The Belly of the Beast

Ch. 9, Terror, Bliss

A beautiful girl lay on the white sheet, her face delicate, peaceful even, laid to rest on a funeral pyre built of humanity's waste. But that wasn't what terrified me.

She wore The White Uniform. The uniform of the Top. A uniform only worn  by someone from levels A, B, C.

And it was covered in blood.

I'd only ever seen the White Uniform when the Admiral made an announcement. Seeing the uniform, here, in the lowest level, was impossible. When people from the Top died, they weren't put into the Chute and burned like the rest of us.

No one from the Top ever came to the Belly, and vice versa. They were separate, untouchable worlds. If Xyla hadn't been standing right next to me, I would have thought the whole thing a dream.

Xyla's hand wrapped around my flesh hand. "Z... we should go... we can't be here."

I won't eat your lies.

The blood staining the white uniform was bright red, still fresh. More than curiosity brought me to my knees beside her. I am a doctor... even if only of the dead. I lifted two shaking fingers and placed them against the skin of her neck.

For the first time in the Chute, I felt a slow beat that wasn't the engines.

"She's alive." I took a steadying breath, then lifted the bottom of her shirt. She bore several wounds not unlike that of the fighting pits, deep, ugly gashes, like she'd been stabbed. A thousand questions swirled in my mind, but I pushed them away as I leaned forward and smelled the warmth and stench of intestines. Too deep. Too late.

"Can you save her?" Xyla whispered. I met her eyes and the truth passed between us.

Together we looked down at the girl, who looked barely older than me, her deep chestnut hair lined with hints of gold. Then I glanced up at the fiery red glow in the distance, where she would be dumped into the inferno. "We need to move her out of the Chute."

"Z..."

"She's still alive, Xyla. We can't do nothing."

Xyla glanced over her shoulder, and even with her handkerchief over her mouth I knew she was biting her lip, debating. If we were caught here, we were dead. But if we were caught here with a dying woman from the Top? They'd throw us into the Incinerator and forget the Letter Trails altogether.

It didn't matter. I couldn't leave her.

"Please, Xyla. She's helpless. She's dying."

Xyla exhaled, eyes tight, then bent to the woman's side. "Alright, but quick. And just to the walkway."

I took her legs, and Xyla grabbed beneath her shoulders. I'd always imagined the people from the Top to be taller than even Xyla, with bellies swollen from food, but she was nearly as thin as I.

Together Xyla and I carried her to the thin metal walkway that lined the edge of the Chute, for K-guards who wanted to patrol the area without getting their boots dirty. The edge revealed machinery below so convoluted I had once believed Yaneli when she told me we lived inside a beast and the grinding and pumping machines were its organs, the smog its blood, and we the tiny mites that lived and died inside it.

"Set her there." I motioned to a place on the metal walkway, and we laid her down carefully.

Her eyes opened.

Xyla swore and recoiled, but I stepped closer and knelt at her side, taking one of her hands in mine.

"It's alright, I'm here. You... You're not alone." I squeezed her hand, and she turned to look straight at me. Her eyes were glazed— I had the strange feeling she was seeing something other than reality.