It was night by the time they reached New York. The response HQ was in a freshly evacuated skyscraper, enrobed in blackness. Light pollution had erased all stars, and this tower of iron and glass jutted into the sky like a throne. It was empty. Papers lay here and there where someone had dropped them, and Hawk's footsteps echoed in spaces where other bodies were meant to muffle sound. The Wests, Emile and Dyson all entered the empty formal lobby. Everything was black marble, glass, pale granite, and chrome. Well, save for the soda machines in a corner.

The Glass had not reached here...yet. It was coming. For those in the know it was an ever present flow, like the water slowly creeping up a sinking ship. Awareness now burbled, a harbinger of death that seemed reflected in the polished black surfaces of wall and sky and floor.

"Scary." Hawk said.

"Yeah. Um, let's get higher." Henry Dyson said. "Glass doesn't stop for anything but Glass, but it really likes to hang to the ground."

There were also helpful red signs, hastily posted (and hastily laminated; there was a dead fly in one. Must have laminated that one while the insect line was passing through) that pointed people up flights of stairs. Outside, the ground was already littered with the strange, glassy ashes, beige colored and horrifying, for all that the Glass Line had yet to pass. They blew in, bit by bit, on the midnight breezes. Another shred off organics. Another sign that humanity in this place was losing ground.

"No aural spikes. That's what I'm calling those weird ropy things that came off the Prism at my house." Em said. "Aural Spikes."

"It sounds new age," Henry said. They both started up a dead escalator. "And we are way far away from the epicenter right now. What you're calling 'aural spikes' are a sign of very concentrated energy. Basically, you see that, you're already dead, and you'll be glass in minutes. Or you're in a lab, wondering how good your examination box is."

"Absolutely. Why is the escalator dead?" Hawk patted the quiet thing under their feet. The lines on its surface were almost tooth-like, as if waiting for a meal denied. Light gleamed off faces polished by thousands of feet.

"Because this shit affects the weirdest things. It's going to eat the dry wall. It's going to eat electrical mounts if they're not plastic, and half this shit is secured to organic stuff." Henry gestured around them, including the half-dead ficus in a corner. The glass hadn't hit it. Yet. "So the organics will pulverize and that has risks. Like random arcing, or surfaces going live that shouldn't. So we do things like cut elevators and escalators, turn off electricity entirely where we can. Never had to flip anything heavier than a house breaker, maybe cut a couple lines at a telephone pole running backwards. This is the first time we've had to deal with utilities on this scale. I really hoped we were never going to need to implement the mass-casualty, Major City model." He sounded hang-dog, and his free hand was in his pocket. He kicked an empty dixie cup. It flipped through the dust on the floor.

"There's already so much Glass everywhere." Hawk said, following the cup's trail.

"Yeah. That's hugely worrying. Like...like maybe we will see some aural spikes when the Glass Line passes kind of worrying." Henry Dyson swallowed.

"That'd be bad," Emile said.

"Yeah. So let's stop talking and get up to see somebody important."

They only had to climb four flights of stairs. It wasn't much of a slog, despite air conditioners being down. They were stopped, not by sanity, but by the decontamination crew. Accompanied by ants.

Two of them. On a tray. With a toothpick.

Hawk picked up the toothpick, looked at it askew, and flicked it into the nearest garbage disposal. They were guided from the stairs to a landing already kitted out for decontam, though they were mercifully not subjected to frantic scrubbing. This landing was some former business lobby, an architect's suite advertised to the left, a medical testing office to the right. Behind was a small balcony that opened into the main building's atrium, the last floor where one could do this. It gave the dreary black marble at least some hope of light, perhaps for a skylight that would never exist. This wasn't a place of light anyway. This was a place of shoes, brushing across the same spaces over and over, like water on stone. Hands on railing. The patina of fingerprints ground gray into the corners, like the proverbial grist caught in this human mill. But there was no noise, here, now. There should have been turning, churning, a ring of voices on an oceanic scale...and that was gone. It was an empty, abandoned building. Voices did echo, high above. This was no comfort. This was hearing the village just beyond, when you know you are still in the forest with the wolves.

