Rook. Surely it wasn’t that Rook. Seven was so stunned that she nearly lost her footing as he dragged her towards the door, a smile plastered across his face. And yet she was absolutely certain she’d never seen this man before in her life. A distant cousin, perhaps? Still, the idea that any of the Rooks frequented the establishment wasn’t a good sign, nor did it help her nerves. She tried to avoid looking directly at him as he led her away, begging every deity she knew that he wouldn’t recognize her.

  “Let’s get you equipped for success!” he said. Rook’s too-strong arm steered her through the door and through a maze of corridors that smelled progressively worse the deeper they went. Any hint of natural light was gone, and pipes jutted out from the walls, occasionally gasping in a hiss of steam that Seven flinched at. “You’re starting at rock bottom, kid, but our depot has everything you’ll need as a budding miner.”

  Seven needed anything she could get, but the look of the equipment on the wall made her hesitate. Maybe a few more nights in the gambling parlor with Emmet and she could— “I’m sure I can furnish my own—”

  “Nonsense,” he said, chuckling. He shoved her through another door and into the depot proper. Seven froze in the doorway, her mouth half-open with shock. The entire warehouse was an occupational hazard in and of itself—far too dangerous to pass any crown inspection. How did Rook get away with operating with so little regard to safety?

  Because the crown has no power out here, she reminded herself. It was too easy to forget that. Too easy to forget that she was nothing out here. And that no one could save her if she got in too deep. Well, there was no helping that at this point. She’d definitely crossed that line a long time ago, perhaps before ever setting foot in Lucky Mining Corp.

  Hundreds of rusty tools hung from the wall, some slung haphazardly over pipes, all in varying states of decay. Maintenance was obviously an afterthought, and many of the tools were wrapped in bandages and stained in old blood. Seven followed a humming Rook and tried not to think about what had happened to the original owners.

  “Here’s your pickaxe!” Rook hefted a tool that had clearly seen better days. The handle was wrapped in fraying tape, so dirty it might as well have been dyed black. “And a helmet. Safety last, as I always like to say.” He chucked a helmet at her with a clear crack running down the middle. Seven turned it in her hands doubtfully and spotted a few brightly colored stickers attempting to bridge the gap between two pieces of helmet. “And last but not least, your safety manual!”

  He handed her a booklet written in...what was it written in? Seven flipped through it, but she couldn’t make sense of the letters in it. She’d had formal instruction in dozens of languages, and while she wasn’t great at any of them, she wasn’t illiterate either. But this...

  “It’s in gibberish,” she said, peering at one symbol that gave her a headache just looking at it. She shook it at Rook, who seemed uninterested and waved her off dismissively.

  “Mining tradition,” he said, digging through another bucket. “HR says we should be covered in case of liability or something like that.” While he dug, a group of miners slouched by, one missing several fingers, and another with a bandaged head. Nearby, several other new employees were receiving the same kind of treatment that Seven was, only their mining implements seemed slightly less battered than hers. And at least their handlers weren’t enjoying the process so much.

  Rook cackled as he drew a tattered leather bag from the chest and spun it around a chubby finger once. “And now,” he said with all the drama of a game show host announcing the grand prize, “your personal mining die!”

  He shook the bag loose into Seven’s hands, and she had to fumble to catch it with her gloved hands. She bit her lip to stop from letting out a bitter laugh—or a sound of agonizing disappointment. At this point, she couldn’t be sure which would escape. The d100 in her hands barely looked like a dice at all. It was a sphere the size of her palm, the edges long worn away by use. Most of the numbers had smeared off, and those that remained looked like they’d been carved there by someone with tremors and a possible drinking problem.

  She couldn’t help but think that draining this particular dice dry would be a mercy.

  “Well?” Rook asked, his smile never wavering. Seven swallowed, trying to gather her thoughts, and stuffed the dice away in its bag. It glowed brightly, but she couldn’t be cautious enough, especially with Rook the Rounder standing there. If he caught the glow fading through her gloves, would he be suspicious? She didn’t want to find out.

  “It’s...a bit weathered, isn’t it?”

  “It’s got character!” Rook replied, beaming. He rubbed his hands together with excitement. “Takes me back. I remember when I got my first dice. Oh, the things you can do with them, eh?” He nudged her playfully, and Seven nearly fell over with the force. “Mine was much worse than this, though. This little beauty activates on rolls of 44, 55, and 66. Exciting, eh?”

  “How was yours worse than that?” Seven finally snapped. “This one will never trigger at all. What does it even do?”

  “You’ll have to find out yourself,” Rook whispered conspiratorially. “It’s hardly a good test of character to send our new miners in with a consistent dice, now is it? You’ll build character, and when you come back, maybe you can train our new miners in one of our emotional resilience courses. We need a new instructor for that one.” The smile flickered. “Lost him last week. Nice guy. Real nice guy.”

  “Wouldn’t consistent results make more money for Lucky Mining Corp?” Seven ventured. “Why wouldn’t you want more money?”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Oh, we make plenty of—well, it’s about corporate identity, you understand? Our shareholders like a good show, and luck is in our name, after all!”

  His logic was so twisted it might as well have drilled the holes that were set into several of the steaming pipes nearby. Seven watched him rummage through a few more bins, whistling. She tried to chase the math from her head. Three numbers out of a hundred. A three percent chance of success. She might as well be hoping to get struck by lightning.

  “Oh!” Rook said, his voice muffled by the chest of goods. Seven flinched at his chipper tone. “And there’s a small fee if you roll outside of the success range. Keeps things fair. Can’t give it to you for free, you know.”

