The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 25, 2398

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Alyssa has been driving all over the region of central-Western Kansas which her brothers discovered to be a black hole of religion. Everyone in the area reports no religious affiliation. She’s interviewed a few dozen residents in several towns, and they all seem like normal people. They don’t act culty or cagey. None of them refused to answer her questions, except for a few who were late to an engagement, or otherwise preoccupied. They didn’t apparently move here with the intention of being in a community of like-minded atheists. Most of them didn’t even notice. Everything here seems completely above board, which means that something has to be lurking in the shadows. There is a force at play here that keeps itself secret; there has to be, or all the time Carlin and Moray spent researching the phenomenon was a waste. She doesn’t want to believe that. When they return from their space trip, she has to show them that she followed through on their suspicions, and found something worthy of investigation, even if it’s a bad thing. Even if it’s a good thing, for that matter.

Now that she’s failed to come to a conclusion, she decides to switch tactics by exploring the literal center of the religious black hole. She rechecks her coordinates. This is the center of her brothers’ map, and it’s the location of one of the presumed time travelers that Ramses detected with his big brain scanner. That can’t just be a coincidence, but this also can’t be what she’s looking for. This is the center of all of it? It’s nothing special, or at least it doesn’t look it. Maybe it leads to a giant high tech underground complex, like the one under her farm. This could hold the key to the answers they’ve been asking since they arrived. She’s standing under this dilapidated shack on stilts in the middle of nowhere. Surely no one lives here, that would be ridiculous. Then again, stranger things have happened to her already.

Alyssa doesn’t see any no trespassing signs, and again, this would be a terrible home for someone, so she decides to take a risk, and get a closer look. She climbs the ladder all the way up, and into the tower shack. The inside looks like a shack as well. It’s pretty clean, with no debris or equipment, but she ought to watch her step, because some of these boards may not be stable enough to hold her weight. It’s a long way down. There is nothing here, except for one window, and a mirror. The mirror is hanging there on the wall, so completely out of place. It’s not old and dusty, but new and pristine. Alyssa stumbles back when she realizes that she doesn’t have a reflection, but she doesn’t have time to figure it out. She was right about the instability of the floor. One leg crashes right through it, leaving the other leg at her side, causing her to hit herself in the crotch. She tries to get her breath back, but she can’t. The pain in her groin is almost too much to bear. Not only did she hit it hard in the fall, but now she’s doing the splits, which is not something she’s trained for.

She doesn’t want to move, because she’s afraid that any motion will cause the whole structure to fall apart, and then that will be the end of Alyssa McIver’s life. She’ll never see her brothers again. She’ll never fulfill whatever future Mateo and the team believe is waiting for in the alternate reality where they’re from. Okay, she packed climbing equipment. Kansas doesn’t have mountains, but it’s not as flat as the coastal elites believe. We do have edges, and it is possible to fall off of them, and it just made sense to be prepared for such an eventuality. If she can just spin her backpack around, and open it up, she might be able to find a rope, and throw it over something here.

As she’s starting to do that, she sees something move out of the corner of her eye. Is that—no. There’s not a hand coming out of the mirror like a Japanese horror film. It’s not being followed by the top of a head. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is not happening. She has to get out of here. How long will it take to hit the ground if she falls right now? Is there time to spin this backpack around, open it up, find the rope, and throw it over something? Probably, right? Let’s see, take the square root of her weight, and multiple it by the height of the shack. Carry the one, and no, she doesn’t have enough time. She’s either going to fall to her death, or get eaten by the ghost monster coming for her. Neither one sounds appetizing, but the ghost monster may spare her life if she spreads the message about how they died to as many people as she can, or something like that.

The figure finishes climbing out of the mirror, and does a front roll down the wall. Then she stands up, and reaches out a hand. “Let me help you.”

“Who are you?”

The woman doesn’t want to answer. “Don’t worry about it, just take my hand.”

Alyssa lets the stranger pull her to safety. Together, they jump over to the ladder, and make their way down to the safety of the ground. She finally recaptures her breath. “This is the center of unusual religious activity. Are you the cause of that?”

The stranger doesn’t want to answer that either.

Alyssa sighs, and takes out her tablet. “Nerakali Preston.”

“Huh?”

“Meliora Reaver, Xearea Voss, Ariadna Traversa.”

“What is this you’re listing?”

