Seven jogged through the city as she left Emmet’s, only one thought on her mind—get as far away from the chaos of Luckville as possible. It seemed silly to jog when she’d only narrowly missed getting clobbered and worse by another miner. When she’d had to take a shower in that blessed hot water at Emmet’s place before leaving. But the night was cool, almost crisp, and it helped clear her mind. And, whatever had healed her and broken Emmet’s floor open was eager to give her more energy.

  She wasn’t sure where it stopped. Had she always been able to harness it, or had it been something that she’d only just unlocked when her life was on the line? It was hard to really tell. The line seemed to blur between what was Seven, and what was this odd power.

  If it’s powered by dice, I’d never see the end of it, she thought, dodging a few shopkeepers who stared at her as she jogged by. And, if it was something she could master, she very well might not need dice at all.

  She jogged past the counting stalls near LMC headquarters, and the line of miners waiting there to count the day’s wages. Past the mess hall, the street where she should have turned off to return to her tiny apartment, then up to the wall that lined the city, torches blooming into life as night fell.

  It was, perhaps, dangerous to be on top of the wall; she hadn’t forgotten Emmet’s warning about the bracelet around her wrist, and the city wall was a little too close to the outskirts for comfort. But there was something liberating in being so close to the edge. Something that helped her escape the cloying touch of the other miner’s body against hers. Something that helped ease the panic and the crushing feeling in her chest. Yes, she would have to go back to weigh her now meager haul. Yes, she would have to show up for her shift the next morning regardless of what had happened tonight. And yet, though those things certainly weighed on her mind, she couldn’t help but feel hopeful.

  This was something she could fight back with—something she could harness. She still ached for a dice of her own, yes, but with this kind of power, she could mine so many dice shards that she might be able to craft her own one day. And more importantly, she could drain every last one of them and ruin LMC’s operation from the inside, out.

  But where would she go from there? If she couldn’t find a way to pin everything on Rook and clear her name? She passed a laughing group of miners who emerged from the nearby tavern with a slight tilt to their walk. There were other options, of course—House Bloom, perhaps, with its sweeping forests and jungles. No one would find her there.

  Hollow, where LMC was located, was harder to survive in, its landscape dotted with caves and scraggly mountainside, but even then, the west and the northwest were completely unclaimed. She could start a new life there. Maybe even claim it for her own. That much was still left for her, even if she couldn’t find a way to clear her name.

  I’ll find something to prove everyone wrong, she thought, trailing to a stop at the top of the wall to overlook a series of mounds, dark in the orange setting sun. Rook’s treachery was obvious now; if he ran a business like this, surely this was just the first card in the river.

  She’d had a bad night, yes, but she could learn to survive here. She had to. If nothing else, but because her best chance of fixing her curse was still here. Every shard she’d touched tonight hummed differently from a dice. There was something special about them. Something she could practically feel.

  And, for once, she couldn’t help but feel like she was heading in the right direction. Even if she’d already had enough of the neon lights of Luckville to last a lifetime.

  Sighing, she turned to head back to her miserable apartment, wishing she’d had the guts to ask Emmet to stay at his. It was dangerous with LMC watching of course, but even LMC’s increased scrutiny would have been worth it if she didn’t have to return to that awful little apartment. Still, it was a point of pride for her; she certainly didn’t need Emmet’s help. If anything, he needed hers.

  She was nearly to the stairs of the wall when she heard the scuff of footsteps below. Quiet, resigned, dragging footsteps. She peaked over the wall, but whoever it was must have been beneath the arc, heading towards…

  “The city limits,” she whispered. Suddenly, it dawned on her. Only a fool would cross LMC’s lines. She wasn’t even sure where they were—only that anything beyond the wall was decidedly off-limits without corporate approval. She glanced over the wall just in time to see a blond head of hair—a boy, his shoulders rising and falling. He shook out his limbs, looking nervous, then put his hands on his knees, as if readying himself to sprint.

  “Shit,” she breathed, and looked for a way down. There were steps nearby, but would they be fast enough? No, she thought. Not nearly fast enough. Could she survive the fall? It was maybe two stories up, and she’d walked away from it the last time. Could she—

  The boy made the decision for her. She leapt forward, and Seven vaulted over the wall without thinking, Pocket wailing inside her shirt. She landed with a crunch, wincing, and snatched at the boy’s collar, pulling him back.

  “What the hell is your problem?” he demanded, and swung at her, his hand landing with a crack against her cheek. Seven didn’t think; she swung back, her hand balling into a fist.

  Entangled as they were in the dirt, Seven’s swing was wild and barely glanced off the boy.

  But it hit.

  With a crack and a grunt, he landed with a thud on the ground in front of her—this time, closer to Luckville. Seven stared at him, her chest heaving, her hand shaking, still balled up into a fist.

  The boy—or young man, she realized as she squinted at him in the darkness—groaned, rubbing his cheek as he sat up slowly. He was slight in frame, his hair light blonde and curled gently, his complexion slightly pink beneath the flowering bruise on his cheek. While his features were young and soft, he looked like he could have been Seven’s age—easily in his early twenties.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  She caught herself staring and unballed her fist.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said automatically, though in fairness, he had been the one to swing first. She reached out a hand to him, and he took it, letting her pull him to his feet.

  “I was the one being stupid,” he said apologetically, wincing as he poked his cheek. “Has anyone ever told you you have a good swing?”

  Seven kept her face carefully straight. I have got to figure out a way to deal with this without clobbering everyone in sight. “Never.”

