Ruin

            An hour had passed since the cave-in. Only an hour, though Rebecca knew time down in the dark could mean many things. Thirty-six minutes since they entered the cave. Forty-five minutes before anyone came to look for them. Four hours to four days for them to clear the rubble. Ten or so hours before their headlamps gave out. A week before they would starve.
        “Time is flat, Becks,” her father would say, “especially in a cave. It’s a squiggly ruin. A monster, really, looping around and doubling back to eat its own tail.”
        Rebecca had hated when her father turned all Nietzsche and philosophical on her, which was all he did before he died. With the mountain bearing down on her, she thought she could feel time flattening out and wondered if he was right. Seconds ticked by, stretching into impossible lengths and two-dimensional shapes. Had it really only been an hour? Or was it closer to two? How long had it taken the thin line of blood to crawl down her forehead, the side of her face, and collect in the bowl of her clavicle?
        And then she shrugged. Rebecca wasn’t worried. She should have been—any of the other tour guides would’ve panicked and crumbled. Huck, for all his bravado and lustrous man bun, withered at the first sign of trouble. Lincoln lived so by-the-book he would’ve cowered in the dark, insisting a cave-in wasn’t possible in the Blackridge system, determined to throw facts and numbers at the mountain until it reassembled its guts. And Emily was just dumb and had no business in caving. If Emily hadn’t called in sick, she wouldn’t be down in the caves at all. Rebecca didn’t like Emily. She didn’t care for Huck or Lincoln, for that matter, and thanked the universe they hadn’t been on the tour.
        Instead of worries, Rebecca was exhilarated. She hadn’t realized how desperately bored she was with her life, not until the moment the cave floor gave way beneath them. She was bored with her job as caving guide, the only job she could find that mildly interested her after moving home to North Carolina. She was bored with her grumpy house cat that had been her father’s. Even Josie, her unathletic girlfriend and the only other lesbian in fifty miles who wasn’t shacked up, was boring her. But a cave-in? That was the most excitement she’d seen in years.
        “Okay!” a shrill voice yelled from far below. “We’re down.”
        Rebecca groaned. For a moment, she had been alone, shrouded in the deep dark. She stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking what she could only guess was an enormous chamber.
        I should let them die, she thought and then pushed the idea away.
      Over the edge, three small dots of light attempted to cut through the inky ocean of darkness spanning out into nothing. Her own light was just as ineffective. Rebecca was accustomed to the dark only a cave could provide—the absolute void of light that most people never witnessed. But, as she adjusted the ropes around her waist and looked out, she knew whatever they had fallen into was huge. She felt as if they were floating in a space between spaces and that nothing existed unless their lights could illuminate it. Only the rock beneath her feet reminded her that they were on terra firma and not circling a black hole. The darkness here was different somehow. It wasn’t solid with weight as darkness tends to be but fluid, undulating and coalescing around the beam of her helmet’s light.
        Just dust from the cave-in, she told herself.
        The lights below separated and moved away from one another, roaming up and down in the haze, scanning something she couldn’t see from her perch high above.
        “Hey! Stay together,” she shouted down, more aggressive than intended.
        She slipped the ropes through her harness and thought of all the different ways they could die below. She could always say it was the cave-in that did them in, no one could blame her for that. The Blackridge Caverns were stable, after all, or else she wouldn’t have been there five days a week hauling greens—the company’s nickname for inexperienced tourists—through the same boring tunnels, past the same boring rocks, and down the same boring rock walls so they could pretend they were explorers or tomb raiders or whatever midwestern suburbanites tell themselves when they dabble in extreme sports with no real training. None of this would be her fault. Discovering a new branch in the system, though, would be all her gain.  
        The empathetic part of her—the bright-eyed caver and climber who had existed before moving home—couldn’t let her greens die. She hadn’t taken a cave guides oath or anything, she just wasn’t that much of a monster.
        “Scratch that! Just… don’t move at all, please,” she called down, more polite. “This whole chamber could be unstable, too.”
        The three lights reassembled into a tight cluster, still pointing out into the gloom.
        “Loud and clear, ‘Becca!” another voice, clear and condescending, echoed up.
        A bead of sweat erupted from her pale brow, and Rebecca wiped it away on the back of her glove. She tucked a wayward strand of hair beneath her helmet and checked her waist ropes again.
      Or maybe I can be a monster, she thought.
                                                                                      ***
        The Girl woke that morning to the orange glow that greeted her every morning, burning brightly from the Everlasting Flames of Nessiradune—flames that would never and could never be extinguished. She had been dreaming of what life had been like beneath the Great Fire in the Sky. They were dreams crafted by the stories the elders told to the smaller children during the Long Gaps between Feasts, when food was rationed and bellies rumbled. Life had flourished in the Before Beneath the Sky, but what was life doing now Under the Stone?
        In the other room, on cots of hide and tattered cloth, the Girl’s two younger brothers still slept. She decided to let them sleep. They deserved to rest a little longer. Their father had died yesterday, his spirit joining their mother who had died two Relightings before. The Girl was all the Boys had left in their small world, and she was worried. She should have been excited this day—the whole city was alive with excitement. The Long Gap that had taken her mother and father, and many other mothers and fathers, was finally over. Nessiradune would not starve thanks to the return of the Blessed Four.
