“Thought I might still find you here.”

“Huh?” Aurora lifted her head from the table as Barna did the same, and stifled a yawn. Finally, Den’s face came into focus. “Oh, hi, Den. What time is it?”

“A little after lights out.”

Aurora yawned.

“I thought you’d be hard at work.”

Aurora glared at him. “We were, but I guess the sleeplessness of the last few cycles finally caught up with me. What’s up? And what’s so important that it couldn’t wait until light cycle?”

Den dangled a key in front of her.

The remaining sleepiness in her body disappeared as adrenaline propelled her out of her seat.

“Is that…?”

“That’s the key. Fransen finished it not long ago. I thought you’d want to see it.”

“Yes, of course.” Aurora reached for the key.

“No, I mean, do you want to see the surface?”

“Really? You think we should go now?”

“Why not? It will answer the question of whether or not the world is safe to return to.” Den shuffled a foot. “Plus, it would be the fulfillment of a boyhood dream. I’d like to be the one to see it first.”

Aurora smiled. “How can I say no to that? Let’s go.”

With everyone else asleep except for the few needed to cover the night shift for various functions, it was pretty easy to cross from Center Hall to the north catacomb without being noticed.

Perhaps this was the ideal time to go, when no one was watching. It would give them a chance to scope out UWE themselves without anyone, except Fransen perhaps, knowing what they were doing. But, since they didn’t want to run the risk of being seen, they walked without any flashlights or night-cycle lanterns. Within moments, they stood in front of the door.

“Wow,” Barna sighed. “Is that it?”

Aurora nodded, though she wasn’t sure Barna could see her. “That’s it.”

Den opened the door and they started up the stairs. At one point when they couldn’t see the door behind them anymore, Den turned on the flashlight. They continued up until they reached the upper door. Den removed the key from his pocket and stared at it.

“What are you waiting for? Nervous?” Aurora asked.

Den shook his head. “No, not nervous. Anxious though. I’ve waited for this moment my whole life. I don’t want to go too fast. I want to savour it.”

Den slid the key into the slot and turned. The lock unlatched and he pushed on the door. It didn’t move.

“It’s really heavy,” Den grunted.

“Or buried,” Aurora suggested as she joined him on the top step. They pushed together and the door started to move. Just a little at first, but their efforts seemed to be loosening it and eventually the door opened enough for them to climb the last couple of steps, leveraging the weight of the door further open as they went. It landed with a soft thud on the ground.

“There’s no light,” Aurora said.

Den craned his neck. “Just those little twinkling things way up there.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure there’s certainly no bombing.”

She felt rather than saw Barna nod beside her. “How do we know for sure? What if they’re simply sleeping? Seems like UWE is on the same waking and sleeping schedule that we are.”

“Somehow I don’t think wars sleep, at least not the kind of war we saw in Dr. Heinan’s recording.” Aurora took a deep breath. “So that’s what UWE air smells like.” She leaned down and touched a velvety green, diamond shaped thing just barely visible under Den’s light. “This is a plant like we have in our growing houses. Not the same kind of plant, but these are definitely leaves.”

Den waved the beam around the ground and the path ahead and behind them.

“Let’s go this way,” he said, and turned to follow the path on the right.

Along the way, Aurora saw tall, rough-skinned things with more leaves, some with three-pointed, virtually symmetrical leaves, and others with spiky leaves with brown, knobby seeds about the size of her hand. She took one off and turned it over in her hand and decided to take it back with her. Further down the path they found smaller plants some with bunches of little round bubbles, and others with pointy leaves with white stripes down the middle that looked something like a head of hair that hadn’t been combed.

“I wonder what this would all look like during light cycle.” Aurora looked up at the rough-skinned plants towering above her and took in the soft somewhat squishy terrain under her feet — so different from the hardness of the rocks that she knew. She was almost tempted to take her shoes off just to see what the ground felt like on her bare feet, but it was probably better to wait until light cycle. She wouldn’t want to step on something dangerous.

Eventually, the large and other surrounding plants gave way to a clearing that was soft under their feet and gave a clear view of an expanse of twinkling lights in the sky along with a bright, round, silvery object. Aurora didn’t think this was the light source that Dom had said would solve their vitamin D deficiency problem, but it certainly was most beautiful light she had ever seen.

