A full hour had passed before Alexandra reached the bottom-most level of the caverns, a journey more threatened by boredom than any visceral fear. Her mind had taken on many new delights since the full-scale Evolution of thirty-one years ago, the day that changed the world forever. One of those new delights was the ability to find joy in the most unlikely of places, thanks to the Flaring discipline. As she tap-tap-tapped her way down the endless stairs leading from level to level to ever-lower levels, a minor compartment in her mind took pleasure in counting each footstep and calculating angles, distances, pace.

By the time she’d reached the bottom—with additional jaunts through corridors, hallways, secured doors, even a random chance to go up stairs instead of down—she’d been able to calculate several items of interest that kept her entertained if nothing else. Number of steps; overall pace as well as current pace of speed; total distance, both descended and traversed; the precise angle from Point A at the steel door to Point B, where she stood now. Another compartment of her mind noted the various temperature readings as she traveled deeper into the earth, translating every tiny sense and feeling and perception—every wick of moisture—on her skin, on her body’s many parts, into a reading. It fascinated her as to why the temperature dropped at such uneven rates, no consistency whatsoever. She stored the information away, determined to calculate a pattern at a later time.

But, for now, greater challenges awaited as she stood within the awesome sight of total ruin.

This had once been a mighty place. A place of power and potential. She looked at the huge expanse of it all, feeling the wonder and awe of how it must have appeared in its day. Before the great walls crumbled and toppled, and crashed onto the ground. She imagined the immense storm of dust swirling through this vast cavern on the day it happened. Presently, she observed the countless heaps of broken cement and metal, the jutting arms of stone that reached from the rubble toward the reinforced ceiling far above, like monuments to those who’d suffered here, died here. Pointing to the heavens, as if in hope for their souls.

This is hallowed ground, you know, she thought to herself. The Maze. Where he lived. And where she lived. And oh, where old what’s-her-bucket lived and where old what’s-his-hatchet died a gruesome death. And the whole thing collapsed in a magnanimous display of bravery and sacrifice and honor and some other bullpucky, as her grammy would’ve said.