Virdon stepped out of the nautilus-inspired building and drew a deep breath. Damn Pete for yammering on and on about time travel and lotteries! What did he expect of him - to break down and make a teary-eyed confession that he had dreamed of his son choking on Sarin in a subway car?

Pete would just call him irrational. No, he'd call him desperate, which was as accurate as it was condescending. Just like deciding to withhold the fact from him that they had travelled through time, when he had stumbled over it in Zaius' private study. Burke hadn't told him because he figured that the hope of being found by ANSA would keep him going, as long as he assumed that ANSA was still in existence.

Well, it worked, Pete - too bad you don't like the itinerary.

When he opened his eyes again, his gaze fell on the apes, staring at him. Galen had slung a protective arm around Zana's shoulders, glaring at him with the clear message to stop forcing his fiancée to endure the horrors of human history. After one look in Virdon's face, though, Zana shrugged off Galen's arm and stepped forward, closing the distance between them until she could grab his hand with both of hers.

"I don't like it here," she whispered. "It's too quiet. Where are all the birds?"

She was right, Virdon realized. In the ruins of Atlanta, everything had been covered by a thick blanket of greenery, and the silence had been one of wind in high grass and the rustling of little animals in the undergrowth... the silence of a buried battlefield. Birds had been singing in the trees, unaffected by the tragedy those ruins had born witness to.

But here, the only sounds were made by the wind that was strumming the spires and whistling through the ribs of the giant towers, and the rustling of dead leaves that it had carried into the polished corridors at their feet. Despite the patches of grass and vines that the creators of this complex had allowed to grow in designated pots climbing those towers, Virdon hadn't seen any bird - or any other animal, for that matter - moving through them. It was as if the city kept all outsiders at a distance.

Before Virdon could say anything, Burke had caught up to him; Virdon wondered absently what had taken him so long. "Okay, so what's your plan, Al?" he gasped. "We can't search every building in here, even if the damn mon... Urko wasn't on our tail."

"I know," Virdon admitted after a moment. "Let's try to determine which of those buildings might've been an official one... perhaps we'll find something that'll give us an overview of the city - a map, or even some records... some clue what happened here. I'd actually prefer a map; we could go straight to their university, find their physics labs..." It wasn't even a plan, he admitted to himself; just some desperate poking around in the dark.

"Fine," Burke muttered, "an' jus' how are you going to determine what's a public and what's a private building in here? They all look the same to me."

That... was a legitimate question. The designer of this city had decided to make all the towers be the same model. Virdon wiped the sweat from his face and turned around to scan the area. Going by the size of those towers, they had to have been the residential complexes, while the conches were meant to provide services... shops, cafés, maybe even hairdressers, as Burke had jokingly suggested. Perhaps there was a third kind of building for the administrative and educational services? They would be all in one place, probably - maybe closer to the center.

"This way," he pointed down another white, winding path that led down into the shadowy canyons under the towers. He didn't turn back to acknowledge the others' disagreement; he wasn't forcing anyone to come with him.

But he couldn't stop now. Not when he could feel this world sinking its roots into his soul like ivy, choking him and dragging him to the ground, until he'd be content to serve the apes and never lift his gaze again. He'd take a woman from this world, and raise children who would never know anything else but servitude...

"Al."

Burke waited until Virdon had turned around to face him.

"Let's make a deal, okay?" Burke spread his arms. "Let's go on for another mile, and if we find anything, like your physics labs, or a map, or records, anything, we'll follow that lead. But if we don't find anything, we'll break this off." He hastily held up his hand when Virdon opened his mouth. "Hear me out! I'm sure there are hundreds of these ruins scattered from here to the Rockies, and once we're out of Urko's hunting grounds, we'll have enough time to turn over every pebble in them. But this..." he waved to encompass the whole, eerily silent place, "this was just a bad idea from the beginning, you gotta admit."

For a while, Virdon said nothing. Burke and the apes were quiet, watching him; only the horses interrupted the wind-swept silence with an occasional snort, or shaking of their manes, jingling the metal bits of their gear. Galen fumbled with the saddlebags, throwing worried glances over his shoulder. The sun stabbed through the thick cover of clouds for a moment, illuminating a railing around a patch in the road. It was red - the only splash of color in an otherwise perfectly serene pattern of black, white, and carefully placed greenery.

He slowly limped towards it. The railing could have only one purpose: to protect people from falling into a gap... or a hole in the road. Maybe this was another entrance to a subway network. Or maybe there was another city under this city. If you wanted to preserve something for a very long time, you'd hide it in archives that the elements couldn't reach so easily.

Underground.

It wasn't a flight of stairs, Virdon saw when he came closer; it was a ramp, leading to a pair of doors that were torn and twisted, as if someone had used explosives to force them open - one of the few signs of destruction they had come across until now.

If someone had forced their way beyond those doors, something interesting must've been kept behind them.

Virdon turned around. "We don't have to go another mile." He pointed at the entrance that was brooding in the shadows at the end of the ramp. "If this city holds any secrets, they'll be down there."

"The horses won't go underground," Galen objected.

"And neither will I," Zana added, her fur bristling. "One time was enough for me. I don't want to know these secrets, Alan - and I have a feeling you won't like them, either."

"I don't have to like them," Virdon said, "but I need to know the truth. I need to know what happened to my people, and I need to know if there is a way for me to return to them. You lost your home, Zana, but I lost my whole world. You don't have to come with me... this is my story, not yours." He turned away, towards the darkness waiting for him.

Behind him, Burke heaved a sigh. "Jus' wait a damn minute, Al, will ya? Let me get the torches, or we won't find your secrets until they bite us in the ass."

