***
Arms closed around him.
Somebody grappled and kicked, pulling and pushing with intent desperation.
The water suddenly dropped away from his head, and he gasped through the smoke and dust, struggling to stay above the splashing froth.
"Rolf! It's me! Stop fighting!"
Kitna kicked repeatedly between breaths, keeping them both up.
It took several gasps for reality to return, albeit fuzzily.
"How the hell did you find me?"
Soaking, shivering, eyeing the nearby patches of fire warily, and rising and falling with the rolling waters around her shoulders, she gave him a mock glare. "I'm just awesome like that, duh."
He laughed between shivers, wincing against his horribly pained ribs.
Looking around in confusion at the muted grey Stonework in various stages of collapse all around, he touched his face. "I lost my contacts… and my cell…"
"Me too. Come on," she groaned, exhausted. "We've got to get out of the water."
A distant rumble hinted at secondary explosions somewhere nearby.
Swimming for a nearby pillar, they gripped the cold stone with agonized relief.
"Look out!" someone shouted - a distant fellow survivor in the water.
Another massive wave rolled in. He tried to get away from the pillar in time, but the force slammed him up against the hard stone. A painful fire and a physical crack seemed to resound in his arm.
He saved his scream of pain until after the wave passed and smoky air rushed around his face once more. Grunting as he splashed toward safety, he tried to favor his arm, now only a half-capable mass of agony and mangled flesh.
She swam back to the pillar in the lilting waves. "Come on. Up." She seemed even more tired than him.
Gripping the rough handholds with his one good hand, keeping his broken arm pressed up against his body, he pulled up with all his might. She held onto another handhold, and they inched up together, supporting each other.
Another rumble shook the Stonework. Something across the gap above crashed and shifted. An entire building toppled into the water with a deafening reverberation.
"Come on," she said again, panting. "Up, up…"
His whole body torn with pain, he gripped the edge of the street proper. They angled up together, falling on the sun-warmed stone just as the next big wave slapped at their feet, splattering them as one final taunt.
She laughed weakly, falling prone.
The street sat in curious silence, free of crowds for the first time since it was built. A few bodies littered the sea-swept corners. Fires burned at random. Many of the buildings around had collapsed, giving the area a strange openness.
He staggered to his feet, ignoring his cracking right knee and broken arm. He pulled at Kitna, lifting her up against his good shoulder.
Her bare skin felt slick and warm against his, and the tattered remains of her shirt dripped blood.
"You're hurt…"
"Yuh. Where to, captain?"
"That way," he said, looking east. The still-standing structures in the distance seemed oddly blurry. He blinked a few times, but they did not clear. He set his jaw as he realized just how much the world had denied him - he didn't even know his own body. He'd never had the chance. "I'm near-sighted…"
She laughed weakly again, and they staggered forward a few steps.
She pulled downward listlessly. "I need a rest."
A roar in the distance began growing louder; far different from the rage of the sea or the ferocity of the explosion - and far more dangerous. He knew that sound well. "We have to keep going. We can still make it… somehow…"
"I'll make you a deal," she panted, holding her shirt-covered side. "I'll tell you our plan if you tell me you yours. Nobody can hear us anyway, right? First normal private conversation in our entire lives, and all we had to do was blow it all up…"
Worried, he sank to his good knee. "Fine. What's your plan?"
"You're going to have to deal with it," she apologized. "A bigger version of what we ended up having time for."
"A bigger version?"
"It's on a dead man's switch. I don't know who it's linked to. It's mostly in place, but we didn't have the time or the sentiment or the…" She paused for a long, pained blink. "It'll go off if that person's vitals stop."
"Well, we can't count on using it, then, whatever it is. It won't last long. There are so many people dying…" he replied warily, listening to the approaching riots. "They're probably killing everyone on that list right now, and everyone who was heading for the refinery, and more -"
"It's a bomb, Rolf. A nuclear bomb."
It was his turn to laugh. "What? Come on. Where would they build something like that? Where would they hide it?"
She didn't smile. "Where would they communicate in secret? If your first guess isn't a hundred-year-old bugged computer game."
