like. The soldier shoves Alex forward, and she refuses to stumble as she crosses the threshold of the room. It's a wide space, a broad wooden desk taking up the majority of the far side with an imposing, balding man sitting behind it. He doesn't bother to stand at Alex's arrival.

The soldier bodily pushes Alex to her knees, and she nearly growls at him. She will not be demeaned like this by a slimy, privileged surface soldier like this one.

The man behind the desk wears a Garrison jacket with an insignia that emphasizes his rank, and he and the captain seem to have a silent conversation with the subtleties of their expressions before the man, the commander, says, "You may go."

The soldier behind Alex hesitates, sputtering, "Commander, sir, I—"

"It was not a request," the captain interrupts. He raises a single brow, face still entirely void of emotion, and the soldier who caught Alex shuffles out of the room. The captain kicks the door closed behind him. It feels like a sentence.

Part of Alex sneers in satisfaction at the soldier's dismissal, but more of her is caught in a brutal combination of panic and spite as she looks up at the two men remaining in the room. She's already picked up enough to know she shouldn't expect a reaction from the captain, but the commander—he doesn't look at her in a condescending manner, more of a curious one, and somehow that's worse.

"Stand up," he says, settling back in his seat. A set of ODM gear is tossed carelessly across the edge of his desk. Alex eyes it hungrily. She could get back, with equipment like that. Easy. "We don't need to do that here. You're unarmed, I presume?"

Alex doesn't know what to do with this. It's a trap, surely, but when the commander only looks at her expectantly, she pushes to her feet, planting them firmly on the wooden floor. "Yes," she says.

"How wonderful. Levi, let's lose the restraints, yes?"

Silently, the captain moves behind Alex, and she instinctively tenses as he leaves her line of sight. She will hurt him if he tries to harm her. She doesn't need a knife to cause damage.

But the captain slips a key into the cuffs, and they fall away from her skin. She brings them quickly to her chest, rubbing at her wrists.

"Great," the commander says. "Let's speak candidly, then. My name is Dot Pyxis, and I'm the commander of the Garrison's southern district. This," he gestures to the shorter man, "is Captain Levi of the Scout Regiment. He was just briefing me on preparations for the twenty-ninth expedition beyond the walls. Garrison guards have to be prepared for the opening of the gates, you see. Does that mean anything to you?"

Alex blinks.

Beyond the walls. Beyond the walls? He says it so casually, as if it's not a world-altering difference, being on the other side. Alex knows what the Scouts are, sure, but hearing tales of their deadly escapades into the untamed, Titan-riddled world—especially after Shiganshina—has always felt more like a myth than a reality.

She says nothing, but Pyxis seems unfazed.

He glances at Levi, as if giving him the floor. The captain sizes her up again, idly scanning her from head to toe. Alex narrows her eyes. What do these men want from her?

"I won't ask where you're from," he says, circling her slowly. "That seems evident enough. You're a raider, yes? I assume you don't work alone."

Alex stares resolutely at the commander.

"What's your name?"

Oh.

That's interesting. Alex didn't expect to be given any part of her humanity within this room. The restraints being removed already feels like a trick, and this even more so—what does Levi want to accomplish? Does he want to catch her in a lie?

"I—" Alex says, and immediately bites her tongue, angry with herself.

Levi comes to a stop in front of her, unimpressed. "Is it a hard question?"

It shouldn't be. Hal, she should say. Alex is her truth, one she's kept under lock and key even from Martin, from Carly. Hal is who she is as a raider, who she is to Kenny, who she is in the Underground. It feels wrong to bring Hal out here, but would it be worse to be honest, to tell the truth to these men who will only deport her or throw her in a cell?

She looks at Levi, at the careful weight of his gaze, calculating, icy. She's suddenly not sure she can lie to him, not without being seen through. And she does not want to give him any more of a reason to punish her.

"Alex," she says, more quietly than she'd like. "My name is Alex."

