She explained to one of the soldiers that she wanted to sleep, and they generously gave her a piece of plastic to lay over the spikier crystals. She looked around for somewhere out of the way. This geode-like cave structure was objectively beautiful. The crystals were a warm cream, livelier than the beige of Glass ashes, and they held a strange, almost lively coolness, as if they were swelling each with their own charge of energy. She reached for the nearest spire and laid her hand upon it. It was cool, but not cold. Not like stone should be. This was the heat of a sun-warmed rock, two hours into night. The stone itself was smooth as silk. She liked the feel…at least, until she got to the tips of the crystals, which were sharp enough to cut. She got three small, shallow, paper-cut like injuries and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. She wasn’t going to go too far from the drill.


    She walked gingerly on a fallen spire, the surface slick and angle severe, until she reached a spot big enough for her piece of plastic. It was far enough away from the rumble of the Drill that she could hopefully get some sleep, but close enough that she felt safe. Someone else had set their piece of plastic and their belongings nearby, so she certainly wasn’t alone. She spread out the plastic mat. It was heavy duty, more like the outside of a container than a tarp, but it would be enough to protect Hawk from the crystal points. She tossed her duffle down as a pillow and laid back to watch the show.


    The drill was huge, a mass of chrome structures and piping, support struts every few yards. While the drill itself looked cutting edge, the support system looked jury-rigged, made more of necessity than planning. There were quite a few cement bricks, a few sand-bags. It did not seem to adversely affect the drill. It worked with a regular Hum-ba-dum rhythm, something smooth and nearly soothing. Hawk watched Em slowly make their way across the sharp ground, and listened to the hum-ba-dum cycle. The crystals around were bright with their own clarity. Their milky substance did not seem to mute light one iota. With her back against their tips (albeit mediated by plastic) she could almost imagine the hum being a part of them. Every footstep seemed to vibrate through to her backbone, and if she let herself drift with the vibrations, she could almost imagine that she were home, and the hum belonged to the air/con and refrigerator, the louder thumps and kicks of rocks were just the washing machine, or the dryer churning something with too many buttons, and Alex was sitting beside her, watching…


    …watching…


    She must have fallen asleep, because suddenly the crystals were actively growing brighter, and voices were shouting in discomfort and stress, and everyone she could see was running back from the drill. Watch out! Watch it! And Keep clear! And then it stabilized, the hum now exclusively the domain of the crystal cacophony around her, the light as bright as pain, though she didn’t think they hurt. After a few moments the panicked voices changed to a chorus of “Clear! Clear. Clear? Clear!”


    Then Captain Spectre’s voice broke through the din. “Alright, folks. We’ve had that kick-back before. Just means it’s time to go through and clean up the regrowth. Come on. Andrews, get that side post. Lawrence, Heybruik, Lee, go get to cracking crystals. Let’s keep this going, we got people counting on us!”


    There was a loud Ka-chunk, and then the hum-ba-thunk of the drill bit getting seated a second time. Hawk abandoned her rucksack and plastic and climbed back across the crystal to Spectre. “That was loud,” She said.


    Em was standing with him, looking irritated but not any more prickly than normal. They nodded to Hawk, who nodded back. And then, quick as a cat, their fingers snuck over and grabbed Hawk’s hand for a squeeze. Contact, and personal empathy, granted by someone who hoarded theirs like gold. Hawk wanted to grab her friend’s hand, grab on and never let go. It reminded her that she was here, that she existed, that her pain counted and was worthy and was worth being seen…all in an instant of contact, a squeeze of fingers. Em let go. A load that Hawk didn’t know she was carrying went with her.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    “I take it that was one of the regrowth episodes you mentioned.” She said, to Spectre.


    “Yep. They seem to be getting a bit more frequent, too. Not overly much. About once a day or so we get a surge and have to go through what we’ve already done. I’ll probably yank the bit back and run it back down through the hole, just to make sure we got it. My guess is even with the time we lose dealing with regrowth, we’ll be through it in twenty four hours, this side.”


    Em, who could always be counted on, said, “How long is that on the other side?”


    Captain Spectre looked away for a moment, his lips working like he’d just eaten a lemon. “Maybe ten minutes. Maybe less. We’re not working too hard on hammering out the equivalency right now. We just know that there’s people out there waiting for their families, and that we’re going to be giving them one hell of a batch of bad news.”


    “At least we’re in here to deal with it,” Em said, and slipped past the Captain. “Come on. You seem to have a little nest over here.”


    “I ought to go back topside,” Hawk said. “run the time out there, so we can get moving immediately.”


    “And what if Kaiser’s got you a ten minute walk from the hole when we break through? You can sprint the distance to the Event Horizon and it won’t matter. You’ll still lose a week. No, I’d rather be down here. If only so we have more time to plan what to do about up there.” Em said.


    “Why do we need a plan for up there?” Hawk said. “Alex is down here.”


    “Because Kaiser is up there, for now, as are the several hundred very wealthy families whose kids are long gone. And you know Alex might as well be gone. You know it, I know it. We’re all just…going through the motions and digging people’s graves right now. And Kaiser is going to be the man to tell all those rich mommies and righteous daddies that Billy and Jimmy and little Francis lived and died down here. And then those people are going to take their money and do things with it. And it’s going to be moves against technology and sciences that don’t have massive lobbyist collectives protecting them. Or it will if Kaiser has anything to say about it.”


    “You think he can keep them from suing the shit out of his company?” She said, as they climbed back over the spikes


    A very pleased smile from Emile. “Not even if he begs them. His ass is grass…if.” Em held up one finger, and Hawk spun around to face them. “They’re gonna need a connection between Studdard and Kaiser. Bigger than Kaiser stealing, bigger than him being the OG manufacturer of the Prism. They need a way to connect what Naomi Studdard did to Kaiser Willheim.”


    And she heard what Em was saying. “Alex.”


    “I don’t think it’s chance that they pulled this off when he showed up. I think that Kaiser sent him there, same way he sent the two of you into the old woman’s backyard, and the same way he sent all four of us to the Bronx zoo. It’s great if we accomplish something and survive—” They raised their eyebrows to Hawk.


    “…but he’s real okay if we don’t.” she finished, then sighed. “The only way to prove that Alex is the connection is to find Alex.” And an idea hit her as if she’d been stabbed. “Which Kaiser isn’t going to let us do, if he did set Alex up to fail.” Hawk sat down hard on her piece of plastic. In the distance, the drill made a sharper shirring sound, and the military guys around it began shouting—and then broke into cheers before Hawk could do much more than worry.


    “So I’m thinking it’s gonna be a good idea if one of us—me, you, or Dyson—got lost as soon as that drill...” Em stopped their whisper, looked quite hard at one milky quartz wall, and sat down beside Hawk as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Only their hands, suddenly clenched and shaking at their side, told Hawk things were not okay.


    “What is it?” Hawk said.


    “Don’t look now,” Em said, and shifted so that their back was against a smooth, quartz-like spire. “But there’s somebody watching us on the other side of this shit.”