Aaron hit the ground and stayed there for a while on the ground.
Not from injury. Just from needing a moment to accept what had just happened to him.
He sat up. Spat dirt. Looked up.
No sky.
Just grey. Endless grey above them like the world had a ceiling and someone had painted it the color of nothing.
Around him people were getting up. Slowly. The way you got up when your body wasn't sure it wanted to yet.
Twelve of them. Aaron counted twice. Eleven awakeners and him.
Hess sat on a broken stone and put his head in his hands. "I was supposed to call my mom tonight."
Nobody told him that was a stupid thing to say.
It wasn't.
The place was wrong in every direction.
Massive stones at angles that hurt to look at. Walls that started and just stopped. Archways standing with nothing on either side. The air tasted like the inside of something that hadn't been opened in a very long time.
"We need to find an exit," Marcus said.
"You think?" Crane said.
"Does anyone know where we are," the girl whose name Aaron still didn't know said. Yoon's friend. She'd stopped crying and gone somewhere flat and quiet that was worse than crying.
Nobody answered her.
*Three weeks of data*, Aaron thought. *And I still ended up here.*
The bands flickered on for four seconds.
Aaron felt it before he saw it. Everyone looked at their wrists at the same time with the specific hope of people who needed something to go right.
[Status: READING ERROR]
[Rank: UNREGISTERED]
[Class: ———]
Hess stared at his. "What does that mean."
"It can't read this place," Aaron said.
"Why not."
"Same reason it couldn't read me at the ceremony. Whatever this is, the system has no category for it."
"Okay but what does that actually mean for us right now."
"No warnings. Anything that comes at us, we won't know about it before it's already there."
Hess looked at him.
"Cool," he said. "Fantastic. Love that."
Aaron started watching the archways while they walked.
The ones with something behind them pulled air inward. Barely noticeable. The kind of thing that didn't exist if you weren't looking for it specifically.
He was still working out how reliable this was when Yoon stopped at one of them.
Aaron felt the inward pull.
Opened his mouth.
Half a second too late.
Something on the other side looked back and Yoon was gone and the archway showed nothing after. Just ruins. Just dark.
Yoon's friend made a sound that had no shape to it.
She went for the archway and three people grabbed her and she fought them hard, crying, not caring who saw, and they held on and wouldn't let go.
"Don't," Marcus said. Quietly. "Don't go through."
"He's RIGHT THERE."
"There's nothing there anymore." His voice cracked slightly on it. Just slightly. "I'm sorry."
She stopped fighting.
Stood there shaking with people still holding her arms.
Aaron put his hand on her shoulder. Kept it there.
Said nothing.
There was nothing.
"Marcus." Aaron came up beside him. Low. "The archways with something behind them pull air inward. The ones that are empty push out. Yoon's was pulling in."
Marcus looked at him. "You knew before it happened."
"Half a second before."
"Half a second."
"Yeah."
Marcus was quiet for a moment. "Stay next to me."
*Great*, Aaron thought. *Love that for me. Standing next to the guy who can actually fight things while I contribute by noticing air currents. Really pulling my weight here.*
The structure appeared out of the dark and Aaron stopped walking.
It had been massive once. Still was, in whatever way ruins could still be massive. The stones weren't sized for people. The archways weren't shaped for people. Even the dark around it sat differently, like it had been here so long it had become part of the place rather than just sitting in it.
One section of wall still standing. Carvings on it.
The carvings moved when Aaron wasn't looking directly at them.
He tested this three times. They stopped every time he looked straight at them.
*Right*, he thought. *Okay. Sure.*
"Go around it," Marcus said. "Don't touch anything."
"Wasn't planning on touching anything," Hess said. "I am planning on going around it very quickly."
"Same," Crane said.
"Can we just find the exit," Yoon's friend said. "Please. Can we just find it and go."
"Yeah," Aaron said. "Going around sounds right."
Then his band lit up.
Everyone's band lit up.
[Status: READING ERROR]
[Status: READING ERROR]
[Status: READING ERROR]
Then the screens didn't go dark.
They started flickering. Fast. Letters cycling through things that weren't letters. Numbers going places numbers didn't go. Crane grabbed her wrist. Hess made a sharp sound. The girl next to Aaron stumbled like the flickering had physical weight.
Aaron looked at his own screen.
[Rank: ———]
[Class: ———]
[Status: RECOGNIZED]
Not an error. Something else. Something deliberate.
The wall cracked.
Top to bottom. One clean split and then the stones grinding apart at the base and from inside came light with no source and a feeling Aaron knew from the console and knew from the portal and knew from every single spike on every single map he had ever made.
Everyone's bands went white.
Completely white.
Every screen showing the same thing at the same time.
[UNREGISTERED PRESENCE DETECTED]
[CLASSIFICATION: IMPOSSIBLE]
[THREAT LEVEL: ———]
"What is that," Hess said. His voice had gone somewhere very small. "What does that mean. What does IMPOSSIBLE mean."
Nobody answered.
The light from inside the wall got brighter.
And from somewhere deep inside it, something started walking toward the opening.
Aaron's screen changed one more time.
Everyone's screen changed.
[WARNING]
[WARNING]
[WARNING]