The Ditch Monger camp had been ransacked. Sleeping bags were torn into pieces, their stuffing strewn about the campsite. Our personal packs had been dumped out in a heap on the floor. The Abominate had been right. They did not intend to leave us alive.
Weave had owned a spare headlamp, which he used as a reading light. I tried to locate it in the mixed up heap of our belongings. There was a picture of a child between two proud parents. Perhaps this was Weave when he was younger. He was smiling in the picture, and held a ball.
My hand touched something hairy and warm, but lifeless. It was a dead krat, but still soft. Rigor had not yet set in. Weave had cared for the animal like it was a child. Apparently the men in white suits didn't feel the same. I found Weave’s headlamp and put it in my pocket.
pooking over the camp, I was stunned by our lack of belongings. There wasn't much for the inspectors to ransack. All of our life spent in a mine, but for what? What was this purple thing hidden in my helmet? Those who did this did not just see us as miners, digging the mountain; they saw us as nothing. They thought of us as expendable. And we were all used up.
Passing into the main hub that lead to the mezzanine level, I saw crews of miners interrogated by many more white suits. Every level of management at the mine assisted them in searches, going through tents and even bedpans. The men in white suits were so preoccupied with searching workers, that they did not notice me.
A siren sounded, starting deep in the mine and making it’s way up to the top level. They found the dead bodies. The entire mine was on lockdown. Men in white suits produced weapons from their coat pockets, and strapped them to their hands. The weapons looked to be a mechanical joint with a needle on the end that folded out from the palm.
A white suited inspector shouted for me to get down on my stomach. My instincts told me to run, but I was scared. I hugged the ground. He kicked my knees apart, still shouting. Then I remembered The Abominate’s gift. When the white suit turned away for a moment, I pulled out the bloody, soiled sock The Abominate gave me, and folded back the cloth to expose the severed finger inside. I put the severed finger against his boot, and ran it up his leg until it met flesh. He dropped to the ground like a rag doll.
I carefully unstrapped the needle device from his palm, and put it on my own. When the hand closed into a fist, the needle retracted into the palm so that it did not harm the wielder. But when the hand was opened, the mechanical arm stretched out from the palm about eight inches, where a needle protruded that was brown and striped, like the stinger of a wasp.
I got up and ran. Some white suits I ran past. Others I stung with the needle before they even saw me. I killed many with The Abominate's finger. It was not physically difficult to kill. My conscience was what was difficult to overcome. I had never been in a position where my life was demanded of me, where the only way I could survive was to kill. But my soul was troubled by killing so many. I was right to kill a few in self-defense, but was I right to kill one hundred in my attempt to escape?
As I reached the higher levels, I saw fewer inspectors, and more soldiers. These were military men, owned by the state. They demanded total compliance from even the men in white suits. One of the men in white did not clearly hear an order given to him, so he asked for clarification. The soldier smacked him to the ground with the butt of his weapon. When I heard them coming, I threw Weave’s spare headlamp down the hall, and doused my own. I got down on the ground, stretching out flat beside the wall like the dead. The soldiers marched past me to inspect the decoy lamp. By the time they reached it, I was gone.
I was very near the surface now. I took cover against a wall, out of reach of the swirl of spotlights. I looked down at the needle weapon in my hand and decided not to use it again. I didn’t need to have a needle weapon when I also had The Abominate’s finger. A platoon of soldiers was hopping off a hover vehicle and marching away in the direction I had just come. It was strange to think that these inspectors and military had always been so close at hand. Then I put it all together. The mining company was not really interested in mining blank rock. Otherwise, they wouldn't have dug so deep. There was plenty close to the surface to mine for years. They had dug deep and in so many directions looking for what I now had hidden in my helmet, the heart of the mountain.
The last of the soldiers disappeared down the shaft. I slipped underneath the hover vehicle, and found a place in its working I could climb up into. The hover vehicle moved on. After some time, it emerged onto the surface. It was night, so there was no sun to greet me. But even the cool, fresh air felt wonderful.
I was free of the mine!