“Follow the flashlight, don’t go off the tracks. These parts get dangerous.”

“Hey, wait.”

“What?”

“What’s that?”

***

Cora is beaten, worn down, bruised, bloodied and aching all over. Liam is doing his best, of course, but her feet still grind against her shoes, her soles hurt and her toes are numb.

Three hours. Three hours of checking her phone, watching the minutes tick by, and eventually the hours, before she notices a change. If she hadn’t been bored out of her mind, she probably would have missed it.

“Hey, Liam,” she says.

“Mmm?”

“Do you see that?”

Past the bristling canopy, through another cleft in the vegetation, is the change. The sharp outline of an object darker than night itself is hard to miss, ironically.

Liam pauses. He follows her outstretched hand, past her index finger at the black outline. The frown on his forehead deepens. He squints, frowns even more deeply, and purses his lips.

“I think… yeah. What the fuck is that?”

“That’s my question. It’s different.”

Through a rare, sparse section of the canopy, the red moon bathes the area in soft light. The outline contrasts against the moon, neatly bisecting it. Unfortunately, thick foliage blocks sight of where the rectangular outline ends.

Cora can’t judge its size. It might be just behind the next tree they pass, or it might be miles away, humongous enough that they can see it clearly.

Like the mountains. She knows they are far away, because their images looked hazy, and mountains, by logic, have to be big. Right? She has no metric for the outline. It just is.

Too perfectly rectangular. Too artificial.

She’d seen something similar, stranded in the vast chasm of an unimaginable hell. Stripped of sensation, a non-Euclidean nightmare that never ended. It hadn’t been a dream, had it? She gulps down the knot forming at the base of her throat.

While Cora stares at the outline, Liam stretches his hand toward it and makes a fist. “We should check it out.”

“No!” He stares at her. She blushes, turning away so the most she glimpses of her flustered reaction are locks of her hair. “I mean, we should be careful. We don't know what that thing is.”

“That’s why we should check it out.”

“That's why we shouldn’t. There's no way that thing is natural.” Fragments tickle her brain. Cylinders, cubes, spheres drift into and out of awareness. A horrible sensation squirms like a snake inside her. “It could be dangerous.”

Liam's nostrils flare. She’s seen that expression before, and again he schools his irritation, hiding it behind a veneer of weariness. “We've been traveling for hours, and for the record we don't have a lot of supplies.” Understatement of the century. Even with the backpack’s seams close to bursting, it’s still so pitifully small, dwarfed by his muscular bulk. “Somebody must’ve built that. Maybe recently. If they’re out there, they’re our best chance for help.”

“I’m scared that something’s gonna happen to us.”

It’s hard, painful, really, feeling so helpless. Where did that girl Cora dreamed of go? Where did those visions of being an explorer, a pioneer, a strong, independent person who wouldn’t bow before danger go?

Never existed. You’re a coward, remember? Don’t tell me you forgot already, Mari says.

Cora ignores her. You’re a figment of my imagination gone crazy.

Whatever floats your boat.

Yet her bravery had been an illusion. Cora worked under the assumption she’d be stronger, smarter, better in the future, when the day came to activate the box.

She’d had so many dreams of exploring new worlds. Girl against the worlds. Braving true wildernesses, reveling in vast landscapes unfolding before her eyes, charting unfamiliar territories. And experimenting, observing, cataloging, photographing.

Cora knows better. She would’ve never had control, not really. Starvation or dehydration or the brutal reality of nature controls them. If they die, they’ll never come back.

Some risks are not worth taking. At least, that’s what she wants to tell herself, but another smaller, quieter side steps up. Pioneers take risks.

Why can’t she?

“I can go myself.”

Cora startles out of her reverie. She stares at him, and he nods slowly, locking his eyes on the outline. Reddish moonlight warms his face.

“It’s important. If you don’t want to go, I understand,” he murmurs. “But I can’t let an opportunity like this pass. Not without seeing if it’ll help us get out of this shithole.”

