Then Rona clapped her hands and beamed. "Sooo… should we run again?"
I gave her a look. "Where, exactly, would we even run to?" I gestured vaguely at the fiery pit, the armed guards, and the literal walls closing in. "Pick your doom, Rona."
Ronald whimpered, dragging himself upright with the grace of a sleep-deprived toddler. "My legs… have trauma."
I glanced around.
Steel walls. Unhappy guards. Isaac still trying to yell at me through layers of tape. Rona doing pirouettes. Ronald preparing to faint again.
Perfect.
I smiled.
"Don't worry," I said, stepping forward with an alarming level of confidence. "I have a plan."
There was a moment of silence so thick it felt like time itself sighed.
Everyone groaned in unison.
Isaac's eyes widened in pure terror. The muffled screaming doubled in volume, vibrating like a fire alarm set to panic mode.
Without thinking, I grabbed Isaac by the collar—still bound, still taped, still glaring at me like I'd personally burned down his childhood home—and yanked him upright like a prize-winning hostage.
Then, channeling every over-the-top villain I'd ever seen in late-night movies, I threw my voice into a theatrical boom."If you want this pessimistic insult factory back," I declared, "you'll do exactly what I say!"
Isaac let out a muffled shriek of outrage, squirming in my grip like an angry cat in a sweater.
Ronald's eyes bulged in horror. "L-Llyne?!"
Rona, meanwhile, looked starstruck, as if I'd just grown a crown and a theme song. "Whoa," she whispered. "So dramatic…"
Across from us, the guards wavered. Guns trembled in their hands. A few looked at each other, uncertain. One leaned toward the Chief Guard, whispering urgently into his ear.
The Chief Guard grumbled something under his breath, jaw tightening, eyes darting from me to Isaac. He was stuck in a dilemma, torn between protocol and the very real possibility that I was insane enough to do something terrible.
Spoiler: I was.
Ronald edged closer, whispering through clenched teeth, "Llyne, what are you doing? You're turning them into our enemies!"
"Don't you trust me?" I murmured without looking away from the guards.
"I do, but your plans are always… ridiculous!"
I smirked. "And yet… they work."
Rona suddenly popped her head between us, her face bright. "I always trust Llyne!"
"Good girl." I ruffled her hair like she was a well-behaved puppy about to commit a felony. "Now, follow my lead."
Ronald whimpered. "I hate this. I hate this so much."
I turned back to the line of stunned guards, my grip tightening just slightly around Isaac's collar. "Let us go," I said coolly, "and I'll let him live."
Isaac glared up at me with pure venom, eyes wide with disbelief—as if threatening his life was just another Tuesday for me. Honestly, at this point, it was.
The Chief Guard clenched his jaw, muscles twitching as he weighed his options. Finally, with a frustrated grunt, he lifted an arm and waved his men aside, parting the line like an angry, armed sea.
Victory.
"Oh, and…" I pointed dramatically at the monstrous furnace behind us, still rumbling with residual heat. "Switch that off."
A beat of silence. Then, with an exasperated sigh, the Chief Guard snapped at one of his subordinates. The incinerator let out a heavy groan before falling silent, its hungry glow fading into a dull orange yawn.
I turned to my stunned companions, grinning with barely contained smugness. "You see? Trust me!"
Ronald opened his mouth to reply—but too slow.
Before either of them could blink, I hoisted Isaac over my shoulder like a particularly offended sack of rice and bolted straight toward the incinerator.
"Llyne!" they shrieked in unison.
Their footsteps thundered after me as I dove headfirst into the gaping furnace.
The Chief Guard's face went pale. "What the hell?!"
"Chief!" one of the guards shouted. "They jumped in! Into the—into the furnace!"
Chaos erupted. The guards scrambled, some rushing toward the machine, others yelling into radios, panic crackling in the air like fire.
Meanwhile, inside the gaping steel belly of the incinerator, we were in freefall.
Absolute, glorious, stomach-churning freefall.
The air whooshed past us, thick with ash and the faint smell of scorched failure. For a suspended moment, there was nothing—no gravity, no guards, no logic. Just us, plummeting into mechanical uncertainty.
Rona threw her arms out like she was skydiving. "Woooo! This is even better than the vents!"
"WE'RE GONNA DIE!" Ronald howled beside her, legs kicking uselessly in midair.
Isaac—still slung over my shoulder and tightly bound—let out a muffled shriek that sounded like every curse word he knew, stuffed into one long, vibrating groan.
"I know, I know," I muttered, adjusting my grip on him. "This looks bad."
