The shooting did not stop.
A week had passed since Carmack's disappearance. In the uncertainty, a small team had gone to ground before the elevator was shut down, heading westwards towards the Capital. Carmack had been moved, the scientists concluded; they had missed their chance.
The fighting had continued across the underground laboratory ever since the initial coup divided it into two factions; those loyal to the regime, and those who wanted to survive. Within the last few days, splinter groups had formed in the chaos.
Roundabout loyalties pushed many to extremes they could not withstand. Isolated, some hid to await rescue. The rest turned themselves into animals, shooting ceilings and drywall in their own vein attempts to survive, killing each other by coincidence.
In the end, fighting for survival always meant one's doom; the regime ruled supreme. The scientists, desperate to finish what they had started, acted with final intent.
They would pass beneath the archway.
The team found it whilst taking sediment samples for analysis; a large hollow mouth emptied slowly of the surrounding sand – the same sort that had sucked their team members through – was unearthed lacking inscription or meaningful detail. The archway was excavated and moved, along with the body, for further research.
It stood now in the centre of an empty room.
The scientists heard the slaughter of regime forces approaching and barricaded themselves in with it; there was, they saw, no going back. They approached the archway and stood at its lip, dwarfed by its size, standing shoulder to shoulder the four of them barely filled it. Their time had come, and with it, everything that would remain.
They stepped through.