“No. I–” She what? She gnaws on the inside of her cheek. She doesn’t have the bravery to accompany her actions. But if he’s planning to go… she hardens her expression.

You won’t! You won’t!

“I’m coming with you.”

Liam tilts his head to the side. “But you just said–”

“I know, I know what I said.” She exhales and settles for focusing on a mole on Liam’s face. “Forget it. I’m stupid. I know.”

“Don’t say that. You’re not.”

“Yeah, whatever. Is going there risky? Yeah, probably. But staying out here is risky, too, and we don’t get shit.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Am I being a bad influence?”

Seriously? Cora can’t stop her lips from quirking into a smile. “Shit, shit, shit. Yeah, I think I’ve been close to you for too long. Fuck this shit. You’re right, we have to check it out. We don’t have any better choices, anyway.”

The smile she hadn’t noticed on Liam’s face vanishes. “You sure?”

“I promised we’d stick together, didn’t we?” She’s already failed one person. She can’t bear to fail him, too. “Unless I’m gonna slow you down or something. Then it’s fine. I’ll just wait for you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He shakes his head, breaking his concentration. His eyes gleam. “We don’t need to hurry.”

Their limited supplies disagree, but Cora ignores it. “If it’s gonna get bad, or something feels off, we leave. Promise me that.”

Liam withdraws his arm from around Cora’s neck. He thumps his right hand over his heart and leaves his left rigid by his side.

“I swear.”

***

One moment, they’re traveling through some of the thickest parts of the forest she's ever seen.

It takes skill to avoid touching any part of the purple trees. That doesn't stop them from getting scratched up by shrubs or tough weeds nicking their ankles, but neither leaves them in horrible pain.

The next moment, while Cora is stepping over roots and ducking below the sweeping branches of a purple tree, the terrain smooths out. It’s like somebody circled an area at random and pressed delete.

Cora gasps, jaw dropping. Liam pauses too, his hand slightly squeezing her shoulder.

Here, the land is flat and even, colored reddish by the vast amounts of moonlight raining down. Rusted metal corkscrews out of the dirt. They dot the landscape, seemingly at random, but cluster around what she can only describe as a beetle carapace. It squats at the center of the clearing, easily consuming a quarter of the area. Lines bisect its ovoid surface, and inside she glimpses a dark cavern-like space. Behind the corkscrewing metal and rusted carapace, though, is the outline.

A monolith of black stone. Too dark to make out any flaws. It reaches high into the sky, past the bloated clouds, tapering off into a needle-like point. Aimed directly toward the moon.

The moon, that hauntingly beautiful omen, hangs like a bloodied eye over them. Stretches of bare metal gleam under the moonlight, rusty with slivers of silver slipping through.

The reflections whisper at her, soft and light. Cora shivers, her skin breaking out with goosebumps. It’s just the wind, blowing through pores in the metal structures. Producing light notes like a windchime, and freezing her.

She returns her attention to the carapace. Weeds break through cracks in the ovoid sheets. Roots dangle over their surfaces. She gets the impression that the metal is bleeding, then pinches herself. Ridiculous.

Dotting the edges of the clearing, several pylons jut out of the earth like metallic skeletal hands.

Bent, their fingers stretched outwards, like their creators cried out for help that never came.

“Holy shit…” Liam whispers. His voice isn’t much louder than the howling wind. Her blanket–Liam’s blanket, she has to remind herself–billows outwards like a cape. Her hair blows back, too, and she’s chilled to the bone.

Stolen novel; please report.

It’s so lonely. So terribly lonely. Whatever people lived here, or fought here, must’ve died long ago.

“A fight. A war, maybe.” Cora doesn’t catch what she’s saying until they’re approaching one of the corkscrewing pieces of metal. In several places, the metal is folded inwards, creating pockets not much bigger than her.

