She was short, ash coated, and wore an over-sized trench coat that scraped the floor of the warehouse. She had a pair of ski goggles over the top half of her face, and an old-looking gas mask over the bottom half. Her hair was pulled into a tight braid behind her head, and might have once been brown, but now looked pure white.

"Take off your pack and slide it across the floor to me," she said. When I didn't move, she waved the gun at me. "Now," she said.

I slid the pack over; it left a trail in the ash.

"Is there a weapon in here?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Food and water? Do you have food and water?" she said. She sounded hurried, almost desperate.

"In the front pocket," I said.

She leaned over, never taking the tip of the gun off of me, and checked. I could see her shoulders slump in relief when she saw I was telling the truth.

The sound of a car in the street made her head snap up. She trained her gun on me again, every muscle of her body taut. "Fuck," she said. "Fuck! Did you bring them here?" she sounded angry, but under the anger, afraid. "Did you bring them here!" she asked again, shoving her shotgun towards me.

"No, I'm alone, please - our balloon crashed. My friends are dead."

The woman looked up at the balloon hanging from the ceiling.

"Where did you get that," she asked.

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"I built it," I said. "We - I'm from Chicago. It's beneath Berlin. We came up here to help you, but we crashed.

A car door slammed outside. The sound of boots approached the warehouse. The woman flinched. "If they find us here we're dead. This thing, can you make another one?"

"What?" I asked, "I don't know-"

She stepped towards me and shoved her gun under my chin. "Can you make another fucking balloon?" she asked.

I nodded. She stepped back and put her gun down. She fastened my pack on to her shoulders tightly.

"Come with me," she said, making towards the door. "And run. Be as quiet as possible."

I followed her to the door, which led into a back alley clouded with gray ash.

The front door of the warehouse slammed open; men in ash-stained clothes carrying rifles swarmed the building, moving towards the balloon and Brigg's body. I got one last look as the door slammed behind me.

Shouts came from inside; the men had seen us. The woman took off down the alley and turned a corner; I followed, still clutching my shoulder, pain singing in my ankle. I turned the corner just as a stream of men came into the alley behind me.

The woman straddled a motorcycle. "Get the fuck on!" she said. I grabbed on to her just as the bike took off down the street. Ash plumed behind us. I looked over my shoulder to see men with guns pouring into the street. They fired at us as we weaved between abandoned cars, bullets sparking off of metal and smashing glass. One whizzed under my arm, striking the woman driving in her arm. She swore. Warm blood dripped onto my leg.

She turned the bike down an alleyway and out onto another street. The sounds of gunfire vanished, and suddenly it was the just the whir of the bike and the woman's heavy breathing. Ash whipped past us, sticking to every part of me.

I risked a look upwards, at the sky, even as the ash stung my eyes.

What was once pure gray was now speckled with black; some were new cities. Dozens of them, some near and some father away. Closer, I saw the ruins of Mumbai and the city that collided with it; they looked like asteroids now, clumps of ruined stone floating in the the sky. And around them, above Berlin, were hundreds of jagged pieces of stone.

Chunks of cities still floated, corpse-like in the sky.