Haven "Hawk" West surveyed the cacophony of supplies in front of her, an array of useful things interlaced with the unknown and unknowable. She knew what the MREs were for, why she was being given a knife, a flashlight, and mylar blankets folded in small packets; she was going to need basic survival supplies. But the climbing equipment gave her pause, and it was a pause she couldn''t afford. Time, never a friend, was running out between her fingers, fluid and poisoned. She had the potent awareness that she was running out of it.


    No, sunshine. You''re already out of time, the mental darkness whispered.


    "Kaiser," she said, because if she didn''t start talking she was going to scream, "Why do I have climbing ropes and hooks in this kit?"


    The Richest Man in the World, the Lion of Industry, and the biggest asshole Hawk had ever met looked up from his own supply bag. Kaiser Willheim was an older man, white haired, in his fifties. He looked a bit like Ed Harris met Clark Gable, and Hawk was pretty sure those were the precise instructions he''d given his plastic surgeon. Normally he wore either pin neat business clothes or something more folksy and flannel and faker than hell. Hawk didn''t know who the real Kaiser Willheim was, but she could bet money that it wasn''t any of the faces he presented to the world. This face was the impotent man, and she didn''t believe it any more than she did the folksy farmer boy he''d pretended to be, just several precious days ago. (Days. She''d been waiting days. Oh god, oh god, she was running out of time). But it served his purposes, and if she wanted to save her husband, Kaiser''s purposes were hers.


    He surveyed the scientist he''d essentially bought and paid for, and then turned back to his own collection of rope. "Well, the Rifts we''ve looked into have a significant drop. The one at the Bronx was several hundred feet down, at least. This one looks significantly deeper. We''re going to have to climb down...and hope that the bottom is somewhere we can reach with a rope."


    Goddamn the man. He''d said the word, rift, reminding her again that they had to go, and they had to go now. Because Alex—


    --don''t think about him right now. Don''t you dare. You think about him, and you''re going to break. And you cannot, absolutely CANNOT break down in front of Kaiser.


    If you do, he''ll kill you.


    It was strange, looking at someone and knowing he wanted to be your murderer. But she was pretty sure that Kaiser had already tried to get her killed. Twice. Once, at a dead old woman''s house, and once more at the Bronx zoo.


    He might have gotten her husband killed already.


    No. We aren''t thinking about that right now.


    She hadn''t thought about anything else for three days.


    Three. Days. That was how long it had taken for her to get to this moment. Sixteen hours to get from Arizona to Boston. Another day lost arguing with government officials and Kaiser Willheim, who hid behind the government goons with that Mephistophelian smile of his. He''d waited for Hawk to approach him and assume the supplicant''s position, which she''d fought kicking and screaming. And then, finally, something had broken in the government ranks, and they''d given the OK to allow a team of people to go down the most dangerous hole in the world. Three days, and her husband Alex was at the bottom of that hole somewhere, waiting for her to come to his rescue.


    But if she wanted to be truly honest with herself, this had started a week ago, when her husband''s client Elizabeth Cummings had contacted him about her poisoned garden. She''d been a dotty old lady on the edge of dementia, but she''d been sure something was killing her plants. Something had been. A group the government were calling terrorists (She wasn''t sure what you''d call Edgar and Naomi Studdard now, but she was pretty sure the terror their actions had evoked was a side-effect; still, ''terrorist'' would do, for now) had opened a hole in reality, testing the old woman and her pet basset hound to see if they could survive exposure to the energies of another dimension. They could not. Elizabeth Cummings, her dog, her garden, and the yards and wildlife for several blocks around her house had all been reduced to a strange, crystalline ash. It held the shape of whatever it had been—a rose would still resemble a rose, for a few precious seconds. Then it would collapse from the slightest touch—but it killed, and killed swiftly.


    It was the result of Kaiser Willheim''s experiments with lasers. He was the primary funding behind the Ararat Project, a climate-change centered initiative whose stated goals had been to either preserve the world against its own destruction, or to make terraforming other planets a viable possibility (it was not, in Hawk''s opinion). By accident, they''d shredded reality, killed several of their own scientists and endangered not only Kaiser Willhiem''s business empire, but his partner Edgar Studdard as well.


    Kaiser had finally confessed the truth to her, after lying and blaming Studdard for the hellstorm that followed. Edgar Studdard had been broken by that accident. He''d just lost two billion dollars of his own money...and watched his daughter Amelie die in his arms. So, when the accident proved that the prism-like laser attachment was actually lethal on biblical proportions, he''d climbed into the large mock-up that was terrifyingly functional with a bottle of Jack Daniels...and turned the Prism on.


    He should have ripped a huge hole in reality, which he did, destroying acres of forest and the small cottage his dead daughter had loved. Had his wife been on the property, he would have killed her too. And he should have killed himself. But what no one knew was that the Prism would preserve the life of whatever it held...by changing it. It descended into the hole Studdard had made, with Studdard inside of it. And time ran faster inside the hole, exponentially. Eons passed (presumably) while Studdard was trapped in the crystal, alone, without food or water, kept alive by an unknowable force.