  “A fee?” Seven hissed. “That’s—”

  “Motivating, right? We don’t like quitters at Lucky Mining Corp, and with the right rolls and spoils, you can earn your money back. Nothing to motivate you to keep digging like the fear of financial ruin.”

  Seven was beginning to wonder if Rook was human at all. Granted, with the family he came from, it was no wonder he was the way he was. He might as well have been an alien for all the bad luck he’d experienced.

  As Rook droned on about ‘opportunity’ and ‘synergy’, his voice a monotone of corporate buzzwords that made Seven want to swing her pickaxe at him, her attention drifted to a pen nearby, stuffed away in the corner of the depot. Dozens of colorful slimes sat behind chicken wire, each one adorned with a handwritten sign—in crayon: FREE PET. LIGHTS YOUR WAY. EMOTIONAL SUPPORT SLIME. WILL PROBABLY NOT EAT YOU.

  Seven trailed over to the pen, ignoring Rook, and found one slime shoved away in the back of the pen. Barely the size of her palm, he was nearly buried by the size of the other slimes. He flickered faintly in a sickly sort of mustard-yellow, his gelatinous form milky like someone had left vanilla pudding out in the sun just a bit too long. His sign read: POCKET. GLOWS (SOMETIMES), also written in crayon. Whoever had written Pocket’s sign had crossed out and corrected themselves several times in increasingly frustrated handwriting, the scribbles nearly tearing through the page.

  Well, having someone along would be nice, even if it’s just a slime, Seven thought. She turned back towards Rook, then gestured at the pen.

  “Are these really free?” she asked.

  Rook looked up from where he was balancing an old toolbox and another stack of paperwork, and his smile faltered for just a moment before beaming back onto his face. He straightened, dropped his load, and dusted off his hands. “Of course they’re free! Family should have companions, shouldn’t they? And nothing says family like a pet you can’t afford to feed.”

  The last part was muttered under his breath, but Seven caught it anyway on his lips. Lip reading was a valuable skill to have back home, and it was no different here. She pretended not to hear, but she did reconsider the little slime.

  It would have seemed like a trap if Rook hadn’t looked so put out by her noticing the pen. Even his actions were brusque now, as if he wanted to be rid of her. What were the slimes to him, that he wanted her to ignore them?

  “Just need you to sign a few tiny little forms,” Rook said, and produced a stack of papers that multiplied as she watched. “Pet registration form, slime care liability waiver, emotional attachment disclaimer, pet damage to company property insurance, slime feeding subscription service agreement, emergency veterinary financial responsibility contract, and the ‘my slime ate my homework’ clause for productivity-related incidents.”

  He slammed the stack onto a rickety table nearby, and Seven leafed through it halfheartedly. There was really no point in reading any of it; the pages were written in legalese dense enough to make tax codes look like light reading. Seven figured she was probably about to sign away several rights she didn’t know she even had, but she’d done that already. Emmet had done that already—for her. And, luck take her, if this was how deep she had to go to get back at Rook, she would.

  She paused over the papers, pen in hand, then looked at Rook the Rounder. He was tapping his foot, his arms crossed, looking agitated, to say the least. His gaze snapped from the slime and back to Seven, his smile flickering.

  Rook didn’t want her to sign these forms. And Seven had a feeling about the slime in the pen. Better to have a friend along anyway, than to die alone in the mines. How bad could a companion slime be?

  She signed the papers, watching Rook’s eye twitch, and handed the stack over. He forced another smile onto his face, then shoved the stack into his suit, knocking off a few pins in the process.

  “Excellent! We can’t have loneliness—it’s against company policy. And depressed employees are bad for morale.”

  He clapped his hands together like a performing seal and then ceremoniously unlocked the pen and scooped up the slime.

  Pocket—if that was even his name—jiggled like an inflated balloon, his little eyes looking from Rook to Seven with what looked like an unimpressed glare. His surface rippled with what could have been either annoyance or indigestion.

  “He glows!” Rook announced, holding Pocket up with the enthusiasm of someone trying to sell a broken flashlight.

  As if on command, Pocket flickered once—a dim, sickly light that seemed to echo Seven’s hope for her future at Lucky Mining Corp. The light was so faint it was barely visible even in the depot’s darkness, and Seven tried to force a smile on her face. She didn’t want to hurt the slime’s feelings—if they even had feelings.

  “Uh, very impressive,” she tried, forcing sincerity into her voice. She could hardly be mad about her purchase; Pocket, or whoever had written his sign, had been very clear about his limitations.

  “More impressive than you, your highness,” Pocket snapped, and Seven froze at the title. Yes, he was a talking slime, and that was bad enough. But to hear her title bandied about so casually…surely it was impossible for the slime to know anything about her past. And yet, it took her a moment to master her expression. Rook, mercifully, no longer seemed interested in her, and he checked his watch, tossing Pocket in her general direction.

  She caught the little slime, who was barely bigger than the palm of her hand, and he sidled up her arm to settle on her shoulders, his glow like a light bulb that couldn’t quite settle in the on position.

  As Rook gestured her forward, sorting through her pile of paperwork with greedy eyes, Seven realized that her situation had just gotten infinitely more complicated. She’d signed her life away, and now this slime of all people possibly knew who she was.

  “This is going to be a very long forty-nine years,” she muttered.

  “Only if you’re lucky,” Pocket replied cheerfully. “The odds of you making it past the first week are one in seven thousand, five hundred, and forty-three.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, sorry—seven million, seven thousand, five hundred, and forty-three.”

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