Rust ate away at whatever construction the metal used to be part of. Near the bottom of some metal shapes, drops of metal streaked down the outer shell, lumping together like soap bubbles clustered near the bath drain.

Scorch marks scar the surfaces of many. “Hot enough to melt metal. Bullet marks, too, I think.” This time, Liam voices her thoughts. He runs a hand over the scorch marks, digging his fingernails under a large mark. Pieces of charred metal flake off. “But why?”

They go from metal to metal. Each bears the same damage. One chunk is almost cleaved in half. Whatever weapon had cut through left a gaping cleft within the metal.

“The better question is how,” she says, running a hand down the piece of metal.

She trails her fingers over grooves, going down and down until she feels the rounded beads of solidified metal, which must’ve once been part of the thinner sections of the twisted metal beam, flowing downward, practically lava.

Liam kicks the metal. His foot dings rather than thumps the metal. “Huh. It’s hollow. An even better question is where did they go?”

The forest grows haphazardly around the clearing. There are no roads or towers or any infrastructure. Not even the trees show any signs of damage. It’s just them and the ruins.

A sinking feeling settles in her gut. “Liam…”

“Yes?”

The cold… the darkness that never forfeits its overextended stay… the asymmetrical beasts… the lack of stars… the ruins. A sudden pain rushes down her jaw. She winces. She didn’t realize she’d clenched her jaw that hard.

Cora shudders. The thought sickens her.

“Do you think we’re in a world where nuclear war broke out?”

Liam doesn’t respond at first. His eyes glaze over and he sighs. His eyebrows scrunch together, and then he frowns, and then his pupils contract and his mouth opens, but no words come out.

“No. No way, no, no…” He pulls back his arm and combs through his hair. He paces back and forth, muttering under his breath, kicking the piece of metal several times.

It dings and stays standing. It endured the wrath of whatever group of people came and fought here. Liam’s venting is nothing.

“Cora?”

His voice is a meek version of his usual self-assured words. The mask drops. Her heart aches again for throwing him into her situation.

“Yeah?”

She draws her arms into herself. The stupid cold is getting to her again because she can’t stop shivering. At all. Her stomach is cold, hard ice, nauseating, while her hands sweat and her heart goes into overdrive.

“I hate how everything adds up.” She stares at the scorch marks. He stops beside another lump of metal, kicking it. “It’s different here because of that thing, right?” His breath comes out chilly. It blooms like a mushroom cloud in her periphery vision. “Nuclear winter.”

She's surprised he knows what it is. Then again, he struck her as highly intelligent the moment she got an honest look at him.

“Some version of it,” she mutters. She feels over her sling. Her wrist barely bothers her.

“What does that mean for us?”

Everything. Nothing. She refuses to consider the possibility they’re irradiated beyond salvation. “Maybe that’s not it and we’re overthinking everything.”

But no matter what she tells herself, she can’t shake off the dread or anxiety killing her from the inside. She draws in the blanket tighter as another bout of violent shivering breaks out.

“Fuck, I hope. But anything’s possible, apparently.”

He's right on so many levels, except one. Returning home.

“We can check out everything else and then think about that.”

Her mind is restless. Images of ruined cities pop up. The entire planet flashing from bomb after bomb obliterating entire cultures. A civilization, as large and as powerful as her home’s.

Erased, and left for nature to devour.

You don't even know if it's true. But the more she realizes about the environment, the quieter that doubting part of herself becomes.

“We should leave.” Liam squares his shoulders and returns to her side, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Doesn’t feel safe anymore.”

Cora can't help the harsh, barking laughter that comes out of her. It sounds foreign to her own ears. Dry hacking more than how her laughs used to sound, really.

“If it’s true, everywhere we go it’ll be the same danger. Here, we have a story we can read,” she says. She clenches her one good hand. “Or are you gonna chicken out?”

Liam’s mouth gapes open. “What?”

