The massive cavern ceiling rotated slowly above us as Lara "piloted" our dinosaur. I couldn't tell where exactly, but I desperately hoped she knew what she was doing and that our transport wouldn't decide to snack on us upon landing.

  Speaking of landings...

  I barely caught a glimpse of treetops flashing by when Lara locked eyes with me:

  "Ready?"

  "F...for what?"

  "Hold on tighter!" she commanded.

  "But what are you—"

  No time to finish. Lara drew her pistol again, pressed the barrel against our ride's skull, and blew its brains out with one shot.

  "Have you lost your MIND?!" I shrieked. I swear, Lara's logic existed beyond human comprehension. Did she not realize dead dinosaurs don't flap wings and tend to fly in only ONE direction?

  She grabbed me and kicked off hard from the dino's back. We tumbled through the air and crashed into the tall grass, rolling across the uneven ground like overenthusiastic lovers. Nearby, our "birdie" corpse smashed through bushes with a wet thud. When we finally stopped, we lay side by side, gasping.

  I was alive. Remarkably alive, considering the bullets, arrows, and prehistoric air travel. Adrenaline rivers pulsed through my veins. My phone had apparently split in half... welp, no matter. The data was safe on the memory card.

  Far above, the floating islands and vine bridges remained. A barely visible group hurried along one path toward the cave wall—whether Gang Laden's gang or his ex-harem women, I couldn't tell. Not that I could help them now. I just wanted to vanish from this place before the local Amazons caught up and turned our balloon into Swiss cheese.

  * * *

  "Harrrr!" A small feathered dinosaur burst from the bushes, flashing rows of razor teeth at me.

  A split second later, it was hurled back into the same bushes, persuaded by a .45 caliber.

  "Four rounds left," Lara informed herself quietly.

  Only a few hundred paces remained to the damn cave, but of course, this backwater corner had become a gathering spot for human flesh connoisseurs. My lungs burned and my legs begged to curl up under me for a nice long nap. Unfortunately, Lara and I didn't have time for even the briefest pause. We had to reach the capsule before—

  "Oh for fuck's sake!" I gasped, catching a glimpse of our Amazonian pursuers.

  Instead of chasing us across vine bridges, they'd tied ropes and were now descending into the jungle like winged Valkyries, right on our tails.

  "Faster!" Lara urged.

  "Wait!" It suddenly hit me. "Do you... know the capsule's door code?!"

  "The what now?" The blonde frowned.

  That's it, we're done for. Before dying, Aurora Tromp had changed the lock code and, of course, told no one. Now only one option remained - to offer Ken Celsey to the girls like some Christmas present and flash our widest smiles: look what we've got for you...

  The cave entrance was right there. So was Vesley Bernulli's battered helmet, rolling near a rock with its visor shattered.

  A desperate idea struck my exhausted brain. I grabbed the helmet, shook out Vesley's bloody head, and checked the mic.

  "Faster!" Lara wasn't stopping.

  "Almost there..." I shoved the helmet on, ignoring the gore. "Ken Celsey! Can you hear me, Ken?!"

  Nothing. Like before, the thick rock blocked the signal.

  "Faster!" Lara repeated, firing into the jungle. The shot took someone's life—I wasn't checking whose. Gang Laden's furious roar confirmed he was still alive and leading his Amazon brigade.

  We dove into the cave.

  "Ken Celsey?!"

  "(Pshhh)...ora?"

  "Ken?!"

  "Nora?" His voice came through clearer now. "You whores! Do you have any idea how cold it is sitting here alone?! I can't feel my most sensitive parts anymore! My chakras are draining from light deprivation! Just wait until Elon hears—"

  "Ken, get to the back of the cave NOW!" I ordered.

  "What? Why should I... And who are you to boss me around, Nora? You're not in charge here!"

  "Ken," I repeated, honey dripping from my voice. "If you want to freeze your ass off, fine by me. We've found food, wine, and very beautiful women here. So if you don't come to the cave's end, you'll simply get nothing."

  Silence.

  "I won't get beautiful women?" Ken asked suspiciously.

  "No, there's more than enough women," I sighed. "But the hot food and wine might run out soon."

  "Can I speak to Aurora?" Ken demanded suddenly. He was more cautious than I'd hoped.

  "No, she's drunk and having sex right now," I lied.

  "With whom?!"

  "What do you think, genius?"

  "You ungrateful bitches... Fine, I'm coming!"

  "Ugh..." I removed the helmet after completing my darkest deed yet. "Lara, Ken Celsey's coming. Try not to shoot him!"

  "Okay," she replied without thinking. "Who's Celsey?"

  "Ken," I sighed. "Ken is Celsey."

