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may not have been the type to go shouting his business around the tunnels. However, that didn’t mean he hid things, especially when it came to women, and especially not from Wrench. She knew the two had grown up together within the Nerrin tribe and their friendship remained strong, even after Keiran had been promoted to sergeant above Wrench.
    When she didn’t answer, they fell into a comfortable silence, their footsteps keeping them company on the walk to Medics’ Way. She felt bad for the guys on guard duty. It couldn’t be easy, sitting on your own in a tunnel for hours on end, with nothing for company except the darkness and the familiar rest of a weapon on your back. The guards were necessary, she knew that. They couldn’t leave the entrances from the main tunnels unguarded, not when sweeps of the main tunnels by the Adveni were so regular.
    The entrances into the deeper tunnels were hard to find from the outer passageways, even when people knew where they were. Branching from the walls of the main lines, yet hidden by bricks built up to look like any other section of wall, the smaller tunnels had remained remarkably private. However, sometimes people stumbled in and needed to be turned back. It was, admittedly, only luck that the people finding their way in by accident had never been Adveni. The guards would also help if the unthinkable did happen. Georgianna knew how far an echo could carry within the tunnels; the sound of gunfire would alert those down the line to the problem.
    Luckily, apart from Si’s mysterious absence, the day seemed calm in the Belsa tunnels. Beck probably would have said something if someone had been taken down to the Way for treatment. Though, she supposed she wouldn’t really know the state of Medics’ Way until she got there.
    “It sure is odd,” Wrench mused. “Si not showing up like that. Not like him at all.”
    Georgianna shook her head. She’d been working for the Belsa long enough to know that they rarely missed shifts, and Si was no exception.
    “No, it’s not.”
     
***
     
Medics’ Way, while still part of Belsa territory, was almost counted as a separate area of the tunnels. To get there from the main Belsa encampment involved going through another check point and into a less protected region. Not many civilians dared go into Belsa territory—not if they didn’t have to, so the Way had become a neutral area to allow them safe passage for treatment if they couldn’t find a medic out in the camps. Out of all the tunnels, Georgianna easily spent the most time there.
    A wide tunnel running north-west to south-east, Medics’ Way used to hold one of the busier paths underneath the city. The actual section used for treatment was only short—a section of tunnel that had been blocked off by a cave-in a couple of years before, burying three tunnel cars.
    The tunnel cars, now in various states of dilapidation since the arrival of the Adveni, had previously been used to ferry people and trade through the larger underground tunnels in the city. Pulled by horses, the large metal shells stood on thick wheels that rolled them along the line. When her father’s work had been more productive, he had used the tunnel cars to move larger furniture from one place to another. Lyle Lennox didn’t make many larger pieces for trade anymore, his body not being what it used to, but Georgianna remembered sitting just inside the sliding door, watching the people pass her by as her father led the horses along.
    Since the arrival of the Adveni, all the cars had fallen into disuse and disrepair as a mode of transportation. With the air attacks and fighting above ground, many Veniche people had needed somewhere to hide from the onslaught of the conquering Adveni. They had taken to the tunnels, and the cars had been pulled into disused areas, to be used as shelter and storage. Those rebelling against the Adveni had quickly been referred to as “Belsa”, which Georgianna understood to be an