"You don't have to come, either," Virdon said tiredly, without turning back. "I know you think this is a fool's errand."

Burke muttered something, Galen answered, equally low; Virdon slowly limped towards the gate, not caring what those two were discussing.

Then Burke came jogging after him, and pushed an unlit torch into his hand. "Yeah, I do, but if you get lost in there, I wanna know where you are so I can drag you out, without having to search for your dumb ass.

"An' it's my story, too."

Galen clenched his jaw and turned around his axis, trying to scan every corner and shadow for suspicious movement. His gaze swept over gleaming facades, abandoned alleys, and the forlorn emptiness of the white, unnaturally smooth street they were standing on. In the distance, the spires of incredibly high towers were dissolving in the morning haze. The clouds had covered the sun again, a pale disc behind their gray vapor. Earlier, its light had made it appear as if these towers had been made from copper; now they were dark and dull like iron.

Peet had traded one of Galen's daggers for his gun - a strange deal in Galen's eyes, and a worrying one; if he allowed himself to think logically about it, he could only conclude that the human was expecting trouble in those tunnels. If it came to a fight, ricocheting bullets would be as dangerous for him and Alan as they would be for their attackers, so a knife was the better option.

Unsettling as that thought was, what made his fur stand on end was the conclusion that Peet was expecting trouble for him and Zana, as well - and a kind of trouble that made a gun the weapon of choice.

Galen drew a slow, controlled breath through his nose, and tried to get his fur to settle. Peet had tried to be coy about it, but subterfuge wasn't his forte, which would've been endearing at any other occasion. "'s just a precaution," he had said. "Better safe than sorry, right? There's just five bullets left, so try to not shoot at shadows." With that, he had jogged after Alan, leaving him slack-mouthed and too stunned to demand an explanation.

And now he was left here, listening to the ghost winds and trying to stay calm and rational. It was impossible, Galen admitted in the privacy of his thoughts; this whole place made him uneasy, not in the tense, energized way that Urko set his blood boiling, but as a numb, dreamlike melancholy, as if he'd known this place a long time ago, but had forgotten how or when. It was as if he had stepped into someone else's nightmare.

A human nightmare, by all accounts.

The book that had cost him his old life had actually been less exciting or scandalous than he had thought; Galen admitted to himself that he didn't really understand Zaius' panic about its content. Yes, humans had once ruled this world; but apes had taken the scepter away from them, and were now the uncontested masters, with humans being relegated not even to a status of servants, but of animals, devoid of even the most basic rights. It was a total victory, one that could as well have been celebrated, and rubbed into the humans' faces, at every opportunity.

But standing amidst the silent witnesses of bygone human greatness, Galen began to understand why the Keepers of the Scrolls and the High Council had taken such pains to bury the whole history of human accomplishment. Humans had been great once; humans had been more powerful masters of this world than apes had ever managed to become; and human ingenuity, human spirit was something that was only sleeping... dreaming through the eons, like these ruins. They were still breathing alien majesty, a bold and forbidding imprint on the wilderness surrounding them. Not even the mutated creatures of the Forbidden Zone dared to enter this unholy place.

If humans remembered this past of theirs... Galen let his gaze sweep once more over the spires of needle-like towers, the bold, if broken arch of a bridge, the sweeping lanes of old streets, weaving over and under each other like a complicated tapestry.

If they remembered, they might wake up again. And then they might take back the throne.

He hoped that Alan would come back empty-handed. That he wouldn't be able to alert his fellow humans back in the past of what would become of their dominion. If they learned about what lay in their future - could they prevent it? Erase this world like the flood erased footprints in the sand?

Erase his life... Zana's life?

Maybe they wouldn't need such esoteric means for that. Maybe whatever Peet had sensed, whatever had prompted him to give him his gun, was preparing to end their lives in this very moment. Galen fervently wished to have been more forceful when his father had offered, in a sudden bout of decency that most likely originated from his mother's subtle prodding, to take Zana into his house, and under his protection.

"Do you regret now that you didn't take up my father on his offer?" he asked her.

Zana looked up, surprised; she had learned a long time ago not to start a conversation when he was hunting down a thought, and had probably been busy with spinning her own yarn. "Why would I regret being with you?"

"Well, I hope you'll never regret that, but I actually meant being here." Galen gestured at the eerie landscape around them. "You could be sitting in my mother's living room right now, sipping tea, sewing baby clothes..."

"Wondering where the father of my baby is right now, or if he's even still alive," Zana interrupted him dryly. "Yes, I can see how I'd enjoy myself, especially when your father arrives to join us for tea."

"But you'd be safe," Galen insisted. "The baby would be safe..."

"And you'd never see either of us again, nor would we ever reunite with you," Zana pointed out. "Look what that is doing to Alan! He is crazy with grief!"

"Well, crazy is exactly the word I'd use," Galen muttered. "Going in there, crippled as he is..." Dragging us along, into danger...

"Peet is with him," Zana said. "I wouldn't worry about them."

It's not them I'm worried about...

Something clinked.

It was a faint sound, so faint that Galen couldn't say from which direction it had come, so faint that he wasn't sure if he hadn't imagined it. He glanced to Zana, but she didn't show any signs of concern. So she had probably not heard that sound. That faint, furtive sound.

Or maybe he had imagined it. His overexcited imagination, and worry...

If he asked her now, she'd only start panicking. Galen's nose twitched violently, and he gripped his gun until his fingers ached. Five bullets left... and then?

His gaze fell on the horses.

Tala and Ahpahchee stood tense, heads high, ears twitching; horses were prey, Galen reminded himself, they were naturally prone to sense approaching predators.

If he had imagined that sound, so had they.