When they descended to the first sublevel, they found themselves in a large dome-shaped room. It was all bare stone, and it had that distinctive shade of coal mine black. The space was large enough to fit an entire house. It had high ceilings, and the walls were dotted with maintenance tunnels and support beams designed to keep the shaft from collapsing.
After shining their flashlights around, they noticed the gaping cave-in. The ground on the first sublevel had collapsed, leading to a pit from which no light could escape.
That hole hadn’t been on the control room blueprints.
“Oh geez, this is grim…”
As Erna found herself all but speechless, Annette spotted something. “Yo, the wall’s been gouged out.”
“Hm?”
“The surface got melted by extreme heat. Those are blast marks.”
Erna looked where Annette was pointing her flashlight. The sublevel wall had gashes in it from where some sort of explosion had gone off right next to it.
“…Is this where the explosion happened?” Erna asked.
“At least part of it, yeah. The explosion here wasn’t as big as the paper made it out to be.”
“Could it have been an accident, do you think?”
“You mean, like, flammable gas coming up from the ground and lighting on fire? Accidents like that happen all the time, but they never leave marks like that.”
“…………”
“But c’mon, I think you could’ve figured that out without asking me to explain.”
“…………………”
She was right.
Erna knew enough to tell the difference between an accidental explosion and one caused by gunpowder. A simple gas explosion wouldn’t have been enough to obliterate the entire sublevel like that.
There was only one way she could think of to explain what had happened there.
However, she didn’t have enough evidence to be certain yet. She pulled out a camera and began documenting the scene. Every unnatural crack in the wall she followed lent more and more credence to her theory.
Behind her, Annette let out a confused little grunt.
“…What is it?” Erna asked.
“My transceiver is going off…”
Sure enough, the device in Annette’s hand was blinking.
It was picking up some sort of signal. That was bizarre, considering that they were in the middle of an out-of-service mine shaft. Using the strength of the blinking to guide them, they tried to hunt down the source.
After a few minutes, they succeeded.
It was up on the ceiling. There was a lighting fixture suspended a good sixty feet off the ground, and lying unobtrusively atop it was a black apparatus.
Without Annette’s transceiver, they never would have found it.
The girls set about using the maintenance tunnels in the walls to retrieve the device.
“What is this?” Erna said, cocking her head as she grabbed hold of it. “I feel like I’ve seen it before—”
“There’s something written there, yo!” Annette cried.
Beside the lights that black object had been sitting on, there were some words scrawled on the wall.
KINGS CAN BE REPLACED
The words were bold and written in spray paint. They read like a call to action, and when Erna saw them, the suspicion she’d been nurturing transformed into a certainty.
Erna decided to make one more gamble.
She knew they needed to flee the Bertram Mines that very night, but if they were going to complete the mission the Knights of Valor had given them, then they needed someone to testify on their behalf.
This was the one chance they were going to get.
Knowing that, she doubled back to the barracks she’d been staying at.
Annette looked none too pleased about it, but she pressed her hands against the building’s wall all the same. Erna stripped off her shoes and used Annette’s shoulders as a stepping stone to jump to the second floor. “You’re gonna compress my spine, yo!” Annette complained, but Erna decided to save her apologies for later and reached for her target’s bedroom window.
After peeking in through a gap in the curtains, Erna waited for the woman to be alone before rapping on the glass. As soon as the window opened, she slipped inside.
“Wh-where in the world did you get off to?”
The person who’d opened it for her was a fair-skinned woman. She was the one who’d cautioned Erna when Erna had been going around asking questions. The woman was dressed in her nightgown, and her eyes went wide at Erna’s sudden arrival.
“Someone from the Royal Guard was looking for you. What did you—?”
Erna shushed her and raised an index finger to tell her to keep her voice down. If the Royal Guard was already on the hunt, then they couldn’t afford to make a commotion.
She drew her face in close and spoke in a hushed whisper. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What happened at the old seventh mine.”
The woman’s eyes went even wider.
Her reaction made Erna even more sure that she knew something.
“That wasn’t some accidental explosion,” Erna said, explaining what she’d just seen. “Those blast marks were from hand grenades.”