They needed to get a move on.

"Ants." She said.

"Yes," said their attendant. "We're...pretty sure those will work." This was a new, random white girl in pink-print scrubs, who looked like she wanted her nap back. "It's better than anything else we've tried."

"Where'd you get them?" Hawk said.

The girl shrugged. "They're ants. I didn't ask."

Hawk ate them anyway. They tasted good, and she was suddenly asking herself questions about last meals again, so it might as well be ants for the memory. Then she turned to the rest of the items she was presented with. A baggie for her personal belongings—"Yeah. That's not happening," Em said, from across the room, while Dyson obediently put his things in the bag, talking shop with his be-scrubbed attendant. "You have to. It's company policy," Em's very young, very white, very shocked looking scrub-person said this with the feeling of the Power of Christ compels you!—Hawk turned back to her own supplies. A face mask and oxygen, khaki clothes with no insignia, and a pair of good army style boots.

She turned on her scrub-person. "What are these for?" She said, politely.

"Are...aren't you the special response team? Aren't you the ones going into the zoo?" scrub-person said, in a combo of hope and dawning terror.

Of course we are, Hawk thought, and weighed Kaiser's obstinance against his altruism. It didn't come out in her favor. She sighed. Paused. "No First Aid kit?"

Eyes got wide. "There's one for you. Here." It was a small, plastic kit. "We weren't sure what we could put in it. What could take the exposure."

"What about for other people?" Hawk asked.

The scrub girl just looked at her, and had no answer.

Hawk sighed and said, "Where can I change?"

"You aren't going to protest?" Em said. "They're taking our stuff!"

"Protest what? Kaiser's ego, his ethics, or his fashion sense?" Hawk said. She thought fuck it, and dropped her pants right there in front of everyone. She was wearing granny panties. She'd shown more skin on beach strips. She shoved her limbs into the provided khaki. "We're stuck, Em. We want to work for him, and half the people I'd trust with that hell hole in the zoo don't deserve to go there. There isn't anyone else I'd send, and there isn't anyone else to send. Let's just do this shit and get it over with." She stuffed as many of her clothes into the little baggie as she could, then said "The pants wouldn't fit. They're Levi's from Wal-Mart. Don't stress over them. I'm keeping my wallet and IDs."

"Are these synthetics?" Alex held up the khakis.

"Yeah. Wouldn't do you much good if your protective clothes, for what they are, dissolve on your body." The scrub-person sniffed. "Your things will be kept in a locker."

"I don't care. Where's Hawk? Hawk!" And he pushed past her scrub-person as she was extracting herself, be-khakied, from hers. She noticed he still had his street clothes on.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"You should get dressed. What were you doing if you weren't getting dressed?" She said.

"Watching the end of the world. Kaiser sent over some video of the Event. The epicenter was recorded. We got them on video, Hawk. They turned on their Prism on camera."

Breathless, Hawk rushed to her husband's side. She took a slim black phone from him as he began shoving himself into the khaki clothing, breathing hard and heavy. "Is it pass-coded?"

He shook his head. "We're going in. Cold. Kaiser's not going to fuck with us right now. If we die, he wants it to look like he tried."

"That's cynical." muttered another person in scrubs. God, they were everywhere.

"Yep. You want to fight it?" Alex said, to Hawk.

"No. I want to get to the zoo. Mostly to get it over with but part of me...wants to know. You think he's trying to test honeypots on the primates? How would he get them to each other? How would he put things together to do that?"

"We'll see when we get there," Alex said, and held up his personal baggie for someone to grab. A scrub-person—this one Hawk was pretty sure was a nurse—grabbed it, wrote a name on it, and vanished it upstairs. She was still fumbling with the phone. Where was the on switch? She found it last second, a tiny thing barely big enough for a fingernail. Corporate Minimalism struck again.

