I can do more than that. I remember what it felt like, my knees rubbed raw against the floor, my wrists aching where the shackles rubbed them raw. Dark iron cuffs lie empty where the hollows left them, the chain still intact. I can remember the words carved into every link, even if I can’t remember what they meant. I have their shapes on my fingertips, their echoes somewhere too deep to reach.

For a moment, I can’t even bring myself to cross the threshold, every part of me fighting to turn and burn and run clear.

It doesn’t stop Salt. He steps across the threshold, has to crouch to fit through.

“It was a prison break,” he manages, after a moment, breaking into a chuckle. “Seems some things don’t need translation.” He looks back at us. “Feels just like home.”

Hail steps through behind him, slow and deliberate. “Looks like the hollows didn’t have to work for it.” She glances back at me. “All the fighting was out there.”

Something dark and inky catches her lamp. I follow it, run a finger along a doorframe. “It shouldn’t have been this easy”—I hold it up for them to see—“but there’s rot in everything.”

Salt spreads his hands to the sides of the cell, as if measuring it up. “You build a prison for the end of the world, but you can’t make it last?” He manages half a chuckle. “The Authority could’ve taught them something about the proper way to bury someone.”

“The Authority can wait until you die.” I set my weapon on my hip. There’s no more darkness, no more depth, just the solid boundaries of the cell. “What if you had to hold out for longer?”

He stands his ground. “Reveley is two hundred years old. More. And there are older brigs on Earth.”

“Are they any twice as old as that? A hundred times? What if you needed to lock something up for all of human history?”

He shrugs. “I’d dig down so deep it couldn’t crawl out. Drop a mountain on top for good measure.”

“What happens when the mountain crumbles?”

“I’d dig it deeper.”

“And when the sun dies? When the Earth cracks down to the core? Then what?”

“Then it’ll burn.”

“And what if that isn’t enough?”

He blinks at that.

“If you could kill it, you wouldn’t have to lock it up.” My voice is breaking around the edges. “What if nothing was enough?”

“Then I’d want to be dead before it got out again.” Hail slumps to the ground, nearly folds over herself in the corner. “That’s it. That’s what this is. They didn’t need this place to last forever. They didn’t bother trying.” She straightens just a little, rests her head against the wall. “I understand it now. Fuck.”

We watch her.

“Understand what?” asks Salt.