Trowels chimed like small bells against the rough rock overhead. All through the tunnels, they made music, and seams of light opened across the understreets. So much light that new flowers bloomed—ones we hadn’t seen since our sunwalker days. Our faces pinched, adjusting to the new brightness in our world. Our black eyes began to shrink back into a multitude of color.

“I wonder what color Chev’s eyes are?” Beth dug at a sooty spot overhead. A small rush of dirt dusted her hair. She coughed and scrambled back as a chunk of concrete fell at her feet and shattered. The sounds of a busy street tumbled down through the new hole.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know, darling. I don’t think he’s coming back. And if he does—be kind to him. He doesn’t even remember the sun.” I collected the fistful of flowers that the bright boy—Beth had named him Bracken—harvested from our small patch.

He never spoke a word, but smiled and followed Beth everywhere. His feet were bare and unflinching against the cold tunnel floor, and his golden hair soon took on the texture of seaweed.

In Chev’s absence, the Kindred’s gapped smiles twinkled in falling bars of sunlight. The old adoption rituals were abandoned. Every elder now had a child—some two—and laughter sounded in the underground for the first time in living memory. There were now more children than tarps. The future of our line was secure.

***

A sound like a siren wailed through the tunnels. Kindred crawled from under tarps, blinking in the light. As the sound fell and then rose again, I realized it was a child, crying. I raced around corners, down tunnels, now unfamiliar in their sunlit map, until I found the source of the cries.

Belle held a young girl in her arms, fresh from the streets above. The girl pushed at Belle’s face, her eyes wide with fear.

Belle looked to me, bewildered, her brows raised, raining concrete dust across her cheek. “What do I do? Why is it crying?”

Chev stepped out of the tunnel behind her. His face had grown gaunter, his eyes even blacker than before, as if he’d sheltered someplace deep, away from our growing light. “Because it isn’t Kindred. That’s a sunwalker child you’ve pulled down. Your greedy opening of the streets is contaminating our world.”

Belle looked in horror at the child, and dropped it. It scrambled away from her, backed to the wall, and reached up for the light from the hole Belle had dug. A woman was screaming in the street above, and the child screamed in answer.

Beth ran up behind me, her face pale, her hand clamped around Bracken’s fist.

“Go home, you two,” I said. “Let us handle this.”