The Knights of Valor had assumed it was a mining accident, but that wasn’t it. The royal administration was trying to cover up something far more horrible.
“I thought about why that might’ve been. But I’ve got a pretty good guess. When you drum up workers and force them to work under horrible conditions—you get strikes. If they didn’t happen, they wouldn’t have put those systems in place to keep the workers from bonding with each other, and the soldiers wouldn’t have been so on edge.”
She couldn’t stop thinking about that message she’d seen underground. Kings can be replaced. The people weren’t happy with the current government, and that must have been one of the strike’s slogans.
There had been an anti-government demonstration there. She was sure of it. And knowing that let her explain the grenades, too.
“The Royal Guard suppressed the strike. That place was littered with blast marks and bullet holes. It isn’t hard to picture just how brutal that battle must have been! And in a mine, of all places! So of course it collapsed! And it crushed all the people on the second sublevel and below when it did!!”
It was an act so inhumane, it beggared belief.
“The royal administration massacred the Bertram miners.”
The government had slaughtered its own citizens. It was the greatest crime imaginable.
It was no wonder, then, that they’d gone to such lengths to cover it up. That was why they’d forced the rest of the Bertram Mine workers into silence and immediately snatched up the reporter who broke the story about the explosion. It also explained why there were soldiers stationed all around the mines, as well as why Nike had come to inspect the site in person.
If the truth ever came to light, the people of Lylat would be furious.
“Judging by your reaction…,” Erna said, observing the woman, “…I’d say I’m right.”
“That’s… I don’t—”
The woman’s already pale skin went even whiter. Her gaze darted around in discomfort, and she bit down on her lip to keep her emotions from showing on her face.
Erna clenched her fists. Her guesses had hit the mark.
All of her evidence had been circumstantial, so that play had been a big risk. With no time to conduct a thorough investigation, though, taking that gamble was the only option she’d had.
“You can’t,” the woman whispered in a panicked hush. “If you try to leak it to the outside, they’ll kill you. We’re under strict orders not to tell anyone—”
“And you’re just gonna do what the government tells you?” Erna glared daggers at her. “Even after that tragedy, people in the mines still love Nike…and it’s obvious why. It’s because they arrested everyone who doesn’t adore Nike and the king.”
“________”
“The fact that the Royal Guard is already coming after me is proof enough of that.”
Erna turned another bitter thought back to the way the workers had cheered for Nike. That warm, fuzzy scene had only been possible because of her complete and total control. Nike swiftly rooted out anyone who harbored hostile or rebellious emotions, and the Royal Guard locked them up. All that remained were the people completely devoted to the government.
“It’s hell here.” She immediately grabbed the woman’s hands and squeezed tight. “Come with us. You were the one who warned me. You knew it might turn the soldiers against you, but you tried to protect me anyway.”
“…Huh?”
“This place will destroy someone with a heart as kind as yours.”
The Knights of Valor needed that woman. If she was willing to testify about what had happened at the Bertram Mines, then Jean and the others could spread her message across the country. It would give their revolution a massive tailwind.
The pale woman’s expression contorted in discomfort.
Erna knew she was rushing things. She’d just dumped a lot on the woman and not given her a chance to process it.
She heard Annette calling from outside.
“I hear footsteps, yo! It’s the Royal Guard!”
The soldiers were hot on their trail. Once they realized that Erna wasn’t in the barracks or the infirmary, they’d broadened their search.
There was no time. It pained her to do so, but she was going to have to force the woman’s hand.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Erna said, looking her straight in the eyes. “Now, make your choice. You can escape with me. Or you can leave me here to die.”
Bad luck was fast approaching, and Erna surrendered herself to it. Embracing the role of an ill-fated girl beset by tragedy was the perfect way to throw people off-balance.
Perhaps it was cowardly of her, but that was simply the way the spy called Fool did things. She took advantage of her delicate looks and dragged other people into misfortune alongside her.
Erna was willing to use any tool at her disposal in order to advance Lamplight’s goals.
Eventually, the pale woman let out a defeated sigh. Resolve flared in her eyes. “Where are we going?”