She hasn't said it aloud in so long, it almost feels like a betrayal.

Levi takes it in stride. "Who sent you, Alex?"

Kenny suddenly whispers in her ear, leers in her mind, towers over her with a blade in one hand and a threatening grip on her wrist. Do I need to worry about loose lips, now, Hal?

"Who runs the raiding network?"

Alex swallows once, hard. "You won't find him," she whispers. She doesn't mean it to sound so cryptic. She's only telling the truth. Kenny has more convoluted protection than anyone can really navigate. He's untouchable.

Her hesitation must show in her expression despite all her efforts to hide it, and Levi closes his eyes slowly, sighs. But it doesn't feel like exasperation, like frustration that she won't talk. It feels more like disappointment, resentment, but not toward her—like she's confirmed something he already knows, but wishes he didn't.

He turns and retreats to the left wall, leaning back against it as if the rest of this interaction doesn't interest him.

"Well, Alex," Commander Pyxis says, pushing to his feet, the chair screeching against the wooden floorboards. "Let me ask you this. Why shouldn't I put you in a cell?"

"Resources," she says immediately. This is what she's spent the whole wagon trip thinking about, her useless defense. "You would waste space on an unimportant Underground kid? Just deport me."

"Ah," Pyxis tuts, circling around to the front of his desk and leaning back on it. "But you've seen my place here now. You know the lay of the land, if you will." He spreads his arms, gesturing to his office. "You've already told us you know who's at the top of your operation. Will you not simply report back to this unfindable man, and then return to steal more of the supplies we so direly need, hm?"

Shit. Shit. She's given herself away.

"That you so direly need?" she spits, hands curling into fists. She can't help herself. "We don't have shit down there, and you know it. You know we're all suffering in the dark and you sit here in your pretty little offices and do nothing about it."

She's screwed herself over now. She's not getting out of this; may as well go down swinging.

Pyxis smiles, chuckles. "You like the office, then?"

Levi rolls his eyes.

"I should think it would send more of a message, keeping you here," Pyxis says. "You understand. Send you back and show your fellow raiders there are no consequences to their actions. Keep you up here and they think twice about how they spend their time."

"You think they'll care?" Alex hisses. "You think anyone matters down there? You're wrong. I mean nothing one way or the other."

Pyxis sighs deeply, running a hand over his head—it's amusing, because there's nothing there to run his fingers through.

"I am not inhumane, Alex," he says. "I understand that theft is born of necessity. But it is not something I can promote. You've put me in a bit of a position here." He thinks for a moment, reaching for a silver flask on the desk behind him. "Or that soldier did, I suppose, by bringing you here. He should have taken you to an outpost, but he's made things complicated."

Alex thinks that if she gets out of this, she might risk coming back to Trost just to take her sweet revenge on that prick.

Pyxis uncaps the flask and takes a long drink, and Alex feels her stomach curdle in disgust. This is a game to him. To all of them.

Levi clears his throat and Alex can't help but jump a bit—she didn't notice him crossing the room again, appearing at Pyxis's side. Pyxis tilts the flask downward as if in offering and Levi eyes it with disdain.

The commander, realizing Levi has something to say, leans down and offers his ear. Alex digs her fingernails into the palm of her hand. Talking about her like she's not standing right here. She's nothing to them, dirt under their shoes.

She's so busy being angry she barely registers the end of their muted conversation, until Pyxis laughs abruptly and clears his throat. "Well, seems we've found a neat little solution!" He claps his hands together once, takes a step toward Alex. "You may not be aware, but the 104th Cadet Corps begins training in three days' time. You seem to have rather impeccable timing."

His smile makes Alex want to punch his teeth in. And then his words register.

Cadet Corps?

Something in Alex's chest seizes.

