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The Lady was dead. RK had her blood splashed up his torso, across his face. Six had her blood all down her chin. Six had... She'd saved him. He wasn’t quite sure what from, but the Lady had been about to hurt him, and Six was there, mirror like a shield, and teeth like weapons, and suddenly everything was happening so fast and then nothing was happening at all. Silence fell between them.
He doubted Six killed her for him, since she kept her own council and he’d never been allowed very close at all, but he appreciated not being dead.
“Hey!” he whispered as she stalked away from the cooling corpse, horrifying shadows shaking the pillars around them. RK would like to run and hide, again, but this wasn’t an adult. It was Six. Another kid, even if one that just ripped the throat out of the scariest person RK knew. Maybe it was stupid to draw her attention, but RK had made a lot of stupid decisions as of late. He caught her hand. “Six, wait.”
She paused, eyes wide and a little distant. Her gaze dropped to their clasped hands, then back to RK’s face. She grit her teeth, the muscles of her jaw painfully taut.
“Are you… okay?”
Six shook her head, then pulled her hand free hard enough to leave scratches on his fingers and kept walking. “Don’t follow me,” she bit out when RK took a step toward her, hand curled on the sting of torn skin. Her tone made him halt, breath catching like when the Janitor’s blind fingers groped so close, and stand there as she walked with slow, laborious steps farther and farther away.
RK didn’t really know Six, he reminded himself. She wasn’t like him, pale and wane from a life in the depths of the Maw. She’d come from somewhere else, and had been living in the walls, snatching food where she could, asking questions that every kid raised in the Maw already knew. Who was the owner, where did kids go when they were taken, what did they know and what did they see?
She’d latched onto RK for that reason, since he saw the most and didn’t mind sharing his knowledge. The more kids who knew, the more who survived. Six would slip him tools to free himself, so he could show her safe passages, introduce her to the Nomes and teach her tapped out messages when speaking was too dangerous. He helped her adapt to the world he’d always known, and she proved a valuable ally. Only sometimes did she show a crueler side, with mean pranks and unsettling observations, but RK didn’t begrudge her her past. It sounded hard. No kid who came in from outside the Maw had had it good, if the Maw of all places was their final port. And it was always, always their final port.
He never got the idea that the Maw was the end goal for Six, though. She had a mission.
Now, as RK watched light bulbs explode in showers of sparks, as the Maw bent to the whims of its new mistress, he wondered if maybe she’d accomplished it. The elevator door closed, and Six descended.
The Lady was dead. Without Six there, struggling with something, RK could think on that. Without the Lady, the Maw was dead, right? Or would another adult just take her place? Before that happened, he could free the other kids. Save as many as possible. It was an overwhelming task. There were too many, scattered all throughout, in cages and rooms and chains. He needed to start smaller. Just help one girl wearing yellow.
The elevator shuddered and fell silent. RK waited a little longer, flexing and unflexing his injured hand, then threw a book at the button to call it back. Six hadn’t had to do that. The elevator had simply worked for her. She told him not to follow, but he was a little concerned for her. Whatever had happened, it had clearly done something to Six. Had the Lady attacked her one final time, or the Maw itself rebelled? RK didn’t want to think of her collapsing and dying somewhere far away and alone, not after what she’d done, intentionally or not, for him. And because no kid deserved to be alone.
He crept into the elevator, and the doors jangled like bones as they closed. A disgusting mixture of death and food wafted up to meet RK as the elevator went down, and he pulled his sleeve up over his hand to press it to his face. Something was severely wrong. The fancy parts of the Maw never smelled quite this bad, like the refuse bins full of discarded body parts.
The door opened to the dining area, and RK peeked his head out, wary of Guests and their insatiable, violent hunger. He… he saw Guests, these ones large and round with excess finery, but they were probably not very hungry anymore. RK swallowed the urge to vomit as the stink of death, stronger and sour and vile, rolled over him. Some distant lights still flickered, but Six had been this way, and most lay in shards.
RK ran past them, breath held until his lungs burned. Light, brighter than any he’d ever seen, filtered down from an opening, and he headed that way. Nomes were crowded around the base of the stairs, looking up into the blinding yellow-white. As he came to them, he risked a small breath. Still gross, but at least it was being washed away by salty, fresh air.
