There’s a monument in the sky, gigantic, something great and invincible, like evil or truth.

Another pyramid, this one is many hundreds of feet tall, hovering there over us, amongst the desolation, the ruined buildings that still somehow stand.

Enormous towering tombstones inscribed with nothing but the name of the past, a time long forgotten other than in this place, the Lost City.

These things, skyscrapers many thousands of feet tall, I’d only ever heard the tales, knew only what they had passed down, seen the ruined foundations pulverised by the lightning. Hard to imagine such a place from such a time still standing, but it’s here, somehow, and now so are we.

The boy stands next to me, the twitch in his shoulder back, the bite of his lower lip working away. Him and I in the middle of this Lost City, this vast graveyard, having travelled for weeks now aided only by the technology given to us by the Descendants and the boy’s special guidance.

Here to find what they told us still exists, another one of their kind, a pyramid, a ziggurat, but one that is still operational. One waiting here, hiding in and protecting the Lost City, so a child like Jacob might one day find it. Only one like Jacob might find it.

A pyramid that has the means to get us where we’ve been told is our ultimate destination on this new journey to which they have appointed us. Where we may find our salvation, where we will find hope for survival in this world. To the ‘crete and its origins and where we might live again. To meet the maker, the destroyer, and save what we can.

I look down at the boy and then back up again at the gigantic pyramid hovering up between the monolithic buildings. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I say to him. “What they said we needed to find, another group like them, more Descendants, ones that you can use, or ones that can use you to take us to it.”

“To where the ‘crete began,” he whispers. “A machine to last a thousand years.”

There’s a low hum in the air, like back in the last place, given off by that glowing supercomputer that lit our way with its strange and eternal glow deep underground.

“Where the ‘crete began,” I say back, a quiver in my voice at the thought.

He stands next to me, looking around, across, down the broken streets, up at the towering buildings. This place, like an end, full of lurking death and hidden evil, still stands, still holds itself against the new world and it’s because of this monument, this gliding fortress, the hovering pyramid, the vehicle that has been said can take us with the aid of this boy, Jacob, the navigator, to our own end.

“What do we do now?” I say and spit, the floor here not the same as the dust out on the planes whence we came. Concrete yes, but roads amongst the buildings, glass even, things, materials I’ve never seen, metals, steel, all sorts of treasure that’s resisted the ‘crete and any gambler in any settlement would lose their life over.

“I can feel it,” he says and the twitch in his shoulder grows and the bite of his lip swells.

“Feel what?” I say and pull the weapon the Descendants gave me from the big holster on my back, eyes wide, ready. The hair across my arms and bare skin stands the same as it does when the lightning draws close, but now, there’s no thunder, no lightning. It’s still, no air moving here, no winds of ‘crete, only the quiet apathy of the gigantic buildings, the low hum of the hovering vessel.

“Whatever’s inside that thing, the seat,” he says pointing up at it, a shake in his small hand. “What they said would take us to it, it’s calling me.”

The vessel starts to lower itself down in-between the buildings, no sound. Not sure what I would have expected, not seen or heard a working engine since I was a boy, but I remember them being loud.

“They’re coming,” Jacob says.

“I know it,” I step forward and look up with a squint, the hard sun beating down, the silhouette of the pyramid in the sky drawn out against it.

“No, something else,” he says.

There’s a small whistling sound followed by three thin trails of smoke that come out of a building high up and far down the empty street we’re stood on.

They whip themselves up and then pile drive down into the peak of the pyramid with a massive explosion.

I shield the boy, bolting off the road and into a doorway of a building as the shock wave hammers its way down and blasts the dust and glass and debris off the surrounding ground, tearing clear the entrance to the building.

I’ve got the big gun the Descendants gave me held in my old hands, the boy’s down to my side, shaking and whispering to himself.

Something’s up there, in these buildings. Someone that follow us, or found this place, or was sitting, waiting for the pyramid to expose itself again when a child came, wanting it for their own, to do with it what they will.

“Marauders,” the boy says, on the floor, shaking as I try to spy what’s happening outside, the dust beginning to settle.

“How do you know that?” I say back to him, my old hands twitching, holding the big gun and no thought or idea of what to do with the thing. “There’s not been any marauders since I was your age, they lost their fight.”

“They told me,” he stands and comes next to me pointing out at the pyramid still slowly coming down, the hum reaching my ears again through the ringing from the blast.

“What’re they telling you, Jacob?”

“I can hear them now, instructions. I know what to do,” he comes alongside me and reaches for the gun. “Give me that.”

He takes the weapon off me and steps out into the light, the dust and debris thinned now, the world and all its terror opening back up.

There’s a scream, a roar, something ungodly and inhuman coming from across the way as I step out and into the massive street in the shadow of the lowering pyramid.

“Stay low, old man,” he turns to me, a look in his eyes unlike anything I’ve seen, in him or anyone else. A sense of meaning, of purpose to him now. It pierces me, this look, this idea, lost for so long now.

He kneels as a horde of marauders burst from a building across the street. Big hulking things, roaring, arms raised with implements of brutality, spiked clubs, hammers, spears, things lost to the ‘crete for a long time. Their armour sticks to them hard as they run, nothing like the organic rags we’ve lived in for all these years. They’ve got plating and steel and they’re charging us, charging the boy who has gone rigid, the weapon’s butt fitting snug into his shoulder.

