Peter approached the nearest table. Three seated figures occupied it; a fourth lay on the floor beside his overturned stool. Holding up his light stick, Peter bent to the closest body, a woman. She had toppled face-first; her head was turned to the side, her cheekbone resting on the table’s surface. Her hair, bleached of all color, formed a snarl of parched fibers around the knob of her skull. Where her teeth should have been were a pair of dentures, their plastic gums still retaining an incongruously lifelike pinkness. Ropes of golden metal wreathed her neck; the bones of her fingers, where they rested on the tabletop—she seemed to have reached out to stop her fall—were bedecked with rings, fat shining stones of every color. On the table before her was a pair of playing cards, face-up. A six and a jack. It was the same with the others, he saw: each player had two cards showing. There were more cards strewn over the table. Some kind of game, like go-to. In the center lay a heaping mound of more jewelry, rings and watches and bracelets, as well as a pistol and a handful of shells.

“We better keep moving,” Alicia said, coming up beside him.

Something was here, he thought, something he was meant to find.

“It’ll be dark soon, Peter. We have to find those stairs.”

He pulled his gaze away, nodding.

They emerged into an atrium, domed in glass. The sky above was cooling, night falling. Escalators led down to another dark recess; to the right they saw a bank of elevators, and yet another hallway, and more shops.

“Are we going in circles?” This was Michael. “I swear we came right though here.”

Alicia’s face was grave. “Peter—”

“I know, I know.” The moment of decision was upon them: keep looking for the stairs or seek shelter on the ground floor. He turned to face the group, which seemed, suddenly, too small.

“Damnit, not now.”

Mausami pointed toward the windows of the closest shop. “There she is.”

DESERT GIFT EMPORIUM, the sign read. Peter opened the door and moved inside. Amy was facing a wall of shelves by the counter, bearing a display of spherical glass objects. Amy had taken one in her hand. She gave it a hard shake, filling its interior with a flurry of movement.

“Amy, what is that?”

The girl turned, her face bright—I have found something, her eyes seemed to say, something wonderful—and held it out for him to take. An unexpected weight filled his hand: the sphere was full of liquid. Suspended in this fluid, bits of glittering white matter, like flakes of snow, were settling down upon a landscape of tiny buildings. Rising at the center of this miniaturized city was a white tower—the same tower, Peter realized, in which they now stood.

The others had crowded around. “What is it?” Michael asked.