“Is she…?” he whispered, drawing the Nomes’ attention. Several pointed up the stairs, and RK wound his way past with pats on their heads and mumbled thanks. Whatever had happened, whatever Six had done (RK was already revising his theory that she’d been attacked by the Lady or the Maw), she could not be in a good state of mind.
He stopped at the bottom step, realizing what this must be. Sunlight. He’d never seen the sun before. He’d always wanted to, but the Maw was vast, and only surfaced rarely, leaving apparently just one way out most of the time. He would never have made it to this exit on his own.
He couldn’t even see the stairs, the light was so bright. The last thing RK wanted to do was burst out into a new world completely blind. He sucked in a hiss of air through his sleeve, then squinted around, until he found a hat that had fallen from one of the Guest’s massive heads. It was far too big for him, but it would work. He slipped it over his head, and held it up with his hands.
Carefully he ascended, and breathing became easier as new scents and sounds replaced the foul reek oozing out of the Maw. Waves splashing, wind whistling. RK couldn’t see shit. He pulled the hat down over his eyes and stared down at the vague shapes of his feet awash in blinding sunlight. Beside his own, he could barely make out the imprint of other small feet, and followed those to a long, Six-shaped shadow.
“Mono-- oh,” she gasped, before it was cut off by bland realization, and her shadow moved, doubled, as she turned. Her next question was harsh and sharp. “What?”
“I can’t see anything,” RK mumbled. “It’s too bright.”
Six was quiet, leaving RK to pull anxiously at the edges of his hat. Then, she finally said, “Sunset’s soon.”
RK didn’t know what that was, but nodded. If it meant the sun going away, that would be better for him. Easier to talk, too, without a too-big hat hanging down over his face.
“Who’s Mono?”
Six was silent again, and RK sank down to the sand. He couldn’t see it well, but he could feel it between his toes, crumbly and strange. He didn’t mind the quiet, now that he knew Six was at least responding. Quiet was good, and a habit hard to overcome. He began to play in the sand, balling it up, then crushing the ball into fragments that fell with satisfying, shivery little plops onto his feet.
Soon, Six joined him, knees in his view and thin fingers digging into the sand around his feet. She began to pile it up on his feet, like she was trying to bury him alive in the slowest way possible.
The sun sank while they worked diligently at digging holes and making mounds, saying nothing, each lost in their own thoughts. As bloody red light spilled across the water and turned Six’s coat a deep, gory orange, RK took off the hat. Six turned with him to regard the big bright ball of sun as it dipped beneath the horizon, and that was RK’s first sunset. It made his eyes water from the brilliance.
Then the moon rose, and stars came to life, and RK suddenly really understood just how vast the sky was. The picture books in the Maw didn’t do it justice at all. RK flopped back, marveling at the sheer bigness of the ocean and the sky and just the whole wide world now open before him.
Six’s head came into view. He couldn’t see her face from the deep shadows of her hood.
“Mono was a boy I knew,” she said.
RK pushed aside his wonder for Six’s sake, now that she was talking. “What happened to him?”
“I hurt him.”
“Oh.” RK wasn’t sure how to take that. Sometimes that happened, though. Kids throw blocks too hard, or they get into a fight and knock each other over, or get scared or angry. “Did you say you’re sorry?”
Six shook her head. “He wouldn’t…” she trailed off.
RK sat up, and she leaned back, silhouetted by the moon, eyes glistening and wide. Oh no. He recognized tears about to fall. “I bet he would. Accidents happen.”
Her next words were so quiet, RK almost missed them under the sounds of the ocean. “Wasn’t an accident.”
RK didn’t really know what to say to that, but also wasn’t going to follow that thread. Some things were best not to know, especially since Six’s fists were clenching and unclenching, and her breath was stuttering. Her entire posture was wound tight as a spring as she choked back any sounds. She felt miserable about what she’d done. He wasn't going to make her feel worse. RK could get the details later.
“It’s okay to cry,” he offered. Normally, that wouldn’t be true, and Six had been around long enough to know that. But up here, where there were no monsters (where they were all dead because of Six, a frantic little voice reminded him), RK didn’t see the harm in it. The moon and sea wouldn’t judge, and he’d cried plenty himself. They all did.
Six didn’t immediately break down, but wore down slowly as they sat quietly together, like the narrow strip of beach being worn away by the ocean. RK leaned forward to hug her, and his arms were almost around her before she shoved him back and scrambled away.