I can see his eyes squint and there’s a crack, an explosion of a sound, as loud as the lightning, the rolling thunder that chases this planet. One marauder explodes and a trial of smoke rises from the boy’s weapon.

He lets off another shot, and another, and they continue to erupt in clouds of blood and dust, bone and steel. The street’s wide, massive enough to fit all the people and vehicles that this old and vast city once housed, but the marauders are hammering over to us quick, quicker than he can keep firing.

“Boy!” I yell at him as the pyramid comes down between the buildings, closer with each second, the marauders unrelenting in their charge, unshaken by the gun or its bullets.

He lets off a few more rounds, pauses for a fraction of a second before leaping and spinning in one fluid motion.

My eyebrows furrow and I’m about to ask how the hell he’s doing this, but he’s already on me, pulling me, rushing me toward the monument of our future.

We’re bolting around the debris of the old world, the roaring tribe with its brutal ways screaming behind us, the wonder of the vast floating construction in front. It’s hovering a few dozen feet off the floor now, standing vast and proud between the ruined buildings, with a neo-crete staircase coming out of its middle, grey teeth rolled out to the ground for us.

My old and stiffened legs carry me up, the boy taking the lead, the ‘crete in my bones flaking off as we pound over the grey steps and into the darkened portal of an opening.

Something rings out, another explosion, a massive wind rush blasting us into the pyramid, and everything goes black.

It comes in slow, twitches in my fingers, soft air running across my skin, the low humming sound resonating through me. Faint light through my thin eyelids, and a sense, something deep and long forgotten, a hidden knowledge.

“Gideon,” comes the whisper of a small voice. “It’s okay, open your eyes, we’re safe.”

I peel my eyelids back and shift my old bones, it’s soft under me, something I’ve not felt in a long time. Looking around, we’re in a small room, flattened and grey, the same ‘crete as always, and as my eyes adjust, I turn and see the boy.

“What happened?”

“There was an explosion, nearly got us, but we made it inside in time,” he says, stepping back and revealing himself. Standing there, proud, upright, no chew of his lip, no twitch in his shoulder now, there’s something over it, some armour. Shining blue steel, intricate designs carved into its layers the likes of which I’ve never seen before, something from a different time, that hidden knowledge.

“Inside where? The pyramid?”

“Yes, we’re protected now,” he says, the low blue light glowing around him.

“What’s that?” I say and point at his shoulder armour as I shift legs around and off bed, onto the cold ‘crete floor.

“They call it a navigational spaulder,” he says and turns and looks at it. “Say it’s been waiting for me, their old technology, the first of them, the ones that invented the ‘crete and left the planet if they could. It’s part of what makes me able to do what I can do.”

“What did they say you can do?” I stand with a small shake but keep myself up.

“Take us, navigate us, it’s in my DNA, they bred us for it. Once there were many like me but now…” he trails off and looks at the armour again. “A long time has passed; seems I might be the only one left. This technology is a part of it, they want me to take the seat.”

“The seat?” I say coming up to him, he seems bigger now somehow, not taller or wider, but bigger, presence, and stature, something ebbing from him. It pervades the small room, that hidden knowledge that creeps through me.

“More of their old tech, their navigator died many generations ago, they lost the bloodline and became lost themselves, so they stayed here, in the Lost City, waiting to see if another came, so we can find our way, find our way to it.”

“Find a way to it? To the ‘crete?” I say and swallow against a dry throat.

“To where the ‘crete began.”

A doorway bolts open behind him and two of those like the other Descendants stand there in their robes, their smooth faces unmoving and wide eyes staring. One black, one white.

“We must hurry,” the black one says.

“Why?” I stand between them and the boy, but the boy comes around me and turns.

“I wanted to wait until you were awake before I decided what to do,” he says, looking up at me, a flicker of that youth behind his new eyes that now contain this unknown strength.

“I’m an old man, Jacob. You’re the future, you know what you need to do.”

“I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you,” he says.

“You think it’s real?”

“I can feel it, something, I don’t know, through this thing,” he says quick, without thinking, without blinking, without a flinch. “I know it’s what I’m here for.”

“Then we do it,” I say.

He nods and turns, and we follow the Descendants through the low hanging concrete walls, smooth as the day it constructed them, the neo-crete under their control, performing the task they designed it to do.

We take twists and turns through the huge floating monument until the pair leading us splits and turn and stand either side of a doorway.

“Here we will stay, they forbid us to go any further.”

The doorway shoots open, upwards, and reveals a large room with more of the low blue light, a chair in the middle, a concrete throne, gigantic, all hard edges and flat surfaces, far too big for the boy but he walks towards it. Drawn to it.

The navigator, Jacob to take us where we need to go, for us to follow him.

“This is it,” he whispers, the blue light swimming around us.

I can feel it, it holds that hidden knowledge, meaning beyond my reckoning, but the boy, here at my side, he looks at the throne with wide eyes and he knows he has found his true place in the world.

It lowers and shrinks its way down to fit his small frame, from this concrete station for some being of the past, genetically engineered to take up its position, down to now, for this boy, for what he represents. A lost civilisation on the brink of extinction, with only the faintest embers of hope still smouldering somewhere in our dying hearts.

Stepping up to it he turns and sits, the spaulder igniting in furious blue flame, his back pinned straight, the ‘crete moulding its way around his frail body, mouth agape and in a flash, the room changes.