      But her worry was overwhelming. The Girl had barely seen twenty-two Relighting of the Flames, and now it would be her responsibility to visit the Stone Womb to provide for her brothers and herself. She wouldn’t be shunned or forbidden, not with her parents gone, but it was customary that only those who had seen thirty Relightings could visit the Womb and provide.
        In Nessiradune, only those who had experienced life could be monsters.
        And only with an experienced life came a name. With their parents gone, the Girl and the Boys had to forfeit the names given to them at birth. Not until her thirtieth Relighting would she be able to choose a new name for them and herself.
        The Girl splashed murky water on her face from the basin. She tied her black hair back with a strip of hide and laced her mother’s pendant—an iron nautilus—around her slender neck. She kissed the foreheads of her sleeping brothers, then she walked out onto the street. In the distance, blue light crackled over the sharp tops of the buildings. The Girl joined the crowd heading across the city, all toward the Stone Womb.
      I have to provide, she told herself, I have to be a monster.
                                                                                      ***
        Rebecca shimmied over the cliff’s edge, sat back into her harness, and planted her feet squarely on the jagged wall. She gave the rope bag clipped to her waist a quick tug. With a hard kick, she repelled down toward the cave floor far below. Her helmet’s light danced along the unfamiliar grey rock as she landed against the wall every few feet before launching herself back out into the void again, letting the rope out as she fell.
        Even with the system stable and fully mapped since the 1920s, Blackridge Caving Tours still had protocols. In the off-off chance of a cave-in or any other catastrophic incident, the guides and their greens were to stay in place and wait for rescue. Rebecca and her three had been in the second tunnel, aptly named Devil’s Maw. They had stayed in the tunnel longer than the tour usually called for so they could study the rock formations—at the greens’ request. They were there for ten minutes when the floor of the Maw fell out from beneath them with a deafening roar. Rebecca’s ears still rang slightly, as if a bomb had gone off. They’d dropped onto a slopped channel and, after a hellish ride, found themselves God knows how far beneath the mountain.
        But then they discovered the chamber they landed in opened into something larger, beyond the cliff. A caver’s dream is to have a new system named after them, to be the first in a place that no human alive, possibly ever, has seen. Rebecca daydreamed of her name on the map. The Becks Anderson Passage in bold font. Or the Anderson Cathedral if the chamber was truly as big as it felt.
      Her father, a caver himself, used to tell her that her hubris would be her ruin. That she believed herself invincible. She thought him a miserable hypocrite. He had caved the most treacherous places in the world, and what did he have to show for it in the end except a cancer-riddled body? Rebecca learned everything from him and was determined to leave something behind besides a corpse.
        Fortune gave her a cave-in and her father gave her the drive. There was no way in hell she was going to stay in place, even with three greens tied to her. Not a chance.
        She focused on the last few feet, then landed on the ground nimbly. Rebecca unhooked herself and did a quick headcount. One, two, three little mice, all still breathing. For now. She just had to keep herself professional until rescue arrived and took the others out. Then she could embrace the thrill, allow the near-death adrenaline to carry her through every nook and cranny and come out the other end with her name firmly mounted on the stone of whatever this new place was. Just as soon as the idiots were gone.
        Rebecca felt her contempt for them was warranted. She harbored some small resentment for every green she carried through Blackridge, as if they were to blame for pulling her away from the rest of the world and back to North Carolina. Her father’s cancer had done that. But with him gone and her mother too much of a wreck to leave, she needed to place that resentment somewhere. Most lied when it came to their caving and climbing experience, requiring her to literally carry them down the handful of roped belay points.
        Her greens today were a different breed: college students. Not the fun kind. Geologists or something, from NCSU. The tour would’ve been further along and out of danger if it wasn’t for their rubbernecking at what amounted to just a bunch of hardened dirt. They just had to photograph or sketch the rock formations in Devil’s Maw.
       “The ground here feels stable,” Rebecca said, “so we should be safe until help comes. It shouldn’t be too long, we’re about forty minutes past our check-in. They’ll have to clear out all the rubble, then drop some more ropes…. down…”
         Rebecca trailed off when she saw they weren’t listening to her. Instead, the greens were all looking further into the chamber, out into the fluid darkness, mumbling to themselves. The two men, Alex and Ernesto, were digging in their packs, pulling out notebooks. The woman, Diana, adjusted the ginger ponytail seeping out from beneath her helmet, then reached into her pack and heaved out a professional camera. Together, their four headlamps formed a dome of light around them. But beside the jagged, grey cliff wall there was nothing to see.
        “I don’t believe it,” Diana said, fumbling with the lens.
        Rebecca stared in amazement. It was the same bullshit they’d been pulling, except they had graduated from photographing stalactites to just empty darkness itself.
        “What the actual fuck are you doing?” she asked. “We’re not on the tour anymore! This isn’t part of it!”
        They ignored her, pissing her off more. She wondered if she was taking out her impatience on them, but she also desperately needed them to get their shit together and focus.
        “What is so goddamn important?” she asked.
Rebecca pushed past them and aimed her headlamp upwards, but it was too dim and the cavern was too large.
        “Screw this.”
        She dug into her rope bag and pulled out a flashlight stronger than the headlamps. Whatever they were gawking at had better be good she told herself, or she was going to beat them to death with her light. She clicked it on, testing it toward the ground, then raised the beam high.
        All around them were ruins.
                                                                                       ***