“Don’t!” she cried, the darkness around her growing deeper and colder, all the way to where RK was, “Don’t -- I -- don’t get near --”
He held his hands up peaceably, not getting any closer, but not retreating, either. “Okay. Okay, Six. I won’t.”
“Hurt you, too.” She pointed at the scratches she'd given him on display, and he quickly dropped his hands again, though he suspected she was worried about something a lot worse than a few scratches.
“That's fine,” RK said, continuing to ignore his instincts telling him to run, especially now as he could see his own breath, and the waves were icing over. Six was scared, something he’d never thought to associate with her before. It was obvious she didn't want to hurt him, even if she wound up doing so. Six made a strangled little noise of confusion. “I mean… I don’t want to be hurt, but sometimes it happens. There’s always a risk, y’know? But we’re friends. I’d understand. And I bet Mono would, too.”
Six stared at him like he was insane. Slowly, the air warmed, the world around them lightened with moonlight again. The blood down her front was black as pitch. She crawled forward, not quite into hugging range, but closer. “Think so?”
RK kept his pose entirely relaxed, like trying to win over one of the bilge rats. “Is he… alive?” he asked delicately.
She nodded frantically. He let out a relieved breath of air.
“Then yeah, I think so.”
Six seemed to be mulling that answer over. RK was content to give her all the time she needed. Well, until he went back inside, as he inevitably would have to. He just wanted to make sure she didn’t do something stupid, all caught up in her thoughts and strange shadows like she was.
“Gonna save him.”
RK perked up. He was missing a lot of the pieces of the puzzle that was Six, but every one she gave him painted a slightly clearer picture. “He’s in trouble?”
Six nodded again, then pointed across the ocean. RK contemplated the curve of the horizon. The world was really, really big.
“How are you gonna save him?”
Six opened her mouth, then closed it, then adopted a look of utter befuddlement.
RK huffed a laugh. “The boats don’t come often,” he said when she scowled at him. Of course she didn’t have a plan. That sounded like the Six he’d gotten to know. “We have time to figure it out.”
Suddenly, the sand was very interesting to Six. RK worried he might have overstepped, inviting himself into her mission.
“I should go back,” he announced awkwardly. “The other kids…” Speaking of not thinking things through, just because the monsters up top were slain, there were still plenty in the lower levels. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get the kids away to safety. Where even was safety, in this world?
RK’s gaze slid over the dark water and the glittering sky, committing them to memory just in case he didn’t make it back. One could never be too sure they’d survive here. Death was as close as a slip off a pipe or a weakened floor.
“Are we friends?”
His eyes fell to Six, blue meeting black. They’d been amber, before, but clearly she was still going through some things. He had said they were, weren’t they? RK didn’t have many friends. Sure, kids hung out with one another, and some liked each other, but this wasn’t the place to ever really connect . Not when everyone wound up in the kitchen, eventually. All friendship resulted in was pain.
Six was, as in all things, different though. She lived feral in the vents, humming a song that she said she made up but RK suspected she was lying about. He’d taught her what few words he knew, reading into grates from tattered children’s books, holding them up so she could see the words. He’d taught her to write her name, not just the number, but the word. She’d decided his name was Arkay, and he hadn’t had the heart to correct her when she presented him with a paper messily scrawled with the word.
She’d immediately taken it back when he’d thanked her for it, a brilliant blush on her face, and set it on fire. Then his bed had caught, and that was honestly the most excitement he’d had in a while. Also the most smoke he’d inhaled ever. He hadn’t been sure what to make of that, except maybe she didn’t know how to be nice. But she’d tried, and she’d freed him before he could go up in flames, too, which had to count for something.
She'd vanished for a while, after that. RK had spent endless hours worrying about her fate until she showed up again, sullen and silent. He'd hugged her when she crawled into his room, and she'd tensed like nobody had done that ever before. It was somehow worse, knowing there had been someone, and now there wasn't.
“Yeah. We’re friends.”
A ghost of a smile crept across Six’s face. She still looked shaky, like all that darkness she’d gobbled up was ready to burst at the seams and spill out, but not as miserable. One kid helped. A good start. He returned the smile.
Six held out her hand to him.
RK took it. Her skin was icy cold, and the contact made his hairs rise. He didn’t know what she was, or what she’d done, either to the Lady or to Mono, but she needed a friend right about now. The answers to his questions would come when she was ready.
Together, they descended back into the Maw. And together, they'd save Mono.