  “Well you do.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and Seven slowly relaxed as she realized that the boy didn’t look like he was going to try to make a break for it—or get revenge for her strike. Instead, he just looked out into the horizon, his eyes sad.

  “Why did you stop me?” he asked. “Better a mound out there than a body underground. At least out there my family would be able to visit.”

  Seven looked from the boy, to the mounds, then back at his face in shock. The emotions and the exhaustion of the day had caught up with her, but she couldn’t help but feel another emotion—anger.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” she said. “You were really going to make a run for it?”

  “The odds are better.”

  “What odds?” she snapped. “You’re absolutely dead if you wander outside of company limits with one of their deathtraps on.” She brandished the bracelet on her wrist, now so ubiquitous she’d almost forgotten it was there. “At least if you’re in the mines, you stand a chance.”

  “I already calculated the odds,” the boy replied, his voice sharper now. “There’s a higher probability that I die in the mines than out here. If you could just—“

  The words died on his lips as scuffling met Seven’s ears. Footsteps. These were in the distance, but whoever was making them was so frantic it was easy to pick up. She scanned the horizon, looking for the source of the noise.

  Movement caught Seven’s eye, where a miner in the distance sprinted away from the wall at top speed. Though she couldn’t decipher his face, his body language was panicked and frantic, like he was running for his life.

  At first, Seven looked for the source of the disturbance. She hadn’t seen any wildlife beyond the city, but…

  There was nothing chasing the miner at all. Instead, something glowed a molten red on his wrist—his mining bracelet. That glow intensified, going from molten red to a dollop of orange and finally a white-hot gold, so bright that it illuminated the miner’s horrified face. He stuttered to a stop, pulling desperately at the bracelet, and even from a distance, the wind carried the scent of seared flesh on the breeze.

  Instead, the golden fire raced up his arm, consuming it, then spread to the rest of his body before fanning out to his other limbs. Seven watched, horrified, as the miner was completely immolated by the bracelet. In a flash of light he was gone, leaving only the darkened mounds in his wake.

  Seven barely had a moment to process the man’s death when a hatch opened in the field and a team of men and women wearing LMC’s utilitarian uniform rushed out with a corporate milk crate. One woman picked through the man’s remains for a few tiny belongings—all metal—and then left the man behind without a second thought.

  Another LMC employee rolled a dice, and a mound appeared where the man’s remains had been. Within seconds, the employees disappeared, leaving silence once again.

  Seven stared, finally seeing the mounds in a new light. They weren’t geographical oddities—they were bodies. She shook her head, hugging her torso to prevent her hands from shaking visibly.

  “Whatever odds you’re playing with,” she tried, her voice coming out weakly, “they’re not odds I’d wager on.” The blonde boy next to her shook his head, visibly shaken.

  “I thought I’d run the numbers right,” he said quietly. “They malfunction all the time.” He shook the bracelet on his wrist.

  “But not every time,” Seven said, spinning her own around her wrist. There had to be a way to disarm the things, somehow. “Improbable doesn’t mean—“

  “Impossible,” the boy said, looking at her with newfound respect. He stuck out a hand, and Seven shook it. “Luca,” he said.

  “Seven.”

  “Seven,” he repeated, as if turning the syllables over in his mind. “Thank you for saving my life. I guess it was lucky.” He paused, looking out at the horizon again, then added, “Do you consider yourself lucky?”

  She didn’t answer. Perhaps she had, once. Perhaps some, even, would be envious of what she’d once had—and thrown aside. And even now, looking at the mounds spanning miles of distance between LMC and the mountains in the distance, Seven considered herself to be very lucky for not joining their number.

  “You’ll find,” the boy went on, “that at LMC, your luck will run out. They hold all the chips, and the house always wins.”

  With that, he turned to leave, his footsteps tapping gently against the cobblestone.

  Seven let him go, still focused on the mounds in the distance. Pocket peeked from her shirt, now strangely quiet. She couldn’t get the miner’s face out of her head. She hadn’t known him. Hadn’t known his hopes, his dreams, what had brought him to LMC in the first place. She hadn’t known what he’d wanted from life. Perhaps every mound here had a similar story—a chapter cut off. A legacy not fulfilled. Perhaps they, like Seven, had hoped to rectify a past mistake.

  And now they’d never have the chance to.

  There was a time, perhaps, when Seven had been too focused on herself and her own struggles to notice those around her. A time when she’d been so intensely focused on her dice, her luck, her next place. The next big game. Even now, she had to be focused on her own survival. She hardly had time to worry about those around her.

  But standing there, looking at the sweeping graveyard stretching as far as the eye could see, at the bodies of those miners—at her people, she realized with shock. Seven remembered for the first time in weeks who she really was.

  Not a vagabond desperate for her next meal. Not a desperate miner, hunting to meet LMC’s lofty quota. Not a survivor. Not even a gambler, risking it all for one more hit.

  She was royalty. And these—these had been her people. Suffering and dying at LMC’s hands, so far from the crown that they could never call for help. Perhaps Seven would join their number one day—if not here, then miles underground, buried in rubble. Certainly her first two days had indicated as much.

  She’d come here hoping to get away, but it wasn’t the threat of death that ultimately made her pause. No, that barely fazed her anymore. What made her pause was what would happen to all of these people if she left them behind. It was too late for the mounds in the twilight, perhaps, but not for the rest. For those people, she could be there. Maybe revenge would come first, but after that, Seven swore she would do something for them.

  It was her biggest gamble yet—that she could do something for these people. And yet in gambling, just like in life, the house won quite often.

  But it didn’t always win.

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