        The great city-state of Nessiradune had survived much: fires, plagues, famine, and once a great tidal wave that flooded the lower quarters and pushed the uneducated populace into the academic districts for a time. Even then, as they worked to rebuild the lower city, the Diamond of Nessira still glittered beneath the Great Fire in the Sky.
In the end, the one thing the city couldn’t withstand was her gods turning against her. Nessiradune had worshipped many gods through the ages, each generation seeming to find a new deity out of the Great Nothingness to send prayer and tithings. All were welcome, but not all of the gods liked to share the glory, for there were gods that festered in the Cold Between Worlds that hated and seethed. The people of Nessiradune learned too late that those gods were not to be worshipped, not to be bathed in adoration. Some gods were locked in the Between for a reason.
        The Girl, like most others who lived in the new Nessiradune Under the Stone, worshipped no gods now. There were still temples to the old gods, their stones brought along with the other stones of the city and reconstructed piece by piece, but only the oldest still prayed to anything. Old memories stuck with them of their time by the seas when the city’s stones shimmered and great ships lined the docks. The younger generations learned only resentment from their parents and harshly judged those who still prayed. Look what all that prayer has brought us, they would say.
        She did not hold the anger that others did. The Girl was too young to know anything but life Under the Stone, as were her parents, but whenever she walked the streets of Nessiradune, she couldn’t help but long for the city that once was even though she had never seen it herself. The vibrant markets and golden archways, the endless rows of spiced fish and sweet breads, and the countless libraries. Seeing the way the old stones fit together imperfectly in the new buildings, the crooked homes and towers they became, the Girl found herself resenting not the elders who prayed to the wrong gods but the city itself—for existing, for refusing to simply die, for forcing them to live in the orange glow of the Everlasting Flames.
        She kept these thoughts to herself. The Girl knew no one else in Nessiradune felt as she did, that their resentment pointed to the generations before. They appreciated the fortitude of the people to survive, and for that she had disdain.
        The Girl marched on with the others, through the winding streets of homes that once shone like gemstones. It didn’t matter how she felt about her city at that moment. What was left of her family needed to eat.

