When everyone was awake and ready to depart they made their way down to the cafeteria for something to eat before they headed out of the building. Last night they had agreed they had to venture outside, explore the ruined city since there had been nothing that could help them inside the facility. As they had done in the caves, they filled their food bags with all the durable foods they could from the cafeteria stores after they'd eaten in case they did not get so lucky finding food once they left the administrative office building.

They didn't have to go in search of a door, not when there were a number of enormous holes blasted into the ground-level's walls. The previous evening they had passed by many such jagged openings to the outside, which they had given a wide berth at the time, but in the light they were better prepared to face what might lie beyond. The four of them, each heavily loaded with supplies, Kaegan and Jonah still wielding their staffs, made their way to one of the gaping wounds in the building. The light outside had brightened to mid-morning. The fires in the distance they'd seen from Caulder's office had finally begun to burn out and the smoke that caught and swirled at the underside of the glass covering of the city before slipping out into the eternal-winter sky beyond was thinner, less choking. More sunlight was penetrating through the glass and smoke and it cast the outside world in a deceptively pleasant and peaceful light.

Jonah climbed over the broken wall first and into the outdoors. His first inclination was to take a deep breath but even shallow breathing was laced with the smell of fire and decay. He resisted any urge to take in a lung-full. Thera followed Jonah and immediately tilted her head up to feel the sun on her face. A bright spot of the burning star was peeking through an open area of broken dome and Thera could almost feel it shoot straight into her blood.

"Come on, it's okay," Thera heard Carlin saying and turned back to look at him and Kaegan.

Carlin was standing just outside the building and holding his hand out for Kaegan, who was standing at the threshold of the outside and indoors, just inside the building. She was still in shadow, spared from the touch of the sun's rays, and she looked hesitant to step out into the elements. They weren't the ice and snow and death she had been brought up fearing but still it was so far outside the caves she'd known her entire life that she was tentative.

"Come on, it's all right," Carlin said again and Kaegan noticeably took a breath then extended her left hand. The line of shadow crept over her fingers, up the back of the hand, and over her wrist and she turned her hand over and back again in the sun. She studied her hand in the natural lighting as though she'd never seen it before.

Kaegan slowly stepped outside and quickly closed her eyes to sun-sensitive slits as she looked upward into the sky. Tears in response to the intense light formed in her eyes and when Kaegan closed them completely a tear ran down her face. A smile, despite it all, crept over her face as the sun, for the first time, caressed her cheeks.

Jonah gave them all a moment before he said, "Let's start searching around, see if we find anything we can use or maybe even other survivors."

Kaegan brought her face back down and hurriedly wiped at her tear-streaked cheeks. Carlin smiled at her, kind and gentle, and Thera stepped closer to Jonah's side as they started to pick their way through the shattered and damaged streets of a broken city.


They searched, with little to show for their efforts, for six hours after leaving the administrative building. The sight everywhere was disturbingly unchanged and it began to dishearten the travelers. There were bodies in the streets, sprawled in open doorways, curled in corners where they must have cowered before their deaths. There were charred ash piles of burned-out fires to match the blackened marks from weapons' discharge on houses and storefronts. What was most disturbing, perhaps even more than the stench and the sight of so much death, was the utter lack of any noise. Their own footfalls were the only sound of movement, the only sign of living beings. There were no animals, no birds... nothing. Every once in a while the wind outside the bio-dome would shift just enough to catch one of the holes just right and it would moan and whistle eerily but beyond that it was quiet as a tomb.

Which was perhaps fitting.

Entire blocks had been burned to the ground and the four survivors bypassed those without a second glance. There was plenty more of the city to explore without subjecting themselves needlessly to the smell of cooked human flesh. If they searched everywhere and came up empty they could always return to shift through burned regions.

At the moment, however, they were resting. They had stopped for a break in what might have been a park once. There were benches and trees, some burned into gnarled trunks and some uprooted by massive explosives, but the vague outline, like a retinal image, of a park lingered over the place. Apparently when the attacks came people tried not to be caught in the open so the park was mostly free of corpses, the main reason they'd decided to stop where they did.

Carlin and Kaegan were walking around one of the few surviving trees. Its overhanging branches whispered of hints of normal, of life and comfort before the attack. Kaegan looked captivated by the greenery and she plucked a leaf from a low-hanging limb to smell it and touch it. Thera was on the bench next to Jonah a moderate distance away from the two sudden botanists and she glanced over at him. He was staring up at the dome, his expression thoughtful.

"What?" she asked.

Jonah pulled his jacket closer. "Just thinking... it's pretty warm for an ice age."

