“I don’t think I heard the last ten things you said.” Greg peeled his eyes open reluctantly. Their mode of passage was nothing more than a distorted hunk of steel twisted around the force-field.

  “It’s ruined.” Nash course corrected quickly. She rose to her feet and held her arms high, extending the orb outward until the mass of it broke the elevator chamber apart for good. “Imagine how bad the rest of this place must be.” She said as she shrank the aura again, ensuring nothing would fall on them before dropping it completely.

  The two stepped with caution into the near pitch-black space. It was a huge and ancient chasm, the same as many had been. A few old lights still shone dimly, strung up on shabby wires, and running on spite more so than any scientific logic. Whatever scaffolding or infrastructure that may or may not have existed was lost in the darkness, drowned out by the sight of the very thing they came to see. It shouldn’t have been this easy. A mere forty yards beyond the site of the destroyed elevator, lay the vein of fresh, unharvested, Vercoden ore. Its magnificent blue glow overcame their other senses but for a moment, until the ceiling began to fall.

  It came down in little pebbles and pieces of dust at first, but soon Nash and Greg broke from their azure trance and gazed above in horror as larger chunks of rock and old construction material fell from the shadows above. The unchained percussion was as loud as it ever was, as if a whole city block of raves and clubs were in sync for the moment, marching to the rhythm of their death. Resonance from the surface was only half of the problem. The freshly destroyed elevator shaft had been the last meaningful support in this crumbling, artificial cavern. They turned to each other in full knowledge of what was happening, powerless to stop the wheels that had been set in motion long ago.

  “Dammit!” Nash roared with the anger of betrayal. “This place was never stable. And instead of listening to the workers the first time, they kept it quiet, forgot about it, then decades and decades go by and… Greg, what are you doing!?”

  “I’m listening this time, promise!” he called from farther away.

  “Are you stupid? Get back here!” She screamed as she turned to see him inching further and further into the glowing vein of ore as the rubble fell all around him. His right hand was gloved and extending a pair of tongs into the pit, while his left gripped some kind of metallic storage bag. He must have hidden the stuff in his seasonally inappropriate coat.

  “Hang on…” he grunted, straining to reach as far as his long arms would allow. A chunk of rock the size of a raccoon fell just beside him, threatening to dislodge his footing or crush his head, and yet he remained steady. “…I almost – almost… got it!” He cheered triumphantly, raising the sapphire shard high before thrusting it into the bag and scrambling back over the edge of the rift.

  “Enough of that! We have to go before this whole place caves in!” Nash pled, extending her hand as he dashed back over to her. They held tight to each other once more as she flew them both upward, dodging debris of increasing size, and aiming for the top of the collapsing elevator shaft.

  When they emerged from the hole left in the center of the building, she hesitated to set their feet upon the ground again. A wise move, as the floor began to sink beneath their levitating forms, falling piece by piece into the growing maw of the ancient mine, starved for nearly a century. The walls followed, dissolving from the bottom up. Papery tiles bouncing off the top of the force-field led them to believe the ceiling was next.

  “It won’t stop here,” she said gravely, floating, frozen in the crumbling ruin. “We have to get the others!”

  “You mean—” Greg started.

  “The mine spans beyond what lies under this one building, it could be the whole block… or two or three for all we know!”

  “That could be thousands of people.”

  #

  Nash and Greg sprinted up the dark path and returned to the same street as before, narrowly escaping the old building in the middle as it vanished into the growing sink hole. Out on the boulevard, the blue afternoon had surrendered to an indigo night, illuminated by flashing displays of neon and liquid crystal as unpleasant as the sun they’d replaced. People milled about in the same great throng as before, sweaty, untethered, and on edge. The shifting beneath their feet went unnoticed amidst the unending music, at least for now.

  “They have no idea they’re about to die.” Nash looked at the crowd frantically, head on a swivel as the wheels turned within. Her eyes landed on the Human with that same ferocity that burned hot in any such emergency. He loved it, knowing an urgent command from a familiar would follow, as opposed to a cold interrogation from an extraterrestrial. “Go back to the ship, gather as many of our group as you can find along the way, and be ready to launch. I’ll meet you there soon, but first I have to try something, anything!”

  “What are you going to do?” Greg implored.

  “I’ll figure it out. Now go!” She glanced at the advancing cloud of dust coming from the darkest reaches of the alley. He saw it too, so he heeded her instruction and took to the road.

  The thudding within the ground was getting louder now, more random, and more powerful. Even unrelated passersby seemed to pick up on the swing in energy. A sense of unease beyond the usual rave goer’s tolerance wafted through the bodies like a vapor. Greg tore through the busy streets, a half-head taller than most and using it to his advantage. He jerked his head left and right, back and forth, hoping for a glimpse of the one he cared most for. The panic rising in his throat subsided just a bit when it was her he saw first. Not even a block from where he and Nash emerged, Kory and Mia sat at an outdoor café, curiously fenced off from the waves of rabble.

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  “Get up! We have to go now!” He called, loud enough to be heard above the crowd. “Get to the spaceport! There’s an emergency!” His instructions were heard not only by the sisters, but by those surrounding him as well. The mob neither asked nor cared for clarification, electing instead to stampede uphill and away from the downtown area towards the lone hub of transit. “A small mercy,” he thought as their frightened forms pushed past him. “Some of them may live.”