                                                                                       ***

        Conical structures rose high above them, reaching out toward the surface. They appeared to be buildings, with doorway and window openings, but they twisted and bent into shapes unlike anything Rebecca had seen. They were constructed from oddly shaped stones, adding to their bizarreness. Instead of rectangular blocks, the stones were carved in unusual angles, each stone fitting imperfectly. The buildings sat tightly next to each other, forming streets that wound away from them. Rebecca saw now that she and the greens had descended from the cliff onto a path that curved against the wall, curing out of sight to their left and right. A narrow alley creeped away in front of them.
        “It’s incredible!” Diana said, snapping a photo of what appeared to be a toppled statue. Her voice raced out into the dark but didn’t return.
        Rebecca’s mind raced, and her blood ran cold.
        Scattered among the ruins they could see, statues of humanoid figures sat silent and vigil with wide, large eyes. Their heads were long and narrow, their mouths opened slightly to reveal rows of sharp, piranha-like teeth. Their bodies were carved wearing robes or cloaks.
        Ruins here changed everything. For better or worse, Rebecca wasn’t sure. Her stomach twisted into knots. She had found more than just a new system, she had made the discovery of the century. A whole city under her feet the entire time. Rebecca didn’t know much about archaeology, but felt sure the ruins had sat in the dark for thousands of years. Maybe more. Age seeped from the stone.
        “W-what is this,” she asked, not expecting an answer. To her surprise, the greens had one.
        "Nessiradune! The City of Exiles,” Diana answered. “It’s real!”
        Rebecca looked over and saw tears glisten on Diana’s cheek, and she scowled.
        “We think this might be Nessiradune,” Ernesto interjected. “It’s our best guess.”
        Rebecca’s glared. “I thought you three were geologists. What are you talking about?”
        “Anthropologists,” he corrected, “Graduate candidates, at least. Excuse Diana. She forgets average people don’t know our level of archaic history.”
        “Excuse me,” Rebecca said, taking a hard step toward him.
        “No, no! I’m not calling you stupid. Truly, no one believes in the things we’re studying.”
        “He’s right,” Alex said. He dropped his backpack to the ground and pulled another notebook out. “We took this tour as research for our group thesis on pre-Columbian civilizations—that’s why we were plotting the rock formations. We had a theory that there was more to Blackridge Caverns than meets the eye.”
        Ernesto cut back in. “We’ve been following a series of myths and images across the eastern coast of Brazil and Venezuela. Up into the Yucatán Peninsula. Crossing cultures along the way, almost like it's running from us. Images of tall, narrow-faced people on some sort of exile march from a seaside city to an underground cavern. From Incan to Mayan and even Native American as we moved back into the States. A lot of it had been written off as colonial invasions and conquistador murder parties. But Diana was doing research across the freaking Atlantic and found herself chasing the same myth!”
        “Western Sahara,” Diana clarified, the camera covering her face.
        “What myth?” Rebecca asked, curious.
        “Don’t,” Diana said to the two men.
        Alex and Ernesto exchange glances. Rebecca immediately regretted asking. Both men flipped to the first page of their notebooks, moving in closer to share her light. She felt like she’d just asked to see their penises and they couldn’t move fast enough to whip them out. Rebecca looked at Diana, hoping she would make it stop, but she was busy photographing rubble.
        “Right. Okay. So…” Ernesto began. “I’m sure you know the story of Atlantis?”
        Rebecca groaned. She had just started to hate them less, too.
        “You know what? Never mind,” she said. “Let’s forget I asked.”
        “That’s where we always lose people,” Alex said, shutting his notebook.
        “That’s why I didn’t waste my—holy shit!” Diana took off running.

