The Shadow had stopped making water. There was a great beige circle in the moss, not quite to the edges of his boundary line. He was nowhere to be found. Captain Spectre, however, stood near the circle, holding a clipboard. He spoke, quickly, to a soldier who also wore Captain’s insignia. She stood and walked, just as quickly, until she could hear what they were saying. Apparently Spectre was organizing the slow march up the pylon.

“…the most significantly wounded can’t be moved,” the Dr. was saying. “Not up that thing, anyway.”

“We’re working on a sling and a pulley system. We’ll get them out.” Spectre said, with the devout faith of a priest. A trust in his own arms and abilities that Hawk kind of envied. Then Spectre spotted her. “Ah. Dr. West. Gimme a second.”

“Given,” she said, and once again sat down.

***

Hawk did not intend to doze. It just happened. The nonstop excitement since they fled Nasheth’s pavilion had finally caught up to Hawk. One moment she was sitting, waiting patiently for Spectre to say something more to her. The next, she was being shaken awake by the man himself. Every fiber in her being wanted to go back to sleep. Crash, she thought, and every bit as destructive as a car impact. She needed to be up. She needed to be moving. She needed to look like she had half a brain for Spectre, who repeated the words “Wake up” with increasing frequency.

“I’m up,” she managed.

“Sorry for taking so long. And sorry for waking you up. I know you’ve been through the wringer—”

“So have you,” She said, because if Spectre had seen his bedroll in a while it’d have been a miracle.

“—but General Mulligan wants to speak with you. And with that…Shadow…guy.” And Spectre turned a little pale. “He’s…formidable.”

“How long was he making water?” Hawk asked.

“Right up until we figured out how to get a reliable supply down here. We made the hole bigger. Right now we can back a whole sixteen wheeler in deep enough to get past the time dilation. From there on, it’s firehoses to the base, and then the bucket relay getting it from there to the medical tent.” Spectre said this with some pride.

She nodded, pushing herself up off the ground. “And Kaiser?” She asked. Last she’d seen of the murderous bastard, he’d been climbing up that ladder to Earthside.

Silence. A long and gaping silence.

“I see,” She said, and her heart was pounding again. There were a lot of secrets she kept Earthside that she didn’t want Kaiser seeing…and Kaiser, being Kaiser, would absolutely break into her house if he thought she wasn’t there to report him. He’d done it before, after all. “So he got away with it.”

“He got to a van while we were still dealing with Dyson’s body and getting some first aid for Mattias. He escaped by seconds, Hawk. I swear.” Spectre sounded like he was about to drop.

She sighed. She hadn’t known how much faith she had in the judiciary system until it all collapsed beneath her; some part of her actually believed she’d see Kaiser in cuffs. It still hurt, gut-punch, head and heart, and she saw empathy in Spectre’s eyes.

“If it helps,” He added, “Mulligan is going to kill him.”

“He’s going to need to get in line.” Hawk said.

***

The path to the Nexus was filled with people. Hawk had to get in the world’s most precarious queue. Here the air was so thick with smoke, people had to wear breathing masks starting about a third of the way up the pylon. Some people hesitated with the unfamiliar devices, so a box was rigged with ropes and nets, secured with long metal spikes, filled with masks no one needed right this second. Hawk accepted hers while still on the ground. The climb itself wasn’t that bad. It was slow, but more lines had been strung and, to her surprise and no small bit of delight, small rest-stations had been…well, you couldn’t call these things erected. They were essentially very fancy hammocks, the sort mountain climbers would use to sleep in on long climbs—or, as Hawk suspected, to show off for Instagram.

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Hawk was able to bypass some of the queue. The soldiers had built it so that there were actual lanes, one for the refugees and one for the soldiers. Hawk stepped into the latter and was up the pylon in half an hour, her speed greatly increased by the number of helpful ropes. She had to pause, once, as a stretcher with one of the worst of the burned was hauled up the pylon. This was steadied by a medic, who also held an oxygen mask for the injured, to the point of neglecting their own.

