A gargantuan sphere loomed ahead, dented on nearly every facet of its massive surface. Beneath the dirt that encased its battered profile appeared to be some type of metal she’d never seen before. Shadowed by Auras on the path towards the machine, Lara felt the pincers of nerves dancing on the bottoms of her feet.

Lara hadn’t noticed the vacant opening just large enough for a person to fit through until she returned her attention to Auras, and watched him maneuver himself in. She followed suit to find the space within just barely accommodating to his physique, let alone both of them. The majority of the area was occupied by two padded seats across from one another, and the few details she noted in the darkness were illuminated by the molten glow of the ball against the rocky surface beside it. In her awkward position, an ache plagued Lara’s lower back just as Auras instructed her to take a seat.

“No need to admire the accommodations.” He advised as she settled herself, “You’ll be unable to see much soon enough.”

Her legs struggled to find a comfortable position around his. But when she was finally situated, it became painstakingly apparent that the bit of aisle they’d been afforded was not nearly enough to accommodate two opposing passengers.

“How long, exactly, will we be enjoying this arrangement, Auras?”

The impatient hum of the smoldering metal ball was her response.

“Or don’t answer me, I s’pose,” She answered to herself less audibly, curling her lips as she turned her vision to the ball’s glow. Her eyes widened, “Are we moving?!”

“Yes, Lara,” Auras replied, a touch of amusement in his voice. “We are.”

She clutched the seat’s cushioning, steadying herself as the casing around them rattled and the narrow cavern passed with increasing swiftness. “How? How does it work?”

“I wouldn’t be the best to inform you.” Auras, in the meantime, had somehow managed to cross one leg over the other, the tip of his hanging foot a bit too close to one of the entryways, and therefore in danger of being easily shaved off by the passing rock. “I’ve never been much of an engineer.”

The movement of the tunnel and machine, itself, further crippled her enthusiasm. “That’s so helpful, Aur, thank you.” She remarked sarcastically despite her budding nausea.

Lara could barely review his face, and instead found some small relief in focusing on the raised metallic chips on the walkway’s floor.

“First time traveling,” she excused herself breathily as the accompanying scenery of underground stone disappeared into darkness, swallowing the sight of the walkway’s metal, and her vision entirely.

A large shock ran through her body as she felt the loss of gravity, her bottom hovering above the seat for less than a second, before she felt her full weight slam back down onto the cushioning.

She let out a small squeak of his name as sound became her only unhindered sense and the noise around them had become nearly unbearable. But she willed herself calm.

As their transport ventured further into the depths, Lara mentally eased herself into the regularity of clattering jolts. In comparison to being left alone for days on end, her new situation failed to pass as even remotely safe.

Regardless, when it felt as though nearly an hour had gone, the question won out her sensibilities, and she accepted the urge to relieve them of the silence.

“So,” she began, shakier than she’d hoped. “How safe is this?”

“Do you really want to know that, Lara?”

“No,” she mumbled. “It probably wouldn’t make a difference if I were to die knowing, would it…”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

Eyes straining through the darkness, she barely made out his figure: muscle compressed by the charcoal-colored fabric of his trench. His boot rested silently against the metal, unlike her, as she anxiously bounced her knee, clanking her wide black and white boots against the ground. His tranquil demeanor told her he had done this before.

“Is this how you travel? Has this always been here?”

He thought for a moment.

“It’s a fairly recent addition.”

“The ball or the tracks – if we’re running on tracks. Are we running on tracks?”

Auras issued a deep breath, tidbits of silver in his curly black hair flashing in the dim, burning light they had remaining on the walls from the burning metal of the ball. “The transport is called a Revolver.”

She pondered the name. “How recent is ‘recent’?”

“It was put in place after the war, the tracks were built pre-war as a means of transportation underground in order to avoid the bombings and eventually radiation. Many of the stops were never added in time, however.”

“The end of the war took them by surprise?”

Auras’ disapproval of her joke was poignant.

“Something like that.” He leaned his head back and rested it against the wall above the seat. His shift in mood advised Lara to move past the subject.

“So, can you at least tell me where we’re going, now?”

“Indianapolis.”

“What?” She asked, trying to recall her knowledge from the pre-1940’s history books she’d read through in the library.

“It’s a hub.”

“A hub?” She repeated. “With more people than Champaign?”

There was a smile in his voice in response, “I’d like to say yes, but I have a feeling you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Whatever it was, Lara knew it certainly meant more people than what she’d known thus far. “Then why now? Why didn’t you take me there in the first place?” Her voice ended meeker than she’d thought it would.

Lara was considering a way to reword her question when Auras responded. “Do you remember the journey, a little more than a year ago?”

A bit of the memory was still fresh to her. As she answered him, she did withhold the dull pain in her head associated with the blur before the end of their travels, and even more-so the deep, resonating pain of the fog over her entire memory before that.

She hadn’t noticed his voice drowning out as she submerged herself more deeply in her mind’s mystery.

There, in the depths of the caverns, cradled by the bumbling revolver, the thick mist felt more accessible than it ever had before. Lara’s skin prickled with increasing sensitivity as she wandered through the miasma in her memories.

Did she remember, a year ago?

Some of it: waking on the old mustard couch, nausea swashing within her. That was a regular feeling, then. It was where the ease of remembrance began. But before that, it was more difficult to recall exactly how she’d gotten to that worn-out couch in the little dilapidated house.

Her skin began to feel thousands of tiny slices. There was a cabin, she heard her voice say, weak and unsure. In her mind’s mist, every sense but her vision reigned, which filled her with an all-consuming dread. She remembered her shallow breaths and the stark forest which was the last sight before she pulled under into an abyss. There was the smell of burning skin, screeching, with her bones cold as ice.

Then silence.

The sound of the rumbling metal scraping against the earth returned to Lara’s ears as she slipped back into reality from the broken memories. Her face was damp. Her hands, she realized, clasped cotton fabric. Lara released Auras’ trench as his palm rested with brotherly concern atop her head.

The clamminess of her palms wiping at her face did little to help the salty mess of tears and sweat upon her skin.

Auras made no remarks as he listened to her wobbling breaths, and it was a prolonged moment before Lara began apologizing. The small of her voice was perfectly audible, she realized, noticing the silence about them, and the unmoving revolver.

Lara knew Auras had no interest in her discombobulation.

From her earliest memories, she had known him to harbor a peculiar disinterest in her episodes. At the start, her debilitations were much more common; her memories had seemed clearer – though she now recognized that they’d still been blanketed in the mist. She sought to avoid the embarrassment that came hand in hand with the inability to explain her actions and how she could break down when she thought too hard about her past.

Nevertheless, she had quickly learned that, somehow, Auras excelled in his brotherly ability to comfort her. Lara wiped at her face, mentally dismissing the need to know what was hiding in the back of her mind, nor the reason it left her feeling so very vulnerable.

When Lara had tried to make sense of where her twenty years had gone, a sinister air lingered over her being. It was that very fear of the truth that restrained her burning desire to finally pull back the dull curtain hiding that truth.