“Don’t let go! Don’t let go,” Mac pleaded as he dangled over the chasm. There was supposed to be a bottom down there somewhere, but from his precarious position over the underground, impossibly deep crevasse, it looked like the bottom had likely signed the contract with an exaggerated wink and skipped town the next day. Physics had probably rather courteously co-signed, Mac reasoned logically.

  “Grist not let go, but wall soon let go of Grist,” the troll securing his life remarked with surprising calm. “Pull Mac back to wall.”

  Wait, I’m not turned around…” Mac warned before he felt the air leave his lungs for the stabler conditions on the other side of his windpipe.

  “Grab wall,” Grist urged. “Grip weak.”

  The unfamiliar stars of the unground circled around Mac’s head as he tried to twist his body around to face the wall. It might have helped if he could see more than a few stark shadows cast by the light attached to Grist’s helmet. His own helmet had long since decided to strike out on its own and discover where the bottom had gotten off to. Traitor.

  “Grist let go,” the troll said before Mac and the cliff could re-establish even the most platonic relationship.

  “Wait! Wait! Wait!” Mac’s right hand slid across the smooth stone searching for… anything not a smooth stone. Yes, something like that would do nicely.

  “Quick, please,” the troll sounded strained.

  Mac’s foot scrabbled against the plate of stone questing for a ledge he might have seen before his headlamp had abandoned him. Surely, it hadn’t gone anywhere. Stone was usually reliable like that.

  “You have three, two…” the sound of Grist’s foot sliding cracked open the door to an inner panic which wouldn’t have done him any noticeable good except that Grist swung him just a bit closer to the wall. Mac’s hand found a ledge just before Grist let go.

  Grist let go. Why did Grist let go? Friends did not let go of friends over bottomless chasms. Not even rival co-workers did that.

  Mac felt the vibration of his associate rejoining the stone wall with some force… through his foot, which was on a ledge. That was the one ray of light in what had nearly been the last thirty seconds of his life. Mac cautiously lowered his heel and was pleased to discover he could place almost his entire foot on it. What obscene luxury was this? He almost felt guilty as he eased some of the weight off his arm. Almost.

  “Will you two quit playing around, and take this seriously?” Tiera quipped from somewhere above them.

  “You know Safety Ed posted some battle suits down below to catch you if you fall. Just let him go next time, Grist. It’s a lot easier to catch one person than two.”

  “Grist did let go.”

  Hey!

  “I mean right way. Don’t give up yourself and die with your teammate. That’s stupid.”

  “Grist try to help.”

  “I know. Don’t risk yourself. Other people… need you alive,” she finished a bit softly.

  “I thought we took care of each other in HeHeHe?” Mac remarked quite logically.

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  “Just not at the expense of our own life,” the shock leader replied admonishingly. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to train you? It’s bad enough to lose one of you, but two… That would totally wreck my budget.” She sighed. “Get moving already.”

  “Kind of hard to navigate a smooth wall over a bottomless pit without any light,” Mac contended.

  “Are you seriously complaining about poor work conditions? You haven’t even completed training yet. I guess I could start the paperwork for your release, and there’s the mandatory mind wipe thing. So annoying.”

  “Oh look, my next handhold.”

  “Of course. Safety Ed made sure it was navigable this morning. You could do this blindfolded and let your hands do the seeing for you. Then you won’t see the bottomless pit beneath you.”

  “It’s too dark to see that anyways.”

  “You see, nothing to worry about,” Tiera reassured him from somewhere above.

  “Ah, scales,” Tiera cursed amid the sound of sliding gravel.

  Served her right.

  Then, Mac felt the impact of trollip’s slight weight crashing into him among a shower of pinpricks that had to be gravel. Physics abruptly realized it was showtime and dropped his popcorn just in time to pry Mac’s fingers from their death grips on the negligible ledge. The stone cliff parted ways with his acquaintance like a cousin who’s just won the lottery, and the rush of warm wind filled his ears.

  He was surprised to find his boss still in his arms. The light from her head lamp was blinding. At least, he couldn’t see the walls rushing past. That might have terrified him.

  “I thought I told you to hang on to the wall,” Tiera shouted at him.

  “I was doing just fine until you butted in,” Mac retorted.

  “No time to argue,” Tiera shouted back over the roar of the increasingly warmer wind. “Push me out to the side so the safety suits can catch us one at a time. Quickly! Before the magma chamber.”

  Mac heaved the weightless female out to his side and chanced a glance down, which was logically deduced by where the wind was coming from. A distant red glow was just barely discernable but gaining strength.

  “I guess that rules out zombification,” Mac reasoned to himself.

  “Spread your body out and try to slow yourself down!” Tiera shouted as she began to gain height on him. The annoying light of hers was still in his face.

  Mac had only just started to spread his arm when he felt the cool touch of rubber and steel on his arms. This was followed by the familiar groan of thrusters and the brief glimpse of Tiera suddenly sailing past him into the moderately known below.

  “Can you do anything right, laddie?” Amethyst’s voice echoed from the speaker. “I should have grabbed the shock leader first, but you didn’t have any lights on you. “I guess I should let you climb back up now.”

  That was Mac’s limit. The trembling started, “P-P-Please, no.”

  “Just kidding, laddie,” Amethyst replied. “I’ll get you back to the top. The shock leader specifically said I wasn’t allowed to kill you after what you did to Nessie. But don’t you worry, I haven’t forgotten.”

  A moment later a second suit was ascending beside him with Tiera cradled in its arms. “You see, perfectly safe,” Tiera announced over the whine of the engines.

  “Reasoning that we’ve got some time, what’s the deal with you and Safety Ed?” Mac asked if for no other reason than to take his mind off the fact that the only thing between him and fiery death at the bottom of a not quite bottomless pit was possibly the only person in the world who cared for him less than his ex-wife… and her dog. Fluffy hated him. But that was mutual.

  Silence.

  “Did you hear…?”

  “She heard your question, laddie,” Amethyst replied. “She’s just choosing not to answer it.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”

  “Whatever he told you I did. It wasn’t my fault,” Miss Sardonyx suddenly broke her silence. “Okay, it wasn’t completely my fault,” she admitted further.

  “He hasn’t told me anything,” Mac replied.

  “There was that insufferable and conniving Akari girl from Nippon. It’s really her fault… mostly,” Tiera admitted grudgingly. “She had no business being in the battle suit class with what she was and everything.”

  “Wait, how long ago…” Mac began to ask but was cut off.

  “Thinking she was so special and charming everyone to do what she wanted…” Tiera continued to reminisce involuntarily. “Not only did she cause my friends to hurt each other, but she made fun of my favorite doll in class . She deserved that broken rib. Anyone could see that.”

  “You broke some poor girl’s rib?!”

  “She wasn’t even remotely poor, and no, I didn’t break that she-dragon’s rib.”

  “Oh… good,” Mac sounded relieved.

  “My doll did.” Mac could hear the vengeful smile in her voice. “Oh look, I can see the exit up above. Once we’re done here, we can spend the afternoon beating each other with sticks.”

  “Wait. You’re serious,” Mac replied.