    Obviously, (or so Kaiser said) he went insane. He was also presumably immortal, and he seemed to have gained the power to alter reality in subtle ways, though it was hard to tell in the handful of horrified minutes before whatever it was he''d become vanished from human sight.


    Most people would have interpreted these events as a sign from the universe that the Prisms needed to be destroyed and forgotten about. But Kaiser and Naomi Studdard had both seen the potential. Unfortunately, Naomi had proved to be faster and more on the ball. She''d begun testing Prisms immediately, trying to figure out what it would take to repeat the process Edgar had undergone...without going mad. Naomi had presumed that the isolation, not the transformation, was what had stolen her husband''s mind, and had bent all her effort, money, and heartlessness to discovering how to preserve life outside a Prism, as well as inside of it. She wanted to go down into that alternative reality. To gain the power and the immortality she assumed Edgar now possessed. But she wanted to bring other people with her.


    And three days ago, that was exactly what she did.


    She wasn''t supposed to do it now, Kaiser had said, when she''d finally treed him in his own office and demanded he tell her the truth. She was supposed to wait, and she was supposed to be inside the Prism, and it was supposed to be somewhere with no collateral damage.


    So you planned this, Hawk had wanted to say in response. You allowed this to happen. You looked at the dead and dying from countless Events, each time knowing that it was Naomi Studdard with a Prism, and you let it happen because you knew it could win you immortality. But she didn''t say that. She had to say on Kaiser''s good side.


    He was the only way she was going to rescue Alex.


    He''d called her as the world caved in around him. Called her and begged her for help, just before the phone cut off completely, and the ground gave way to the Prism''s power. Kaiser had told her the Prism that had knocked out half of Boston, that was currently turning all organic matter in the rest of it to the ash they were calling Glass, had been the size of a greenhouse. Hawk imagined Alex, handcuffed to part of the floor, doing everything he could to try to stop it.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    But there was something else she didn''t understand.


    "Kaiser," She said. "Why won''t you tell me what you think Naomi gave Alex?" Alex had told her he''d been given some sort of injection, something that made it hard for him to think. Kaiser, on hearing that part of the story for the first time, had turned pale. And then he''d refused to say anything else on the subject.


    "It may not be important," Kaiser said.


    "Oh, fuck that in the ear," said one of the other members of their little hell bound expedition. Their name was Emile Yong, an Asian Enby scientist who viewed the normal rules of polite society as guidelines they could ignore with glee. For once, they weren''t wearing something inappropriate, but rather the same paramilitary fatigues that had been supplied to Hawk and Kaiser. But they''d taken care to dye their hair a riot of rainbow shades, just to make up for it. "We''re talking about her husband, dipshit."


    Kaiser gave them a look like he''d enjoy firing them by drop-kicking them into the sun. But they weren''t one of his employees. Nor was Hawk, or Alex. They were more-or-less innocent civilian scientists (plus one Private Investigator) who had been sucked into this mess when the Ararat Project showed up to police Elizabeth Cummings'' backyard...and who had survived multiple exposures to Glass energy through Hawk''s speciality.


    Honeypot ants.


    She wasn''t sure how, because they hadn''t had time to study it, but something—likely an enzyme in the ant''s gut—protected organic matter from the Glass energy. They''d discovered it because she and Alex had eaten some before breaking through Kaiser''s security at the old woman''s residence. And as she was one of the world experts on the subject, she became valuable to Kaiser.


    She''d been eating them fairly steadily ever since, just to make sure she could safely traverse a Glass zone. She''d only been to two different Events, but she''d survived both times. Her biggest concern, however, was the scarcity of honeypots, and their growing need for safe first responders. She had no idea how they were managing the Event in the Bronx, but the Glass Event in Boston had outstripped that within minutes. In New York, jokingly, Alex and Kaiser had talked about evacuating the whole state. Now it was looking like they''d have to, only it''d be Massachusetts and not New York State.


    A Glass Event happened when a Prism, made of four specially cut and finished slabs of crystal, was activated using light. Even ambient light could do it, though Kaiser assured her that as long as the individual parts were kept separate, even by something as thin and delicate as cloth (He claimed they used an oil-and-particulate mixture that kept the various parts cushioned from each other) the Prism was inert. The Prism, once activated, vibrated and drilled a hole, not through rock or soil as Kaiser had intended, but through reality itself. The first time he activated one, it sucked three researchers and a janitor down, as well as half the lab. Those bodies were never recovered, but eventually, the Prism was.


    There was a lot of quantum physics at play here that Hawk did not understand—in the words of Bones, she was a bug scientist, not a quantum physicist—but she understood enough: The Prism, once activated, went "down" into something like a pocket universe. Then, depending on the intensity of the light that triggered it, the Prism came back "up" to our reality once more, sealing the Rift and making the world safe for human habitation again.


    In theory.