“Sanaa Karimi, Aquila Bellamy, Amanda Moss, Cambria Buchanan, Susan Glines, Natasha Orlova, Ellie Underhill, Téa Stendahl...”

“Are these meant to mean something to me?

“Ida Reyer, Aura Gardner, The Officiant, The Overseer, Tonya Keyes, Dr. Mallory Hammer, Danica Matic, Dilara Cassano, Marcy Calligaris!”

“Stop! I don’t understand!”

“I’m listing names of people that you could be, because when I land on your name, your microexpressions will tell me that it belongs to you. I have dozens more to get through, unless you would like to speed this up and tell me who the hell you are!”

She doesn’t speak.

“Quivira Boyce, Catania Porter, Bhulan Cargill—there! There, that’s it. I bet you didn’t think I’d find it, but you’re Bhulan Cargill.”

“That’s Mateo Matic’s list, isn’t it? That’s the cleverest thing that man ever did.”

“Are you the cause of the religious black hole?”

Bhulan still won’t answer that question.

“Daria Matic, Dodeka Sarkisyan, Lita Prieto—”

“I thought you already figured out what my name is.”

“Now I’m just doing it because it seems to annoy you. Answer my questions.”

Still nothing.

“Khuweka Kadrioza, Hogarth Pudeyonavic—”

“Fine. Yes. I’m the cause of what you’re calling the religious black hole, but not by choice. I’m just a prisoner here.”

“Who did this to you?”

“That I don’t know.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 15, 2398

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Heath Walton awakens in darkness again. His head feels better, and he’s comfortably lying down in a bed. He doesn’t know how he got here, though, or how long he’s been asleep. He has to regain his memory once more, but this time, he isn’t going to move around, and look for clues. He’s just going to lie here quietly and think about it.

“I know you’re awake,” comes a voice from the other side of the room.

“Who’s there?”

A light flips on, startling and blinding him for a moment. Once his vision returns, he sees a little girl sitting in the corner, holding a book. She turns off the tiny reading lamp she was using, and stands up. “He’s awake!” she calls out towards the hallway.

Heath looks around, realizing that he’s in the med bay of The Constant, where his wife, Marie is meant to have her abortion. Judging by the fact that at least two strangers are here, that’s probably not going to happen anymore. “What are you doing here?”

Three more people walk in, all of them children. The two boys are probably a few years older than the girl in the corner, and the last one might technically be an adult, though not likely their mother. She inspects Heath’s vitals on the monitor above him. “You have a concussion, but the computer thinks you’re gonna be okay.”

“Who are you?” Heath asks. “Do you live down here?”

“No,” the young woman replies. “We were driving into town to secure a booth for the farmer’s market when we noticed a hole in the ground by the side of the road.”

“A giant-ass hole!” one of the boys exclaims proudly.

“Language, Carlin,” the leader scolds.

“Sorry,” he says with a frown.

“You saw a hole, so instead of calling the cops, you decided to climb down a five-kilometer deep elevator shaft using the emergency ladder?” Heath questions.

“We didn’t climb down the ladder,” the woman denies. “We took the elevator.”

“There is no elevator,” Heath argues.

She nods. “There was a little hole in the side of the big hole. We dug into it deeper, and found a door, which leads to an elevator. It lets off at the bottom at what appears to be a hidden entrance down here too. Did you fall in the big one? How could you have possibly survived that height?”

“I didn’t,” Heath begins. “I fell next to the hole, and hit a rock, which knocked me unconscious. When I woke up, I climbed down the ladder, looking for my friend, and I guess I lost consciousness again.”

“You’re lucky we found you. You were asleep all day yesterday, and into this morning. It’s May 15 now.”

“You’ve been down here this whole time? Did you touch anything?”

“Of course we did,” the woman responds. “We didn’t do anything dangerous. This is a nice place. It kind of looks like an underground hotel, but clearly no one actually lives here. Did rich people build it centuries ago to survive one of the older wars?” 

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

She can tell he’s lying, but appears to recognize his claim to this facility is much stronger than hers, and she’s not entitled to answers. “Anyway, you’ve already met little Trina, and foul-mouthed Carlin. This is Moray, and I’m Alyssa. We’re the McIvers.”

Heath perks up, and can’t help but ask, “Alyssa McIver?”

“Yeah. Have we met?” she asks him.