Because in a way, she's prayed to nameless gods for this. For a way to be a legal resident of the surface, to not be forced back beneath the earth. To stay in the sunlight, to leave Kenny behind, to zip through the streets in ODM gear unrestricted by a cavernous ceiling.

Sunlight, freedom. Maybe.

But Martin. Carly. The new kids. Her life down below—you hate that life, she tells herself, why do you want to go back?

"Levi here has suggested that instead of spending the foreseeable future behind bars, you enlist in the Cadet Corps. How old are you?"

Alex blinks. And then realizes, shamefully, that she is not sure. She was nine when Kenny found her, back when she was keeping track. It felt important, somehow, back then. How many years have passed now? Five? Six? She shrugs, looks down. "I don't know."

Pyxis, taken aback, looks to Levi as if for guidance. Levi says nothing.

"Well, you look about of enlisting age," Pyxis says, and Alex has no idea if that's true. "Here is my proposal. Enlist in the Cadet Corps right here in Trost. Perform well, and you stay out of prison. You do not return to the Underground, and you keep your situation quiet. We do not need your cohort to know we've let you off so... lightly."

"Lightly," Alex repeats, seething. A prison can take many forms, she knows, and this is too good to be true. How can this not be a trap? How can they let her go like this, not knowing she won't just slip back to the Underground?

But she won't. She knows she won't. Because now there are eyes on her, and if she is not careful, she will lose this. And lead them to Martin, to Carly. Bring Kenny's wrath down on them, if nothing else. It is an impossible, illogical proposal, and Alex has never felt more lost and exhilarated at the same time.

Some part of her has already made her choice, chosen her flawed allegiance, by speaking her own name into the air.

Levi picks up the ODM gear on the desk with one finger, dangling it by a strap. "You know how to use this," he says. It's not a question.

Alex opens her mouth, closes it. What's the use in denying it? She nods, and Pyxis smiles like they've come to a grand agreement.

"The Cadet Corps, or prison. Your choice," Pyxis says.

Fuck.

Fuck.

She looks at Levi, who only levels her with that useless, indifferent expression.

"I have a condition," she says.

Pyxis narrows his eyes. "You are not in much of a position to bargain." But he's quiet, ready to hear her out.

"The guy that brought me here," she says. "He took my knife. I want it back."

For a long, charged moment, neither man says anything, and Alex is aware of how childish it sounds—some freak from the Underground, clinging to a rusty blade. But she doesn't care. She's had that knife her whole life, and if they don't give it back to her, she will hunt that soldier down herself and rip it from his hands.

Levi seems to register her intention, because he just nods.

"We're agreed, then," Pyxis says. "Well, wonderful. A pleasure to meet you, Cadet. Captain Levi will show you to the barracks."

Levi frowns, like this wasn't in the agreement, and starts for the door. Alex stands there dumbly for a moment before turning to follow without a word to the commander. It was not, she thinks, a pleasure to meet him.

When she follows Levi out the door, that soldier is standing there, waiting like a lost animal. He straightens at the sight of Levi, putting a fist over his heart. "Captain," he says, and then he sees Alex. His gaze travels to her unbound wrists, and his lips part in question, brows furrowing. Alex feels the corners of her lips curl up into a satisfied smirk.

"Captain—"

"Give her the knife," Levi says.

"Sir?"

Levi does not repeat himself, looking at the soldier like he's stupid. He is, Alex thinks. Very stupid. He looks as though he's about to protest, but something in Levi's expression makes him root desperately around his pockets and produce Alex's blade.

It's not much. It's a kitchen knife, rusting near the handle, but it's sharp and it's saved Alex more times than she can count. She holds out her hand and the fury on the soldier's face is almost enough to make Alex forget about the precarious situation she's found herself in. She smiles as he drops the blade angrily into her waiting palm, and she tucks it in her pocket.

"Captain," the soldier starts, but Levi is already walking, and the soldier—despite his lack of brains—is wise enough not to follow. Alex grins at him, wide, and then follows Levi down the long hall and out of the building, into the cool night air.