    Hawk knew that theory wasn''t good enough. While a Rift was open, it bled energy that turned all organic life into crystal ashes. Which meant it very effectively sterilized everything. To the average human, that didn''t sound so bad. Clean dirt. Clean air, virus and bacteria free. No ants in the soil. No cockroaches in the house (Though if your house were built with wooden beams and drywall, you''d also have no house). But to Hawk, that was catastrophic. Humans do not understand enough about the environment to rebuild it after a total loss. As a matter of fact, they don''t rebuild. They can''t. The best humanity could do was clean up the affected area (be it by oil, chemical, fire, or Glass) and then wait for the unaffected nature to sweep back over the destroyed parts, like a wound healing from the outside in. We had no clue how to go from nothing to something. Even creating indoor ecosystems required one to find creatures from an outside source—springtail cultures, cuttings from plants both wild and domestic, animals from other places, birds, fish, the microbiome of soil and water. If asked to create such a thing from scratch, the average human would be lost.


    The Glass Event in Mrs. Cummings back yard had seemed massive when it swallowed several blocks of her neighborhood, but Hawk now counted that Event as small, sane, and contained. The Bronx zoo Event had started out as a nightmare, instantly destroying hundreds of people, not to mention the majority of plants and animals within, but it had slowed, and mostly stopped after they killed...


    Well, that was the other part of the equation. It seemed that if an example of a lifeform were placed inside the Prism when it was activated, that lifeform could survive exposure to Glass. Which was not something recognized until a desperate, depressed Edgar Studdard attempted suicide by Prism, and failed to a horrifying degree. According to his wife, Naomi, Edgar had been monstrously changed by his time in the Prism...which was longer than one would think. While it had lasted only a day in the normal time-line, time had run slower inside the Rift. To the rest of the world, the horror of his suicide had been brief. To Edgar, it had taken centuries. He''d come out of the hole, alright, but had been nearly incoherent...and then had disappeared.


    And Alex went down this hole. It had lasted for three days, so far. Three days of untold horror. Each Event was defined by lines—the point where energy exposure began killing things. There were lines where each lifeform on this planet began to fail from exposure. Ironically, mammals and birds lasted the longest, but would be the first dead things found during a Glass Event...they were the only things capable of running away. Then the insect line, where the small biological robots we called bugs could no longer function, their insides hardening and fragmenting as their carapaces turned brittle. Then, finally, the Glass Line, the point where even dead organic matter went to ash. That, the Glass Line, was considered the boundary of the Event, and the Boston Event''s Glass Line was starting to threaten other counties now. The death toll was estimated to lie in the thousands, and there was no end in sight.


    And Alex was at the bottom of that rift, waiting for her rescue.


    To get there, she''d had to talk Kaiser into first talking to her and then letting her help, which she had done. Then both of them had to persuade the government to take the risk of sending people not just to the center of the Event, but through it. And that had taken most of yesterday, but they''d done it, founded entirely on Kaiser''s promise that they''d find a way to close the Rift and save lives. And now their team was being assembled. Hawk had pulled a few strings and Kaiser had pulled the rest, and they''d gotten Dr. Henry Dyson and Hawk''s friend, Dr. Emile Yung, added to the roster. And now there was nothing left but to pack their rucksacks and troop on down to their ride, as if they were going on the world''s worst camping trip.


    Hawk had her bag packed, and was putting on her shoes—she was starting to get used to wearing combat boots—when Emile came over.


    "You doing okay?" Emile said. They''d made a special point to never, ever look particularly masculine or feminine. Hawk suspected the only reason they went around clean-shaven was because it added to the confusion. Their hair was streaked with hot pink, gold, neon green, sapphire blue and the most annoying shade of purple Hawk had ever seen. It hung in ringlets, which was very interesting considering that Emile was Chinese.


    "I''m doing. And thanks for doing this with me," Hawk said.


    "No problem. You''d do it for me or Henry." And oh, the way Emile''s voice softened when she said Henry Dyson''s name was more than enough to make Hawk smile. Even with her own life on fire, the fact that Em had found love—or something that could become love—in their own worst enemy gave Hawk''s poor heart a sense of peace. She stuffed the last of the MRE''s into the sack. "They really think we''ve got enough rope to get there, don''t they?" She had four coils, but she was pretty sure that wasn''t enough.


    "I''m sure they think so. Look. I just want to make sure you''re okay."


    "I''m okay," Hawk lied.


    "Because...because I just want to be sure, you know?" Em insisted.


    Because we both know Alex is already dead, Hawk thought, dismally, but no. Alex must still be alive. They knew of two complex organisms surviving time inside a Prism: Edgar Studdard and the gorilla Hawk mentally called The Ape. Both had lived, and the Ape had seemed to live well (until Kaiser''s people had shot it), so there was a chance that Alex was still alive. As what, Hawk didn''t know. But he might still be alive.


    She just had to hope and—


    The doors to their ready-room suddenly banged open, and a soldier in desert fatigues came through. "Who is Willheim and West?" she barked. At least, Hawk was pretty sure this was a she.


    "I''m West," she said.


    Kaiser just strode forward. "What is it?"


    "You both need to go to the command tent, and bring the rest of your team, Yong and Dyson. There''s been a development. They''re moving the deployment up."


    Hawk grabbed her bag...but still had the presence of mind to ask, "Why?"


    The soldier looked at Hawk with pity, and no small amount of fear. "Because, something''s happened in the Rift.


    "It looks like its being blocked off from the inside."