“No, of course not.” And it’s true, they haven’t, but he has heard the name before. Or rather, he’s read it. Mateo keeps a list of every person he’s met, even those he knew before becoming a time traveler. Anyone from his past or future could return, and he finds it hard to keep all that in his head. Heath has no such memory problems—at least, not unless he has a concussion—so he became pretty familiar with that list just by reading over it once. Alyssa McIver is on it. He knows she is, but what does that mean? Was that an alternate version of her? Does this one standing before him end up traveling to the main sequence at some point? Has she already been to the main sequence, and now she’s trying to keep it a secret? That wouldn’t be an outrage. What was that code Marie told him about, the one they sometimes use to find out if a stranger is like them, or oblivious to time travel? Oh, yeah. “Do you like salmon?”

“Huh?” she asks.

Oh, wait. He has to emphasize that word. “I mean, do you like...salmon?”

“I’m vegetarian.”

“I’m not!” Carlin announces.

Well. They could still be lying, but it’s not his job to decide what to do about them either way. He starts to get out of bed. “I have to call my friends.”

Alyssa steps over and gently presses his shoulders down. “Whoa, you are in no shape to go anywhere. There is no service down here, and there’s not enough room for a hospital bed in the elevator, and this bed doesn’t move anyway, and the computer says that you need more rest.”

“You have to leave, and pretend you never saw any of this,” he orders.

“Go back to sleep,” Alyssa orders right back. “We’ll talk about it later.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 14, 2398

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Heath Walton awakens in the darkness with no memory of recent events. The last thing he remembers is preparing to blow a hole at the top of the empty elevator shaft with Mateo. The storm just started, and they were running out to take advantage of the noise it would create. It must not have gone well. Sure, there’s a hole in the ground, but there’s also a huge lump on his head that hurts like hell, and Mateo is nowhere to be found. “Mateo! Mateo!” he calls out, but nothing. He begins to meander around the area with his flashlight, looking for clues, and continuing to call out his friend’s name. There’s an obvious place where he would be, but he doesn’t want to think about it. That is not an option. There is no way they went through all this—taking the easy way out—and Mateo is just dead, lying at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

As he keeps going with his search for answers, memories begin to return to his mind, first as contextless fragments, which gradually transform into coherent recollections. They hid behind the trees as the fuse shortened. No, Heath was hiding alone. Mateo had to light the fuse himself, and then teleport away at the very last second. But he did make it out, Heath remembers that quite clearly now. They...they high fived to their success, and went out to see it for themselves. But it was too early. Yeah, that was the problem. The hole wasn’t finished forming yet, so when they peeked over the edge, their weight caused it to widen more. They could not have fallen through, though, because Heath woke up on the surface. Think. What happened?

He sighs, and continues, but comes up short. This isn’t helping. He has to stop and concentrate on the last moment he experienced before falling down and getting bonked in the head. Let’s see, his watch is still fine. It’s been seven hours since dinner. That’s a long time to be unconscious. Maybe Mateo woke up first, and wandered off? Heath goes back to the spot where he woke up and shines his light on the ground. There. There’s the blood stain on the rock. He feels the back of his head. His hand comes back red. Yeah, that tracks. There’s only one blood stain, though. Remember. The ground fell out from under them, and they fell backwards. But... But Mateo fell in the opposite direction. There’s no doubt about it now. He still can’t recall the exact moment, but it is the only reasonable explanation. In fact, he has the feeling that the last thing Mateo did was save Heath’s life.

He points his light into the hole, knowing full well there’s no way he’s going to see the bottom of the five kilometer high elevator shaft. He should be able to see all the stuff they constructed near the entrance, though. The rope, the ladder, the little platform. One of those things might have saved Mateo’s life, but none of them have been left standing. The explosion took them all out, which isn’t all that surprising. The concrete ceiling was almost half a meter thick. If it didn’t break apart all the way, it would have taken out any obstacle in its path on the way down. And then Mateo would have fallen right upon that rubble a minute later.

There’s still some hope, though. Like the rest of the original team, Mateo has the ability to teleport, as long as he stays within some certain radius of this facility. He could have transported himself out before crashing to the bottom. That doesn’t explain why he never returned to make sure that Heath was okay, but there could be any explanation for that. Perhaps Mateo accidentally jumped to the other side of the world. Or maybe he finally figured out how to get back to his home reality. He can’t assume anything yet. This can all be proven wrong if Heath can find a body. The only thing he can do now is climb down there using the emergency ladder, and hope to find nothing but dust, dirt, concrete, and metal.