Thera tugged the billowing sleeves of her coat over her hands for warmth. She knew exactly of what Jonah spoke; she'd noticed it, too. It was bitterly cold but not terribly so...they weren't in danger of freezing to death. It was confusing because they knew the dome was far from intact, they could see the huge holes punched in the superstructure.

Thera nodded up at the glass and said, "The transparent dome surface probably acts sort of like a magnifying glass, directing the heat of the sun into the city. We must be in this planet's summer or else we probably would have frozen already." She'd already thought of that very detail when they had survived the night above the surface.

Jonah mulled this over and looked down at Kaegan and Carlin brushing their hands over a small patch of unburned grass. "Then we have a timetable, we have to be gone before winter."

Thera nodded to herself and held her covered hands against her stomach.

"Where do we go next?" Jonah asked her idly as he toed the ground underfoot.

Since one direction seemed to be as good as another they had taken turns picking the next area they would search. As yet they had not dared to separate to cover more ground. They were sacrificing efficiency for safety in numbers.

Thera looked around the park, beyond at the residential areas (so many of them blackened and crumbled) then her eyes fixed on one direction. For some reason it caught her attention and would not let go.

"That way," she said and pointed.

Jonah nodded absently, accepting her decision without inquiry.

Then the atmosphere, the mood between them, shifted and Thera knew it was time to go.

Jonah stood from the bench and brushed his pants off. His torso dangled with items, as did everyone's. The black vests proved handy in more ways than one. The pockets all contained snaps to secure them in place so held by each button were the strings to food and water bags. The belts, too, had become a means for attaching supplies. Thera, since she had not been able to wear the belt that came with her vest, had her spare bags tied to the shoulder straps of her vest.

Thera held out her hands and Jonah pulled her up (the graceless waltz they danced so frequently as of late) and he turned to Carlin and Kaegan. Probably without realizing it they had wandered a good distance from the rest of their team.

Jonah whistled shrilly and Carlin and Kaegan looked up at once. Jonah waved them over and picked up the staff he'd propped against the bench.

Kaegan and Carlin looked at each other then started walking back toward Thera and Jonah.

"Sorry," Carlin said when he and Kaegan had rejoined their companions. "We didn't realize we'd gone so far."

"Just keep an eye out," Jonah said, and frowned at the utter stillness around them, "though I'm beginning to think we're the only ones who survived."

Kaegan, a tree leaf conspicuously stuffed into her curly hair, looked out at the same scene of horror Jonah did. The dark woman was adapting and adjusting well. Already the sight of the sun and sky and the open spaces that had at first made her skittish didn't startle her anymore. Seeing people, her own though she'd never known of them before two days ago, dead in the streets was no longer a shock. She was marching on, refusing to let it faze her. Jonah approved of her ability to 'buck up' because they didn't need to baby-sit a basket-case and look out for hostiles.

"Where now?" Kaegan asked. Thera decided the incongruous leaf burrowed into her hair gave the other woman an oddly exotic appearance.

Jonah motioned in the direction Thera had indicated earlier and answered, "That way."

Without a reason to complain Kaegan shrugged and Carlin was game. Jonah, as usual, took lead with Thera a few steps behind him. Carlin followed Thera and Kaegan brought up the rear. It was the pattern they'd fallen into while traipsing through the city without ever discussing it. It was almost disturbing how the order had just 'fallen into place'.

Jonah, Thera, and Carlin walking in single file, in that particular order, seemed almost practiced though Kaegan was less 'right' in the role as the last person in the procession. Thera reasoned it was probably because she wasn't one of the original group. That had to be it.


"Oh, wow."

Kaegan frowned at Carlin's back as he walked in front of her. She'd heard him muttering and murmuring to himself for at least ten minutes and it was either about to pique her curiosity beyond tolerance or irritate the piss out of her.

They were working their way down some manner of thoroughfare, or at least what had been one before the attack. Their single-file line contracted and stretched, sometimes went crooked as Thera would head up to Jonah's side to converse with him before falling back into step or Carlin would lag and wander off to one side to look at something. Always, however, their formation would return to its original shape and they would move along.

These three were strange ones. Even in the caves they'd been the oddities, the aberrations. Them, and the massive man Tor who had never returned from his last bout with night sickness. It claimed workers sometimes if it was not caught and treated soon enough.

But Kaegan found herself even beginning to question that part of her old existence. Everything she thought she'd known was blasted into the sky, the pale blue, nonfatal sky, when Jonah had led them from the caverns and to the surface.

It made Kaegan reevaluate a lot of her preconceptions, and first to come under fire were those concerning her new companions.

