They'd organized into teams of three. And named them, unfortunately. The Cocaine Schmendricks had discovered a media room of some kind. They were in there absorbing alien art and music.

Team Goat Fetus was using some kind of surveyor Magic to map the whole place out. Three very serious girls, holding hands in a circle, and the air around them was erupting in faint maps, representations of the city.

The Big Three, Taylor's team, was standing agog, motionless, staring all around at the lost city of the Ari Maspai.

It was something to see. A Human city is something you can recognize on sight: streets, buildings, doors in those buildings. Fine for people who walk on the ground.

The Ari Maspai had been flyers. Little ones, or at least smaller than Human. They'd moved in flocks, or had no individuality that had lasted terribly long. I didn't quite understand how that would work, but it made for a very different kind of city.

And I'd described it as a "lost city," hadn't I? That implies ruins, neglect, a silent tomb of a place.

This thing was still running.

Imagine a series of concentric steel rings, each the size of a stadium, slowly whirling within one another like a colossal astrolabe. Blinking lights and Runes all over them.

The rings sit inside a huge shaft that goes down, down, and there are many other sets of rings on the way down. All are spinning, running, whirling, glowing.

I couldn't see the bottom of the shaft, just a distant glow down there. The sides of the shaft were laden with thousands of small openings. Doors, one assumed, for people who flew.

The rim of that colossal excavation was lined with things I recognized more as Human-friendly buildings: spires, towers. That honest-to-god lighthouse, still resolutely blazing, somehow, warning ships, guiding nobody.

And everywhere: gems. The walls, the floors, all covered with intricate patterns of ruby and emerald, sapphires and topaz, gems I didn't recognize: white, black, all colors, some that flickered from one color to another.

"Team Radio DJ was looking for Owen."

Ezra was waving at me, all smiles behind his absurd glasses. He was inside a sphere of gold, peering at me through the gemstone windows. As I watched, the sphere lurched into motion, stopped.

He stuck his head from one of the many round holes on the thing. "It's an elevator!"

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"My man," I shouted, and Ezra grinned like a damn jack o'lantern.

"What are we looking for?" he asked, hopping out. He was younger than me by a few years. Springy and thin like a greyhound. Those glasses twisted on his face, doing something Magical. "I can probably find it right away."

"I'll take you up on that. I'd like to find that convenience store, the Circle K." The Radio could have guided me right to it, but this kid needed a win.

And the Radio knew it too. "Ezra was aware that he had the capacity to complete this mission all by himself, if he'd wanted."

"Don't give him an ego, Radio."

But Ezra was glowing with pride. His glasses turned themselves inside out, blinked into different shades. He rotated in place, then stopped and pointed. "Follow me!"

He led us to that boxy plastic sign on its black pole. The Circle K was empty. All empty shelves and bare counters. Not even a cash register. Disappointing. The floors were cracked linoleum. The whole place looked old, abandoned and tired.

"Why would people on Earth send this?" I asked. "Seems useless. An old building with no chocolate that I could have given to someone."

"Gosh I wonder who," Ezra said. He was smiling.

"Everyone's up in my business," I grumbled. "Radio, you detected this, right? When they pushed it through?"

"Owen's request for vigilance had been taken seriously by his friend the Green Radio."

"These aren't dumb guys, necessarily. I mean they're Humans, which means there are going to be a lot of decisions based on dominance, social hierarchy and cruelty." I looked at Ezra. "No offense."

He looked skeptical. "Aren't YOU Human?"

"Don't remind me. So we're looking at a culture that values aggression and subterfuge. It's basically about hiding in the dark and stabbing."

"Taylor wouldn't know how to do that," Ezra said. "Too tricky." He frowned and looked briefly morose.

"Taylor is in a lot of danger," I said. "What's his brand of Magic, anyway? What's yours?"

"No idea what he does. I put life into things." He tapped his glasses, which flickered into different colors and shapes. "I can find hidden things with these, for example."

"Hidden things. Radio, we know that Humans have the capacity to use a Stealth Rune. Do you detect anything nearby? Any uncertainty in reality? Maybe they sent this building to hide their actual payload. Piggybacked it."

The Radio was silent for a while. Not good. "Yes. Outside. In the sky."

I leaned out, looked around. Ezra did as well; his glasses squirmed and flickered. "There."

I followed his pointing finger. "I don't see anything."

He handed me his glasses, which must have been a pretty big gesture of trust. They were handmade, a little chunky, formed from that ubiquitous white plastic around Harrigan's camp. I held them to my face.

"Oh." A drone. A balloon, no idea how big it was from all the way down here, festooned with cameras.

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