"I’m not easily fazed. And there are far worse places to die than among the stars."

Three hours later. . . .

"Turn around!"

"We can’t! They’re on our six too!"

"Damn! On me!"

Rayn runs. Kindra follows right behind, yelling into her communicator, "Pilots! We need cover now!"

Hours later…

"We can’t keep this up much longer."

"I can."

"Okay. Not down. Just lower."

They sit as they have for hours, crouched, facing, waiting, weapons pointed as high and tight as the tension in the staling air. Each nurses injuries from the cave-in. Neither trusts the other enough to tend them, look away, or move. But now Rozar convinces Rayn to lower her weapon, just slightly.

With eyes that burn like green electric fire behind the falls of his long black hair, he studies her. This annoys her.

Rayn sniffs. "I remember you. Standing on a table in the Din years ago. Screaming about how you would reach up and drag the world down if you had to. . . . Congratulations."

"Talk. Years ago. You can’t think we . . . I . . . really wanted this!"

No answer.

"But the world before wasn’t so hot for us on the bottom. We were right there! But no one seemed to notice or care that a third of the world was living like rats under paradise! Without access to resources, comfort, medicine, advances -- anything. Then we found out they were dumping toxins on us, using us like guinea pigs, killing us off, literally keeping us down, and a dozen other outrages that no one. . . . "

He sighs, breathes, regains control. "You wouldn’t look down. Now you have to. Middlelands, Highlands, Lowlands. Levels clumped together pretty quick for a classless society, huh?"

"Much better. Now we’re all equally screwed."

"Better to screw the few?"

"Better war?"

"Your choice, not ours."

They argue on in the dim gray created by the lights on their weapons. As they do, precious time and air pass. The fall on their side is too precarious to even touch.

"I never had a choice!" Rayn snaps.

"I did?"

"I would’ve been killed by one side or the other if--"

"And I?" He leans closer. "When the rage peaked it swept us up like a wave, family, friends, I couldn’t escape it."

"And once it washed into me, I couldn’t stop it."

Through their damaged communicators, channels open but not sending, they hear only static. Rayn had feared the end would come in a place like this. Is anyone looking for us or even still out there?

She sighs, "Maybe there were choices we couldn’t see. Maybe there weren’t. What does it matter now? No more politics."

"No. No point."

Another rockfall.

Dodging debris, they are thrown close, very close. A long moment. The hollow stills. Then Rozar grabs for her weapon. Rayn jerks away. Knew I couldn’t trust you!

He smiles slightly and shrugs an innocent "I do what I must." They resume their uneasy stance.

~

He watches her. "So young. So tired. You must be so good. They must run from you, terrified. Soldiers, civilians--"

"It’s not like that. It’s war!"

"Even war is like that. You could’ve killed my brother, cousins, friends."

"And you, my friends--" A blast of static. Rocks fall beyond. "--My family! During that first terrorist attack on High!"

"Wasn’t us. Those were civilians, families. We’ve always denied--"

"Of course you would. Whether you did it or not."

"True. But we didn’t. What do you remember?"

Her mind combs through scraps of memory. Fear. Pain. Then the wrong things. The officer pocketing a copy of the crime scene photos -- for whom? The room with the bodies, something wrong there, but she still can’t look in long enough. The heli-lift.

Emotions threaten, work her chin. Without risking words she draws the heli-lift’s symbol in the dirt.

"That’s a Council symbol. Covert security. Onar’s."

"But. . . . My father was on the Council. Why?"

He shrugs. "Rumor was the first attack was done by a rogue unit of mercenaries from all sides hired by someone -- maybe the Council."

"To kill my family?"

"More likely to start a war."

"Why should I believe you?"

Not rockfalls. Digging. Lasers. One side or both are there, maybe listening, definitely digging through. Rayn and Rozar both know only the one whose side reaches them first lives. They wait.

After a while Rozar asks, "What do you think your life would’ve been if none of this had happened?"

I wish I could, but. . . . "I can’t even imagine."

"Maybe you’re just afraid to try?"

Who the hell does he think he is? "No more talking!" Her weapon rises.

"Why?"

Digging closes in.

"No point."

Suddenly words break the static. On his channel, officers discuss messages just received. Possible truce? A cease-fire?

Rozar jumps up, "Did you hear that?"

"A trick!"

He gapes at her. "You’ve given up! You’re just as afraid of the war ending as you are of war itself."

"Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t know anything about me!"

"Do you?"

On hers, Myles screams, "I won’t leave her!" And Meena . . . plays. For whom? One of her team must be dead. Rayn jumps up, weapon pointed.

Rozar hears the haunting music and senses its meaning. "I’m sorry. But when you can, tell them to stand down. I promise it’s no trick!"

Digging right behind them. They both know how fragile a cease-fire could be. How just one incident. . . .

"I swear! On my life!" Hesitantly, he lays down his weapon. Rayn does not.

He opens his hands, "Don’t be afraid."

Digging.

"I’m not afraid of anything."

Digging.

"Prove it."

They break through. On his side.

A dozen weapons point at her. Rozar yells, "Stand down!"

Then her side breaks. Rayn yells, "Stand down!"

Neither side does.

Myles pants, "Why Rayn?"

"A cease-fire! I . . . I think."

"We heard, but--"

Rayn looks into Myles’s eyes. I cannot be the cause of this continuing one more day! "Please!"

Myles shakes his head, thinking no, do it for Hitt. "No! Drop ‘em! Or in 5, 4, 3, 2--"

Rayn screams, "No."

NEXT WEEK -- EPISODE 6: ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON