Chapter 412: Old Mine

Today, the work order didn’t come through the usual channels.

Xavier noticed that first. It wasn’t routed through inmate labor rotation or maintenance scheduling. It came directly to his profile, flagged as a “technical support request,” vague enough to mean almost anything and specific enough to mean someone wanted him there.

Supervisor Arlen was waiting at the junction instead of sending a guard.

“You’re getting popular,” Arlen said as they started walking. Her tone was light, but she didn’t look at him when she said it, eyes forward, pace unhurried.

Xavier glanced down the corridor ahead of them. “That usually ends badly.”

“Only if the wrong people are paying attention,” Arlen replied. “This is an older section. Systems keep acting up. Nobody likes sending standard crews down here.”

They passed through a checkpoint that felt more symbolic than secure. The lighting shifted as they moved deeper, panels older, less polished, maintenance seams exposed instead of hidden. The prison still functioned here, but it felt like it was layered on top of something else rather than built clean from the ground up.

They stopped near a sealed bulkhead marked with faded identifiers that didn’t match current prison formatting. Arlen stepped close to the panel, close enough that Xavier caught the faint scent of whatever she wore, deliberate and out of place down here. She keyed in a code and waited for the locks to cycle.

“Before this became a prison,” Arlen said, “it was a resource site. Deep extraction. Jupiter-adjacent mining. Expensive, unstable, and quietly shut down, or so I have heard.”

Xavier studied the markings. “You don’t abandon infrastructure like this unless something went wrong.”

Arlen’s mouth curved slightly. “Or unless what you pulled out caused more trouble than it was worth.”

The bulkhead opened with a low mechanical groan.

Beyond it, the corridor widened and dipped, gravity shifting just enough to register. The walls were rougher here, reinforcements exposed, old equipment mounts left empty. This wasn’t a prison design. This was industrial, repurposed instead of replaced.

Klatos was already inside.

He leaned against the wall with his wings folded tight, posture relaxed in a way that meant he’d been waiting longer than he let on. When he saw Xavier, he straightened a fraction.

“Told you there were places people pretend don’t exist,” Klatos said.

Xavier stepped through as the door sealed behind them. “How long has this been closed?”

“Officially,” Arlen said, moving in behind him, “since the prison opened. Unofficially, parts of it still draw power. Old systems don’t like being shut down completely.”

Xavier walked forward, scanning the space. Scratches lined one section of the wall, shallow and deliberate, carved into metal that hadn’t been replaced in years. He stopped when he saw it.

The mark wasn’t decorative. It wasn’t obvious. It was familiar enough to tighten something in his chest.

Klatos noticed his pause. “You recognize it.”

“A man I knew,” Xavier said, ” told me about leaving signs where people stopped paying attention.”

Arlen watched him closely. “Name.”

“Bill Stan. He was famously known as Bull.”

The change was immediate.

Arlen didn’t flinch, but her focus sharpened. Klatos’s posture shifted, wings tightening slightly like he’d just heard something he never thought he would.

“That name doesn’t surface often,” Arlen said. “When it does, records tend to go missing.”

Xavier turned to her. “So you know who he was.”

“It would be weird if I did. He was a space pirate, after all.”

“And a very vicious one,” Klatos added. “Now that I think about it, he was killed in the prison when you were…”

Klatos suddenly stopped speaking and turned to Xavier.

“Wait… uhh…” Klatos pointed at Xavier. “This might sound stupid and impossible, but could it be that the treasure we are looking for is…?”

“Yeah.” Xavier nodded. “It’s one of Bull’s enormous treasures.”

“But he never told the locations of his treasures, so how….?”

“Obviously, I was the one who killed him.” Xavier said without a change of expression on his face.

Bull was the first person he had killed unwillingly, and that was also the beginning of everything. Bull’s death created Xavier and paved a path for him to walk through.

’His death was a sacrifice I will never forget.’

They continued walking.

“I know this sector wasn’t sealed because it was dangerous. It was sealed because it was inconvenient,” Arlen said.

