Class Reptilia

Standing at the foot of the hot-blast furnace, Ember felt less like a snake and more like an insect. She and Orthus were tucked beneath the scaffolding, the air shimmering with heat, as they waited to sneak unseen past a group of workers. They had scaled the fence circling the compound easily enough—thanks to the top curving inwards rather than outwards like the one guarding the train—but they had almost been caught as they passed the machinery, their senses dulled by the constant rumble and the hissing of hot steam.

Orthus had told her that the factory ran day and night, but it was a different thing altogether to see the workers in their orange jumpsuits pushing along barrels of coal. She had searched their lean, work-worn faces for features she recognized and came up empty, and then Orthus had shoved her underneath the scaffolding, saying "We're here for your father, and your father only," as if she needed the reminder.

A bead of sweat worked its way down Ember's chin, plopping down on the hard-packed dirt beneath her feet. To her left, a trough of molten slag lit up the night with a faint glow, smelling so strongly of rotten eggs that she thought it might sear the inside of her nose.

"Come on," she urged Orthus the moment the workers were out of sight. They made a break for the factory proper in an all-out run, dodging conveyor belts and crates of materials.

She panted as her back slammed against the bricks, uncharacteristically out of breath. A window above her head was pulsing orange light, casting her and Orthus in strange shadows, and she stood on her toes to risk a glance inside.

The factory was cavernous. The night sky filtered in, and smoke filtered out, through openings in the rafters. On the floor, more workers manipulated smaller furnaces with white-hot iron tongs, and on the second story, a man in a long coat and protective goggles watched the floor below.

Ember exchanged a look with Orthus. They had no way of knowing, of course, if her father had been assigned to the day or night shift, but it was clear that searching for him on the factory floor would not be easy. "We can't get it this way anyway," Orthus pointed out. "Let's go around."

She nodded, and together they walked to the back side of the building. It had been built on a slight hill, so that it had one story to the factory's two. There was a row of small, barred windows, but this time no light came from within. These must be the sleeping quarters.

They soon came across a metal door, latched and locked from the outside. Ember felt something in her stomach twist, disturbed that the windows were barred and the doors locked in a building so prone to fire. "Can you pick it?" she asked in a whisper.

"It's a simple mechanism," Orthus replied, drawing his skeleton key from an interior pocket. He worked quickly and quietly, and within a minute the lock sprang open.

Ember gripped the handle, cool to the touch in the hot outside air, and forced down the nausea welling in her throat. Her infrared was useless—for all she knew, a guard was waiting on the other side with his shotgun trained on the door—but she refused to let the year she had suffered without her father turn into an eternity, so she steadied her hand and pushed.

The hinges let out a creak of protest, but no answering noises came from inside. Exchanging a relieved glance, the two Linnaeans stepped across the threshold and into the dark, humid hallway. The door closed firmly behind them.

They walked along with soft footsteps. Being inside the barracks of the ironworks factory felt a little like being underground; the sounds of clanging iron and the rumbling furnace were still audible, but dulled by the thick walls. The air smelled of unwashed bodies and sulfur.

About ten meters from the entrance, they found the first door in a row of five. It was wooden, with a metal grate covering the top half and a rectangular slit at the bottom, affirming that the factory was just as much a prison. At Ember's side, Orthus shivered, no doubt revisiting his own painful memories.

Heart thumping madly, Ember brought her face to the grate. When her eyes adjusted, she saw a medium-sized room, lit faintly by a barred window. Cots, stacked in twos, lined the perimeter, and in the center was a washbasin, a desk, and some shelves for personal belongings.

Nine of the ten cots contained bundles wrapped up in sheets, and it took using her infrared for Ember to realize that they were human bodies. One face was upturned, the flesh of the cheeks hollowed as if it had been scooped out with a spoon, but it was not her father's.

Orthus tapped her side, returning from looking inside the other rooms. "Anyone?" she whisper-asked, gesturing around her face. He shook his head. Shit—there had been no one who fit the description of her father.

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She turned back to the door, intending to use her infrared to determine if any of the other bodies were men, and was shocked to see a white face upturned in her direction: a woman, sitting on the nearest cot with her shoulders wrapped in a threadbare sheet. Ember stepped back instinctively, then realized that a human would only be able to see shadows in the darkness; perhaps some small noise had woken her, or just instinct.

