"Well…?!"

"Hmmm. Well what? Oh, you mean what happens next? Well…"

Three years later…

"Pull!"

"Don’t yell! If you’d listen to me once, your big butt wouldn’t be--"

"Just pull!!!"

Kindra yanks Rayn free from the shaft by her heelspurs. Rayn dusts off. "Thanks. I was just exploring the area. At least nobody saw…" Rayn turns. Her squad is there, watching.

Rayn in her tattered purple jacket, shines her wrist-light as she trudges the cramped tunnels of metal pipe and brick. After years of war, they had truly reached bottom. The legendary last surface layer, the Underworld. Below, the constant hum of the subterranean machinery that ran everything. Above, most upper layers collapsed or unsafe. This would be the last battleground.

She explores because she always has. Even as a child at home, she would get stuck chasing her lizard down the delivery tubes. A girl she couldn’t really remember, one who sucked her own hair -- cousin? visitor? friend? -- had usually been there to pull her free.

Rayn explores because she’s claustrophobic. The thought of all those worlds bearing down on her, her who had once lived so close to the sky.

And Rayn explores because this was the first time in three years they weren’t constantly fighting, moving. Their first real break. And she can’t bear it.

She descends into a deep, dark cavern. She shines her light. There on the grimy cave-like walls is the most incredible thing. Constellations, galaxies, nebulae, a universe! All drawn forth from the glistening minerals in the walls by a laserblade. She moves in. The painted universe shimmers all around her. Her claustrophobia vanishes. She breathes.

"Beautiful…"

She stands mesmerized. From a distance Myles watches her. Kindra watches him.

Afterwards, Kindra, her uniform tight and boosting as always, slides up to Myles. "You’re wasting your time there." Nodding back at Rayn.

"What’re you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing. So I never asked, how’d you end up here?"

"Drafted from art school. Parents tried to buy me out but I wouldn’t--"

"Artistic, principled. And wealthy. I like that in a man."

"You like everything in a man. So why are you here, on this side?"

"What’d you mean?"

"Your accent sounds a little . . . "

"Low-ly?!"

"Well . . . "

Kindra recoils. "You aren’t defined by where you start out in life anymore," she says. "Where you end up. That’s all that matters. Remember that!"

Meena joins Hitt in his flyer. He is playing a holo-picture of a woman and two children.

"Your family?" He nods. "Oh." Her innocent young crush on the man who had first saved her life diminished but not destroyed.

Unobserved, a silent Rayn walks by.

"At least it was. Five years ago. I’d like to get back while we can still recognize each other." He turns it off. "You don’t have to be here. In this."

"I had nowhere else to go. Here I can help. Heal. Be with the people who saved my life. You?"

"I’m one of the best pilots in the Highlands, as was my father and his mother. All military. Family tradition."

"But you don’t like flying. You’d rather be home."

He shrugs, "It’s just, this is the first chance we’ve really gotten to think about all we’ve had to do, see, all we’re missing. . . ."

Rayn turns quickly away from the last thing she wants to hear or think about and runs smack into Krachi and his squad. Krachi smiles his weary smile, "Good to see you all. Alive."

Rayn returns to the cavern, captivated by the twinkling swirls around her. She loses herself in them.

"Critic or buff?"

She turns. Myles.

"You did this?!"

"First time I’ve really had a chance to do anything artistic outside school since I photographed the first attack on the Highlands."

That was you? Taking pictures in the square. The day I was first lost. "Still have them?"

"Somewhere. Maybe I’ll show you sometime." At the walls, "In theory, it's art. In reality, more of an experiment in dirt."

"It’s . . . nice."

"You know . . . in three years we’ve never really . . . you’ve never really opened up to anyone, except maybe Kindra, and I’d. . . ."

"I have to go."

Before she escapes, he adds, "Last week. You saw that sniper I didn’t. You saved my life, again. Thanks. I guess."

Rayn goes to Kindra.

"Practice?"

"You read my mind."

Both worked up, both ready for a little hand-to-hand combat. Streets and battles have honed their skill. They are well-matched, especially since as always Rayn holds back just a little.

After her workout, Rayn happens by the tunnel where Krachi’s unit, like hers, awaits new orders. He had commended her quick rise through the ranks, extraordinary skill, mission success rate, and kill ratio. But she still hadn’t asked him the question.

"Then mom’s pie exploded and the boar got caught in the fence. It took five of us to free him!"

Meena reads Krachi’s letter transmissions to him. Once she had told Rayn, "I think he likes to hear them in a voice like his daughter’s." That’s how he taught Meena to read after she enlisted as a healer. Those first months she was assigned to him to evaluate her dream-visions before their accuracy rate was held too low to be useful and she was sent back with them to the front lines.

"You’ve improved." His eye looks at Meena with sad gentleness, a look Rayn recognizes from 16 years before.

Later, Rayn approaches Krachi, less a soldier right now than an old man still doting over his children’s letters.

Barely audible, she speaks, "I haven’t had a real chance to talk to you since that day you told me the Low rebels killed my family. I’ve fought them for three years, for my life, for my friends’, without a chance to stop, think, even breathe. But now I must ask, how do you know?"

No answer.

"You were there that day. You pulled me from the chasm. I remember now, your eyes."

No answer.

"Kindra just turned 21! I think I’m her age but I don’t even know! I don’t remember that or who my family really was and until now I’ve been too… to try and find out…"

"Good."

"How…?!"

"Your last name. Your father was Danél Zeeyél, junior member of the overstuffed World High Council under Chairman Onar, virtually unknown, no power player. But still your family was targeted. Why? Don’t know. You were reported killed. And I’ve never officially mentioned or entered your full name. It’s your secret, your life. Now it’s up to you to keep." He rises to make his daily report. "You know, once you save someone’s life you’re responsible for them forever."

He leaves. As does a hidden, shadowed figure, its eavesdropping complete.

When Meena later joins her, Rayn is methodically cleaning her weapons, trying to think of nothing and everything. Hers is the soul Meena worries most about. "You’re tired. We all are." No response. "I dreamed you again."

"What did you see?"

"I saw you betrayed . . . and buried . . . alive."

Onar’s trembling hands hold daily reports. "The rebels are still there, still fighting!"

"This will be the final push!"

"You said that last time Tyran. Last two times actually."

Red-faced, Tyran exits into the hall. He passes the pale young woman in pale robes staring from the window of the orbiting Council headquarters at the planet below. Her tiny voice stops him. "It’s unfair of him to put such pressure on you. Besides, there may be another way."

NEXT WEEK: EPISODE 5 -- BURIED, LIVE