The elevator door parts at the middle and separates. Opens completely. Reveals the exterior high carbon steel landing door which ponderously creaks open. The square ceiling lights of the elevator flash on and off and on and off. Burn out slowly like smouldering embers.

Beyond the elevator cab is a distant landslide revelation of surreal horrific eschatology. Epistemological and metaphysical like monstrous oil paintings. Pollack frothing upon Grimshaw. Rock wall stones and boulders lay in Sorites with twists of steel and chunks of concrete. Blood splatters reveal like a hellish Mars-scape. Human bodies of scourge flesh from bone protrude half buried. All broken. Squirms and twitches of movement. The chaos of an Hieronymus Bosch deformity. Arm severs and twists of broken back torsos scream in volumes of cavernous echoes like invisible devils with long claw pitchforks torturing every atom. Skinless legs. Indent foreheads. Noseless physiognomy protrude from the rubble of the rock face. And they still attempt war upon each other. Half of a Ghost mask lays facing the elevator, the other half of the face closest to the ground is a crimson flay gore skull. Across from the authentic and the simulacra is a screaming waist buried Ghost who stabs rebar into the leg of a Leonard soldier. Janice watches the Ghost's face explode from the raining of gunfire from the top of the landslide. A free Ghost passes the recently headless torso and runs up and down the rockfall. Kicks to death the exposed faces of anyone without a skull mask. A half buried soldier points a gun at the back of the Ghost. Shakes his head. Grins for a second. Places the gun in his own mouth. Before he can pull the trigger, that same Ghost turns and kicks the gun deeper into the man's mouth. Breaks open the soldier's face at the chin. The Ghost leans down and pulls the trigger for him. Blood and brain explode from the back of the Leonard's head. Takes the handgun and climbs down from the slant of gray and black and silt and gravel and clay. Runs into the darkness of the destroyed Crater. Disappears beyond Janice's sight.

The Grand Ghost tilts her head down. Focuses her sight on a dead man laying just in front of the elevator door. His face is sunken. Almost deflated into the ground where the back of his head should be. He's holding a Honey Badger PDW assault rifle across the chest of navy blue uniform. Another man sits against the rock face on Janice's left. One of his legs is pointing in the wrong direction at his knee, like the twist of a living elm branch that won't break off. He raises his Honey Badger in her direction. Janice slams her glans war hammer into his face. Makes a sucking sound when she pulls the weapon out. Teeth tumble from his mouth along with a spurt of blood when he tries to breath. Finds he can't with his maxilla broken into the back of his throat. His nose hangs below his right eye and his left eye dangles where his nose used to be.

Janice witnesses Patricia raise her Berretta and fire at the first group of blue attire soldiers standing ten feet from the elevator. Their attention turns from stomping to death a single Ghost to Patricia's attack. She kills them all in a second spray of 9mm. The Ghost is alive and stands. Limps and joins the two as they begin the journey through the disaster of the Crater.

The power still functions and the lights flicker on and off and on and off and on and dim and bright and off and on in the direction they intend to run. Shapes of blue and black clad bodies lay everywhere and serrated edge boulders litter the track.

Janice watches a blue soldier fall from a sixty foot rafter. Explodes into a broken heap of epidermal peel and protruding femur and backward tarsus and popped patella and torn uniform tatter. He screams and abruptly dies as blood and brain fluid pour out his ears.

Two other Ghosts walk out of the shadows from behind Janice and join the running ossuary heading toward the southern stairwell across the track. A bullet ricochets a wisp of dust on the ground in front of Janice. Patricia points and fires at a blue soldier standing upon a rock face ledge twenty feet above to the group's left. The soldier tumbles limply the long distance to the Crater floor. Crashes onto a pommel horse. The body folds in two pieces like an upside down V of creased and maimed gut dripping medieval aesthetic.

The air seems to break in the echo of the cavernous underground. Shatters all sound like a giant pounds a club onto the walls of the Crater. An earthquake of explosions shake the entirety of the vicinity. A massive landslide pours the ceiling and rafters and rock wall onto the track behind Janice. A climbing wall rock face collapses onto the elevator. Buries everything within that particular part of the Crater. Boulders tumble and crash and become smaller boulders. Roll and ricochet. One flies over their heads and crashes like a cannonball into a distant Ghost running toward them. The masked ally who seems to have a gun pointed at them explodes into an arm and two legs. The head and torso and left arm are gone. Janice and Patricia would be dead if they were still in the elevator or ten feet further on.

The Grand Ghost mentions a thought to Patricia through the noise and panic and adrenaline.

"Timing...once a bitch, always a bitch."