Ember hesitated. As it was, there was no way to find which room held her father unless they went looking for records that might not exist. She pointed the woman out to Orthus, a silent question in her eyes, and he dipped his chin in confirmation.

She poked one finger through a hole in the grate, making a 'come here' gesture. Quiet as a ghost, the woman stood and shuffled over to the door, squinting. "You're not-" she started to say.

"Roy Whitlock," Ember said in a voice just loud enough to be audible. "Do you know him?"

Although the woman was only human, her gaze seemed to penetrate the grate and turn Ember inside out. For a minute she said nothing, just watched, and Ember grew more and more afraid. Will she wake the others? Yell for the guards?

"Room four," the woman said at last.

"Gods, thank you," Ember said, voice cracking, and something like hope sparked in her chest. But as she went to pull away, she found her hands still clutching the sharp sides of the grate, fixing her in place.

The woman hadn't moved, and Ember saw, really saw, how sick she was: the pallor of her skin; the way her eyes sat like two black coals in their sockets; the thinness of her arms above the elbow. Matthias is going to use these people until there's nothing left, Ember realized. That is their punishment.

"Unless you can take me out of here, too," the woman said, "past the fence and someplace far away, you better hurry. The guard patrols here every hour."

Ember released the grate, stepping back in surprise at being read so easily. She and Orthus had already discussed it—to escape the city walls and trek across the mainland, they needed to be as unobtrusive as possible. They did not have the resources to rescue anyone else, nor could they afford to elicit more suspicion.

"Thank you," Ember said again, turning away. "And I'm sorry."

With even more haste than before, she and Orthus proceeded down the hallway. Ember took note that the second and third rooms were empty—the night workers' quarters, presumably. The fourth cell was much the same as the first, but this time, everyone was asleep. She could tell at once that the occupants of the closest bunks were not her father, and the others were too far to make out in the dim light, but she found that she trusted the woman's word.

"Ready?" she asked her companion, and with a grim expression, Orthus pulled the skeleton key from his pocket and set to work on the lock.

The mechanism sprang free with a soft click, and Ember reached out and grabbed the knob with shaking fingers. She was hyperaware of her own heartbeat; of the mingled exhales so close by; of the iron and fire just outside. She closed her eyes, imagining that the metal was her anchor to the earth below, and steadied her breath. Then, she inched the door open.

She gave the first four bunks a cursory check: the first two held young men, and in the third, she could see a woman's long hair from underneath a makeshift pillow. In the fourth was an old man, his eyebrows drawn together and his lips downturned in restless sleep. He had the look of one who had suffered much, and she pitied him.

As she walked deeper into the room, another flare came from the blast furnace, momentarily bathing everything in a flash of orange. In the ninth bunk, the light illuminated a head of grey-speckled brown hair—thinner than she remembered it, but instantly recognizable.

Am I dreaming? she wondered, heart in her throat, as unsteady legs carried her to his bedside. "Dad?" She crouched down, gripping his shoulder. "Dad? It's me."

The moment that those familiar brown eyes sprang open to meet hers, Ember's world pieced itself back together again. She grabbed his hands, silent tears dotting the sheets. "I'm here."

His face, bearded and lined with hardship, lit up with a hope almost painful to behold. "This cannot be," he whispered, "are you an apparition?"

She brought her face close to his, blinking away tears. "It's really me, see? But we've got to go, now."

He grasped her urgency right away, and she helped him get to his feet as he swayed. But when they turned, Ember's heart dropped; perhaps because of the light, or because the prison had trained them to sleep lightly, two others were watching them: one of the women, and the old man.

Ember swallowed. Orthus stood helplessly in the doorway, one hand hovering over a knife on his hip. The woman was pressed against the wall, looking confused and a little scared, but Ember could tell she was not a threat. The old man, on the other hand, was looking her up and down with scrutinizing eyes, and she could tell the moment he realized that she did not belong. Then, even worse, he looked back and saw Orthus, whose eyes glowed even beneath the contacts that hid their bichrome nature.

"Who are you?" the man asked, making no effort to be quiet.

"Oh no," Ember's father said under his breath.

"That's none of your concern," Ember replied in her most commanding voice. "Roy is needed for tonight's work."

"I heard you call him dad," the man said, pointing an accusing finger. "You're-"

"Ed," her father started, holding up two hands placatingly. "Please-"

"DEMONS!" The man screamed, his jaw distended with the force of it, "DEMONS!!! DEMONS ARE HERE!!!"