"You're serious."
She nodded. "I'm sorry. We were going to split society in half with the threat. Not just hole up in some refinery… it was never intended to actually go off."
He rubbed his face, trying to process the enormity of what she was saying. "But the dead man's switch -"
"It had to be a credible threat."
They both remained silent for some time, staring at each other, one apologetic, one disbelieving.
He suddenly felt very aware of the heavy smoke sifting past his hair, and of each and every scrape and injury. Past the heavy, gritty dust, he even felt a scant bit of the sun's warmth. A half-sob contorted his chest. "Are you… is this… are you saying… is this the end of the world?"
She breathed in once, her bloody lips curled up in an unhappy frown, tears running down her beautiful cheeks. "I'm so sorry. There's somebody else, there has to be. It went so wrong - so wrong - it was never supposed to happen like this."
He staggered back, holding himself up with his good arm.
There was nothing to say.
His thoughts were all on Elizabeth, and a little bit on Og, thankful neither would have to be here for the pathetic, agonizing, fiery end.
But within him, deep within, inside his most guarded keep - sitting at the crudely hewn chrome table with his inner self - a cold and black figure laughed. Reborn in that moment of pained despair, in that terrified moment after the explosion, the silhouette watched with sadistic humor. Dice fell on the imaginary table between them.
"That's alright," he said after a moment. "It's alright. So everybody's probably going to die at any moment. The plan's the same."
"Your plan?" she asked, leaning her head on the wall remnant behind her.
"We're going to steal a boat," he said, fierce. "And we're going to head east, under the Stonework, avoiding the riots. And we're going to find the Islander, and we're going to get him to tell us where he's from somehow. It's got to be Somewhere Else. I don't care where. And we'll go there, you and me, and we'll be far away from all of this. And they can blow each other to hell, kill each other in the streets, it won't matter. We'll be long gone."
"Is that what you want, Rolf?" she asked. "To just go, forever?"
"It's the plan."
She took a moment to respond. "Then it's a good plan."
He peered over the rough, shattered edge, scanning the waters below. "There's an Underman boat now. Wait here."
"Don't…" she breathed, reaching for him weakly with one arm. "Don't leave me here…"
"I have to. We have to keep going."
Steeling himself, holding his mangled arm tight, he leapt back into the now-calming sea. The water sank over his head, but he kicked up, trying to keep focused against all the screaming fears at the edge of his thoughts and the mind-numbing pain spiraling out from his arm. So the murderous crowd was coming, and there was an even bigger bomb somewhere, so what… everyone he knew was dead, so what? He still had Kit, still had the two of them, and they could still make it, however narrow the path might be - there was still a chance.
/> The rapidly ticking clock at the back of his mind sped up, keeping time with his racing heart.
"Just keep going," he muttered, climbing into the charred craft, exactly like the one that had brought him back to the Stonework only two days before. "Just keep going."
He clambered awkwardly over the two metal benches, splashing and sprawling toward the back, but the simple controls sat unresponsive. The engine had a large gash in its casing, torn open by shrapnel.
Shivering with chill, his jaw set against fiery pains all throughout his limbs, he used his good hand to investigate the mechanisms within.
"You were always better with machines," he said aloud, trying to keep that thought at bay - the thought that Elizabeth was a charred corpse somewhere.
He collapsed for a moment in the chill water in the curved bottom of the boat, exhausted. He wanted to scream in anger, but he had no strength for it. It was all he could do to gaze past the billowing black columns high above to the scant traces of clear blue, and speak to them, as if the vaulted sky could somehow carry his words to Elizabeth. "I'm sorry that I wasn't the friend you needed. I always thought you'd outlive me for sure, that you'd always be here…"
But she wasn't there, and he tumbled over the side, splashing toward the pillar with the last of his strength.
One hand up… one foot up… the other foot up… he strained his neck with the force of resisting a scream, the pain from his right knee almost unbearable… one hand up… one foot up… "Just keep going," he grunted, using his damaged knee again, his broken arm threatening to force him to black out.
Through it all, the clock kept ticking, faster and faster, now dictating his heart rate rather than the other way