As the five Ghosts continue running, more skull masks join. By the short time it takes to arrive at the stairwell, the group is made of thirty-seven, mostly injured but well armed Factory soldiers.

"Where are we headed?"

"The control room, if it's still there."

"Why there?"

"You'll see. It's our only way out of here."

"Who did this?"

"The Leonards. All of the blue soldiers are Leonards."

"I saw Ghosts killing Ghosts upstairs, in the city."

"Traitors."

"Fucking traitors."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"Me either. It just happened. I was going home and then an explosion caved in a piece of the city and then everyone ran to help. Many of us were shot when we arrived. Then it was war."

"We couldn't go up, we had to go down."

"Good thing you did."

"Ok, chances are that some Leonards may be outside the control room. We'll have to fight our way in. Be prepared."

Another earthquake explosion brings another rock wall down upon the Crater. Crushes the weight room and everything around it.

"Let's go, we're out of time."

They come to the entrance doors which lead to the control room under the Crater. One by one, with Janice in the lead, the Ghosts fly through the stairwell doors and run down the flights. They blast through the bottom door and into the thin hall where the vault exists as the final wall of the underground. There're no Leonards waiting.

"Lucky."

Janice runs to the wall on her right and presses her hand onto a particular cinderblock. Five layers open like vertical dominos to expose darkness. Janice walks in and the lights reverse fade. She taps a hologram wall and begins typing and entering codes upon codes upon passcodes until a doorway in the rock face to her right lights up and flashes. Electricity lightnings over and over through the opening to nowhere like horizontal waves upon a vertical sea. Then the opening becomes a doorway to somewhere. A pink room. A pink bed. Mirrors in fancy frames of copper and brass hang everywhere. Janice can see a mirror in front of the bed is smashed.

"Ok, everyone in. This is the way out. No one comes back. My orders. Some of you stay in the pink room and guard this portal. No Leonard is getting through. Capeesh?"

"Yes, my Queen."

Every Ghost walks through the portal.

Patricia doesn't budge.

"There may be more of us up there. Maybe we should try to direct them here if we can."

"Ok. Let's try."

Patricia takes Janice's hand and kisses her on the lips where they stay for a long moment before running out of the room and back up the stairs.

They re-enter the Crater. Completely silent except for the sound of boots. Tenebrous  except for the glow of a few skull masks in the distance. They float like apparitions toward Janice and Patricia.

Patricia's arm is taken by an unknown hand and shook. Janice notices Terra's friend, Glare. She's maskless.

"Patricia! We have to get out of here! Those Ghosts aren't friends."

A Ghost running toward them points a gun and begins to aim at Glare.

Janice shoots behind the skull masks and Patricia unloads her Berretta sub machine gun into the oncoming Ghosts who fall in less than a second. She drops the rifle when the last round is spent. The three Ghosts turn and run through the stairwell door and down the flights. When they reach the bottom, Janice hears the upper door slam open and the horrible unmistakable stampede sound of Leonard boots stomping down the stairs.

They reach the control room. Janice tries to close the cinder wall. Presses her hand upon a particular block. The wall creaks like a concrete on cement shuffle. Begins to close. Stops half way. The opening is still big enough for one person to enter at a time.

"Fuck! It's damaged. Fuck!"

"Go through the portal, Janice!"

"No! Glare first!"

Glare looks at both. Nods. Turns and jumps through.

Janice hears the bottom stair door slam open. Boots stomp toward the control room.

"Ok, you go through, Patricia. I'm staying. Someone has to destroy this portal so it can't be rebooted into another location within the way station. I'm the Grand Ghost and it's my responsibility. My failure. Thank you for the past few days, Pat. You put my demons to rest and revealed my Heaven. I love you so much...maybe we'll meet again in some other life. Capeesh?"

Patricia takes Janice by the neck and kisses her on the lips.

"I love you, Janice. You're worth it."

Patricia kicks her in the stomach. Winds her. Janice keels over and holds her abdomen and chest. Patricia pushes her hard through the portal, war hammer and all.

The Grand Ghost falls into the pink bedroom on her ass. Watches with the useless gravity of wide eyes as Patricia shoot the sides of the portal. Rattles the HoneyBadger she collected from a dead Leonard. Janice watches blue clad soldiers and Ghosts enter the control room behind her lover. The two look each other in the eyes while Patricia continues to shoot. The portal turns off like a nob being turned from ten to zero.

The Grand Ghost slams her fists into the pink hardwood floor over and over. Cuts her knuckles. Screams at her reflection in the ornate mirror which a moment ago was the doorway to the love of her life.