He’s about to rush down there, but realizes that there is absolutely no way someone survives that fall. If Mateo’s down there, it’s just his body. There’s no hurry to go down and see that, and he has to be smart about this. The sun is going to rise shortly, and anyone could just show up and see this weird sight. It’s probably going to be someone who lives around here, and knows that there’s not meant to be a gigantic hole by the side of the road. It’s okay, they planned for this. They ripped some bushes out of the ground from farther away, and set them off to the side. All he has to do is place them in between the roads and the hole. He doesn’t even have to plant them for real for now. He just has to make it look like they belong there. When they have more time, they’ll complete the transplanting, and cover this whole thing up better than any government agency could.

Once it looks good, he ties a rope to a tree, repels down to the emergency ladder, which is fortunately intact, but still doesn’t go all the way up to the very top. As tired as he is by now, he doesn’t stop. The journey takes him around an hour. He sets up the battery-powered work lamp, and starts to sift through the wreckage. He spends several minutes on it, and doesn’t find a damn thing, which is a good sign. He hasn’t gotten anywhere near the real bottom, but he shouldn’t have to go that deep. Memory issues notwithstanding, Mateo had to have been standing on top of the ground when the shaft caved in. Sure, some debris may have fallen down after him, but not this much. Heath should be able to find him here somewhere, or perhaps...parts of him. That is, he would find him if he were here. But he’s not, it’s all but impossible. He keeps pushing things around for another half hour anyway, but still doesn’t find anything; not even blood. Mateo is alive, wherever he is. Then he has a thought. Maybe the question isn’t so much where, but when. The other team members would know better. It’s time to call them and explain. This is going to be a terrible conversation, but it has to happen. He just needs to take a rest for a second first.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 13, 2398

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It’s too much work. They tied a mess of rope to the ladder, and across the shaft to the metal beam things that were once used to transport the elevator car, back when there was an elevator in here. They still can’t figure out what happened to it, but it’s looking like they’re going to have to somehow build their own. Should teleportation stop being available to them at some point, they don’t want to have to climb up and down a ladder five kilometers at a time. Perhaps a slide? Or a staircase? No, none of this is at all reasonable. It’s just too much work, and neither of them is equipped to take on such an endeavor.

They still have plenty of work that has to be done either way, so they try not to worry about it while they’re digging. The soil level could be piled several meters thick, and they can’t dig straight down, instead opting for a ramp that people can actually walk down. After waking up the next day, having barely made a dent in the job, they decide it’s time to rethink this whole thing.

“Hasting,” Heath suggests without elaborating.

“Hastings...Nebraska?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“Stay with me here. Why doesn’t the ground over the elevator shaft just fall down into the hole?”

Mateo points over their heads. “Because of this ceiling,” he says, knowing that Heath is only asking to support his argument, not because he doesn’t know. They’re standing on a little platform that they installed to give them more room. It was the easiest part of yesterday’s work, drilling holes in cement while hanging over the abyss.

“Right. So what would happen if we took out the ceiling first?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo says, nodding his head. “I get where you’re going with this, but I’m not a civil engineer, or whoever would understand how this all works. Maybe the ground would fall in, or maybe not.”

“We have to break through this anyway. Might as well start from below. All we would have to do is extend this platform.”

“Uhuh,” Mateo begins. “And if there’s a platform, where does all the concrete and dirt fall as we break through it? And if it doesn’t work, and we still need to start digging from above, what happens to us when we destabilize it enough to actually cave in?”

“Oh, yeah.” Heath frowns. “This is impossible!”

They’re silent for a few moments, before Mateo remembers something. “Why did you bring up Hastings, Nebraska?”

“Oh, yeah.” Heath repeats himself, then shrugs. “It’s only thirty minutes away the way you drive, but we could rent a power chisel without anybody asking any questions.”

“Yeah, that’s one option.”

“What’s another one? Everything seems too slow.”

Mateo nods. “It’s gonna storm tonight.”

“Yeah...?”

He rifles through his bag until he finds their salvation. He holds it between his fingers like it’s the most important find ever.

“It’s a bullet.”

“It’s a telebullet,” Mateo corrects. “It may just be all we need.” He smiles, dreaming of Shawshank.

“What does it do?” Heath asks.

“Usually, you shoot it at someone, and it instantly transports them to wherever you want.”

“Isn’t that something that you can do yourself?”

