The Kadoma District Clinic was a low-slung concrete building that smelled of antiseptic, red dust, and desperation. The power was flickering, a common occurrence in the highlands, casting long, jittery shadows across the hallways. Inspector Chipo Moyo led Samson past a row of weary families toward a reinforced door at the end of the wing.
"The boy's name is Kuda," Chipo whispered as she turned the key. "He was an 'apprentice' for the artisanal miners—the one they send into the smallest crevices because he's thin. We found him ten miles from the Invictus site, standing in the middle of a dry riverbed. He hasn't moved a muscle in forty-eight hours."
They stepped inside. The room was cold, cooled by a struggling window unit. On the narrow cot sat a boy who couldn't have been more than twelve. His skin was gray with stone dust, and his eyes were wide, staring at a point six inches in front of his face. In his clenched right fist, he held the jagged piece of blue-veined quartz.
But as Samson approached, he realized Chipo had been wrong. The boy wasn't just holding the stone. The stone was fused to his palm. The iridescent blue veins in the rock were spreading into the boy's skin, mapping out his nervous system in glowing sapphire lines.
"Kuda?" Samson asked softly, stepping into the boy's line of sight.
The boy didn't blink. However, the tattoo on Samson's arm began to throb with a violent, rhythmic heat. The sapphire ink beneath Samson's skin reacted to the quartz in the boy's hand like a magnet finding north.
"Inspector, get back," Samson warned.
Suddenly, the flickering fluorescent lights in the room died completely. But the room didn't go dark. It was bathed in a sudden, blinding sapphire radiance emanating from the boy. Kuda's mouth opened, and instead of a scream, a sound came out that made the windows rattle in their frames—a high-pitched, metallic grinding, like a diamond drill hitting a vein of iron.
Samson felt a psychic hammer hit his brain. His vision blurred, and suddenly, he wasn't in the clinic. He was falling.
He was inside the Invictus Mine, but the perspective was wrong. He was small—Kuda's size. He was crawling through a narrow "rabbit hole" tunnel, three hundred feet below the surface. The air was thick and hot, tasting of ancient earth. Ahead of him, the other miners—men with names like Farai and Nyasha—were swinging their picks in a rhythmic trance.
Then, the sound started. Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
The rock wall in front of them didn't collapse; it dissolved. It turned from solid granite into a liquid, shimmering pool of blue light. And then, the hands reached out.
They were hands made of pure gold, but they moved like silk. They didn't grab the miners; they pulled them in, as if the men were being invited into a warm bath. One by one, the miners stepped into the wall of light, their bodies turning translucent, their memories of home and family being stripped away and crystallized into the very ore they had been trying to dig out.
"The earth is hungry," a voice echoed in the vision—a voice that sounded like a thousand shifting coins. "You take our skin, so we take your souls. The balance must be paid in gold."
The vision snapped.
Samson was back in the clinic, gasping for air. He was on his knees, and Chipo was holding his shoulder, her face a mask of concern. Kuda had collapsed back onto the cot, the blue glow fading into a dull, exhausted hum.
"What did you see?" Chipo demanded. "Your eyes... Samson, your eyes were glowing."
Samson wiped the sweat from his face. "They aren't stealing the gold, Chipo. They aren't even mining it. The gold is the miners."
Chipo stepped back, her hand touching the cross around her neck. "What are you talking about? That's impossible. Gold is a mineral. It's chemistry."
"In Tredex, memory was ink," Samson said, standing up on shaky legs. "Here, in the Great Dyke, it seems the earth has found a way to turn human life into bullion. The international concern is right—the gold is vanishing. But it's not leaving the country. It's being transformed. Something deep down there is hungry for the 'Aetheric' energy of the workers. It's a harvest, Chipo. A soul-harvest."
Before she could respond, the heavy steel door of the room was kicked open.
Two men in charcoal-gray tactical gear burst in, carrying silenced submachine guns. They didn't look like police or rebels; they looked like corporate mercenaries—clean, expensive, and lethal.
"Detective Samson," the lead mercenary said, his voice cold. "Mr. Sibanda would like a word. And we'll be taking the boy."
Chipo drew her service weapon with lightning speed. "This is a government facility! Drop your weapons!"
The mercenary didn't even look at her. He fired a dart into her shoulder before she could pull the trigger. She slumped against the wall, paralyzed but conscious.
Samson moved to draw his gun, but his right arm—the one with the tattoo—refused to move toward his holster. Instead, it pulled him toward the boy. The blue ink was screaming a warning.
"Don't make this difficult, Detective," the mercenary said, stepping over Chipo. "We know about your history in Tredex. We know you're the only one who can talk to the 'Veins.' You're going to help us stabilize the Invictus Mine, or we'll let the boy burn out."
The mercenary reached for Kuda, but as his hand touched the boy's skin, a spark of blue static threw him across the room. The quartz in Kuda's hand flared one last time, and a map burned itself directly into Samson's retinas—a map of a secret entrance to the mine, located beneath a sacred Baobab tree in the Shurugwi hills.
"He's not going anywhere with you," Samson growled.
He didn't use his gun. He slammed his glowing palm against the floor. The Aetheric Residue in his blood connected with the mineral deposits in the clinic's foundation. A shockwave of blue energy rippled through the concrete, blowing the windows outward and short-circuiting every piece of electronics in the building.
In the confusion and the darkness, Samson scooped up the unconscious boy and vaulted through the shattered window into the red dust of the Zimbabwean night.
He didn't head for the police station. He didn't head for the hotel. He headed for the bush. He needed to find the man who owned the Invictus Mine, Mr. Sibanda, but not as a guest. He needed to find out if Sibanda was the butcher, or just another piece of bait.
As he ran, the sapphire tattoo on his arm began to change. The map of Tredex was fading, being replaced by the jagged, golden topography of the Great Dyke. The city was gone; the mountain was taking its place.