  “What’s going on?” Mia demanded as she reached out to Greg through the deluge of people. She and Kory made their way to him easily using a little ‘fingertip cattle prod’ action; sure to go unnoticed in the fray.

  “There’s a sinkhole under here… a big one,” he gasped, lowering his head but keeping his volume high. “We don’t know how big the mine is, but it’s collapsing. These whole few blocks might be swallowed up soon. Where’s Zol?”

  “I think I saw him go that way!” Kory urged, pointing up the street, further away from the site of the future tragedy.

  “We have to get to the ship, let’s pray we catch him on the way.” Greg decided, hoping to spot his quiet friend in the panicked horde. The three ran together with the masses, keeping their eyes peeled for Zol, unsure if he was back at the Stardust already or not. It wasn’t like him to disappear, but it wasn’t like him to call either.

  As they raced up the avenue, the resonance from below lost some of its tonal quality. Dissonance and the destruction it foretold crept into the persistent rhythm, spurring the crowd on in movement that was no longer for their indulgence, but survival. By some miracle, Greg, Mia, and Kory, sweating through their club clothes with blisters forming on their improperly shod feet, got sight of their friend.

  In his wandering, he’d found a group of similarly built freaks at some outdoor gym that was blasting techno and resembled a prison yard. Almost on instinct, he turned away from his roided-out brethren, to behold his friends racing toward him through the moving crowd.

  “Back to the ship, Z! This whole place is falling into the ground!” Greg cried, his voice nearly hoarse from the effort, but hoping that others still unwarned would hear him and take heed.

  “You heard him boys, cardio starts now!” Zol commanded the other meatheads to join him in the rush to higher ground. As he ran alongside Greg, he couldn’t help but notice something was wrong. “Where’s Nash?”

  “She’ll meet us there!” Greg shot raggedly. They charged up the hill the rest of the way, unable to fly and forced to run with everybody else. The Toravai’s electric power would alarm and certainly injure others. Not to mention that Greg had no such power of his own with which to launch himself through the air, as he was so often reminded. Though it mattered little now; the entrance to the diminutive spaceport was nearly in view.

  #

  The minute Nash saw Greg’s auburn head weave through the crowd, she turned from the alley and entered the closest nightclub, darting past the ornamental doorman into the pulsing hive of sound and vision. She ran from person to person screaming “Get out, get out! You’re all going to die!” to no avail. The partiers were too faded to listen, or at the very least they believed she was as far gone as they were, if not farther. In a brief moment of resolve, she knew what option remained. The thrumming inside the room was unbearable. But what grew beneath it was worse. Her eyes watered, and her fingers glowed under the strobe lights. She hated to think what would come next, and that was when she saw him.

  At a table by the wall, he spoke with a greasy looking Iolite man of the northern variety. She would hardly have known it was him were it not for the mattress of white hair hanging off his head. In another age he might have passed for a crafty court wizard whispering in the ear of some upstart princeling.

  “Sohrab! You need to help me now!” She shouted over the din of the music, hoping to convey the gravity of the situation so that he’d read her mind and see the chaos threatening to swallow them all. The shock of her arrival jolted him out of his conversation and caused him to drop his lit cigarette onto his pant leg. He pawed at the embers, cursing her insolence as he scowled up at her acidly.

  “Damn you, stupid girl! Can’t you see I’m busy?” He gestured sharply toward the other man, who glared at her with just as much contempt.

  “We’re all about to die!” She slammed her hands down on the table, knocking over their drinks as she lowered her face to meet his. “Look at what I saw! We might not have five minutes!”

  He almost spat vitriol at her once again when the breath stopped short in his throat. He sunk back into his seat, shocked at the image inside of her head. The other man turned to ask him what was going on when Sohrab barked: “Get out of here already, she’s right! Don’t just sit there wasting air, save yourself!” As soon as his companion was halfway to the door, he turned to Nash grimly, and said: “There’s one thing I can do.”

  Without another word, he put his face to the now bare table and gripped its edges in his pale claws. His eyes were closed when he raised his head again in a near theatrical display. Nash was on the verge of shouting at him to be serious when she saw his mouth begin to move. “Go now. Go now.” He seemed to whisper. In an instant, his eyes opened again, and his head shot forward. With one arm he fumbled around on the bench seat for the errant fifth of vodka that landed there after Nash’s arrival. “They’re moving. They’re moving,” he gasped, eyes wide, as he raised the bottle to his trembling lips.

  She looked around to see his prophecy made manifest. Sure enough, the people walked as one towards the club’s entrance, crowding the small door and nearly trampling each other in the process. “I can’t believe it,” she said in wonder. “How many more times can you do that!?”

  “Literally none,” he rasped. “Now blast a hole in the ceiling while their backs are turned and get us out of here!”

  Nash wasn’t one to take orders from the likes of him, but the buckling floor beneath her feet gave her no choice. At the back of the room, still pulsing with lights, near the empty stage and abandoned DJ booth, the rear wall of the club caved in, disappearing into the ground as if it hadn’t been solid ten seconds ago. “You’re right,” she swallowed hard, choking back the thought of the people in every other packed establishment on this block who wouldn’t make it. She lowered her eyes, took his hand, and did as he said.