Em joined them, looking distinctly allergic to Khaki. "I feel like a floormat made of corporate propaganda," they muttered. Their hair, multicolor strands with orange and green the dominant colors, hung in disgruntled ringlets around their hazel eyes.

"Don't worry, designated side-kick," Alex muttered. "Soon the bat-signal will flare and we'll be able to do battle against the forces of capitalist scum."

"You are a capitalist, Alex." They said.

"And scum, don't forget that part."

"Reformed scum," And Hawk put a hand on his waist. My reformed scum, she thought. All mine.

Henry Dyson emerged last. "I hate the scrubs this time. Millions of dollars, he could get the grunts a better uniform." And he stopped as Em rolled their eyes. "There a...a problem, Emile?"

"A uniform would make them grunts. Scrubs get instant respect these days. We assume a medical profession and treat people wearing them with respect. And I like that. A janitor can get treated like an RN if they put scrubs on first."

Henry nodded. "And keep their mouths shut."

"First lesson of any con." Alex had gone through his bag of supplies already, and seemed disturbed by how little there was. "Shut up. Speaking of...anybody got a map of the zoo? A real map, not the tourist bullshit we got off our phones."

There was a lot of chatter, and then a map was provided, with one of Kaiser's black-garbed bullies. Not scrubs. Lots of guns, still. "We want you to leave soon." The scary guard said. Hawk watched Alex pretend to be scared. Badly. He turned around, then pointed at a table the scrubs were using to hold supplies. With one sweep of an arm, he threw it all onto the floor. "Sorry, kids. Take the game someplace else."

He rolled the map out across the table. It was satellite view of the Event site from twenty minutes ago. The large, glowing hole in the world was visible from space. Hawk could just pick out the buildings and pathways that made up the zoo; the highways bordering it were more visible. All of it, though, was dominated by a ring of light that swirled around a pit of darkness so black it looked nearly violet. The blues and whites of the aural spikes were brilliant, the nearest thing to starlight Hawk had seen all day. The darkness seemed to absorb all hope. "Alright. These people don't think anything of the animals, so they haven't marked out individual enclosures. The internet map says that the gorillas and other primates are all here," he circled the epicenter of the Event. "Right where the Prism is. Which we actually have camera footage of." He grinned and took the slick phone from Hawk, pulled up a video on the witless screen. "They've got a Gorilla cam. There's four right now. An elderly gorilla here," he tapped the screen at a large, dark object that was possibly a gorilla. "She's kind of a celebrity. She can speak with sign language and everything. But there's a new female, here, who is pregnant. This is a baby cam. They put the two females together so Mom wouldn't get distressed. It's the only reason we've got any footage at all."

They watched as men came into the room with a large flatbed dolly. The slabs of crystal Hawk had so carefully pieced together and then theatrically thrown away were back, blown up exponentially larger. This was assembled in the middle of the room, right in front of the cameras. This was not accidental. Several of the intruders—comically dressed in balaclavas and dark scrubs—took time to make sure the positioning was exact. Right where the viewer could see it.

"A few of the zoo employees—the ones who were at home while all this was happening—said they started getting calls from concerned patrons right about now. The zoo was open while all this was happening. They wanted to know what was happening with the mother."

Oh. Fuck. Hawk thought. "But they got people out?"

"They got people out of the monkey house by closing doors and putting out signage. They didn't do anything about the people out in the crowd. There were a couple hundred people in the zoo at the time. Keep watching."

Dizzied by the simplicity of disaster—hundreds of people—she watched as the men finished assembling the Prism in the monkey house floor. Then they brought in another dolly, this one with a singular box on it. They never got a good look at it, but Hawk thought she knew what it was. Someone who regularly handles ant-keeping equipment recognizes certain shapes, like flexible plumbing tubing. The top of the box was clear something, and based on the fake plants inside it was probably an acrylic outworld. The men spent some time at this box, their hands jerking away from it in a dance Hawk knew well.