  "He changed his name too?"

  "...You know what? Just save your bullets—we'll figure it out later!" I urged her to hurry.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The echoing footsteps of approaching Amazons were already audible. Just a few cave turns remained to the damned capsule. How we'd actually get inside remained a mystery.

  "Nora?!" Ken's voice screeched from the darkness.

  "Ken!" I cheered loudly. He looked rumpled and irritated but still unfairly handsome. "Ken, take off your helmet immediately! You won't need it anymore!"

  "Are you insane? I'm not removing it! And where are those women you promised?"

  "Oh right," I grabbed his spacesuit and shoved him toward the approaching Amazons with all my strength. "They're right here. Smile pretty!"

  "What the hell—" Ken began, then immediately bit his tongue when he saw our "guests."

  Fatima emerged first from the shadows—drenched in blood and with murder in her eyes. Ken took one look at her and shrieked like a deflowered Victorian maiden.

  "What's happening back there?" Gang Laden's angry roar echoed.

  "There's a very handsome man here!" Fatima announced.

  "Really?!" came another Amazon's voice.

  "Wow, he's gorgeous!"

  "What?!" Gang Laden spluttered. "Kill him immediately!"

  "Sisters!" Fatima commanded. "Kill Father!"

  Holy hell, the cave erupted into chaos! Ken Celsey Buckingham's shriek was immediately drowned out by war cries and Gang Laden's curses as he realized he'd been betrayed. I wasn't about to stick around to see who won—the capsule was right there, and Lara Barcroft's fingers were already dancing across the keypad. A green light flashed above the airlock.

  "You said you didn't know the code!" I gaped.

  "Hm?" She blinked. "What code?"

  "The door—you just opened it!"

  "Oh that," she nodded innocently. "Aurora showed me which buttons to press. Easy."

  Right. Fuck. Don't think about this, Nora, or you'll lose your mind too. This world held greater mysteries than an alien ship in the depths of Earth. One was currently walking upright on two legs.

  Gang Laden's furious swearing from deep in the cave suddenly turned to death rattles. The tide had turned in Ken's favor—if he was still alive. I wasn't waiting to find out. Time to reprogram the balloon for our return to the Goldilocks zone.

  The floor beneath us shuddered violently as if an elephant had landed on us. Except we heard no impact. The capsule just trembled on its own, creaking like a rusty hinge.

  "What the—" I muttered.

  Lara and I stood frozen, waiting for another tremor. Meanwhile, my gut churned with the kind of dread usually reserved for tax audits and unmarked sushi. Something was very wrong outside this tin can. The entire Mariana Trench seemed to groan, its voice dipping into frequencies that rattled my molars. Like the planet itself had woken up cranky from a nap.

  No…

  No no no, this can’t be happening!

  "Move!" I lunged for the locker. Spare suits, oxygen tanks, water filters—I grabbed whatever I could.

  "Put this on!" I shoved a suit at Lara.

  "Huh?"

  "Hurry, Lara! Gang Laden hit his goddamn button! We need to get off this rock now!"

  "Okay," she agreed, disturbingly calm.

  Lara didn’t even ask why. If I was right, there was no time to reprogram the balloon. Even if I forced a descent, this stupid capsule was slower than a bureaucrat’s apology. If Gang Laden hadn’t been bluffing—if he’d actually pressed that cursed button before croaking—then we had exactly one option left. A stupid one.

  "Dammit, where’s the other one?" I clawed through the locker. "Lara, find the second parachute!"

  "What’s that?" She blinked at me with the wide-eyed innocence.

  The universe lurched sideways, bucking like a shot animal.

  Fine, screw the second chute. I scrambled into my own suit, fumbling the seals with shaking hands. Helmet, radio, oxygen, pressure check, Lara Barcroft—

  CRACK.

  A sound like splitting granite echoed far above us.

  "We’re leaving!" I slammed the airlock open, tumbling out.

  Mistake. I should’ve looked down.

  The Space-X capsule had somehow detached from the cliff, drifting meters away. I saw Ken Celsey’s and the Amazonian girls' long faces. One of them was already targeting her spear at me.

  Then I fell. Straight into the Mariana Abyss, screaming like a banshee. And I had plenty to scream about—my suit wasn’t sealed. The visor was still up, and the freezing wind slapped me straight in the face.

  Oh, and Lara Barcroft was still holding the only parachute.

  As if that wasn’t enough, a several hundred-ton chunk of rock chose that moment to fall beside me. Dazed as I was, I could at least try to steer my descent. The rock? Not so much. A second later, it shattered against the canyon wall with a deafening sound. Debris spun around me. One jagged piece clipped my thigh, flipping me onto my back. The impact even knocked some sense into me. I stopped shrieking and finally sealed my helmet.