Jonah and Thera had always seemed like elitists to Kaegan. They had bonded to each other and spurned everyone else as though they were better than them all. Jonah was the only person fit for Thera's company and Thera the only one fit for Jonah's. Thera had been the worst... she thought she was so much smarter than everyone, thought she knew how everything should be done better than anyone. And Jonah was only marginally better; he had his flaws. He strolled around the underground while everyone else bent to their work and kept in line as if he owned some right to respect, to their respect. He refused to be frenzied or rushed by the important, life-saving work they did. His attitude was cavalier and thoroughly grating.

Before they got sick Carlin had been different. He'd been a little naive, a little too trusting and open for the caves, but Kaegan had found it endearing. She got to know him and understood there was definitely an edge to Carlin, he was just hard to stir to aggression. Carlin just wasn't that way and Kaegan had found a soft place in the hard, cold world of their existence as workers a comfort.

Then they all got night sick and went for treatment. Night sickness medication could make people forget some things. When Carlin came back he didn't remember Kaegan.

Kaegan had not intended to let that end her friendship with Carlin but before she could reintroduce herself Carlin had taken to associating with Jonah and Thera. They seemed to have retained their memories of one another just fine since they were always seen together even after the sickness.

Kaegan had surrendered Carlin to his new 'friends'. She wasn't interested in fighting Jonah and Thera over a guy like Carlin. She'd put them out of her mind and ignored them all as best she could.

And then Carlin's strange behavior at the mines that had precipitated this misadventure she could never before have dreamed.

The staggering implications of all they'd found aside, Kaegan was discovering things about her former coworkers she'd never before noticed. She hadn't let herself see them before, nor would she have spared the time to look. Now, however, she found herself allotted unique opportunities for observation.

What she saw made her rethink a lot of things.

Thera's exalted disposition was not empty hype but justly earned. Reluctant though Kaegan was to admit it, Thera was very smart... smarter than anyone Kaegan had ever met. It was more than the ideas Thera had concocted in the caves to improve the machines. It was in the silent way she watched, the calculation and measurement in her blue eyes, the flicker across her face when her mind started to spin like a well-greased engine. For all the buried intellect Thera's eyes reflected Kaegan began to think Thera was actually rather demur and self-effacing. To see so much thinking going on Thera was markedly quiet for all that went on in her head. She could easily flout her intelligence so much more than she did but Thera was content to keep to herself, to battle first with her thoughts before she challenged anyone else with them. And she was pretty nice, once Kaegan gave her half a chance. Kaegan could not fault Thera's loyalties or her priorities. Thera's primary concern, above all else, was for her child, and Kaegan had to credit Thera her commitment to her baby.

Jonah, Kaegan had slowly come to understand, was actually everything he'd appeared to be, everything she had detested and taken as pompous show. He was self-assured as only a tried and experienced person could be. His every move was trained. Jonah had tight command over his body and it obeyed him unerringly. His gray hair and lean frame would suggest weakness in comparison to someone built like Carlin but Jonah had skill gained only through a thousand fights. Jonah was a predator in the guise of a man and Kaegan could not fathom how such a person could come into being in the mines and caves. It seemed, for all the hardships their lives had entailed underground, there was nothing powerful enough to shape a man as strong and indomitable as Jonah. Kaegan also picked up on the fact Jonah, for his dumb-brute first impression, was nearly as smart as Thera but in a different way. He took in things and processed everything... and then he acted. His air of command was undeniable, even Kaegan with her own unyielding spirit had taken to following him without fail, but there was more to it than just that. Jonah put his comrades before himself. More important than anything was Thera, his lover and mother of his unborn child, but even Carlin's well-being was considered before his own. Jonah took into account Kaegan before he thought of himself, and Kaegan could never again ask how anyone might follow the man through this ordeal and far worse.

Kaegan was left to consider Carlin as he continued to walk ahead of her. He had struck her as a gentle person at first, before the night sickness incident, but the more she lived and traveled in close quarters with him through forging times the more she understood she had greatly underestimated Carlin's true personality. Carlin had depths and layers Kaegan had never imagined he harbored. He was outwardly friendly, talkative, conciliatory... the few fights she'd seen him in he never looked at ease with swinging his fists. He was a peace-maker and that was still true, but he was not just that in Kaegan's eyes anymore. He was a man with the curiosity of a child, a spark of innocence she couldn't recall ever really seeing in her life until she saw it in Carlin. He was intelligent, his blue eyes so nearly mirrors of Thera's when he was thinking. He had darkness and pain but at first glance one would never suspect because Carlin acted two-dimensional so well. Kaegan learned she had to watch Carlin closely because he folded his reactions inward. While Thera would speak her mind and Jonah would act Carlin would pull back and hold in any overt signs of his true responses to a situation. Kaegan suspected a good general rule with Carlin would be to assume his emotional reaction to something was ten-fold what it appeared... and three times as complex.