She reached the Nexus and was shocked to see the tunnel the soldiers had started—was it less than a week down here? And what, a handful of hours up there?—had finally wormed its way through the geode-like edifice. More than enough room for both lanes of injured, weeping traffic to make its way inside.

The Nexus was filled with people. Holian people, not Earthside military. The whole entirety of the geode had been papered in plastic, heavy stuff to keep the crystal points filling this place from breaking skin. Blankets, cots and white Holian silk had been piled on top of the plastic and people were lead to sit, or lie, or otherwise pose on the safe and comfortable folds of an army blanket.

She walked past all this misery, feeling accused by it. She should be wearing a red A, she felt, only it would be a red H, for “Healthy”. Or maybe also for “home” because she recognized the lost look in the refugee’s eyes. It was the same way Hawk had felt when Mattias, then-Archon of the Light, dragged her behind the Earth Archon’s pavilion. Not just lost as in location, but lost in life too. How could these things be? How could there be so many people here?

She walked, head held high, until she reached someone who looked like they were in charge—well, in-charge-ish. They had a clipboard. Everything would be okay if she could talk to someone with a clipboard.

“I’m Doctor Hawk West. I need to speak with General Mulligan.”

The clipboard looked her up and down. “Sure. The wait areas are over there.”

She nodded. “I’ve been ordered to speak with General Mulligan.”

Now he got a little smirk. “I’m sure. Nice try. Go sit down.”

Annoyed, Hawk looked the man up and down, and drew on her life with Alex—it was fading. Oh God. She’d just thought of him without any major wave of grief—and what he’d taught her about observation. Uniforms removed most of the useful information, but she spotted a tattoo of the Zelda Tri force on the side of his neck, its tip just barely sticking out of the collar. There. She could work with that.

“So are you a Breath of the Wild kind of guy? Or were you old enough to play Ocarina of Time when it came out?”

He stopped looking at the clipboard and stared at her.

“I was always Link to the Past myself. You also have a little bit of a southern accent, but not like Texas or Tallahassee. I’m guessing maybe Georgia or Alabama.”

Now he was gaping. “West Virginia, actually. How—”

“I’m from Earth, you absolute pill. The General did order me to come speak with him, as passed on by Captain Spectre. Now. Can I follow his orders or do I need to recite the plot to every single Star Trek: Next Generation episode? Because I’m a nerd. I can do that in spades.”

A moment of hesitation. Then he said, “What do you think the worst episode was?”

“The one where a virus turned everybody on the Enterprise into half human, half animal hybrids. They almost made Captain Picard into a Lemur.”

“So why are you dressed like one of them?” He jerked his thumb at the refugees. “You look like you’re in worse shape than half the patients up here.”

And she probably smelled worse, too. It’d been a little while since she’d gotten a bath. “I…fell,” she said, because it was easier than explaining what the Shadowbeasts were. “One of the natives took me in and gave me clothes. He’s up there, somewhere, where I’m supposed to be so I can talk to Mulligan.”

He nodded, and added, “I’m sorry, ma’am—I thought you were one of them.”

And that sure stuck in her craw. “Do you know where these people came from?” she said.

“Something about the descendants of the missing kids?” He said, almost hopefully.

“Right. That makes them part of us. It’s not their fault, and their whole world seems to be falling in right now. So you treat them with compassion. They deserve it, just by being alive.”

Chastened and stinging, the soldier finally let her through.

She had a horrible moment of hesitation before she got on the ladder, though. Time was technically on her side down here. Days wouldn’t race by in minutes. She felt she had more control, not less, being down in the Rift with the refugees and the fire. Once she went topside, things would be decided and acted upon in the time it took for her to step off this ladder…and no-one up there would know.

Five minutes, she thought. There, and back. Long enough for the General to address things.

She climbed.