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We’ve hollowed out many tunnels inside the nearby hills. They hide us from the korabi very well. The tunnels are very narrow in some places. I hear him grunting behind me at some of the more difficult parts, but he keeps coming nonetheless, even when it means spontaneously enlarging the tunnel with his shoulders and claws.
I let him come through far enough that I’m certain he hasn’t been followed, then I turn around and stop him.
“This is as far as you go,” I say. “Everything past this point is human-only territory. I shouldn’t even have brought you this far. If you go ahead and take the left fork, you’ll end up back in Megaris.”
He doesn’t move, and I wonder if this is about to go horribly wrong. The tunnel up ahead is rigged to collapse if any korabi come down it. If he comes over all stupid male, we’ll both end up under the mountain forever.
But he doesn’t try to push his way further into my sanctum. It turns out he just wants to talk. He’s so strange. Nothing like all the other korabi I have ever been acquainted with who are usually deviants and freaks. Human fuckers looking for a thrill outside of the bounds of good society.
“Why did you save me?”
“I don’t know. Guess I thought it would be funny.”
“Is that why you make the choices you make? Because they’re funny?” He seems appalled by the notion someone might be having a good time in general existence. I don’t think the korabi enjoy themselves very much. The elites certainly don’t. They’re like machine versions of humans, sort of similar, but all hollowed out.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“You seem like someone who takes things a bit more seriously than that.”
“Do I? Maybe your seeing sensors are off, then. Anyway. That’s the way out.”
He hesitates.
“I owe you a debt, human.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I don’t deal in owing. That’s a korabi construct. I do what I want, when I want, for reasons I want. I’m scum. That’s one of the very few benefits of being scum. I don’t want for anything, and I don’t need anything from anyone. Especially not korabi soldiers on sightseeing tours.”
“I am korabi,” he says, obviously. “And I owe you whether you like it or not.”
With that, he leaves the way I’ve pointed. He will emerge into Megaris untainted by contact with scum. He will have evaded justice and return to his life of oppressing humans and generally being terrible.
I carry on down toward the inner sanctum, where we hide our young and vulnerable, where new scum are born and raised. It is decorated with the remnants of the furniture and tapestries of the old world people.
Korabi and humans discovered this world at the same time. At first, there was a truce between our species, but inevitably the bigger, stronger, more violent species prevailed. That is the natural order of things, and I am not bitter about it. I embrace my role as scum. I have freedom no other class of entities on this planet can claim. All Megaris belongs to the scum.
“Lyric!” My friend Alicia greets me with a scowl on her painted face. “What were you thinking? Showing a korabi soldier our tunnels?”
“The korabi know we have tunnels.” I wave her objection away. “And we know they’re all secured in ways the korabi aren’t prepared to risk themselves.”
“Since when do we help them?”
“We don’t help them. I helped him because he looked more scared than we did.”
“You’re getting soft.”
“So are you.” I poke her stomach gently. “Been scavenging successfully, I see.”
“You are such an asshole,” she laughs. “I’m only three months along. You know I just look flabby until I’m further along.”
She is pregnant again. Alicia has already had four children. Two of them are still with us. One passed shortly after birth, and the other, well, that’s a trauma we all carry with us and never talk about. She has more reason than most to hate korabi.
“I’d never do anything to put you in danger,” I say, more seriously. “But we do need to form alliances with some of the more sympathetic korabi. They’re the ones who run our supplies for us.”
“I know. I just…”
“I know.”
There is so much weight to what is going unsaid. I wrap my arm around her shoulders, and we both walk into our town square. A meal is being prepared by the cooks. It smells incredible. We have the best food in Megaris down here. We sell quite a lot of it at the Blindspot too. We trade cooked goods for raw goods and eat the balance ourselves. There is nothing like scum ingenuity. We could survive anywhere.
“Another raid, Lyric?”
Wuld approaches me. He is gruff and gray and old. He likes to think that he is in charge, even though he walks with a cane now and can’t make it down the tunnels.