"THIS IS BAD!" Ronald wailed again, flailing like a marionette in a wind tunnel.
"I regret everything!" Isaac screamed—or would have, if the tape hadn't swallowed half of it.
We twisted in the air, descending deeper into the machine's guts. Pipes lined the walls like metal intestines, some of them hissing steam, others crackling with faint static. Somewhere far below, a faint clunk echoed, hinting that the bottom wasn't just theoretical.
"I'm going to haunt you forever if we die," Isaac mumbled.
I chuckled, shifting my weight midfall. "Well, get in line!"
Ronald whispered a prayer, voice trembling. "Please let this end in a soft mattress... or death. Either's fine."
Me? I just adjusted my landing posture.
Because I had a hunch this wasn't a death trap—it was a detour. A dramatic one. And knowing our brand of luck?
It probably had a secret basement.
And then we saw it.
The exit.
A gaping, ground-level hole in the machine's underbelly.
We flew through it like errant laundry—and crashed headfirst into dusty reality.
WHUMP.
We landed in a heap of dirt with the grace of a soggy pancake tossed from a moving truck. My face embedded itself squarely into the earth, accompanied by a sound I could only describe as regret hitting bedrock.
"WAIT—WAIT—WAIT—NO—!"
Too late.
Rona, naturally, stuck the landing. On top of us.
"ACCCKK!" we groaned in muffled unison, piled like some budget-layered dessert gone horribly wrong. Isaac flattened at the base. I, squished just above him. Ronald, flopped across me like a warm, nervous manatee. And Rona—arms spread, smiling like a child on a trampoline—sat proudly on top.
"I liked that better than the last ride," she chirped, entirely too chipper.
Isaac coughed a puff of dirt. "I. Hate. All. Of. You."
Ronald groaned. "I think I dislocated my dignity."
I spit out a mouthful of dust and sighed. "Well... at least we're not on fire."
Beneath us, Isaac wheezed, "You. Not yet."
Eventually, we untangled ourselves, groaning and brushing grime from our clothes, our pride, and each other.
We looked around.
The air was dry. The walls were crumbling stone. The space was cavernous, almost too perfectly hidden beneath the building. Crates lay scattered in the shadows, and somewhere in the distance, a slow drip echoed.
"Where are we?" Ronald whispered, turning in slow, terrified circles.
I scanned the dim chamber and smiled.
"Hopefully?" I said. "A place where excitement has come to an end."
But, of course, Isaac had to ruin the moment.
"Nope," he said flatly, brushing dirt from his shirt. "This place is the dumpyard."
We all turned to stare at him.
"After the trash gets burned to dust," he continued, voice as cheerful as a tax auditor, "whatever doesn't burn ends up here—stuff too toxic, too dense, or too cursed. It just sits here until they dispose of it another way."
"…Another way?" Ronald asked hesitantly.
"Yep." Isaac nodded, his tone flat and disturbingly casual. "They vaporize it. This chamber is rigged with a disintegration field. One that confirms the molecular deletion of whatever's inside. Gone. Boom. No trace."
I blinked. "Then why didn't they just use that in the first place instead of the incinerator?"
Isaac tapped at his wrist interface, flicking through screens like a bureaucrat mid-breakdown. "Because it uses a rare compound mined near the Earth's core. Can't be activated often. Expensive. Highly unstable. Politically controversial. You know, the usual."
My body tensed. "Doesn't sound standard to me."
Ronald gulped. "And… when's the next scheduled vaporization?"
Isaac's fingers froze mid-scroll. His pupils shrank.
He swallowed.
"Um…" he squeaked. "Sometime about… now."
We all stood there.
Frozen.
Not breathing. Not blinking. Not even thinking.
Just four idiots and one rapidly approaching existential crisis.
A low hum began to rise, vibrating through the stone beneath our feet—a deep, ominous sound that made the hairs on my neck stand at full attention.
Without missing a beat, Isaac turned and jabbed an accusatory finger straight at my face. "When we all get atomized, just know—you're the genius I'm haunting first."
I smacked his hand away. "Oh, please. If we'd tried to walk through that wall of guards, we'd be riddled with holes. You know that."
"At least I'll be safe." Isaac shrugged.
Ronald jumped in, hands raised in a peacemaking gesture. "Okay, okay! Let's not fight! Maybe there's a way out—yeah? Secret door? Emergency ladder?"
"There is," Isaac said immediately, expression unreadable.
Ronald's face lit up. "See! That's the spirit!"
"To death," Isaac finished, deadpan. "Exit straight to oblivion."
Ronald's face collapsed like a bad soufflé.