Smoked - Mari Mancusi Page 0,45

take that as a yes.”

PART 3:

SMOLDER

Chapter Seventeen

The Council Chambers—Year 190 Post-Scorch

“The Council will see you now.”

Connor looked up from his reader, meeting the eyes of the assistant who was leaning in the doorway to the inner sanctum. She smiled and made a gesture for him to follow her. Rising from his seat, he walked through the doorway and into the smooth, circular hallway that glowed with phosphorescent light. A few feet ahead of him, the assistant used her remote to open airlock door after airlock door as they passed through. The Council chambers were not only more than a mile underground, but they were also completely disaster proof. Rumor had it they had enough food, water, and beds inside for the entire council to sit out a nuclear winter if the situation demanded it.

“Have you ever been here before?” the assistant asked, keeping a brisk pace. Connor had to practically jog to keep up with her.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m more of an in-the-trenches kind of guy,” he added with a sheepish grin. “Politics really isn’t my thing.”

“Mine either,” the girl confessed, giving him a sly sideways glance. He hadn’t realized at first how young she was. Tall, slender, pretty, with stick-straight brown hair that hung long down her back. “But it’s a job and it puts food on the table. Also, there’s the scholarship.”

“Scholarship?”

“To the Academy, of course,” she said as if it were obvious. “So someday I can train to be a Hunter just like you.”

He masked a cringe as he caught sight of her shining eyes, her face glowing with ambition. It took everything he had not to grab her and shake her and tell her what a bad idea that was. That if she were smart, she’d stay here, deep below the surface of the world, where she was safe as a person could be. She had a job—a good one at that. She probably even qualified for Council housing, which was usually located in the best stratas. Why would anyone want to give that up for a dangerous, dirty surface job like his?

Because she doesn’t know what it’s really like, he reminded himself. She only knows what the Council tells her.

“This is a little embarrassing to admit,” the girl added, her cheeks coloring prettily. “But I still have your rookie card. My father won it playing Jongu down in Shanty Town a couple years ago. It’s pretty torn up, and my mom thinks it’s probably a fake. But I don’t care. I still like looking at it, imagining you boys up there, fighting with everything you have to save our world.” She giggled. “Anyway, like I said, if I’m lucky, maybe someday I’ll get to join you up there.”

“That would be stellar,” Connor replied, mostly because that was what she expected him to say. What the Council insisted on being said. And hey, far be it from him to dissuade people from joining their ranks—they could use all the Hunters they could get. Still, something deep down wished he could persuade her to take another path—any other path than his.

“Here we are!” she chirped brightly, stopping in front of a pair of ornately carved, gold-trimmed doors. “The Inner Circle.” She grinned conspiratorially at him. “Good luck in there. I’ll be here waiting to escort you back when you’re finished. And maybe…” She paused, fidgeting a little. “We could go get a drink or something afterward? I’d love to hear about all your adventures on the Surface Lands. I’ve never been, myself, of course. But it seems so interesting.”

He sighed. “Sure, I guess, maybe,” he said. “Let me get through this first, okay?”

She nodded, then reached up and pressed a hand to his shoulder. It was a simple gesture, and it should have felt friendly. But to Connor, it only felt invasive.

You belong to the people, his sergeant had scolded numerous times. You gave up private life the second you donned the Academy uniform.

It was true. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

He gave her a farewell nod, then turned to the doorway and stepped through. The Council chamber was cavernous—with at least a fifty-foot ceiling. Tall ceilings were a rare luxury in a world that had had to be carved out of solid rock. He wondered if this had been some sort of cave they’d found and finished off or if they’d built it from scratch.

He looked around, taking in all the ornate decorations, the wooden benches and chairs. Wood was almost impossible to