"You so silly, Adrianne. We are home."

"No, baby, we're not."

She took him by the hand, and they walked together through the peaceful city. It was the city she remembered growing up in with her brother. Friendly faces smiled at them as they walked. Many of them seemed sickly and tired, yet they smiled and went about their daily business. Antoine was happy and swung his arms like a child. This was the place that serviced the men who patrolled the wall. Providing them with food and all the comforts of home. It was home, and Adrianne loved it. But it wasn't real.

Voices, accents, languages whose rhythms echoed places Adrianne had never seen (and never would) beat past her like a marching band. The sounds were a blending stream of conversations and sighs. The faces that passed her were from all over. Each a different shape and color. The smell of roasting peanuts on open charcoal burners, curried meats, and frying falafels drifted through the warm air. Adrianne and Antoine moved asynchronously in the uneven flow of people.

The open doors of the boutiques and electronic stores blasted icy wind from air conditioners set on super high. The cold drifted out, beckoning them inside. Adrianne relished the cool against her skin. Through their reflection on the window into a clothing store she could see the plastic people looking at the mannequins in their styled outfits. She told Antoine to wait outside while she went in.

In a few minutes, her body adjusted to the cold. She roamed through the racks of shirts, skirts, dresses, and pants as Antoine stood outside patiently waiting. The perfume of a passing salesgirl was a mixture of sea breezes and powder. She clicked her price gun on a tag.

A red and white blouse caught Adrianne's eye. She pulled it off the rack and held it up to the light. It was a flowing delicate faux silk blouse, long at the bottom, with buttons at the top. She put it next to her body in front of a mirror. It was too young for her. So she put it back on the rack without much care. She really shouldn't be here, she thought. Back out to the streets to a smiling Antoine.

There was a man selling newspapers on the corner. The headlines told of war in foreign lands.

Adrianne looked at the sky, and it was blue, blue, no sun just blue. And there was the spot of green. Never moving, never changing shape or size. She followed it like the slaves of old the northern star. Down the boulevard, they saw corner after street corner after street corner, on and on ad infinitum. It was all such a beautiful illusion.

Past the stores and past the tall glass and steel skyscrapers, then to the area of small red brick townhouses in the lower edge of the city near the river. This was a part of the city that she should never be in, but here they were. She'd never realized how empty the city was outside their neighborhood. Wind carried newspaper pages flapping through the desolate streets, the breeze howling off the abandoned buildings. Adrianne led Antoine through back alleys where things scurried away to the old harbor where the great ships used to dock, then to a place where she had been before, the City Hall that their ancestor had designed, which was now open to the elements.

They walked through the front door unhindered because no one was there. They shuffled over the tiled mosaic floors, taking a moment to stare up at the oculus, which drew in a large stream of light from above - the ceiling decorated so delicately with indented squares carved out to lessen the weight of the dome. Their steps echoed loudly in the emptiness. They slipped into a back room and then through an open door to the outside into an alley to step over the boxes and the bones from devoured chicken and through the potent stench of urine to touch a brick wall.

Hovering above was the green speck in the sky. Adrianne searched and searched for what she knew must be there from a half-memory of when she was a girl. Antoine scratched at his face, then pointed to what she was looking for - the brick marked with a "T" in black magic marker. She pushed at the third brick down. A door opened and they walked through.

"Remember this place, 'Twone, from when we were little? We used to come here with grandpapa."

"He said this was a secret place," Antoine said.

"Yes, this is a secret place."

This was the place behind the walls, behind the sky, controlling the day and the night and the wind and the rain. The hidden place maintained by The Twelve, that everyone knew about but refused to remember. They walked through the hall, past the one-way observation window where the town and the wall could be seen. Through another hall to the stairway of cinderblock walls with peeling off-white paint. These rooms were abandoned. No one should be here anymore. But they heard a noise. A shadow moved and approached them. It was Steven.

"So you've finally come," he said.

"Yes." Adrianne said. "How long have you been here?"

"Only a little while. I was waiting for you," he said. "Hi, Antoine."

Antoine bear-hugged him. When he was finally released, Steven pushed back his glasses and said, "We should go to the control room."

"Okay," Adrianne said.

They went to a room of glowing buttons and turned on the light. Steven sat at the console. The screens above showed images of every aspect of life of the world inside the city. Lessons from so long ago had taught her about the system - a privilege because of her ancestry. She and her brother were descended from the man who had designed all of this.

"Remember this place, 'Twone."

"Yeah, Adrianne, I remember," he said and sat in an office chair and swung around and around and laughed and laughed. That was indeed what they used to do when they came here all those years ago.

"The projection system has been altered in recent years, probably by the krestge. The system projects a world that people cannot escape," Steven said. "All the exits and vents have been blocked, covered from above. And there is no air flowing through to the underground."

"So what are we breathing?"

"An increasingly toxic mixture of gases made mostly of carbon dioxide."

"So we've been buried alive," Adrianne said in a voice just above a whisper.

"I've been trying to reprogram the system, but it's locked," Steven said. "As people die, they are either replaced by projections or the livable area is shrunk down to accommodate the reduced population. You, me, and Antoine are some of the last ones left."

Steven flipped a few switches, and the images on the screens changed. First the people disappeared, then the town dissolved away, then the sky. There was some movement, but mostly all was gray blackness in a cavern and a ruined underground, flooded with water in places. It was a home for the dead, a tomb.

