The mountains rose black against the autumn sky, jagged teeth biting into the horizon.
Sonya pulled her shawl tighter as the carriage wound its way up the path.
It had been months since Elias sent her back here, months since their argument in London.
She had been angry then—furious, even—that he dismissed her as if she were still a child.
But now, as the familiar peaks came into view, her anger had given way to a different feeling entirely.
Unease.
When she had last seen the headquarters, it had been little more than a fortified camp tucked into the folds of the mountains.
A few barracks, the headquarters, a network of tunnels cut into the rock.
Enough to house a growing regiment, hidden from prying eyes.
It had been dangerous, secret, but still small—still human.
Now, as the carriage rounded the bend and she glimpsed the valley floor below, her breath caught in her throat.
The camp was gone.
In its place stood a town.
Smoke rose in thin, orderly lines from chimneys.
Stone-built barracks stretched row upon row, their windows glowing with lamplight.
Cavern mouths yawned wide in the cliffside, opening into tunnels and halls large enough to swallow entire columns of people.
The road itself bustled with movement—soldiers drilling in ranks, miners hauling carts of rock, women and children carrying baskets moving to and fro between structures.
The Iron Hand as Elias called it was no longer just an army.
They had become people.
Thousands of men returned from war, now living in the hidden mountain valley alongside hundreds of freed women, and children who otherwise would have become slaves if not for Elias and his 'plans'.
The guards at the gate recognized her at once and saluted, their rifles gleaming with the polished steel.
She dismounted, legs unsteady, and let them guide her through.
Everywhere she looked, there was change.
The the once single or multiple stone barracks had become stretching lines, while fortifications protected the entire valley from the entrance, while row upon row of simple housing likewise lay within, housing for the freed peoples.
She passed a cavern converted into a school, where children—freed slaves, she realized—sat bent over slates, scratching letters under the guidance of stern tutors, their seniors who'd been trained before by Elias's spy corp.
Another hall had been transformed into a hospital, with neat rows of beds and doctors (medics)—uniformed, organized, offering service to the residents and soldiers of the valley.
She stopped at the edge of a vast drill square where hundreds of men moved in perfect formation, rifles snapping up as one.
The sound of their boots struck her chest like a drumbeat.
She remembered the ragged handful of soldiers who had once called Elias "commander" in hushed, uncertain tones back years ago when he'd first freed her, and brought her to this place.
These were not the same men.
These men were so much more than those before.
Her stomach twisted.
Four years ago, she had been a fourteen-year-old girl, frightened and desperate, dragged toward a fate she scarcely understood.
Elias had intervened, saved her from chains.
She had thought him a savior then.
In many ways, she still did.
But what she saw now was something else entirely—something she wasn't sure she understood.
"Sonya!"
The voice pulled her from her thoughts.
A figure approached from the crowd—a broad-shouldered officer she remembered faintly from her early training.
He greeted her warmly, saluted, and offered to escort her to the inner compound.
As they walked, he explained how much had changed since Elias's departure with her years ago.
Mining crews had expanded the tunnels into a labyrinth of underground caverns, large enough to house thousands without leaving a trace on the surface.
Entire barracks had been dug into the mountain itself, disguised behind stone doors that blended with the cliffs.
powered lifts carried supplies through the shafts.
The greatest benefit of the system, that was still unknown to the people would have to be the infinite amounts of preserved army rations that came out of the HQ and barracks, enough to allow them to live endlessly in seclusion if they so chose.
"And the clerical corps,"
he added, gesturing toward a cavern filled with desks, papers, and ledgers.
"Supreme Commander's idea. We've expanded quite a bit since your last visit. These freedmen take to it quickly. Some of them can calculate faster than I can count bullets hehehe."
Sonya lingered at the doorway, watching the clerks at work.
Boys and girls who had once been treated as property now bent over ledgers, their brows furrowed in concentration.
A few looked up and smiled shyly at her.
She forced herself to smile back, though the knot in her stomach only tightened.
When at last she was shown to her quarters—a private room within the HQ building itself—she sat on the bed in silence.
This was not what she remembered.
It was more.
More than she had imagined possible.
And yet…
Her hands clenched in her lap.
Elias had made this.
The man who once sat quietly sharpening blades by firelight had built an entire hidden world beneath the mountains.
Thousands of men and women looked to him as if he were not merely a commander, but something greater—a ruler, a prophet, perhaps even a savior.
And she?
She was just Sonya.
A peasant girl who couldn't even read when he had found her.
He had taught her much since then—history, languages, mathematics, strategy—but she still felt small in comparison to the vast machine he had set into motion.
A knock at the door startled her.
One of the younger clerks stood outside, bearing a folded letter sealed with Elias's mark.
She tore it open with trembling hands.
It was short, precise, written in his sharp, unyielding hand.
Sonya.
You will remain in Montenegro until I call for you.
Your role is not what you think, but instead it is to learn.
These people will need a voice of humanity when I am not here.
Be that voice. —E.
She read it twice, then pressed the paper to her chest.
A voice of humanity.
Her throat tightened.
Did he even realize how cold those words sounded?
Did he know how much it hurt to be sent away, to be told she was useful only as some quiet balance to his iron will?
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to march into America herself, to stand beside him in whatever hell he was planning.
She wanted him to see that she was not weak, not some fragile doll to be hidden away.
And yet… she also wanted to believe him.
To believe that her presence here mattered, that she could do more than watch from the sidelines.
She rose and crossed to the window.
Below, the lights of the hidden town flickered in the winter dark, torches moving like fireflies across the drill square.
The air trembled with the rhythm of marching boots.
A machine, yes.
But also a home—for those who had lost their own.
Perhaps Elias was right.
Perhaps they would need someone to remind them they were still human, not merely cogs in his endless design.
She pressed her palm to the cold glass.
"It's been four years,"
she whispered.
"Four years since you saved me. You've given me everything, Elias. But if I can, I'll give you something in return. I'll give you back the part of you you've lost."
Her reflection looked back at her, pale and determined.
In the distance, the drums of the Iron Hand echoed against the stone, steady as a heartbeat.