When Noah got about halfway to Building 10, he stopped the rover, and we discussed how close to bring it.  One the one hand, it was very valuable to us, and we didn't want it to get damaged.  On the other hand, it felt like it was our getaway vehicle, and if we needed to get away quickly we didn't want to have it too far away.  Neither of these concerns make much sense, given that there was, again, not any real physical Monster in there.  But, we were all thinking like we were headed into battle, and it was making us jumpy.

Once we had decided, after entirely too much discussion, the right exact distance away from Building 10 to park it, we needed to decide how we were going in.  Should we try to go through the regular door, if that could even be done now?  Or should we climb through the crack in the building that had resulted from the quake?  I think the discussion went on so long because, once we actually decided, there wasn't any obvious way to keep stalling, and we would have to go in.  So we debated the pros and cons of each way of approach for a long time.  You know, one thing about having a discussion where you don't care so much about the answer, or winning the argument, but more about making sure that it lasts as long as possible because you're afraid of what comes next when it's done, is that everyone is really willing to listen to everyone else's point of view.  We have never had such a patient and considerate discussion, giving everyone their say, even prompting other people to speak up with statements like, "what do you think, Emma?  I'd like to hear your opinion."  I think we all knew at that point that we were just bullshitting.  That statement was me, by the way, but I'd like to point out in my defense that it was, literally speaking, true.  I did want to hear Emma's opinion, even if only because I was hoping it would take a while and I was scared.  Unfortunately Emma just said, "I don't care, whatever you guys think," and then it was time to go.

Nothing like cowardice to make everyone polite about who gets to go through the door first.  "After you, no, after you!"  But eventually, we stopped talking, got out of the rover in our mechsuits, and then headed towards the front door.  Which, was no longer working, so we had to go around to the side where the walls had collapsed, which meant all the discussion about which way to approach was pointless, since only one way was possible.  After punching pointlessly at the keypad to open the door several times, we trudged around to the jagged opening in the side of the building, which looked to me like the opening to a cavern.  I looked down at a chunk of rubble that had tumbled out, and saw a piece of iron rebar sticking out of it.  I picked it up, since I was (because of the mechsuit) now strong enough to carry it easily, even with the concrete chunk still attached at one end.

"What is that for?" asked Noah.

"To poke things with, to make sure it's stable before I step forward," I lied.

"Then why are you carrying it like it's a mace?" asked Noah.

"Because I probably will need to hit you with it for being a smartass," I said.  No, not really.  I just quietly turned it around, holding it by the end with the concrete still attached, as if I had really intended to use it to probe the ground ahead of me.  Then, realizing that I was wearing a mechsuit, I crushed the concrete, removing pretty much all of it from the whole length of the iron rebar, and then held it out in front of me.  This was good for two reasons.  One, it was way more convenient, and I could actually imagine using it to test the ground (or walls, or roof) in front of me before I stepped forward.  Two, I felt just a bit badass for crumbling concrete with my "hands", even if it was really just proving that I was wearing a mechsuit, which is essentially a piece of construction equipment so of course it can crush things.  It still felt more than a little reassuring.  I was not a 12-Earth-year old boy, frightened of his own shadow as he headed into the place where his mom and dad both died.  I was a guy who could crush concrete with his "hands", and I had a pretty heavy piece of rebar to bash things with.  Not claiming that this made any rational sense, just that it made me feel less small and afraid.

The quake had broken open the building such that it had what looked kind of like a narrow cave opening in the side, surrounded with rubble that had broken off the walls as it tore apart.  To be honest, given how small the shift in the ground underneath it actually was, the amount of damage to the building seemed excessive.  It makes me think that maybe something had been off with that building's construction in the first place.  That place was cursed.

Still, the opening was narrow enough that we had to go through it one at a time, which meant someone needed to be first.  Liam was going to go first, but since his hand was hurt he had some difficulty operating one arm of the mechsuit, and it seemed like it would be a better idea if somebody else went first and cleared a path to walk.  The mechsuits are big and strong, but they make you a bit clumsy, and certainly not nimble.  One of the things the safety videos for the mechsuits stressed is that they are not good for walking over uneven ground, and you shouldn't expect to be able to walk over rough ground like you can when you're not in a mechsuit.

Ava, who had been gung ho to come at first, was now more or less freaking out about the idea of going in, although fortunately in a quiet way.  Her face was absolutely stony, but her eyes were big and watery, and she was hanging back.  Emma looked to be doing better, and probably would have gone first if asked, but was also not pushing her way to the front.  I guess I was about the same as Emma, in this respect.

Noah stepped forward and went into the dark cavern lair of the Monster...uh, I mean, through the cracked open side of the building into the space where our dead parents were, clearing away some of the rubble on the floor as he went.  Liam followed, then Emma, then me.  As I stepped up to the threshold, I looked first into the interior, now covered in a thin layer of reddish-brown dust.  Then I looked back at Ava, who hadn't moved.

"Come on," I said.  She shook her head no, saying nothing.