** BREAK **

>> opendialog SECTOR: 10110001 : Did this really happen?

"What?"

: Are you imagining all of this?

"You tell me."

: I don't believe you.

"Don't you believe your own eyes?"

: This is difficult to accept.

"Who the hell are you anyway? And how are you in my head?"

: end; >>.

>> continue BRIDGE PROCESS: CONTINUED.

Steven pressed more buttons and typed at the console for a long time. Adrianne didn't want to disturb him in his work. Antoine continued to swing from side to side with his head bowed in the chair. She went to him and stopped him from moving.

"'Twone, I have to tell you something, and it's going to be hard to understand. But I need you to listen."

"What, Adrianne?" He looked worried.

"Baby," she touched his hand and said, "how do I say this? ... Nothing in the city is real."

"What do you mean?"

"Everything and everybody. Nothing is real."

"Even Helen?"

"Even Helen."

Antoine laughed. Adrianne scrunched her face. She felt helpless. The snaking scar on his brow wiggled when he laughed, an ever-present reminder that her brother's mind was gone.

"There," Steven said. "It's done."

"What's done?" Adrianne asked.

He removed a memory card from the system and held it up for her to see. "This is the update to the Elysium system. Do you know what that is?"

"It's the archive of our people maintained in the sky in the aboveground," she replied. He placed the card into a small tube-like device and wrapped it well in plastic. Then he put it into a small duffle bag and handed it to her.

"You have to update the system."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"But I don't know how."

"It's not hard. Once you reach above, you place the projectile firmly on the ground facing the open sky, press the launch button, and back away. It will do the rest."

"Shouldn't you be the one to do this? You know more about it than me."

"I have to stay here in the control center. There is only one way out of the city, and that's through the water tunnels. Someone has to power down the pumping system and open the flow-ways to help you get out. It can only be controlled from here."

"But how will they get out?" She was looking at the few movements in the grayness. Adrianne felt her throat tighten. "How will you get out?"

Steven pushed back his glasses and looked away.

"There has to be another way," Adrianne said. "We can't just leave you -"

"You have to. If you don't update the system, no one will ever know what happened here."

"You and Antoine have to go," Steven said. He put something that looked like chewed gum in her hand. "Wear this in your ear. I'll direct you through the tunnels as best I can with this. Don't worry about me. I'll be all right."

Adrianne caressed Steven's face and kissed him on the forehead.

"Come on, Antoine. We need to go now."

"Where we going, Adrianne?" Antoine said.

"Above," she said. "To Elysium."

Antoine laughed.

Adrianne and Antoine walked hand in hand through the back rooms, passing bones and the decay of the ruin of their forgotten world. Adrianne thought of those who still lived in the projected town outside. Being deprived of air, they must believe themselves sickly while surrounded by fresh, healthy projections and a blue uninterrupted sky.

Steven's voice sounded in her ear, telling her where the entrance to the water tunnel stood. The opening was wide enough so that they could walk through. Antoine had to duck a little. The further they walked into the tunnel, the more flooded it became. They walked until the water came up to their waists. Steven said not to worry. He was letting the water in slowly to empty the cistern enough so that they could reach it. They would have to swim through to the other side, to where the river would be, then swim up to the top.

They followed the path of the tunnel until it reached its grated hole. The grate was easy to remove. They did it together and walked on for what felt like hours until they reached the end. Before them was a concrete basin with overflowing water.

The voice in her ear crackled and was full of static. The few words that she could make out were: "You ... have ... to ... swim."

"Antoine, we have to jump in."

There was fear in his eyes. She reached up to touch his face and caressed the scar on his forehead, the injury that took away her brother and replaced him with this beautiful man-child. Her heart actually ached to look upon him. He stooped over her, his bulbous eyes watering with fear.

"We'll be okay," she said.

He smiled and climbed into the cistern, and she followed. They both began to swim.

The water was deep and the current swift. She felt the arms of Antoine around her, bracing her up. He was pulling her along, keeping her afloat. They moved against the flow. Above them was water and more water. She held onto him and tried to not let him go. Together they swam, hand in hand. More water. Greenish-blackness all around. Slipping. His hand, his hand, where was his hand? She floundered and searched. The instinct for air forced her upward. Up and up and up, until her head emerged into the night sky. She took in a deep breath and splashed on the surface of the water. She looked all around in the dark. She couldn't see Antoine. She couldn't feel him.

"Antoine! Antoine!"

She coughed out water. There was no answer.

She swam until she felt the dirt and rocks and pulled herself to shore. The smell of fresh air filled her lungs, and she coughed.

"Antoine! Antoine!"

Still no answer.

Adrianne prepared the device for updating the atmospheric database. She dragged herself to the shore, still calling for her brother. She removed a small rocket from her bag, set it upright on the ground, ignited its engines, and backed away. The small rocket whooshed into the air, higher and higher, until it disappeared from sight. The rocket burst into flame above, flowering overhead into a multitude of directions, momentarily lighting the entire sky like a giant spider's web set ablaze.

A shift in the wind. A distant heartbeat. The sound of crashing trash cans. Something was out there.

"Antoine?"

It wasn't him. It was something else. Many things. They were coming.