"Are we going to die?"
In the darkness, the girl's fear and sobbing spread to the others.
They huddled together in a corner, clinging to one another for the little comfort it brought.
Their parents, their friends, everyone they had ever known, were dead, slaughtered by a pale giant.
Hundreds of children had been thrown into this room. The pale giant said nothing to them, only tossed in a book. In it were detailed records of the crimes committed by their families and friends.
Curze was both judge and educator.
He had wanted these children to understand the meaning of justice, to let justice and order take root in the hive.
But he sensed danger. He had to leave.
"Mr. Smitch, are you certain?" Philly asked.
"I don't know, ma'am." The worker stammered. "Although my family has been maintaining these lifts for generations, the control of the lifts was never in our hands. The nobles at the spire control them. But… I once heard my father say, his father taught him: restarting solves most failures. It's the family secret, passed down from generation to generation. Whenever the lifts broke down, a restart would bring them back online."
"The nobles shut down the lifts. I think this counts as a malfunction, too. Maybe a restart can make them run again."
Phily did not interfere. She couldn't understand the precision instruments, nor did she know what the buttons were for.
Even the worker only half-understood. All he could do was mimic the sacred steps written in the family's book of tradition.
And while the Midnight Phantoms were attempting to break into the upper hive, the nobles were plotting as well.
The nobles of the spire had ruled the hive for generations, enjoying supreme power. But the truth was, the fate of the hive had always rested in the lower hive.
All industry relied on the manufactorums of the lower hive. The massive fusion plasma reactors that powered the hive were also down below. And now, all of it was in the hands of the Midnight Phantoms.
But whether noble or Phantom, neither would dare tamper with the reactors.
If the reactors overloaded, the explosion would send the entire hive into the sky.
If the reactors were destroyed, no one could repair them. If they were shut down, no one could restart them.
Without the reactors, the factories would grind to a halt. The promethium refineries would fail to produce corpse-starch in sufficient quantities, and billions would starve.
But the people would not die of hunger first. Without the reactors, the lower hive would lose its only source of heat. The ventilation fans would fail. The toxic smog of the factories would accumulate.
The people would freeze to death or choke on the fumes, long before hunger killed them.
The Midnight Phantoms, though controlling the reactors, had never cut off the power supply to the upper hive and the spire.
Because billions of innocent workers lived there. Even if nobles had backup generators, those workers would surely die.
For the same reason, though the nobles had severed all contact between the upper and lower hives, they still regularly sent shipments of replacement parts and workers to maintain the reactors.
The Midnight Phantoms had no choice but to accept them, because skilled reactor technicians were few in the lower hive.
These workers were never allowed to return to the upper hive. They worked only under the strict watch of the young Phantom warriors, for fear they might leak intelligence.
But the Phantoms' knowledge was still too shallow. They did not know of something called a camera, nor of a technology called real-time transmission.
Clang! Clang!
The lift descended, aligning with the platform amid a thunderous roar.
The Phantoms had fortified the lift shaft with three hundred young warriors and several tanks guarding the entrance.
As always, they prepared to welcome the incoming workers from the upper hive. But when they saw what was inside the lift, they froze.
There were no workers. Only tanks and hundreds of fully armed soldiers.
"Att- " The warning caught in a boy's throat as a plasma beam vaporized his entire upper body.
Scarlet beams wove a net of slaughter, cutting down a dozen unprepared fighters.
The officer inside the lift coldly gestured. His soldiers advanced, following behind the tanks.
Boom!
The tank's treads crushed a boy's corpse, bursting blood and gore across the ground.
Its cannon thundered, each shot tearing apart carefully built defenses and annihilating the Phantoms' tanks.
As soon as the soldiers left the lift, it rushed upward again, ready to bring down more troops.
The nobles could not tolerate being held hostage by a band of lowborn rebels, even if the chance of them sabotaging the reactor was nearly zero.
"For justice!"
"For the Midnight Phantoms!"
"Reinforcements are coming; we must hold them back!"
The young are always full of fire. They always charge to the frontlines of revolution, and always die there first.
Even against overwhelming odds, they stood their ground.
Their lasguns could not pierce tank ceramite, but they still had missile launchers, heavy saw-guns. They fought back!
The officer watched coldly. These were mere children. They had no real training.
They could fire a gun, but before a disciplined army, they were only a rabble.
In minutes, the tanks smashed their defenses. Seventy-three casualties later, the Phantoms' force was annihilated.
The soldiers quickly fortified their position, awaiting reinforcements.
Crack!
The officer raised his boot and stomped on a boy's face, bursting his right eye in a spray of blood.
A plasma gun pressed against the boy's head, the same gun that had blown apart another boy's torso, and with it, his dream.
A moment ago, he had tried to grab his gun and fight back. Now he could only whimper beneath the officer's boot.
The officer hadn't meant to torture him. But the nobles wanted a show.
"Don't kill him. When the next lift arrives, send him up to the spire. I want to torture him personally."
"These wretches dare to resist us? Have they forgotten whose city this is?"
"Hahaha! Well done! Kill them all, kill every last one of these vermin!"
The nobles laughed through the officer's chest-mounted camera, mocking the Phantoms and venting their rage.
The officer kicked the boy aside. Two soldiers dragged him to the lift.
Even maimed, with one eye gone and his body mangled, the boy glared at the officer with burning defiance.
The officer thought of the Phantoms' slogans, order and justice.
"Fragile order. Ridiculous justice." He sneered, playing to the nobles watching the live feed.
"Funny, isn't it?"
A cold voice whispered behind him.
The officer raised his gun in alarm, but all he tasted was the sweet tang of blood in his throat.
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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