She stepped off. It had been a long journey but she was finally here.
tom
A man across the parking lot eyed her up; assessing. She shivered in the night air — it hadn’t been this cold when she set off.
He approached. “You here for…” She nodded, cutting him off.
He headed back towards the dark squat block behind, a security light illuminating a door on one side. She followed.
Approaching the door he pulled out a key and unlocked it.
“20 minutes.”
She bobbed her head and he opened the door. As she moved forwards he grabbed her arm, handing her a rope “You’ll want this. Tie it properly, we lost someone last week when it came undone. Couldn’t pull themselves back.” She took it and stepped through.
The door closed and the room was submerged into darkness. Her eyes adjusted slowly. At the centre of the room, the shoebox.
She dropped the rope and approached it, picking it up and lifting the lid. Unwrapping the bundle inside, she saw it — one of the last fragments of meteorite from The Incident.
She held the box in one hand and reached in, touching the shard of rock.
White.
Black.
The box hit the ground.
The doorman swore. The young ones never come back.