“Seriously. If you need to talk.” Em said.

Hawk, Em and Henry Dyson had been cleared to exit the building and arrive at the Event site. That was how it was phrased. “Arrive”. Such a simple understatement. Like getting there wasn’t a horror story all by itself.

Bittermoss School had been near one of the more affluent parts of Boston, not quite in the neighborhood, but near enough to it to be a convenient drive. It was a large school for a private facility, aimed at recruiting the best and brightest minds to accelerate our future—or so the advertising copy said. In reality, Hawk knew it had been an experiment in modern eugenics cooked up between the Studdards—both Edgar and Naomi—and Kaiser, back when his ambitions were to save the world from climate change. It’d been important to them to keep up that respectable front, however, so not one hint of the school’s true purpose was known. Unfortunately, that meant it had been sitting next to one of the busier freeways when the Prism was activated.

The initial round of cars had driven off the freeways, into yards and parking lot medians, and most horrifying of all, down into the Rift. From a news report, the Glass energy was survivable for humans—her gut twinged. Alex!—but it didn’t matter when you were driving your vehicle into a cloud of white light, or when an old-growth tree dropped its shattered self directly in your path.

Still, Hawk thought the presence of a person—Alex—in the Prism was shielding the National Guard and Army first responders, who were gathered around the hole like ants. She could not see anyone inside the Rift. She suspected they were moving too fast for her to recognize. Yes, because as she watched, a soldier climbed out of the hole, out of the Event Horizon. They just appeared like some strange, celestial being, a god of fatigues and khaki and bad tempers. They also looked shellshocked, as if stunned by something the rest of the army hadn’t seen.

Hawk figured this poor kid would know where to take the rest of them. She walked her way over, picking through a ground that was mostly ground in ash and dirt. She tried not to imagine what her boots were grinding into the sterilized soil. She was just glad that, from all evidence collected so far, it was absolutely a what and not a who this time. No people were dying in this cacophonous hell. The nightmare loss of life hadn’t been so bad.

Six hundred children and teachers in the hole. Alex, also in the hole. It’s bad. She thought, and reached the dazed looking soldier just as he registered her presence. “Hi. I’m Doctor Haven West, this is Doctors Yung and Dyson. We were told we could enter the hole here.”

“I don’t…I’m not—” the captain shook himself.

“We’re aware of the time dilation effect. In fact, we’ve warned your general about it. How long have you been inside the Rift?” Please say a couple days, please say a couple days—

“A week. And apparently it wasn’t even twenty minutes. This is—” he paused. Looked at her. Registered the name. West. “Aren’t you family of—”

If she heard Alex’s name spoken, she’d break. “Immaterial. We’re here to help. We’ve also been present at two other Events, including the Bronx Event. We know what we’re doing. This the way down?”

He nodded. And so she walked forward, down towards the ring of aural spikes.

I’m on my way, Alex. She thought, as she reached for the guide-rope that would take her down. All you need to do is hang on.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

***

The Rift was, indeed, plugged off by a bulk of crystal. Hawk was pretty sure that it was the real, true, honest stone. It certainly wasn’t frail ash. She stepped down off the rope ladder the military had set up, onto plastic sheeting that protected her feet from the crystal points. There was a hollow, here, the full size of the rift, and it was covered in glittering quartz points, all of it a strange and comforting cream. “Sharp?” She asked the captain, who was following her down.

“Like a son of a bitch. Captain Matthew Specter.” He offered a hand as both a steady and an introduction.

“Doctor Hawk West, entomologist. I’m the one who knows how the ants work. Behind you somewhere are Doctors Emile Yong and Henry Dyson.”

“Dyson I remember. He’s going to be our liaison with Ararat Project. Emile, she—”

“They,” Hawk corrected.

“They?” This got a raised eyebrow.

“Emile Yung was a first responder at the Bronx zoo. They’re running on about as much sleep as I’ve gotten in the last few days, and they’re one of the few people I’d trust right now. So Yes. They. Is that a problem?”

“No, ma’am. I got a non-binary cousin. How much sleep are you running on?”

She shrugged. “Look around you. Six hundred missing kids, full faculty staff MIA, and people driving into the rift every few minutes. Would you sleep?”

“Right now? Yes, ma’am. Or else get out of the pocket completely. If I’m groking this right—” And suddenly Hawk was upgrading her expectations with this kid, “—time’s running faster in here than out there, a week down here is a couple hours—”

“Less than, it looks like.” Hawk said.

A nod. “—so if you’re going to get some sleep, it won’t matter if you sleep down here. You won’t lose any time. And I’m going to warn you, it’s been hard going through this crystal shit. Every day at about noon, it gets some kind of pulse and we get a lot of regrowth.”

“Huh,” Hawk said. Regrowing Crystal? Well, for now, it might as well be magic; this place had told physics to fuck off a while ago.

“Any idea why?” The Captain asked.

“No. I’ll be honest with you, Captain. We are just as lost as you are.”

“Kaiser Willheim, ma’am, seems to think you lot have it all together.” The Captain said, guardedly. He’d leaned back to the edge of the plastic, probably would have leaned on an outcropping of crystal, had the one behind him been just a little bit taller, and less sharp on its uppermost end.

She looked at him, measuring tone and stance and a thousand small other things that, she hoped, added up to trustworthy. “Kaiser Wilheim, sir, is mostly worried about his stock price, and how many patents he can get out of this disaster.”

Captain Spectre seemed to relax like a spring uncoiling. “He struck me pretty much the same way.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Captain. A lot of people owe him loyalty. Dyson, for example, is an employee of Ararat Project first, and a member of this expedition second. Kaiser has expectations of him that he won’t of the rest of us.”

“And Yung?” Spectre asked.

Hawk measured her words, trying to plumb out the best warning she could manage. “You ever been face first over a Roman Candle?” She said.

“Oh.” A grin. “One of those.”

“Just call them ‘them’ and let the small stuff go. They’re pretty good about getting the difference between a hard boundary and something they can fuck with, but they’re also civilian and deserve a little slack.”

“Way I see it, ma’am, you good people could be at home, safe in your bed, and you’re here to carry some of the load. Just don’t make our job harder, and we’ll get along great.” A pause. “Ma’am, I gotta ask you…those kids. We’re not getting them back, are we?”

No. You’re not. She considered what to tell him, and decided the truth, but one tempered with a little bit more hope than she felt. “The odds are pretty good that we won’t. But we might find their kids. I think they had a real good chance of surviving that long…and they had my Alex with them. If anybody could get somebody over the hump, it’s him. I don’t have a whole lot of hope of finding him,” and saying that out loud for the first time hurt like a thousand needles through her spine, “but I can find whatever he left behind, and I can make him proud of me.” And she took a deep breath. “I’m going to find someplace quiet to collapse until we’ve got an opening confirmed.”

“Sounds good. Up there, it’s all hurry up. Down here, nothing to do but wait.” Noises above told them both the next round of people were on their way down. She could hear Em’s loud criticism of the rope ladder. “Looks like I get to meet your firecracker, now.”

“They’re good people.” She said, and walked away.