Kaegan walked, swinging the staff in her hand forward then let it drag back with the ground before swinging it forward again. Carlin didn't remember they'd once been friends when he saved her. To him she was no one special when he dragged her to the safety of the strange underground ship. Kaegan was intrigued by that fact and it teased her with the mystery that Carlin's true nature was to her.

And then Kaegan had to consider them all as a unit. There was a natural balance to the way Jonah, Carlin, and Thera moved and worked together. She tried to fit into their inner world, to do her part in repayment for her inclusion in their group (for Carlin saving her life and Jonah and Thera letting him), but it was as though there was an unspoken dialect between them she didn't understand. Things were intuitive between them. Jonah could give Thera or Carlin a look and it would initiate a complex series of actions, almost choreographed in their correctness. They worked like interconnected parts of one engine. She'd never seen them display that kind of cohesion in the caves, but then there they had been made to suffer the ineptitude of many who didn't speak the language. Kaegan tried to stay out of the way and wondered where they might have learned to move and communicate and know one another the way they did.

Carlin had slowed and Kaegan was soon nearly abreast with him. She stopped beside him and looked up at his face. His eyes were in constant motion and behind them that intellect Kaegan had underestimated previously.

"What is it you find so fascinating?" she asked, finally at her breaking point of silently listening to him 'ooh' and 'ahh' to himself.

Carlin, as though having forgotten Kaegan was there, jumped a little and looked down at her. She stood, braced on her staff, weight shifted on to one foot, tree leaf still tangled in her hair.

He seemed to stare at her a second before he gestured with a hand at the corridor there were traveling. Already Jonah and Thera were ahead of them. "Just...this."

Kaegan frowned and looked around. They had traveled many streets, most of them gruesome enough that she'd rather not remember them, in their exploration of the city. They had found roads and corridors between buildings far more impressive than this one they now walked. It was narrow compared to the streets they'd already seen, obviously meant for nothing but pedestrian traffic. There were stone pillars, just taller than waist-high, lining either side. Kaegan thought it looked silly and pointless. It seemed that the stone posts didn't serve any purpose but to mark off where the walkway's boundaries lay.

Kaegan turned a dubious eye on Carlin and he was watching her, as though waiting for her to declare it indeed intriguing. Kaegan wondered if perhaps a person could be incredibly smart but a little crazy at the same time.

Carlin, as if he could read her thoughts, smiled fleetingly and said, "It looks almost ceremonial. See the placement of the pillars, the way it ascends up this small hill, like travelers are rising to a sacred truth or divine judgment?"

Kaegan made a face and continued walking after Jonah and Thera. Carlin fell into step beside her but his attention was split.

"So the surface-dwellers were strange," Kaegan offered.

Carlin shrugged. "Maybe, but doesn't this just seem horribly out of place to you?"

Kaegan looked at him quickly. "I'm walking in a city where I always believed there was nothing but ice and you're asking me if this in particular seems out of place?"

Carlin gave a half-smile and shook his head. "I mean, we haven't run across anything like this before. Everything we've found in this city has been almost rigidly modern, utilitarian."

Kaegan nodded. The no-frills basics of the city's layout and pragmatic amenities appealed to her.

"But this," Carlin gestured down at the path at their feet. His brow furrowed. "It's just...older somehow. It doesn't seem antiquated to you?"

Kaegan looked askance at him. "It's a walking trail, Carlin. Maybe all this is starting to get to you."

Carlin gave an indecipherable grumble then fell quiet. Kaegan dropped back behind him to retake her place at the back of the line. Jonah and Thera were making their way around a bend in the path up ahead that curved to the left. For a second Kaegan felt a race of uneasiness to know the two others would be out of sight soon and would remain so for at least a minute or two but it was short-lived. The more they saw the more Kaegan was convinced there was nothing alive, dangerous or harmless, but them.

Carlin and Kaegan reached the arch in the pathway and when they cleared the single-story home that obscured the rest of the path from view Kaegan saw Jonah and Thera first. They were only a few feet ahead, both stopped dead in their tracks.

Carlin, at her side, jerked to a stop.

Kaegan's hand closed around her staff tighter until she saw beyond her companions and saw the thing beyond. Despite everything unimaginable Kaegan had seen in the last couple of days that certainly did seem out of place to her.

The path they were on abruptly ended, came to a stop at the foot of a dais of shallow stone steps and upon that platform of rock a monstrous gray circle. It stood like a sentry, gaping and still, and it had certainly frozen Jonah, Thera, and Carlin on the spot.

Kaegan trusted her companions enough to feel nervous at what the gray ring might mean.