Free Summerhill by Kevin Frane

what was happening before the coral gave way. He tried to dive for the hatch of the lifeboat, but he’d already lost his footing as the surface of the reef crumbled. Katherine cried out, but her scream was cut off as she fell into the nevereef as well.
    What Summerhill and Katherine fell into, however, was nothing at all like a coral reef. Below them was pure emptiness, like the space outside the Nusquam , but whereas Summerhill had been able to saunter through that pleasant sort of nothingness, here he and Katherine were being drawn into intimidating, unwelcoming emptiness. There wasn’t even any sign of the fragments of coral that had fallen in underneath them.
    They weren’t pulled down by gravity, but rather pushed down by some other force. Summerhill didn’t know what else it was, but he knew what it wasn’t. It felt like being wrung through a sponge, extruded through thick, viscous emptiness by unseen hands.
    The hostess’ face was white with shock, her mouth wide with a scream that only barely reached Summerhill’s ears despite how close she was, still the same scream she’d begun to let out when the coral had collapsed underneath her. Her legs and arms wheeled about through the emptiness at a fraction of the speed that flailing in panic ought to, the whipping of her hair and the blinking of her eyelids slowed to an equal degree. It was the look in her eyes, though, still stricken with frozen terror, that showed Summerhill that Katherine was stuck in that moment, trapped in the agonizingly slow passage of time.
    The fur on the back of Summerhill’s neck bristled and stood on end. Though he could not see beneath himself, he felt as if the empty skyscrapers of the World of the Pale Gray Sky were down below, were waiting for him, to catch him in their cold, lifeless grasp, like fingers of glass and metal reaching up from the coarse hand of a dead urban landscape.
    With a surge of desperation, Summerhill fought against the force working on him. Moving his body as it plummeted through the emptiness was still slow going, like trying to swim through gelatin, but it was possible. The food pack slung across his back weighed him down at first, but he fought against that, as well. He dragged himself closer to Katherine and grabbed her by the hand. Her skin was cool to the touch, and felt more like the plastic of a mannequin than actual flesh, but the dog could still feel the faint twitch of life within. Gritting his teeth, Summerhill pulled her by the arm as he pitched downward and dove .
    Now that his head was facing downward, Summerhill saw for sure that there were no buildings down below. There was nothing below, not as far as he could see, but as he kicked his legs, he was getting there faster. He kicked and kicked and kicked, dragging Katherine down along with him. Time sped up more and more by the moment, and the rushing of his pulse in his ears got stronger and harder and louder and more real until everything snapped back completely into place.
    Eight
    Details
    As soon as reality coalesced around them once more, Summerhill and Katherine fell several feet. The landing was jarring, but it didn’t hurt much. The ground felt soft, spongy, negating most of the brunt of the impact. After the initial shock faded, however, and Summerhill had a chance to paw around at the surface they’d fallen onto, the ground felt hard and unyielding as solid rock.
    Pitch blackness still engulfed their surroundings. The air was stale and—well, not stale, but just kind of nondescript. Neither warm nor particularly cold, not dry and yet not damp. Summerhill perked his ears and listened carefully, but he could hear no sounds other than Katherine’s groaning and the drumming rush of his own pulse hammering through his skull.
    Katherine groped about blindly, her hand smacking against Summerhill’s arm a few times before she got purchase on his shoulder and pulled herself up into a sitting position. Summerhill helped to prop her up, and