Den had stopped walking clearly in awe of what he saw as much as she was. He reached for her hand and she didn’t pull away.

“Is it what you thought it would be?” she whispered.

Den nodded. “It’s better. Thank you.”

“Thank you for what?”

“For letting me go first and for sharing this with me.”

Aurora shrugged. “Where else would I be?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, heat rushed through her cheeks and she was grateful that it was still too dark for Den to see her, though she knew he was watching her intently. Where had that come from? She was still a married woman, technically. Ordinarily, she should be fighting to stay with her husband. But, Merrick had already made it very clear that their marriage was over and that she wouldn’t be able to convince him to change his mind. All that was left was for him to serve her with a dissolution of marriage certificate, which he likely would do after her recommendation to City Council became public knowledge.

Truth be told, as much as she loved Merrick, her feelings for Den were different. Beyond friendship, almost a soul mate that she’d never experienced with Merrick, despite their deep love. What she thought was just a slip of the tongue, turned out to be precisely what she was feeling. There was no other place she’d rather be than with Den at this moment. She squeezed his hand. He turned and looked at her then and she knew that if it weren’t for Barna being with them and the fact that they knew nothing about the world in which they were walking he would have kissed her. But logic prevailed, and Aurora knew it would have to wait until later.

Aurora tore her gaze from Den’s and it was then that she saw enormous black silhouettes rising out of the ground.

“What are they?”

Den shook his head, then released her hand as he walked toward one of them. “There’s got to be at least ten of them.”

Aurora followed him, Barna’s footfalls following behind. In fact, hers were the only footfalls. What happened to the people and animals from Dr. Heinan’s files? Dr. Heinan had said she didn’t expect anybody would survive and perhaps she was right.

“Den!”

He hoisted himself up onto one of the steel structures. She reached him just as he jumped back, startled at what he found inside. He jumped down gasping for breath out of shock.

“Dead?”

Den nodded. “Dead in their seats. Obviously, the war was still going on then. It wasn’t the war that killed them. I didn’t really think I’d find anyone in them. Like Barna said, I thought they’d be empty because people were sleeping.”

“Maybe we should check the other ones just to make sure. I don’t think I’m ready to declare the war over yet.”

They spread out. Most of the steel structures were the same except for a tube-shaped one Aurora found on the farthest most part the green expanse. It seemed like it was half in and half out of the ground with one flat long object that drew to a point and a rounded top in the middle of the tube that was broken, with jagged sharp edges.

She pulled herself up on to the flat piece and was able to look into the hole underneath the top. Inside, a figure sat slumped over the stick in front of him. It was still clothed and wore a kind of hard, rounded hat with glasses over where his eyes used to be, but these, unlike Joshua Egerton’s, were rubbery around the outside instead of wiry. The ground around it was charred, crunchy like the tube had plowed into it and then exploded, like the bombing in Dr. Heinan’s message.

These findings certainly confirmed that the war had been long over, though it didn’t look like these people died as a result of the war but because of something else. What else could have killed them and how did it kill these people so quickly that they died in their seats, still in the performance of whatever duty they were doing? And would that something else still be a threat to them?

The fact that she and Barna and Den were still alive and these people had obviously died very quickly was a good sign that it was safe now. Particularly with their bodies having been sequestered away from whatever germs or bacteria existed on UWE, they’d be much more susceptible to any that might be left and would likely experience symptoms pretty quickly. No, there was no longer any threat here.

Aurora took a deep breath partly in relief and partly enjoying the fresh, outside of stone, unfiltered air.

“Aurora?”

She turned as Den approached.

“What’s that one?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of flying tube, I think. He appears to have died of the same cause as all the rest. Something killed them really quickly. If it were still here, we would be suffering any ill-effects by now.”

“That’s what I was thinking too.”

Barna waved at them where the tall plants and shorter, wavier plants of the opening joined.

“Guess we ought to head back.”

“Yep. You have a presentation to give tomorrow.”

They traipsed back along the path and back down the stairs, closing the door behind them.

Aurora almost didn’t want to go back. The moment they reached the bottom of the stairs and re-entered Egerton, she longed for one more intoxicating breath of Upper World Earth. But she had a job to do first. And the next time she saw UWE, it would be to introduce their people to a new world that would be completely theirs without the trials and attitudes that plagued and destroyed the old one.