“Yes, but I can’t move a concrete ceiling and hundreds of cubic meters of soil and rock.”

“But that little bullet can?”

“Well, it can be more destructive, which should be enough to destabilize the ground, and cause a cave-in. Or, uh, not should, but could. Hopefully.”

“I guess we might as well try,” Heath figures, “as long as you don’t need that bullet for something else.”

“It’s like you said, I can teleport myself, but only at this special location. It has no other use in this reality. If we ever get back to the main sequence, I could always find myself some more, I’m sure.”

“All right, I’m in. I assume you mentioned the storm, because there could be thunder?”

“Yes, but the sound is not the only problem we have.”

“How does the bullet explode?”

“Right.”

“Well, I can make a little bomb. I assume it doesn’t have to be powerful enough to blast through a mountain.”

“I assume as much as well.”

Fortunately, Heath already owns a six-meter long ladder, stored in his flying carboat. They’re going to stop calling it that, as they’ve come up with a proper name. It will now be known as The Olimpia. Mateo carefully extends the ladder so that it’s resting on the ledge on the other side of the shaft, and ties everything up. He runs planks across it so he has somewhere to stand while he’s working. It’s absolutely not the safest thing in the world, but he has himself tied to the structurally sound emergency ladder with mountain climbing equipment, so it should be fine. It’s his job to drill a hole in the concrete ceiling while Heath rigs up a small explosive to catalyze the temporal bullet. This may not work at all, and it might be a waste of their time, but the way they see it, they either spend a couple hours on a lark before resorting to digging a hole by hand, or they skip it. Either way, the digging will cost them days, not hours, so this is hardly a digression.

While Mateo is constructing his safety platform, Heath goes out and buys a special long drill, and the ten-centimeter bit that they’re going to need, along with his own supplies. The hole doesn’t have to be pretty or clean. It just has to be deep enough to get to the dirt. According to their research, a normal ceiling should only be about twenty centimeters thick, but this one is twice that, presumably to support the weight of the ground above. That’s going to make it harder, but not impossible. That’s why he requested a super narrow drill. Once the hole gets started, it goes surprisingly quickly. Now all they can do is wait until the thunderstorm begins. They’re not sure how loud the explosion is going to be, so it’s best to muffle it as much as possible.

They’re in the middle of dinner when Thor’s battle against the God Butcher begins. They leave their dishes on the table, and run back to the would-be center of the country. Using radio transceivers, Mateo waits for a signal from Heath, who is counting thunder strikes. Once it’s time, Mateo lights the fuse, and tries to teleport out. For a split second, he’s stuck, and doesn’t go anywhere, so he’s afraid the temporal energy already ran out, but then the glitch disappears, and so does he. He meets Heath back on the surface just in time for the temporal explosion. Heath timed it perfectly with the storm, so Mateo feels compelled to give him a high five. At first, it doesn’t seem to have been enough. It definitely shook the earth, but nothing has changed from above. But then it does. The ground begins to sink. More, then even more, until it all caves in. It worked. Holy crap, it actually worked. They high five again.

Carefully, the two of them step over to the hole so they can get a look inside, every once in a while looking up to see if police cruisers are coming down the highway to investigate. They stomp on the ground to make sure it’s still stable, and it seems perfectly safe...until it doesn’t. The ground right under Mateo sinks. A normal person would probably reach out for help, but he has the opposite reaction. He’s died—or come so close to death that he would not have survived without time power intervention—so many times, it feels more natural to let it happen. Instead, he pushes Heath away with as much force as he can muster, which serves to pull him downwards even faster. He slips off the grass, and tumbles down the hole. He spreads his arms out, hoping to catch hold of the emergency ladder, the portable ladder, the little platform, the ledge, the rope web, or some other structure, but nothing meets his hands but dirt and other debris.

Finally, as he’s falling, he attempts to teleport himself to safety, but it would seem that the explosion used up all the temporal energy left in this place. There’s no way out. He’s going to actually die this time, and it’s so incredibly unlikely that someone created an afterlife simulation in this reality. It’s the end. As he’s falling towards his demise, he almost regrets no longer having his faith, but he appreciates that it wouldn’t change anything. Death is death, whether you believe in it or not.