                                                                                       ***

        A tightness wove itself around the Girl’s chest, and she thought her heart may explode. She couldn’t do it. Her worry had burrowed into her stomach and threatened to heave itself up out of her mouth. No one around her seemed to notice. She slipped out of the marching crowd.
        She had made it to the end of her narrow street, where the road curved left and right at a jagged wall. The Girl put her back against the cool stone wall of a shop that sold cave toads, letting her body slide down to the ground. She closed her eyes and breathed, forcing her stomach to keep down the small bits of salted meat she had eaten when she woke. The meat had been the last of the stores her parents kept hidden and preserved from the last Feast, but they had turned rancid with age.
        One of her earliest memories was her mother coming back from the Stone Womb, her face covered in viscera and blood. She carried with her enough food for their family to eat and preserve until the next Relighting. But the Girl would never forget the wounds her mother hid, covering them with pieces of strange cloth and slug ointments. The Girl loved to hug her mother, wrap her arms around her in great leaps. She learned to be tender when her mother came back from the Stone Womb—she never knew where all of the bruises were.
        Her father had only been to the Womb once to provide. He had come back covered in so much blood that the floor of their home was permanently stained from where he stood quietly as their mother wiped him clean. The Girl never found out what had happened to their father at the Womb. He had been forbidden from returning. She never learned what Laws of the Womb he had broken.
        She thumbed her mother’s pendant against neck, running the spiraling edges against the tip of her fingernail. A few deep breaths later and she was calm again. No one enjoyed the Stone Womb, she knew that, but it was the only way for Nessiradune to eat anything other than snails and toads Under the Stone.
        The Girl rose to her feet, ready to join the march once again, then stopped. Across the street, against the jagged rock wall, the air glimmered with shapes. It was as if she were looking into the warped reflection of polished copper. She gasped and stepped back, hitting the wall of the shop hard. A small piece of the building’s archway crumbled to the ground, but no one noticed except the Girl. The rubble came to rest at her foot.
        Just as quickly as the Girl saw the shimmer, it vanished.
        The Girl grinned wider than she had in a long time. There were whispers that at the start of Feasts, especially when a Long Gap had gone longer than normal, shimmering specters could sometimes be seen about the city. They were seen as good luck.
        The Girl would need a little luck.

                                                                                       ***

        Rebecca’s chest bloomed with fury as Diana ran around the bend, followed quickly by Alex and Ernesto, their lights dancing away into the dark. Again, she thought she should just let them die. If they wanted to run around and fall into a pit, let them. She was dizzy with information overload and needed a moment to herself. Finding ruins had been one thing, but Atlantis? Wasn’t that supposed to be in the ocean? She winced and tugged at her ear. Alone and quiet again, she noticed that her ears were still ringing from the collapse.
        The darkness crept in again. The dome of light had been made from their headlamps shrank down to a small egg around Rebecca’s. She waved the stronger flashlight in her hand around, focusing on statues and darkened windows in the distance.
        Ruins or not, it didn’t matter. The plan remained the same, but how would it work now? Would the tunnels still be named after her? Or would they be named after whatever dead civilization left them behind? She would still be credited for the find, right? It was her decision to keep pushing forward, after all. Yes, she knew that’s how it would play out. It had to.
        A footstep crunched behind her.
        Rebecca gasped and spun. She tripped over something soft, dropping her flashlight. The beam shot past stone teeth, an empty archway, the rock wall, then nothing. There was nothing. In the archway across from her, much larger than the others, a piece of stone from the framework rested innocently on the ground, dust raining down from the spot where it had fit snugly moments ago.
        “Jesus. Get it together, Becks,” she said to herself, standing.
        She looked down to find Alex’s backpack by her boot, left behind. The anger in her chest flared again, but quickly subsided into resignation. She picked up the backpack. She had to go after them, the empathy in her said.
        Shut up, she told her kinder self. Shut up. You’ve done me no good. I don’t need you.
Rebecca grabbed the strap. The backpack unzipped along the top and its contents fell to the ground like a gutted animal. Notebooks, a camera like Diana’s, a change of socks, a book on North American caves, and—
        Rebecca screamed.

