around.
He grasped and clawed up, falling roughly to the street, his limbs full of snapping little tendrils of fire.
Kitna reached out her arm, waiting, with no questions about the boat.
Lifting himself with a groan, he pulled her up, bringing her to his good shoulder.
"New plan," he gasped. "We fight our way east."
She nodded weakly, an exhausted smile hinting at her resigned understanding of what was about to happen.
Examining the nearby streets that still remained standing, he lifted his awareness free from his damaged body, fiercely calculating all the options. Without his cell and perfect information, it was all vague estimation… but it was all he had.
The rising roar hinted that the riots were nearing.
No, not the riots plural. The riot - the violent surge to end all violent surges. This was a species in its last days. He knew there would be no holding back, not anymore.
Panting, he visualized the buildings that should be all around, his eyes narrowed. "I know this area… why do I know this area?"
A drop of blood fell from his left eyebrow, shooting down past his vision.
The roar was loudest to the south. That route would be certain death.
Passage to the east ran mostly along a wide central street. There would be no hiding there.
The north offered a long series of mazelike alleys, many still standing, many obscured by debris and collapses. He felt a small hope for that direction - without their cells, they couldn't be tracked in real time… at any other time, taking off their cells would have been a death sentence, but now confusion and anarchy would shield them.
Stumbling forward, he held her tight, and they limped north together, moving along a narrow battered causeway flanked by piles of rubble.
"Tell me about it," she breathed. "Tell me about Somewhere Else."
Turning a corner into a cluttered, high alley, increasingly supporting her to the point of nearly dragging her along, he tried to imagine it.
"They leave each other alone there, if that's what they want," he panted. "There's enough food there. That's for sure."
He paused to pull her over a pile of rubble; she helped as best she could with feeble efforts from her debilitated arms.
"What else?" she whispered.
"There's probably death there, we don't want to get too greedy," he smiled, turning another corner, moving them both past a series of strewn bodies and a flaming chunk of refinery wreckage thrown by the explosion. The heat seared his face as they eked past. "But people don't kill each other. There's no need. There's enough food for everyone, so there's no need to commit crimes at all."
Individual shouts became audible within the approaching roar.
The ticking clock, now prominent in his thoughts, doubled in speed again. His heart strained to its limit attempting to keep up.
She nodded weakly. "How do they… kids…"
They came to a wider street, far more structurally sound than most. The buildings here remained standing against all odds.
"It's all about the young," he continued, ignoring a desperate need to collapse. "Not like here. The children are happy. It's nice."
Unable to speak further, they moved in silence, the oncoming clamor echoing from every direction.
At some point, he realized he was fully dragging her along.
He stopped, his thoughts suddenly blank.
He touched her neck, checking.
The clock accelerated again, now a crescendo far past his ability to keep pace.
Time was almost up.
"Oh," he said to nobody, his tone absent. "Okay."
He laid her down gently against a nearby wall, slinging her down into as respectable a position as he could manage.
He adjusted her tattered clothing, and then ran a hand through her matted hair, smoothing it into the style she preferred. "I… I think they'll make sure you reach the Fields."
He remained on one knee, blankly staring down.
He wondered if he should be feeling something. If ever there was a time to feel a storm of emotions, it would be that moment, right? But there was just that empty void, surrounded by that high-walled castle he'd spent so many years building - protecting nothing.
There was nothing left; nobody left.
He wondered if he should be crafting some grand realization, some final epiphany about society or life or human beings. If ever there was a perfectly poetic point in time, it would be that moment, right?
He gazed at Kitna's calm face, her eyes closed as if she was asleep.
It was all just a game - a twelve-year-long game whose ending had always been inevitable.
He'd played it safe, played it cold, made the tough decisions and kept out of it all, and this was the reward - he'd outlived the other players in his little slice of the game. He would be the last to die. Rolf the Rude, he was indeed, playing it right to the end no matter what, and all the more bitter for it.
