Pavonis was a city to die for.
Once a humble mining town — one of the first to be established during Mars’ initial colonization — its importance and reputation had exploded after Martian independence was declared. With the help of an Earth-based scientific organization specializing in genetics, ARNEN, the town saw exponential growth.
Built upon the shield volcano to which it owed its name, it had become nothing short of a hub for scientific advancement in the Tharsis quadrangle, and by far one of the most beautiful cities on Mars.
Its sister cities, Arsia to the South and Ascraeus to the North, were no doubt built into taller volcanoes, but they could hardly compare to the scientific spectacle of Pavonis in all its glory.
The city on the mountain hosted an unprecedented diversity of plant and animal life, some native to Earth and others genetically engineered right there in the city. Though ARNEN had since abandoned the planet, Pavonis remained at the forefront of technological advancement. It boasted some of the world’s richest and sharpest men and women, state-of-the-art machinery, and sleek white buildings contrasted by colorful volcanic gardens and animals not seen anywhere else on Mars.
The dragon barns for incoming and outgoing harriers had access to both heating and air conditioning depending on the weather, not to mention crystal clear water and automatic feeders — the meat sourced locally from lab-grown livestock. The harriers’ quarters, not far away, was a two-story mansion of a place, with full access to hot water, soft beds, freshly prepared food, a lounge room, and more.
All throughout the city, the tops of the buildings gleamed with solar panels, and sidewalks and roads generated energy through kinetic pathways to keep up with Pavonis’s extravagant energy needs.
Dragon and horse-mounted police alike patrolled the city in pairs, garnering the occasional wave from a passerby. Despite this, the city had no prisons, and no prisoners.
In the vast estates of the city’s most wealthy patrons and contributors, illustrious Lionfeather dragons roamed freely, lounging near poolsides and displaying their magnificent feathered manes for all to see and admire.
At night, bioluminescent plants lining the streets and walkways provided more than enough light to see by, and the entertainment district ignited with neon lights and drone-operated billboards for all the must-see places around.
But while the city above was the face of Pavonis, there was far more that lies below — a rotten core beneath the ostentatious, decadent display in the world above.
The city below Pavonis was no less intricate than the one above. After all, it had been there since the beginning.
The mining town it had started as had grown exponentially into a system of tunnels and massive caverns, each with function and form.
It too had large dragon barns for keeping the various working animals in good health. Workers responsible for feeding and maintaining the animals’ health were numerous and always shadowed by the knowledge that the animals in their care were both time and cost-intensive to replace — arguably far more than they were.
The city below featured massive housing complexes built into the rock, from which there were few windows and little to see out of them if there were. These spaces, despite their size, were cramped — packed tightly with workers and their families. Still, they too were fully catered. Each housing complex was provided with all the food and water they could need, if not to quite the same quality standards as the city above.
Each of these buildings, as well as the floor in the first two major caverns, was made from a mycelium-based sort of concrete — light, but stronger pound for pound than normal concrete, not to mention self-healing and water and fire resistant.
Dragonmounted police patrolled this area too, though they garnered no polite waves or acknowledgment. Upon their Riotbreaker dragons, their purpose here was clear. While Pavonis had no prison or official prisoners, it most certainly had the undercity.
The plant life that grew there was usually fungal, but sometimes also spread in patches from dirt and seeds tracked in from the Riotbreakers and topsiders traveling between the two worlds.
The people in the city below never wanted for food, water, nor shelter. They were kept healthy, fit, and well fed — but not for their own benefit.
Pavonis was a hub of science, luxury, and entertainment, but that prestige was one paid for in the blood, sweat, and tears of the undercity’s inhabitants.
Each life was under contract, and each contract belonged to one of several mining barons who each infected their workers with a unique, engineered pathogen. For as long as their contract lasted, the workers would return every three days for a shot that would delay their symptoms, and thus their deaths.
For as long as their contract lasted, the workers would know neither hunger nor thirst, but they would live each day without sunlight as they worked tirelessly to expand the mining tunnels and maintain the infrastructure of the city below.
The only sunlight that filtered down below came from a hole in the roof, through which a glass elevator crossed into the city below to bring topsiders from and back to the city above.
When your contract was up, you’d take that elevator back to the surface, back to blue skies. They’d take you to a building where you’d receive a permanent cure.
That was, at least, so far as rumor went.
Cai O’Leary had never been one much for rumors. Maybe it was stupid that this was one of few she just had to believe in.
She could see the slim ray of sunlight from here — it cut a stark image in the distance, near-fully visible in the first two caverns that made up the housing and medical districts within the Pavonis mining colonies. Even now, the elevator traveled up, carrying two mounted guards that must have just finished their shift.
People had a lot of stories about that elevator. About what happened to workers once their contracts were up, or when their contracts got bought out. She’d seen the contract buyers before several times — they were hard to miss. Some were private buyers, or at least, represented private buyers. They were always well-dressed, sweeping sharp gazes across the city’s inhabitants like someone in a produce aisle choosing the right level of ripeness.