There's a breeze, and Alex breathes it in like it's water and she hasn't had a drink in days.

"That's a horrible knife," Levi says as Alex catches up to him and walks at his clipped pace. The fact that he's making conversation at all surprises her—but then, the fact that it was apparently his idea to let her stay was also unexpected.

"It works," she says defensively. He says nothing else on the matter, and Alex takes the conversation in her own direction. "Why did you let me stay?"

He's quiet for so long Alex thinks he's not going to give her an answer, but then he says, evenly, quietly, "I know a thing or two about where you are."

That takes Alex a second to parse. Where she is now? Or in the Underground? Or, Alex thinks, her situation—where she's found herself. She looks again at Levi, really looks at him—he's short, he's sharp, he's obviously seen some things, but most of all, he's pale, tired, a haunted, dark look just beneath his eyes. She should have seen it sooner, recognized it. Because Underground street rats recognize one another. That is what he saw in her.

"You're from the Underground," she says. His silence is answer enough. "You—you know who... runs the raiding system. You looked like you knew, at least."

Levi gives her a sidelong look that confirms her suspicions but does not reveal just how much he knows, or if he's ever come face to face with Kenny at all. Maybe he's just heard the rumors, the reputation. Most of it, regretfully, is true.

She thinks, for a moment, about Kenny, about his short temper and his punishments and his sickening smile. And then she thinks about Martin. And Carly.

"I have two—friends," she starts. Friends does not seem a sufficient term, or professional enough to appeal to Levi's taste, but Alex doesn't know what else to call them. Family? The closest thing she has to it. But Martin and Carly aren't friends. They're more like—part of her, somehow. "If—"

"No."

It's so abrupt, the rejection, the volume of it, that Alex closes her mouth for a second. It's the loudest she's heard Levi speak, the most feeling he's given her all night, one way or another.

"They can fight," Alex insists, anger blooming in her gut. "They can use ODM gear. They're quiet, they won't—"

"I said no."

The words carry a levity that knocks the breath out of Alex, and she didn't know quiet could be so fierce. There's a far off look in his shuttered expression, like Alex has unlocked some part of him long buried.

There is no fighting this, then.

I'm sorry, she thinks to Martin, to Carly.

"I—"

Levi turns on her, then, and suddenly, despite her height, Alex feels very, very small. "This is your only chance," he tells her, words measured and intense. Clouds have slipped their way over the moon, muting its light, and the darkness blots out the details of Levi's face and leaves him an imposing, shadowed figure. "If you fail out of the Cadets, they will not send you back to the Underground. Now you know too much, and it would risk more raids. They'll put you in a cell." Alex's cheeks heat and she opens her mouth to retort, but Levi isn't done. "You cannot contact your friends down there. You cannot return to the Underground, you cannot communicate through the raid routes. You cannot seek out Kenny—"

Kenny.

Levi realizes what he's said as soon as it's left his mouth, and he looks down and away, like he wants to snatch the lingering word out of the air.

But then he just continues, "You are a Cadet now. You live aboveground. You will train with the 104th and you will succeed, and you will leave that part of your life behind."

And the thing is—Martin and Carly have each other. They were fine before her, and they'll be fine after. She thinks of Martin's amber eyes, more expressive than any she's ever seen. She thinks of Carly's reluctant smiles, her eye rolls, her sarcastic comments masking concern as she stitched Alex up after one of Kenny's rougher nights. And she puts all those images in a little box in the back of her mind, and she packs it away. She's already lost them. Now, she has nothing left to her name.

Levi must see the resolution in her face, read something in her that tells him she's got the message. He nods once, and then he's off again, headed toward a nondescript but long building behind the one they came out of.

Alex follows, and leaves Hal behind, alone and shattered in the waning light of the moon.

◘ ◘ ◘

a/n: woooOOOO

[ word count | 4.9k ]