Thirty seconds later, he reaches the floor, but it doesn’t hurt like it should. Did he get his invincibility back somehow? He thought they decided that was a separate phenomenon from the time power blocker. No, that’s not what happened. He didn’t fall hard on the floor, and just not feel the pain from it. He didn’t crash into it at all. It’s more like a magical force sucked out all his momentum, and materialized the floor millimeters under him. He’s landed safely as if he was never moving at all. He turns over, and sees a ceiling above him. This isn’t just the elevator shaft. It’s the elevator. It’s back. Or more accurately, he’s back. He’s obviously traveled to an indeterminate moment in the past. He sits up, and is about to stand up, when he notices people watching him from the main floor. One of them is Danica Matic. The other is Bhulan Cargill. And the third...is Tamerlane Pryce.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 12, 2398

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This is going to be a lot of work. It was hard to tell back when they were using the elevator to get down here in the main sequence, but it’s incredibly far below the surface. According to Ramses—who stuck around long enough to find Mateo and Heath a blueprint—the main floor is five kilometers under the surface, so the first time the two of them climb the emergency ladder, it takes them just over an hour. Subsequent climbs in either direction are going to take significantly longer. This is not a good alternative, but the computer didn’t tell them where the elevator car was stopped, so they had to do the whole thing to find it. Once they reached an obstacle, it took some sleuthing and math for them to realize that said obstacle was not the elevator. It was a ceiling of concrete, or some other strong material, which was constructed in order to prevent the soil above from falling down.

“Well,” Heath begins as he’s digging through his bag, grateful that there is a ledge here for them to sit and rest.

“Well...?” Mateo prompts after a period of silence.

“Oh. Well, we have all the tools we thought we might need to break into the elevator car, but I guess it was removed...?”

Another bit of silence. “Go on”

“Since it’s not here, we’re going to need something else; a heavy duty power tool of some kind.”

“You wanna take out this ceiling?” Mateo questions.

“I don’t see any other way,” Heath says, “not unless you’re sure that your ability to teleport at this specific location won’t ever go away.”

“Nah, it probably will. It would be foolish for us to rely on that.”

“That’s what I figured, which is why I suggested we do what we’re doing right now. I just didn’t know it would entail this much climbing, or that we would run into this damn thing.” He clumsily pounds on the ceiling with the outside of his fist. “Ow, why is it so hard?”

“Well,” Mateo decides, “I can still feel the energy right now. I can jump up to the surface, dig down with the shovel, and then jackhammer this block.”

“You want to what the block.”

“Jackhammer?” Mateo repeats. He pantomimes with sound effects. “Jackhammer.”

“Oh, a powered demo chisel.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, I don’t have one of those.”

“I should think not.”

“You jump us both up there, I’ll start digging, you go rent one—a hardware store in town surely has one available—and then I’ll operate it.”

“Are you asking me to let you do all the work?”

“How do you mean? I don’t know how else we would do it.”

Mateo laughs. “This is my cousin’s house. If anyone was gonna do it all by himself, it would be me. But no, we’ll do it together. We’ll both go rent the chisel thing, we’ll both dig a hole, and we’ll both break through this ceiling. Let’s hope it’s not made of adamantium, or naquadah, or something.”

“I don’t know what those are,” Heath admits.

“I should think not.” They sit there to rest a little more until Mateo speaks again. “I don’t suppose it’s legal to blast our way through with an explosive.”

“It would be if we owned this land, or secured a permit to conduct such work. Otherwise, they would ask us why we need the explosives. They may even ask us if we try to rent the demo chisel. That’s why I think one will be available, because it’s not exactly something the average household ever needs. It’s a risk too.”

“What about a sledgehammer? Would they question that?”

“A what?”

Mateo growls, though he knows that it’s no one’s fault that they sometimes have different words for the same, or similar, thing. “It’s a hammer you use for demolition, rather than nails.” That’s how he thinks to describe it, but it may be inaccurate.

“Oh, no, that would be fine, though...I imagine it would take a long time. Do you really wanna try?”

Mateo shakes his head. “No one can know what we’re doing here, or that this place exists. We should even move our car to a different location.”

“That’s a good idea,” Heath agrees. “Jump us to the surface, so we can drive to Mankato. There’s a greater population, so we should be able to blend in. I don’t have my own block striker either. Then we’ll park a ways away from here, hide the car behind some trees, and walk.”

“Sounds like a plan, but we may need to get back to the top of the ladder at some point, and I do not want to climb it again, or have to aim at this ledge, so hand me that rope, if you please.”

“What are you gonna do with it?”

“I’m gonna build myself a web.”