                                                                                       ***

        Outside the Stone Womb was chaos, just as the Girl knew it would be. Her mother and father had prepared her the best they could, knowing she might one day have to go in their stead. Crowds gathered around the entrance, waiting for the blue lights and the arrival of the Blessed Four. The Girl was told she would have to act fast. The Blessed Four provided the food, but there wasn’t always enough to go around. The Blessed Four would return, sometimes within moments, sometimes not for a great while—sometimes appearing a little different to the eye but, most of the time, appearing the same. Arcing blue lights streaming off the Stone Womb were the signal of their return, and then the Womb would spin. It’s at that moment she must be ready.

                                                                                       ***

        Rebecca found them standing in front of a massive dome, their headlamps aimed high to illuminate smooth rock. It stood out like the tip of a thumb, unlike any of the other ruins. It was made from the same rock as the chamber but was too even and too perfect, polished to a shine. A large opening stood at its base. The inside was dark and impenetrable.  
        “I told you two it would be here!” Diana said, “Right beneath the Devil’s Maw.”
        With Alex’s backpack over her shoulder, Rebecca marched up to him. He turned just in time to meet her fist across his jaw.
        “Woah!” Ernesto jumped between them and caught a fist to the shoulder.
        “You goddamn idiots!” Rebecca roared, ripping the bag open. “What is this?”
        She produced a small block of C-4, the beige wrapping torn away on the end to reveal the white clay-like explosive.
        The three greens looked at one another, then took a step back.
        Diana said, “I know this looks bad. But we found the City of Exiles! We found Atlantis!”
        “You could’ve killed us! And anyone else in the caves. You could’ve brought the whole fucking mountain down!”
        “No, no, no,” Ernesto said, “I did the math. It was just enough to collapse the cave floor.”
        “I’m sorry,” Alex said, working his jaw. “It was supposed to be Emily. Not you. She was all for it. But we had to act today. Before the rainy season starts and the cave is a swamp.”
        Rebecca’s arms shook. Her empty fist clenched so hard her gloves squeaked from the pressure. She put her back to them, her body quaking. Who would die first? Diana and her smug face. Rebecca would hold her down and use her ponytail to rip her face off. Then she would break every one of Alex’s limbs. Finally, she would crush Ernesto’s windpipe with the biggest stone she could find. Her body flushed with heat thinking about their dead eyes wide with confusion and regret. The thrill of killing them was almost erotic.  
        Then the rush passed.
        OK, now what? she asked herself. An actual explosion explained the ringing in her ears. But how much damage had the greens caused? How long would it take rescuers to arrive? She needed to rally.
        She turned back. They had gone through the opening into the dome. Rebecca charged in after them.
The inside of the dome felt wrong. Rebecca's stronger light was able to illuminate the smooth interior walls, curved too precisely to be a part of the other ruins. It was empty except for a cylindrical post of rock jutting up from the floor at its center, just as smooth and polished as the walls. The flat top of the post made it look like a traffic barrier. The greens were huddled around the cylinder, looking at the top and reviewing their notebooks.
I can do it, she thought. I can kill them here.
        She grabbed the two men by the arm and pulled them away.
        “Enough of this! We’re going back up the ledge and setting up a camp until help arrives or I will fucking end all of you. We’re done messing with this place.”
        Rebecca glared at Diana to follow, but she wasn’t paying attention. Her hands were resting on the sides of the cylinder, peering over the top to look down into its center. A faint blue light illuminated her face.
        “Diana! Stop touching shit and let’s—”
        Then, with both hands, Diana twisted the post.
        A cascading wave of energy erupted from the stone and enveloped them. Electricity roiled over the walls, bathing them in a sickly cerulean light. They all fell to the ground, clutching at the floor. The world lurched and spun around them.
        Rebecca looked up to where the opening had been, but it was now just a blur as the dome whirled violently. She felt a tightness in her chest and thought her lungs might explode. She could breathe, but the air felt wrong, growing thick in her throat.
        Diana clung to the post with a maniac smile across her face, watching in wonder at the empyrean brilliance that sparked across the swirling room. Alex clutched his chest, his face reddening with suffocation. Ernesto tried to steady himself on his hands and knees, but then leaned forward and vomited, yellow bile puddling around his palms.
        Everything stopped. Just as quickly as the spinning began, it came to an abrupt halt. The blue light dimmed and, once again, the room was lit only by their helmet lights. Rebecca's flashlight had died and rolled away. She couldn’t fight it anymore and vomited too, the quick stop making her sicker than the spinning.
        “What the hell did you do,” she asked Diana, wiping the edge of her mouth.