  High above, the Space-X capsule disintegrated, pummeled by falling debris.

  More rock fragments joined my freefall every second, the planet tearing itself apart. Far above, a red glow pulsed in the absolute dark. The sun? No, impossible. I was staring into the planet’s guts. My overactive imagination helpfully painted kilometer-high geysers and lava rivers, all eager to celebrate Nora Paranoia’s final moments.

  Because yeah, these were my final moments.

  The suit’s monitor flickered to life, delivering the bad news: 65 meters per second. Accelerating.

  The darkness thinned, then vanished entirely as I burst into an open void. Earth hung above me now, vomiting debris from the Mariana Trench — along with one very unlucky Paranoia.

  And Lara Barcroft?

  Still up there.

  Still holding that parachute.

  So very dead...

  "Nora, where are you?" The radio crackled.

  "La... Lara?!" I squinted at the garbage-strewn sky. "Lara?!"

  "Yes, my name is Lara. And you’re Nora, right?"

  I nearly giggled like an idiot. Lara Barcroft was alive! Of course, she was. You’d need more than a cracking planet to kill a woman with that much blonde immunity to consequences. A meteor to her face might just bounce off with "Oopsie"...

  "Yeah, it’s Nora," I choked out. "Where the hell are you?"

  "In the air. There’s a lot of... pebbles. And gravel. And—oh! Some very big pebbles. I think I see you now. Hold on."

  "Oh, thank God!" The enormous relief suddenly hit me. "You took the parachute, right?"

  "No."

  …Wait. She didn’t take the parachute?

  My good mood vanished as if blown away by the winds of the thermosphere.

  "What's a parachute?" she asked. "I just grabbed that black backpack you gave me."

  "HA!" The laugh ripped out of me, unhinged. "HAHAHAHA—HA!"

  "Nora, you’re kind of scaring me," she murmured.

  I spotted her then—a bright flicker among the falling rocks. Her suit gleamed like a confused angel. Lara was falling headfirst, way faster than me. And weirdly, she looked at home, twisting between debris like a dove set free. A dove with the brain capacity of a peeled grape. She even used passing boulders to adjust her trajectory, kicking off them like stepping stones.

  Ten long seconds later, she slammed into me, fingers clawing at my harness. We spun wildly.

  "Got you!" Her grin was visible even through the fogged visor.

  "This," I yanked the strap of the "school backpack," "is the parachute, you absolute blonde!"

  "Really? What happens now?"

  "No clue," I admitted. "Gang Laden pressed his damn button, but I flunked astrophysics. No idea what’s supposed to happen next. But we’ve got a chute, so in theory, we land safely..."

  The universe lurched again. I felt it in my protesting guts.

  You know that feeling when you descend a hill too fast? That hollow sensation in your stomach... You floor the accelerator and pray there are no cops waiting at the bottom.

  That's exactly what I was feeling. Something was happening to the planet's gravity. The suit’s monitor glitched, numbers spiraling into nonsense. Were we speeding up? Slowing down? Falling sideways?

  "What was that?" Lara asked.

  I didn't know. We flew into nothing, shredding clouds. Minus sixty degrees beyond our suits. The heater kicked in, showing twenty minutes of battery remaining. The gray continents slowly swayed, rotating around some new, previously unused axes. The wind intensified, scattering fine gravel particles and pushing us away from the main mass of falling rocks. Except... the stones weren't falling anymore - they were spinning in a giant arc curved back toward the planet. When lightning flashed around us, I screamed in terror and squeezed my eyes shut. Not for long though...

  On Lara Barkroft's face, I saw childlike wonder. She still didn't understand we could die at any moment.

  Behind the girl, a strange reflection flashed. It was ocean water spilling from a cluster, forming into a giant, floating mirror. The continents were falling home now. I could only imagine streets buckling, and towers dissolving like sandcastles. We weren't far from the planet ourselves. Like those stones, we were flying back at increasing speed, somewhere far to the side of the Mariana Trench. I could see how the hills below were gradually becoming mountains.

  Regaining my senses, I twisted in Lara’s grip and yanked the parachute’s release. Black synthetic silk flapped in the wind and she gripped my harness tighter.

  A little farther away, landmasses and islands were emerging from black clouds. Who could possibly survive this? Would we be left completely alone when all this ended? Adam and Eve at least had a slim chance and long centuries of incest to repopulate the Earth. What could we do, two screwed-up Eves?..

  "Don’t worry," Lara whispered, pulling me close. Her smile was radiant. "It’ll be okay. I promise."

  Around us, the sky began to rain frozen corpses.

  The End.