He'd never thought he could escape the Hand, not a second time, but Elizabeth's words had stuck with him since the first.
"We just keep going," he said aloud, taking one last indulgence in the ability to finally speak his thoughts aloud.
Gripping the wall with his good arm, he pulled himself up, still intent on heading east.
He made it to the corner before he finally figured out how he knew the area so well.
Standing in the corpse-littered street, gazing up at the horribly familiar buildings all around, a laugh forced its way out from behind his bruised ribs. They were grey without his contacts, but he knew their shapes by heart.
The pain didn't stop him. It was deep, genuine laughter, a response to the most enormous joke, the ultimate farce - a prank obviously played by reality itself just to be terrible.
"How are we back here again?" he asked, shaking his head, the entire situation laughably familiar.
There was even a pile of rubble and bodies in the same spot.
Laughing maniacally, he waited for the roar in the alleys, no longer harboring any illusion of escape.
An older Orani woman limped past, terrified.
He practically cackled with glee and disbelief. "It's the same street!" he shouted at her back as she hurried away. "It's the same street! My family died here! Right here! And here I am again, come to join them! What are the odds?"
She glanced at him in fear as she turned a corner, but she did not reply.
"I'm not the crazy one!" he shouted after her. "It's everyone, it's the world!"
But the insane humor faded into fatigue with each passing heartbeat, leaving him empty again.
They came from every side-street all at once; a frenzied, bloodthirsty wave of animals in a rolling tumble of bitter violence, preceded by a thick surge of terrified victims.
Of the victims, some ran, some fought back, some shouted and pleaded, but it was no use. To the violent, these were not human beings - not now, perhaps not ever, at least not when it mattered.
Utterly calm, he stared down the oncoming Hand.
A corrugated rod jutted from broken debris to his left. He stepped over, pulled until it came free, and returned to his spot, standing with the makeshift weapon ready in his good hand.
It was in their eyes - that hatred that he knew so well.
It gave him some comfort, knowing that this would be the last cycle of violence. The revolutionaries might have had a different end in mind, but the result would still be peace - silence, even, after the bomb. For some reason, his soul was weary of the endless cycles of violence that had led them all to this point, as though he'd personally endured every single one.
In a way, he had. It all fell on him, now, coming to destroy him no matter who he was, no matter what he had - or hadn't - done to deserve it. It didn't matter that he'd technically never killed anyone directly. There was no morality or judgment. There was only death.
The rush of victims began surging past, running for their lives.
"Hey, idiot," the quiet ga
sp came, barely audible over the choir of terrified screams.
He turned, frozen by unbidden hope.
Kitna looked over at him with half-open eyes, a weary smile on her face. "I'm not dead. I just passed out."
Gripping the corrugated rod tighter, but abandoning the last stand immediately, he ran over to her in hopeful shock. "I didn't know - I couldn't tell - Og would have known better, how to judge your wounds…"
"Get us out of here," she breathed, looking past him at the oncoming tide of violence.
Nodding, summoning impossible strength, he lifted her with his good arm and broken arm, all muscles straining against the agony.
Stumbling for the nearest broken section of stone, he jumped.
Reality surged as the water roared past his head again. He kicked up, refusing to stop, refusing to let go of her or the metal rod that might be their only defense. Together, they turned another Underman boat right-side up, clambering weakly into it with no time to spare.
The thunder of violence clashed on the Stonework overhead as he hit the controls and sent the boat sputtering east.
Somebody jumped down, landing in the boat with them, almost sending them both flying.
It was his assailant - that final Subian who had cornered him.
A large bloody gash ran up his face, leaking a light sheen of red down dust-blasted features. His torn clothes sloughed off dirt with each movement. He huffed for a moment, catching his breath. "Truce?"
Kitna spat blood. "Truce? After all this time?"
Rolf waited, still ready for violence, but he made no first move.
The other Subian kneeled in the boat as it began picking up speed. He removed the fragments of his busted cell and tossed them in the water. "You were right, Rolf the Rude. I thought to myself, just