“Inconvenient how?” Xavier asked.

Arlen gestured deeper down the corridor, toward where the lighting thinned and the structure dipped further. “This place still connects to the old shafts. Not all of them collapsed. Some of them lead to areas nobody wants inmates wandering into.”

Klatos exhaled quietly. “People say the mine never really closed. It just stopped being called one.”

Xavier nodded. “Bull said the first location wouldn’t be hidden. He said it would be ignored.”

Arlen studied him for a moment longer than necessary. “Then you’re probably standing in the right place.”

“I’m going to need access,” Xavier said.

Arlen didn’t answer immediately. She stepped closer, lowering her voice without actually whispering. “Access costs trust,” she said. “And discretion.”

Xavier met her eyes. “You wouldn’t have brought me here if you weren’t already invested.”

A hint of a smile touched her mouth. “You’re a problem,” she said. “But you’re also exactly the kind of problem worth getting close to.”

Klatos shifted beside them. “So what’s the plan?”

Xavier looked down the corridor again, toward the buried remains of a mining operation hidden under concrete and policy. “We find out what Bull thought was worth hiding here,” he said. “And we do it before someone decides this sector deserves attention again.”

The lights flickered once, then steadied.

Arlen led them past a secondary junction and keyed in an override that wasn’t on the public system map. The corridor beyond dropped deeper, angled slightly downward, the floor plating older and scarred in a way the prison proper never was.

“This section isn’t on regular rotation,” Arlen said. “Power cycles are manual. Environmental controls lag. You stay close.”

Xavier fell in step beside her. Close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm once, brief and accidental on paper, deliberate in practice. She didn’t apologize.

Klatos walked a few steps ahead, wings folded tight, attention fixed on the structural supports and the way the corridor narrowed as it descended. He was already cataloging weak points, old mounts, places where things could be hidden.

Old mining smell. Metal, dust, something faintly chemical.

Arlen slowed near a maintenance alcove, gesturing for Klatos to keep moving. “Check the junction ahead,” she said. “See if the old rail system still has power.”

Klatos nodded and moved on without question.

The moment he was out of earshot, Arlen stopped.

“So,” she said quietly, “this is where you ask.”

Xavier turned toward her. The alcove was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to stand without touching. The light overhead flickered, casting uneven shadows across her uniform, fitted enough that it didn’t leave much to imagination.

“Ask what,” Xavier replied.

She stepped closer. Not pressing into him, not trapping him, just close enough that space stopped being neutral. “For deeper access,” she said. “For time. For things I shouldn’t be authorizing.”

Xavier leaned back against the wall panel behind him, casual on the surface, fully aware of how little room that left her. “You already know why I need it.”

“I do,” Arlen said. “What I don’t know is what you’re offering.”

Xavier met her eyes. “You didn’t bring me down here for a favor,” he said. “You brought me because you wanted to see if the version of me in your head was real.”

“You’re not even pretending you don’t know what this is,” she said.

“No,” Xavier replied. “And you’re not pretending you don’t want it.”

She didn’t deny it. She reached past him instead, fingers brushing his wrist as she keyed in a secondary authorization on the wall panel. The contact was brief, but it lingered in the way she didn’t pull back immediately.

“This door stays open,” Arlen said softly. “For now.”

The panel slid aside, revealing a narrower shaft beyond, old access rails running along one side, descending deeper into the structure.

Xavier glanced into it, then back at her. “That’s deeper than you said you’d take me.”

Her mouth curved slightly. “I never said where I’d stop.”

Footsteps echoed from down the corridor.

Arlen stepped back just as Klatos returned, his expression neutral. “Rail lines still draw power,” he said. “Barely.”

“Good,” Arlen replied, already back in supervisor mode. “We’ll proceed.”

She moved past Xavier without looking at him, but as she did, her fingers brushed his again, deliberate this time, a silent reminder that the door hadn’t opened on its own.

Klatos took the lead, unaware of what was happening behind him.

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