(On the subject of the gods defeating the Titans)
Now the others among the first ranks roused the keen fight, Kottos, Briareus, and Gyes insatiable in war, who truly were hurling from sturdy hands three hundred rocks close upon each other, and they had overshadowed the Titans with missiles, sent them beneath the broadwayed earth, and bound them in painful bonds, having conquered them with their hands, over-haughty though they were, as far beneath under earth as the sky is from the earth, for equal is the space from earth to murky Tartaros.
—Works and Days, Hesiod
The sunrise crystals were dimming, becoming sunset crystals, and night began to settle on the Hollow Earth. How exactly they worked, and why the crystals mimicked the night and day cycle of the surface world—or why they existed at all—was still one of the big unknowns of the Hollow Earth, although it was generally thought to have something to do with the form of energy that manifested down here. Life would be perfectly capable of existing with no night—or, for that matter, no day.
Harris was glad for it though. To have an evening, to have the light turn slowly down, to see the mountains in the sky shadowed and gradually vanish. There were no stars, of course, and no moon, but sometimes there were lights in the sky, courtesy of at least half a dozen different bioluminescent flying species, some of which—although very pretty—would gobble a person down without the slightest pause. But that was the Hollow Earth. Beautiful and deadly. Natural selection turned up to eleven. He didn’t go out at night.
But he liked to watch it on the monitors and through the windows.
A scan of the various screens and instruments showed nothing deadly on their perimeter, which was good. Kong was still sulking, but at least he’d found something to eat. Harris wasn’t sure what it was; he hadn’t seen the kill, but the big ape was back on his perch, and he had the leg of something in his hand. He bit into it and immediately grimaced, then grunted in pain and threw the joint-of-monster away.
“What’s the matter, big boy?” he wondered. “You have a toothache?”
As if in response, Kong brought his hand up to his open mouth and gingerly touched one of his canines. Sure enough, even in the dim light, Harris could see it was broken.
“Yeah, that’s no fun,” Harris said. “I’ll make a note for the people up top. Maybe the doc can do something for you.”
Kong hunched against the cliff, looking miserable.
As he typed up the note about the tooth, Harris put some music on: one of the streaming stations he liked, mostly fifties doo-wop bands. Fittingly, the first song was the Five Satins’ “In the Still of the Night.”
He finished the note and decided maybe he should isolate a capture from the video showing the injury. The Satins finished, and now it was the Moonglows, singing “Blue Velvet.”
He could find the still in a minute. It was night in Barbados, too. Even if they decided Kong’s tooth needed attention, it would be days before they prepped a mission and came down. Probably they wouldn’t bother. Kong had survived much worse than a cracked canine in his time.
He sat back in his chair. Maybe he would close his eyes, just for a second.
He started awake, not sure where he was or what was happening. The streaming channel was still on, but it was a different song. The frequency monitor was going nuts, and so was the seismograph.
“What the hell?” He sat up, looked at the monitors. Kong’s were still on, but most of the others were displaying a no signal message. It only took him a second to realize that those were the perimeter monitors. All of them.
“Oh, no,” he murmured, standing up.
Something huge moved at the window.
“Jayne!” he shouted. “Lewis!”
Then something slammed into the bunker so hard the whole thing shifted. Harris lost his footing and fell. He was trying to get up when it happened again. This time, half the roof was gone.
A shuddering woke Jia; she sat up, her heart pounding. The trembling continued, all around her.
She wasn’t in her bed. She was on a spit of rock, surrounded by a red glow, the scent of burning in her nose and throat, ashes like those she had seen in her classroom drifting everywhere. Fire burned in every direction; she couldn’t see much more than that. At least at first. But then the fire seemed to come together, solidify, until she was again staring at three pyramids, narrow at the base, tall and very pointed. She had no name for them, but it felt like she had seen them before—not once or twice, but many times.
The stone and air quivered more sharply, like something was making a big sound. And then she heard it. Or she thought she did. It wasn’t in her ears, not on her skin or in her bones—it was in her head, and it wasn’t like anything she had ever felt before. It was what she imagined sound might be like. Trembling, she felt her gaze drawn up, where a pair of ice-blue eyes peered from the flaming air, a terrible stare full of unfathomable malice and rage. Around the eyes, a face began to form, a face something like Kong’s when Kong was at his worst, his angriest. But there were differences, too. This monster was not her friend. It was someone very, very awful. He opened his fanged mouth, and everything shook harder…
She woke up. Again. Only this time she was in her own bed. Her heart was hammering, the terror clung to her. Was she really awake this time? Was there any waking from this nightmare? She wasn’t safe. She felt it to her bones.
No one was safe.
Ilene turned off the documentary and put down the paper she’d been reading. She didn’t have any idea what she was looking for; nothing rang any bells.
Maybe she was wrong. She was fixating on a data-driven solution to a problem that had nothing to do with data. She was looking in the wrong place. She had to face the fact that Jia’s problems might not stem from her background or history, but from her current situation. From the person trying to parent her who maybe didn’t know what she was doing.
She sighed and went to get a bottle of wine, pulled the cork, and placed it on the table. She picked up the scribbled-on test again, looking at it from different angles.
She was so sure she had seen it before.
Wait. She wasn’t crazy. She had.
But not years ago. This morning.
She started frantically digging through the pile of papers, books, and photographs on the coffee table. Where was it? There!
She pulled up the printout of the frequency graphs Hampton had handed her earlier, the ones recorded in Hollow Earth. She laid the test next to it.
The sharp peaks clustered together. They were the same.
Whatever the instruments at the Kong Monitoring Station were picking up, Jia was somehow also receiving it. And no, she knew that shouldn’t make sense. But it also made no sense that it was a coincidence. That she had no explanation for what was happening made not the slightest difference to the fact that it was happening.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud clatter from Jia’s room.
Her daughter’s bed was empty and the lamp knocked over. For a terrifying beat of the heart, Ilene feared the girl was gone. That she’d been taken or had run away. But then her gaze rested on the tent of white linen she and Jia had rigged, suspended from a wire frame attached to the ceiling. The string lights Jia had put up inside of it were on. She called it her “cave” in ASL, which was a hole formed from both hands, palms and fingertips touching. But she added another sign from her childhood, one that she used to mean a hiding place. Besides the lights, there were a dozen or so throw pillows. Every time they went someplace that sold them, there was always a negotiation about getting another one. Jia used it to study in and when she wanted to be alone. Now she sat at the back, clutching the very old doll she had made of Kong to her chest, wide-eyed and shaking.
Ilene bent down and entered the tent. She sat by Jia. Waiting for her to communicate.
I’m scared there’s something wrong with me, Jia finally said.
Ilene shook her head. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect.
I feel like I’m going crazy.
Ilene nodded and rocked her head. That’s called being a teenager, she said. But she knew it was more than that.
Jia leaned toward her, and Ilene gathered the girl in, wishing she had something better to say. Something to fix it. Jia began quietly sobbing against her chest.
“We’re gonna figure this out,” she whispered.