We almost missed it. If it weren’t for Tattletale’s directions, we might have skipped past it entirely.

We were deep beneath the cracks, and cracks separated this landscape too. It was only the fact that Kenzie was floating around, capturing images, that she saw it, and drew our attention to it with a flash in our eye-cameras.

Past a crack, down, there was a landmass, closer to black crystal than to the usual red crystal. A black island in a blacker abyss, with only the periodic glimmer of a flash of lightning, darting down into the darkness, then leaping up the nearby walls of the chasm, to race off elsewhere.

I floated down, and the further down I got, the worse my flight was.

My boots hit the crystal, and it was like I’d landed on a drum. The walls of the chasm on either side of me caught the sound and bounced it back, echoing.

There was another boom, as Rain went from a standstill, five feet above the ground, to a landing.

Getting up was going to be a pain, but…

But I could look into the crystal, and I could see scenes with myself and Contessa. In Teacher’s base. Making the decision.

Rain saw the same.

“When I—” Rain started, and the echo of his voice was intense enough that it made him pause. He dropped his volume, “When I sent her the message, I thought to myself, what she did back there, it didn’t make sense.”

Back at Teacher’s base. Rain’s finger tapped the crystal that jutted out.

“She showed doubt. She made us make the call. If she was a… perfect future-telling machine, then she’d just make the call.”

The scenes around us changed, reflected on the canyon walls.

A girl, Rain’s age or younger, wearing a suit, standing in a doorway.

A woman, that must have been Doctor Mother, asleep.

The girl standing in the doorway for a while, before turning and walking away.

Not saying whatever she wanted to say.

“Doubt,” I said.

The scenes showed something similar. The girl in the suit, now older, walking between standalone cells, not connected to one another. Each with three walls and a roof. The front was left open, only paint on the ground.

There were people within.

“Responsive, aren’t you?” I asked.

The scenes changed. Her, suit jacket off and slung over the back of a chair, picking up the phone, to make a silent phone call. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt… momentous, somehow. Something in her expression.

Kenzie made her approach, extending a hand. Metal clinked against crystal.

“I want to try hacking in,” Kenzie said.

“If we could do any damage, she wouldn’t let us be here,” I said.

“I know. But I want to try. If that’s okay?”

“It’s perfectly okay,” I said.