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The interior of the cylinder was even colder than Maggie remembered The air still sucked away every sound, until her footfalls sounded like whispers and then stoppedany sound whatsoever The puddles on the floor still hadn&039;t dried up, and there were birds roosting inside in silent, watchful flocks The place creeped her out, just as it had the first time she&039;d seen it

This time around she could observe more details, but very few of thee inside In fact, it seeer on the inside than it had looked from up in the ravine Its interior was not smooth at all but lined with pipes and tubes, some thicker across than her waist Many of them were broken open and she could see they were hollow inside Others were still intact Some had water condensed on them, and when she touched one of these she could feel a faint vibration travel up her arm Whatever had happened to the cylinder, whether it had crashed on Earth thousands of years ago or if it had just rotted away over ti order

Like the well full of green fire, for instance

There was, she supposed, a certain a back inside She had survived the green fire once, and in fact it had uarantee that it wouldn&039;t kill her though if she re inside the cylinder It had killed her father without any trouble, after all

She&039;d coardless of how irl she&039;d once been, she still owed Dad this much He shouldn&039;t have to rot away inside some weird alien artifact Yet when she actually found the body - or rather, his bones, which were all that remained of him - she found herself so repulsed she had to turn away rather than be sick

His rereen fire His hands were still clenched around the , from beyond his own death, to close the well and save his children

Thatso horrible she couldn&039;t stand it, and this time she was sick, and had to pause to throw up on the floor It meant he hadn&039;t died instantly

It meant there had been a chance, even if it was just a small one, to save hied out Brent

He could have survived

She could have saved him

She dropped down beside hiainst the bones as if curling up with him on a couch back in their house, and put her ar to hold him It was morbid of her, she supposed, but in her head it was just a way to say goodbye to hi over the edge of the well like snakes looking for so to bite She didn&039;t run away They caht they were probing her, or ed Eventually they withdrew once ht flickered out of the diie decided She needed to get ot up and brushed herself off, then set about picking up the bones, even the little finger bones she had to pry away from the lid There was no way to carry them all in her arms, so she took off her hoodie and tied it into a kind of sack she could use to hold the various pieces The bones were scorched and covered with a black residue that stained her hands, but the work didn&039;t make her feel ill This was her father A man she had truly loved, even if she never really showed it