“Yeah, chicken out. Because you’re the one who wanted to come here, and now you’re gonna flake out?” She points at him. Under the weight of her glare, he shrinks back.

The invincible person who swooped in and saved her is missing. In his place, the current Liam is pale. Where the first version she met fought methodically, fearlessly, this version trembles, his frown standing out.

Of course it’s not his fault. But she needs him to stay steady, because she herself is teetering on the brink of insanity.

“It’s not that, it’s about these things.”

“What about them?”

Liam kicks the nearest one. “Why would these be hollow?” He walks to the next metal chunk and kicks it. The effect is the same, a hollow ringing that mildly hurts her ears. “You know what could’ve been in here? Chemicals. Bombs. Dangerous shit that caused this.”

In one broad sweep of his arm, he gestures at the ruins.

Cora’s eyes trail from his shoulder down to his fingers, then to all the different metal structures wasting away. Liam moves to another metal chunk and kicks it.

One of the folded-up sections is low enough that his foot connects at the dead center. She expects another hollow ringing noise, but suddenly he shouts in alarm, alongside a quick, loud thump reverberating through the cold air.

“Liam.” But her words never reach him, because he shouts again and dashes from the metallic pocket. She jumps, heart racing. “Liam!”

He brakes to a stop. He cups his hands around his mouth. “Get away from that fucking thing! I told you!”

He’s shaking. He’s actually shaking, and the sight stirs primordial anger in her. “How the fuck am I supposed to?” Maybe he is becoming a bad influence on her, like he said. She limps toward the metallic pocket.

“Wait! Sorry. I’m not thinking straight,” he says. He jogs back to her, hand outstretched.

She continues. The anger evaporates, but the residue still smolders.

"Wait, stop–”

"I'm gonna check it out."

Where Liam’s foot had connected, a piece of rusted metal the size of a dinner plate caved inward. And what she sees inside, though the moonlight is barely enough to even tell there’s a hole in the first place, she recoils from.

A body is nestled inside the exposed cavity. Skin long since dried to a leathery husk tore away where metal shards cut through. The face is unrecognizable. The partially mummified body lacks a nose. Clothes that might've once been crisp and clean long since decayed, leaving little more than rags. A few plastic buttons remain, what must’ve pinned a military uniform or something fancy.

Where the shoulders are supposed to be, muscle rotted away, exposing bleached white bone and a desiccated trail of unidentifiable purple pulp. Below chest level, the rest is smashed in, dried purple pulp spewing out of what used to be its stomach, she guesses.

Cora stumbles backward, grimacing. She has enough time to drop to her knees before nausea claws its way up her throat.

She can’t bear to look elsewhere. Not even when Liam arrives and places a warm hand on her shoulder, ever the silent sentinel.

“What the fuck…” Cora gags again, doubling over. No vomiting. But her eyes water.

“I know,” Liam says. He lowers to a kneel. She doesn’t try to push him away, because she isn’t angry at him at all. She deserves to be abandoned.

They spend several moments side by side, shoulder to shoulder, while they refuse to glance at the corpse a few feet away.

Why the metal–how the metal–folded around the body, she’ll never know. She can’t begin to guess at what happened. Nor does she want to. That folded pocket isn’t the only one.

Most metal chunks have one. Several have two, some folded pockets near their peaks, others at the base like the one Liam exposed.

All of them, she suspects, with her stomach churning, have somebody inside.

She opens her mouth, then hesitates. She can’t handle the pauses between them, a void of uncertainty where they pretend they get better and move on.

All they’re doing is putting up an act. Liam isn’t some cartoon superhero. He’s flesh and blood, he’s real, and she’s the reason why he’s trapped. Worse, he protects her, he comforts her, he fights for them, while Cora mopes and vents and doesn’t try to get to know him better.

The boy who had every reason to run away from the corpse, yet swallowed his fear and came back for her.

He’s just like Mari. Sacrificing himself to help Cora, for reasons she doesn’t understand.

