Alaina woke up in a bright white room with harsh florescent lights. She was in a strange, narrow bed with sides that arced up slightly around the mattress. Over her head, there was a kind of metallic canopy. It took her a second to realize it looked more like a lid, and it vaguely reminded her of the barrel she'd crawled into. A lid to her bed...

Why would her bed need a lid? 

Wait. This wasn't her bed. Where was she? She sat up, looking frantically around the room. Two strange people in long white coats were staring down at her from a few feet away. They looked like they'd been in the middle of discussing something important.

"Welcome." one of them said, a little too warmly.

"Where am I?" Alaina asked.

"Don't worry – you're safe." one of the strangers told her. "You're in our lab at the capitol."

"The capitol? With the queen?" Alaina asked. They didn't really seem like the kind of group to have a lab like this. And neither of these people looked like they were elves, either.

"No – it's a different place." a familiar voice said. Alaina turned and saw Cole sitting on a cot on the other side of the room.

"You're here." Alaina said. Wherever here was. She turned and saw Jophiel on another cot. "Both of you."

"We sure are." Cole said.

"And the cook?" Alaina looked around frantically, but the only ones in the room were her, her friends, and those two people in the white coats. No cook anywhere in sight.

"Don't worry about him." Cole told her. Alaina decided she probably didn't want to know what that meant.

"How did you two get here?" she asked instead.

"Same way you did – through those pods." Cole told her. Then nodding to the giant window behind him he said, "You should come take a look at this."

Alaina stood at the window next to Cole. She looked down on a sprawling city, bigger than any she'd ever seen in her life. Shiny metallic buildings reached up into the sky, and blue-tinted tubes wound their way in between them. The whole thing stretched for what seemed like miles before being cut off abruptly by a large, imposing wall. Beyond that, it looked like nothing but desert as far as she could see.

Alaina had never been in a building so tall, and the view was almost daunting. She peered down at the ground below in disbelief. Were those people down there? They were so tiny! And they seemed to be lining up to jump inside of those tubes. Why? What were they for?

"Do you see those cylinders down there?" Alaina asked, pointing. "What are they?"

"Transportation tubes." Cole told her. "The city's so big, the inhabitants use them to get from one side to the other."

"Really?" Alaina breathed. Now that seemed like real magic to her.

"Would you like to go see?" Jophiel asked. He'd stepped up to the window next to her, and he was looking down with an expression that matched the one Alaina was pretty sure was on her own face.

"Naturally." she grinned.

Surprisingly, the two strangers – doctors, apparently – didn't seem all that concerned with letting them leave. They only suggested that Alaina and her friends be indoors by sundown. And if there was a lock on their door, so much the better. It was a little weird, but Alaina brushed it off. Those two were already pretty strange, and this wasn't any weirder than anything else they'd said. Maybe they were just afraid that they'd get lost in this new town at night.

Of course, the first thing Alaina and her friends did was take a trip in one of those transportation tubes. Alaina didn't have a particular destination in mind, so she'd decided to go downtown. Every city had a downtown, didn't it? At least, every one she'd ever been to. Fortunately, this one was no exception. All she had to do was say the word and she was off, whooshing through the city, around buildings and sometimes even over them. It was both terrifying and absolutely thrilling. She staggered a little bit coming out of the tube, but she managed to stay upright, so she didn't think it was that bad. Cole didn't manage to keep from falling, but she and Jophiel pretended not to notice as he picked himself up off the sidewalk.

They wandered around, taking in the sights of this modern, electrically-powered city and its strange citizens. Alaina had to admit, the longer she stayed here, the more uneasy she became. There was something about this place that bothered her, but she couldn't say exactly what it was. Maybe it was the fact that everything looked too new; it was all so shiny and manufactured. Where were the historical sections of the city? And were there any plants here that were allowed to grow as they pleased, or were they all trimmed into these ridiculous shapes? It was all so... artificial.

For lunch, they stopped at a huge, spiraling building that twisted up to the sky. Alaina wasn't sure she was all that impressed with the architecture – it was as flashy and over-the-top as anything else here. But the smells coming out of the restaurant as they walked by were irresistible.

"Welcome to the Cardinal Tower!" a young man in a waiter's uniform said, coming up to them with a huge grin on his face. "Are you here for lunch?"

"We are." Alaina nodded.

"Excellent." The young man grabbed a few menus off the podium near the door. "Have you been here before?"

"No, we haven't." Alaina told him. She wondered if it was the way she'd been staring somewhat slack-jawed at the giant glass sculptures that had been placed around the room that had given her away.

He led them through the building, towards a table near the back, giving them a sort of history lesson as he did.

"This is the oldest building in the city – almost fifty years old, if you can believe it! It was designed to be the focal point of the city, by the legendary architect Ace Addams himself." He gestured around at the high ceilings and the ivy climbing decoratively up the walls. Alaina wondered if the plants were even real.

"Fifty years old?" she asked, realizing what he'd just said. She was pretty sure the newest building in her village was at least that old.

"Oh, no!" The waiter said, laughing pleasantly. "Fifteen years."

"...Fifteen?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. The oldest building in the entire sprawling mega-city was less than fifteen years old? How was that even possible? "Can I ask what happened here to cause the whole city to be rebuilt?"

"You don't know?" The waiter looked shocked. "I thought everyone knew about The Great Fall..."

"The Great Fall?" Cole spoke up.

The waiter nodded, looking uncomfortable. He glanced quickly to his left. Spotting an empty table nearby, he brightened considerably. "Ah! Your table." he said, gesturing to it.

"Thank you." Alaina mumbled, sitting down. Cole and Jophiel followed suit.

"What can you tell us about this Great Fall?" Cole asked again.

The waiter, looking much more pale than he had when he'd first set eyes on them, shook his head slightly.

"I really shouldn't say..." he mumbled slowly.

"Why not?" Alaina asked. He'd been the one to bring it up, after all. Or was that just because he hadn't thought they'd actually push the issue?

"You've really never heard of the Great Fall?" he asked instead, seeming genuinely confused.

The three of them shook their heads. 

"Then how did you get here?"

"It's a long story." Jophiel told him. The waiter sighed.

"You should talk to Brandon the Magnificent." he said. 

"The Magnificent?" Jophiel raised his eyebrows. "Is this your king?"

But the waiter refused to say any more. In fact, he was so dead-set against telling them anything else, that he refused to service them at all. He had a different waiter come to take their order, and Alaina never saw him anywhere near their half of the room for the rest of the night.

"So I guess we'll be seeking out this Brandon then?" Alaina asked.

"Naturally." Cole beamed.

Jophiel nodded, looking grimly determined.