The Crater of Bones

The rock yields under my fist. The edge of the breach crumbles and we finally hack up our lungs in the open air of the Secteur Obsidienne. Jolanda collapses to her knees, clutching Nita against her side. Lio pants, his face covered in soot. Below us, the shaft lights up. The tactical beams of the militiamen sweep the liquefied walls. They are climbing. They want to bury the bones we just tore from the darkness, sealing history before it contaminates the surface. Black blood flows from my wound, evaporating right away on my white-hot skin. I kneel at the edge of the abyss. The militia points their barrels at my backlit silhouette. A shot blazes, ricocheting off an incandescent beam. I plunge my obsidian arm into the stone throat. I channel the entire furnace of INTI.Δ, summoning the buried matter. The rock reaches boiling point. A river of magma flows upstream. It snatches the skulls, femurs, and collarbones of the Oubliés, coating them in lava to hoist them up to us. The trackers drop their weapons. Too late. The flow engulfs them, collapsing the tunnel over their helmets in a crash of muffled thunder. The ground of the plaza trembles, heaves. I pull up sharply. The magma erupts, hurling shards of basalt around us. The molten matter solidifies under the gray sky, sculpting a black crater bristling with human bones. A monument the city will never be able to erase again. A stele demanded by the Mutation. Marisol would surely have smiled at this macabre theater. Light that burns nothing illuminates no one. I withdraw my arm from the petrified crust. Alarms now blare from the neighboring towers, dozens of flashing lights piercing the early morning mist. Jolanda draws her blade, her eyes fixed on the metallic horizon. They are sending the armored vehicles. Do we hold this crater, or do we let the fire spread to the main avenues?