She should’ve snapped her neck and died in the forest from that fall. She should’ve been torn apart, eaten alive by the mutants. She should be stabbed by Liam the moment she tells him why he’s here. She deserves all of that and worse.

Especially after what happened that day.

Cora digs her nails into her palm. Did she just think that? Those weren’t her feelings. She’s sorry, she’s drowning in regrets, and she hates herself, but not like that. Anything but that.

That wasn’t her. Right?

Selfish, always selfish, you piece of shit, Mari says. She doesn’t reappear like she did that one time, but if she did, Cora will know her sanity is well and truly gone.

Maybe it is, and she’s pretending otherwise.

She erases the vestiges of those horrible thoughts from her head. I’m sorry, Mari. Hollow, unspoken words that will haunt her until the day she dies, because she’s starting to think she’ll never see her again.

Cora wonders if Liam has any regrets back home. She wonders if the soldiers had any regrets before they fought. She wonders if the soldier she saw died regretful. She wonders about a lot of things, and the lack of answers weighs on her every passing second.

Before the fight, she had one question: what lay on the other side. After the fight, there are too many.

What happened to Mari is the biggest question, and it bounces around Cora’s skull and strips away her focus until she wonders why Mari didn’t come with her, when they were grappling each other right as the box opened.

“Cora.”

She returns to the present. Liam is standing now, and his hand is offered for her to take. Her legs feel like jelly, and it takes longer than she likes, but she takes it and rises to her feet.

“Thanks.” She doesn’t let go. His hand is warm and strong and inviting. It steadies her in a way Mari’s hugs used to.

Traitor.

Cora laces her fingers with his. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. She should be a stuttering mess, but her heart is elsewhere. Attached to a girl who might as well be dead to her.

“We have to check out the rest,” she says finally. Liam nods.

By silent agreement, they walk past the body. Cora keeps her eyes trained ahead. They pass the other metal chunks and arrive at the metal carapace.

Inside, enough moonlight streams through holes that she sees that nothing internal remains. No bodies, no parts. Simply the outer shell resting atop packed dirt, and the cavernous space left within.

They circle around the shell, but the rest is the same. No bodies this time, mercifully. The monolith is their last destination, and it’s the thing that beckons to her the most.

Up close, Cora notices the imperfections, the scars, cracks, and clefts marring the black stone surface. Chunks of rock are missing from the base, but it’s so wide that Cora can lay herself down ten times head to toe and still have space left with her arms outstretched.

It ends at a peak, too high to distinguish any features. The monolith just is, as strange in the clearing as the carapace and skeletal pylons.

An idea clicks into place. “Wait,” Cora says. She whips out her phone and takes pictures of everything.

The photos come out grainer than she likes, but her phone’s software does a good job adding more light. She drops his hand and limps away from the tower, approaching the forest boundary.

“What are you doing?” Liam says. He starts toward her, but she shakes her head and waves her phone in her hand.

“Photos. Need this for later.”

She lifts her arm and takes a landscape view of the clearing.

It takes a few seconds for the image to clear up. And when it does, Cora almost drops her phone.

It can't be a coincidence. It can't be. The world feels like it's dropping under her feet. She's nothing compared to how vast and complex reality is.

“Wow,” Cora breathes.

Liam jogs up to her. “What happened?”

She passes her phone to him. Liam’s forehead creases. He raises his head and looks at the field.

Then he passes her phone back wordlessly. His body is tense, shoulders squared. The shock written on his face mirrors her own.

Because the metal chunks are too evenly distributed. The carapace sits at the center of the metal chunks, and they form a circular border while the monolith is the thing that’s completely off.

The pieces come together. Her head feels like it’s going to explode. It’s too much to handle.

The metal corkscrewing chunks and the carapace all belong to one object. One big, circular object that crushed a whole section of the forest.

One big, circular object that crashed because of a pillar of sharpened stone that shot out and pierced its hull.