        Diana didn’t respond. Her smile had faded. She was looking out into the ruins. She clutched the post even tighter, her eyes wide and her face pale. Alex and Ernesto were still trying to get to their feet, grabbing each other for support. Rebecca rose on unsteady legs and pushed past them. Terror fell over her, too.
The mammoth cavern was no longer dark but instead submerged in orange light. The city was full of life. Fires roared in pits of metal and figures moved in shadows—figures with long faces.
        Several yards from the dome, a mob of the long-faces were gathered. They weren’t robed like the statues, but almost naked. Their crotches were covered with ragged pieces of fabric or leather, but bare besides. Their skin was pallid and sinewy with lean muscles. Pale, full breasts separated the genders, if such things had genders.
Violent screaming caught her attention despite her brain thrashing to understand what had happened to them. The mob surrounded… something. Rebecca couldn’t make it out. Several of the long-faces struggled to hold whatever it was down. One of them moved away from the crowd with a bloody nose.
        The mob shifted. Rebecca saw a face, eyes bulging and wild. The eyes were so familiar, as was the nose and the mouth. The long-faces were holding a person, a woman, that looked exactly like Rebecca.
No, not exactly like her. It was her. This other Rebecca kicked and screamed like a trapped animal. She bit feverishly at the arms holding her to the ground. She stopped fighting and looked forward, making eye contact with Rebecca.
        “Turn it back!” the other Rebecca screamed.
        Rebecca watched helplessly as a long-faced female leaned down and bit into the other Rebecca’s throat, tearing out a chunk of muscle and tissue. The other Rebecca released a gurgling cough, her body going limp. The mob reached down and tore her to pieces, carrying anything they could away and shoving it into their mouths. An arm. A finger. A lumpy piece of breast. Others tore at her clothes—her layered tank tops and her lycra shorts—wringing the blood from the fabrics and folding it into rags.
        What the fuck is this? she asked herself.
        No, don’t think. Move. Fucking move.
        Rebecca pivoted on her heels. Her mind wanted to rip itself in half, wanted her to sit on the ground and cry until those things tore her apart too. But her instincts propelled her forward, shouting at her. She ran for the cylinder, shoved Diana off, and grabbed it with both hands.
        Many, many other hands suddenly had her by the wrists and pulled her away. She heard the greens moan in horror and pain. Rebecca writhed, flailing her limbs, hitting anything she could. They carried her out of the dome, onto the street.
        Above, she saw the spires of their towers lit up like Times Square. The distant cavern ceiling, now in full view, was higher than she ever could’ve imagined. Rebecca shut her eyes and swung her arms frantically. When she opened them again, one of the long-faces looked down at her, showing his rows of piranha-sharp teeth.
She screamed in his face and twisted her body free. Pulling her limbs tight into a ball, she leapt to her feet but stayed low to the ground. The long-faces moved away from her, giving her space, but keeping her surrounded. Something in the way they moved around felt expected, rehearsed even.
        Oh my god, how many times have they done this? she wondered.
        Beyond the crowd, she saw a group wrench Alex’s intestines from his abdomen while two others held his arms and legs to the ground. But this Alex wore a yellow helmet. Her Alex had been wearing a green one. This other Alex lurched his body up and down madly, blood pouring from his mouth. As quickly as they could pull out his ropey insides, the long-faces shoved it in their mouths, ravenously shredding it with their teeth and swallowing pieces whole. Rebecca couldn’t see Ernesto—her Ernesto or any other. One of the long-faces held two severed Diana heads by ginger ponytails in each hand, bits of spine and tissue dripping from the necks. Each still had a helmet strapped on—one yellow and one green.
        A glance to her left found her Alex with his green helmet, sprawled lifeless and face down on the ground as a female long-faces worked tediously to cut away strips of meat from his exposed back, placing them into a bowl beside her.
        The crowd took a small step forward.
        An alien awareness inside Rebecca came alive, something feral and desperate. The same animal urge that bristled when she thought of killing the greens, that had first come alive in her after she’d held a pillow over her father’s face to finally end his miserable life. She knelt on her haunches and raised her hands into claws. Spit dripped from her mouth as she barred her ivory teeth at the crowd and growled. A feeling beyond herself took over—the instinct of a wild beast backed into a corner.
        A long-face ran at her, grabbing her by the shoulders. She headbutted him with her helmet and he stumbled backwards with a busted mouth. Another one charged, but before he reached her, Rebecca tore the helmet from her head and smashed it against his face. With a sickening crunch, he fell to the ground, holding his jaw. Her hair, now free from the helmet, flowed down to her shoulders and framed the madness in her face.
        Two more came at her from behind, grabbing her around the waist and chest. She twisted in their grip and sunk her teeth deep into a neck. Thick liquid and a piece of craggy skin went down her throat, tasting of fish and infection—sour and rotten. Her stomach convulsed and she puked over the one holding her waist. He let go and began feverishly licking at his skin with a grey tongue, rubbing his hands along his bald head and lapping up her bile with cries of pleasure.