Some represented larger establishments or groups, each with their own agendas. There were more than enough rumors about each of them too — of the fate you could expect if your contract was picked up by a different company in the city, or a militia low on grunts and cannon fodder.
Cai had done her best to lay low and avoid their scrutiny. Though she didn’t believe every horror story about them, the mining colonies were full of people that knew far more than she did about the way the world outside worked.
You could ask a hundred people in the city below why they were here rather than out there, and you’d get about as many answers.
Some were serving sentences, charged with crimes in Pavonis or in any of the smaller towns in its vicinity. Others were paying off debts, or couldn’t afford food and shelter otherwise. Many, like Cai, had been born here. It was more common than you might think — most barons offered the option of consolidating contracts as part of a marriage, and moreover pawning off many of those indentured years onto any children that resulted from the union.
Cai’s biological parents were long gone by the time she was old enough to even understand why — taken up the elevator and away, to whatever sunlit world awaited them beyond.
Like several of the others that had been born there and left young, her first job was not mining, but instead donating blood, bone marrow, and various tissue samples for the city above. It was only recently, not long after turning sixteen a few months ago, that she was deemed old enough for the hard labor required to bring resources from deep in the tunnels back to the surface — or perhaps, too old for whatever trials and research they needed those samples for.
Others had not been so “lucky” to be kept in the medical program as long as she had, assuming that was the word for it. She’d met more than a few kids who were younger than her, but had been toiling at this job for several years already.
Though there was a menagerie of reasons why a person might have ended up there, it mattered very little. They were all miners now, in ways big and small, and would all find themselves in the tunnels at some point or another. At the tunnels, and here every three days, in the medical quarter, where Cai now stood, furiously resisting the urge to scratch at the tender, flaking red rashes on her arms and stomach.
This was usually the first symptom — the one that told her she’d entered the roughly six to twelve-hour window of needing to get her shot so she could return to work.
“NEXT!” A man’s voice called, lost somewhere in the crowd ahead, and the line forward by one.
Two Riotbreaker-mounted guards passed on her left, on patrol. They were massive things, dense bodies able to pack a surprising amount of speed when they wanted to. Their front-facing horns were scraped and worn by time and experience.
The first symptom was, by design, mostly a temporary annoyance. A very clear warning to seek help soon — one that would go away an hour or so after getting treated. The second and third symptoms were less kind, and anything beyond that would start to become debilitating.
The man in front of her was infected with the same strain she was. He was a burly one, broad-shouldered and in his prime, but had clearly waited longer than he should have to come in. For the large frame he had, he was withering and hunched as he waited his turn. All exposed skin was covered in rashes and blisters, with black lesions slowly, but visibly appearing on his arms. A hacking cough rattled the air as he tried and failed to stifle it.
About fifty-some feet off to her right, a section had been cordoned off for those with medical issues not related to their inoculations. It was unusually packed as of late, though the exact reason why was an unspoken one.
Her focus was torn from this as the ground beneath her feet suddenly jolted violently, force rumbling from somewhere deep in the ground. It was enough for several of the more seriously ill to stumble and fall, while others braced themselves and whipped their heads around to look for the source of the disturbance.
Calls rang out as a massive cloud of dust erupted up the tunnel from somewhere deep in the mines, those with the foresight and ability shielding their eyes and mouths as it rushed over them.
A mad flurry of movement began — some towards the mines and others away. Riotbreakers thundered through the caverns and tunnels, charging into action to prevent further panic and gathering dissent. Radios sparked to life with indistinct chatter and people began to feel their way around for an idea of where they were.
In the city above, people raised eyebrows at each other, pursing their lips in a humorous sort of way as pets startled at the quake and lounging Lionfeathers momentarily lost their luster in the scramble to their feet.
Cai had managed to pull on her goggles before the cloud hit but was a few seconds late in covering her mouth. She pulled her shirt up over the lower half of her face, balling it up and breathing the dusty air through it. An itch gnawed at the back of her throat, but whether it was from the particulates in the air or her worsening disease was anyone’s guess.
By the time the dust had settled enough to see again, most of the commotion had calmed down. The investigative phase had begun, and the echoing screams no longer rang in her ears. There were cracks in the concrete, but those would repair themselves in short time.
In a few hours, there would be an official death toll. It wouldn’t be correct.
It had been a collapse somewhere deeper down, no doubt. There had been more than one since They started showing up a few months ago. The truth was in everyone’s eyes, but it never graced their lips in these chambers.
Instead, all she heard was a man’s voice up ahead, lost in the crowd and thinning dust.
“NEXT!”
And the line moved forward by one.
Hello everyone and thank you for reading the second issue in this anthology series! The first story can be found [HERE] and the wider universe can be found [HERE] if you want to know the main storyline! Remember to toss a like if you liked it, leave a comment, share, and subscribe if you want to see more!