I wondered if I should go back and try to nudge her forward, but I thought that might make her dig in her heels.  Ava is not a person to push around, even if she's not wearing a mechsuit.  So instead, I just turned and walked inside, figuring that being out there alone would probably freak her out eventually, and she would come in on her own.  What's interesting to me now, thinking back on that, is not that my strategy worked, and she came in after me.  It's that, really, if it hadn't been for Ava behind me, and me worrying about how to convince her to go in, I probably would have been too occupied with my own thoughts, to go in myself.  I would have freaked myself out and been too scared.  Instead, I was thinking about her, and the way to convince her to go in was for me to go in first, so I did that without thinking about it too much.  Trying to reassure somebody else can sometimes be a good way to stay calm yourself.  Or at least it helped for a little while.

Once we were inside, the mechsuits helped us look around in the dim light that came through the cracked roof; obviously the power in Building 10 had stopped long ago.  There was a lot of equipment, mostly stuff we didn't know much about, tall rectangular boxes with dead computer control panels on the side, and a bunch of tubes that brought various chemicals in or out of that piece of equipment.  But in and around everything, it looked like there were people just lying down, asleep maybe, or passed out.  But, covered with a thin layer of Martian dust.  Probably that was good, because that way it was hard to recognize who was who, and we didn't really want to.  Or, not too quickly, anyway.

"Why isn't anyone talking to me?" asked Olivia over the radio.

"We're here," said Liam, his voice tense and the syllables clipped short, like he was talking over a throat spasm or something.  Which, I suppose, he probably was, in that several of us felt like we might be about to cry.  I tried to think of something to do, to keep that from happening.  It seemed like we might need focus.

"There's no power here, and hasn't been for a long time," I said, thinking that I would talk to keep Olivia in the loop about what we were doing, and also because it gave me something to do besides bawl.  "The equipment mostly looks like it's undamaged, or at least no rubble fell on it and cracked it or anything.  There's a lot of connections to it, power and water of course but also a lot of other chemicals.  I think there's a lot of chemicals that are used in making the batteries..."

Once I said that, looking around, I realized that they hadn't been electrocuted.  Their bodies were all posed as if they had just fallen down, as if their muscles had been relaxed at the time they fell.  They were all around the building, so it would have been pretty hard for them to all get electrocuted at the same time anyway, since the floor was concrete and there was no sign of a water spill or anything else that would allow one source of electricity to electrocute them all.  But, they did all have their helmets off; some of them weren't even wearing their suits.  They were inside a functional building, there was no particular reason they expected to need to wear helmets.

I read once about a risk from some gas leaks, in which there's no odor or burning or any other sign that something is wrong.  The person isn't getting enough oxygen, but they may not even notice that fact, until they are about to pass out.  This is especially true, if they're not really thinking about whether or not they feel funny at all, like say if they're concentrating on working.  Maybe especially if they're concentrating on how to figure out how to work machines they've never used before.

I remembered my dad saying that Building 10 had never seemed to work that well, everything in it seemed to be messed up in one way or another.  He blamed the people who worked there, who didn't seem to be very good at getting the details right.  I wonder if that's why there was a gas leak, and the detectors were not set up to sound the alarm.  Or maybe, there had been a low level leak for a while, and it had made the people who worked there not quite right in the head, but it didn't get bad enough to kill people until after the Evacuation.  Either way, when a bunch of people went in there without quite knowing what they were doing or how it should work...

"Oliver?" came Olivia's voice over the radio.

"Yeah," I said.  "still here.  I don't think they were electrocuted.  I think they were killed by a gas leak.  But I guess that doesn't really matter now.  But it does mean that probably the equipment is not safe for us to use, anyway."

There was silence for a while.  The others in Building 10 were looking around, trying not to see too much as they looked, but unable to stop looking either.  Eventually, we all found our parents.  Each person quietly moved through the building, with sidelong glances, until they stopped, and then the just stood there for a while.  At least, that's what happened with Liam and Emma.  I don't know for sure with Ava or Noah because then I found my parents, and I didn't notice anything else happening for a long time.

It looked like they had been sitting in front of a big rectangular piece of equipment, maybe looking at the control panel and trying to figure out how it worked, or maybe it was running and they were just monitoring it.  Regardless, they had just sort of slumped over and died.  Dad was still leaning against the machine, and mom had toppled off the stool she had been sitting on and was lying on the ground.  I just stood there for a while, picturing the two of them talking to each other while they were working, not aware that there was a problem.  I noticed that all of the adults were in different parts of the building, working on different pieces of equipment, and they wouldn't have been likely to see anyone else passing out before they did.  Did they have a moment of panic at the end, as they finally realized something was wrong, but couldn't move to do anything about it?  I hope not.  I hope they just slid into unconsciousness, without realizing there was a problem.  But, either way, this was where they spent their last moments, and I just stood there not sure what to do, kind of stunned by every memory I ever had of mom and dad.  I didn't want to touch the corpses, afraid it would replace those memories of their faces, with images of their dead bodies, but I also couldn't imagine just leaving them there, so I stood there and didn't know what to do.  I suppose it must have been kind of like that for the other kids.

"Is everything ok?" asked Olivia over the radio, since we hadn't said anything in a while.  I was about to answer, when the next quake hit.