Seven read the words printed on the page with growing dread:

  HELL’S MAW. DEEP SECTOR 7.

  MANDATORY TRIPLE OVERTIME.

  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

  Her stomach dropped out from under her, and she shook the paper at Rook, suddenly annoyed. “You couldn’t think of a more pleasant name than Hell’s Maw?”

  Rook shrugged. “I don’t name them. In any case, Sector 7 is understaffed. A perfect opportunity for someone with your initiative!”

  Seven watched him carefully. She was still pretty certain he didn’t know about what she’d gotten up to at headquarters last night. But he obviously suspected, or he wouldn’t be reassigning her. Perhaps Cheryl had mentioned the missing card. It was an easy connection, she supposed, and she hadn’t expected that the place would burn down. She’d just wanted to get in and out. Even ruining Rook’s dice wouldn’t have left anything tying the act to her.

  She glanced at the assignment, not sure what to make of it. On the one hand, it was a death sentence; one of the many sectors that miners spoke of with dread in their voices, she wasn’t sure she’d even heard of anyone getting assigned there at all. She’d figured it was some sort of threat, said with the same seriousness that you told a child a monster would get them if they didn’t eat their peas with dinner.

  But it was apparently real. Real, and her new reality.

  “You’ll start tonight,” Rook said, as if scheduling a routine shift. “Given your skill, I’m sure you’ll exceed expectations there as well. Any questions?”

  Seven shook her head, already making as many plans in her mind as fast as she could make them.

  “Excellent!” Rook rose in a single smooth motion, extending his hand as though to seal a contract. Seven didn’t take it. Rook could rot in hell with his crooked cousin. She headed towards the door, eager to get as far away from the smell of smoke as possible, but Rook called out behind her. “Oh, Seven?”

  She paused in the doorway.

  “One more reminder.” His voice was warm and cheerful again. “The pickaxe authorization system tracks quota fulfillment automatically. If you don’t meet the triple rate, the lift won’t descend for retrieval.” He smiled, rubbing his hands together. “Just a friendly reminder!”

  Seven left, but as she trailed out of the room, she held her middle finger high.

  ***

  Emmet was milling about with the others staring at the chaos of headquarters. He swore softly the moment he saw her and fell into step beside her.

  “Seven, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said, keeping his voice low as they moved. “What happened last night?”

  “I didn’t do any of that if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Someone set it on fire while Luca and I were in there.”

  “Luca?” Emmet frowned. “The blonde kid? The mathematician?”

  “You know him?”

  Emmet shrugged, dodging a few newsboys hoping to get the story on LMC headquarters. “Not well. I know his family had a bad run-in with the Rook family awhile back. And that he’s lucky to be alive at all. People like him don’t last down here.”

  “Well, he almost ratted me out, but when he realized who I was, he came with me.”

  “Not exactly a good exchange.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But I haven’t seen him all morning. Who knows if he’ll stay quiet.”

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  “He will. Luca hates trouble—maybe even a little too much.” His eyes caught the reassignment papers in her hands as they made their way through Luckville and past the gleaming casinos towards the housing district. “What’s that?”

  She handed him the packet wordlessly. He opened it, skimmed it, then swore, stopping in the streets to search her face.

  “Hell’s Maw? Triple overtime?”

  “The very same,” she said glumly. “At least the ore will be good. What?” She finally asked when Emmet wouldn’t stop staring at her in stunned horror.

  “That’s not a reassignment, Seven—it’s an execution.”

  “So I figured,” she said, tugging him along.

  “You don’t get it,” he said, his long strides easily keeping up with several of her short ones. “They used to send people down there when the mines first opened. It had such a low survival rate that they had to stop because it was cutting into the company’s bottom line.”

  Seven snorted, still moving. Anything to put as much distance between her and LMC as possible. “I would sure hate to cut into the company’s bottom line,” she said, annoyed, then waved at him dismissively. “Look, it’s not all bad. There has to be something good down there. Something worth sending people in for. And besides that, I’ve got Luck on my side.”

  “Obviously not,” Pocket chimed in.

  “Not that kind of luck,” she said. “Luck.”

  “Luck,” Emmet repeated incredulously, dodging a market stall with his hip. “That’s what you’re calling it?”

  “It’s inconspicuous,” she argued. “Simple. Elegant.”

  “Seven, there are many words to describe you, but elegant isn’t one of them.”

  She threw him a rude gesture, but her mind was barely on his words. She supposed she should be panicked, but Rook’s news had settled into her with a sort of bitter finality. Like a challenge she’d finally decided to accept. Rook wanted her dead? She’d come back with so much ore and so much evidence of LMC’s treachery that they’d wish they’d never sent her down there at all. She wasn’t just a princess, or a miner—she was Luck-blessed. Not cursed at all. And when she came back up for air, Rook’s office would be the least of his problems—she’d burn the entire compound down around his ears.

  “Why do I feel like the gravity of this isn’t hitting you?” Emmet asked, clearing still panicked. “Seven, I can’t let them send you down there—Moore will have my head.”

  “What are you going to do?” She asked suddenly. “You can’t convince LMC not to do it, and by the time you get word out to Moore I’ll already be knee-deep in shit.” She shook her head, the sounds of the market strangely calming. “The best thing we can do is prepare. I’ll survive. I’ll come back stronger. And I’ll have so much evidence to bring LMC down that there won’t be a Lucky Mining Corp anymore when I’m done with them.”

  “Still…”

  She tried a smile. It didn’t even feel like a lie, really. “What better way to learn what I can do than with the threat of death looming over me?”

  “I didn’t think stress was a great teacher.”

  “Works great for me.”

  Emmet peered at the paper again as they approached his home, reading some of the fine print at the bottom.

  “No manual overrides,” he read. “No SOS signals available for the duration of the shift due to procedural safety.” He shook the page at her. “This is how you want to learn about your curse?”

  “I would like to borrow a pen,” Pocket said matter-of-factly. “In the event of my untimely demise, I want to leave all of my treasures to the pancake purveyor’s…” He trailed off, muttering to himself. “What was it again? Oh, yes! Sexy man candy. I love that line.”

  Emmet stared at Pocket, dumbfounded. “I thought you said you took the romance books away from him.”

  “I did,” she argued. “He keeps finding new material!”

  “LIBRARIES!” Pocket squealed.

  Seven let out a sigh. “Well, it was this or rotting in one of Rook’s cells. At least this will be a faster death.”

  "That's not funny," Emmet said. Seven made a little back-and-forth motion with her head.

  "It’s a little bit funny."

  Pocket cleared his throat. "I'm aware this might be controversial—but have we considered just burning down the entire facility and running away to become bandits?"

  "That's your solution to everything," Seven said.

  "It hasn't failed us yet!"

  "We've literally never tried it."

  "Exactly. One hundred percent success rate."

  Despite everything, Seven laughed.

  "Okay," she said finally. "Okay. I have…sixteen hours. We can work with sixteen hours. Someone survived. That means there’s a way to make it work for us.”

  "Or someone got lucky."

  "I've been lucky before."

  Pocket snorted. "Yes, your life has been a cavalcade of good fortune. Truly, you are blessed by the universe."

  Emmet sighed, reaching over Seven’s shoulder to unlock his door. “If you’re both done, and Seven is determined to die, we need to do everything in our power to try to prevent that from happening. We’ve got sixteen hours.”

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