                                                                                       ***

        As the Girl approached the Stone Womb, she passed others leaving with arms full of food—some with more than she had ever seen. Great mounds of meat that would feed families of four and five for several Relightings. Either the Blessed Four had brought more than normal, or the Long Gap took more of her people than she realized.
She had never been this close to the Stone Womb before, even during its slumber. The smooth belly at the edge of the city wasn’t theirs. It had not been brought with them from old Nessiradune but was instead discovered during the Exile when they fled from the gods. In their time of need, the Womb had fed them. It shielded them from the Things Between. They rebuilt their great city-state around its smooth, stone flesh, deep in the ground, far from the Great Flame in the Sky.
        But the Girl didn’t have time to marvel. A tendril of blue cast itself from the Womb’s opening. She gave her mother’s pendant another gentle caress. She would not let her contempt for the city be her ruin. She would do what needed to be done.

                                                                                       ***

        Light suddenly erupted throughout the cavern, suffusing over the orange glow of the fires. The dome started spinning again, its smooth surface crackling. The mob around Rebecca cheered. In the distraction, the long-faces leapt forward. They grabbed each of her limbs, making it impossible to fight back. She chomped her teeth at them, ready to take another chunk from their flesh, but she couldn’t reach, couldn’t get out of their grip.
When the orange glow returned to the cavern and the dome had stopped spinning, she knew what she would see.
        Time really is flat under the mountain, she thought.
        She just had to keep struggling until they moved and gave her a clear view. With her last bit of strength, she twisted one more time and the long-faces holding her shifted to keep their grip. As they did, Rebecca met the eyes of a woman who looked exactly like her, staring from the dome.
        “Turn it back!” she screamed and thought too late she should have shouted something different.
        Time might be flat, but choices aren’t and why the hell didn’t she try something different? Please try something different. Don’t let this be our ruin.
        Teeth tore at her throat, and a female long-face pulled back a piece of her larynx. Rebecca’s vision faded. From the monster’s neck dangled the spiral of a nautilus that made Rebecca think of the ocean.
        Then she heard her father's voice and thought of ruin.