"They don't bite or sting that much," she muttered, over these strangers' ant-dance. But they when they had a small dish full of something—she could guess what it was—they moved out of screen. A few moments later they came back, gingerly leading a very large gorilla by the hand.

"That's the old lady. The one that can sign. Probably the most fragile monkey in that facility." Alex said.

The four of them were gathered around the phone, now, watching its dim light like it was a beacon. They watched as the gorilla was presented with the bowl. She ate the contents gingerly at first, and then with great delight, visibly smacking her lips and licking her fingers. When she was done she made two signs to the strangers. Hawk recognized one as the sign for food. The other was either more, or based on how docile the elderly creature was, good. Good food.

Two of the men stood in front of the gorilla, hands out. The old lady looked from one to the other, seeming to grow more agitated as the voiceless recording ran out. She didn't see the third one behind her until he had jumped on her back. The syringe he jabbed into her neck had been visible for the most scant of seconds, just long enough to recognize.

The gorilla lost all pretense of human sensibility and went straight to throwing things. She flung the man across the room, seemingly from a startle reflex because when she was done she just...stared at the three, betrayal clear on her mute face. Why? The ape seemed to ask. Why hurt with good food? And slowly the agitation faded, the gorilla slowed, and when she fell over it was with the grace of a sinking liner.

"They drugged the monkey. Let me guess. They put the monkey in the box." Em said.

"Yeah. Inside the Prism after what seriously could be a bowl full of honeypots." Alex looked to Hawk. On the screen they were manhandling the gorilla into position, dropping the Prism lid in place to lock the Gorilla in. And then a light was brought out, shone upon the Prism, and the recording ended.

"They killed themselves." Em whispered.

Alex was more animate. He turned to Hawk. "Tell me I'm wrong and this isn't some kind of test."

"It's a test. So we're going to go look at that?" Hawk said.

"No," came a voice behind them. They turned and found an exhausted Kaiser standing behind them. This was, Hawk felt, as close to real as the man would ever get. He looked pale, as if he were about to be ill, and somewhat unkempt. "I was dragged here about four hours after I wrapped things up with you. I've finally gotten the governor to agree to evacuate the city, but I really don't think that'll happen in time. We've already seen the death lines pass through. Glass line is on its' way, and we're still only a few blocks of evac. They've got cops and firemen going door to door. We've already lost contact with two teams. The ones nearest the epicenter. This is...it. This is what I was afraid of."

Hawk waited for Alex to say something about the recording and his test theory. Alex kept looking at her for some odd reason, though. Almost as if...Oh. Right. She realized she'd gone a while without sleep too. "Alex has a theory that the Honeypot link was leaked, and that Studdard is running some kind of test here."

Raise of eyebrows. "A test. Of what? The honeypots?"

"Maybe." She tilted her head, opened her mouth to speak. Alex interrupted her.

"Definitely," he said. "And, for the record, also of us. He wants to see how we're going to respond to an incident like this."

"Well, that's noted. And probable. But where you people need to be concerned is...well..."

"You're sending us in. Obviously." Hawk said.

"Up until a few minutes ago, like, literally five minutes, the plan was to send you in to gather enough scary looking footage to scare the shit out of the governor of New York and get them to evac. Because they aren't doing it fast enough and we need to get people moving now, before this shit starts to really spread. But we've run into a problem. And it's a big enough problem that I need you people to give informed consent." Kaiser said.

Hawk blinked. Who are you, and what have you done with Kaiser?

"Consent. Is that, like, you're safe word?" Em said. "Are you okay? Do we need to call somebody?"

"Can you park the mouth for ten fucking minutes?" Kaiser said.

"Nope." Em said.

Kaiser sighed. "Look. I know that you people and I got off to a rough start, but—"

"People are dying. We'll reign them in a little bit." Hawk said. "What has you so scared you want to tell us before we find it?"

Kaiser took a deep breath. "We were able to get a drone close to the Event...well, we're calling it Horizon because it looks like an Event Horizon. So we got something down there to survey the damage and...We saw things. Moving.

"There's something alive down there."