as long as his blurry vision would allow, taking some small comfort in the thought that her body would break all the barriers created by food and time, ending its solar-powered journey some untold distance away, on an unknown continent where she would finally be left in peace.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered after a moment of respectful silence. "Let's go back."
He closed his eyes, fearful of bringing his darkness with him. "We can't. We can't go back." He opened his eyes again, focusing. "There's a -"
But then he saw the cell around her neck. Telling her about the bomb was akin to telling everyone… but why hadn't it already gone off? "There's nothing but death back there," he finally said instead, still undecided.
"I've always followed you," she said quietly, holding him tight, looking around the empty sea for a moment. "Alley to alley, surviving together, you really did keep us alive when most other orphans eventually starved. Even joining the Scientists was your idea, and I can't imagine where we'd be otherwise. But it's time for you to follow me now. Things are changing. We've waited our whole lives for an opportunity like this. But I can't do it alone, remember?" She smiled, but her trembling cheeks belied just how much worry had built up in her days of searching for him. "I need you to come back."
The shadow within his heart seemed weaker in her presence.
It was family, he realized. Family was not just some people that lived nearby. It was this… it was hope that there might actually be a way forward. He'd lost something vital in the explosion, his last sliver of hope snuffed out in the face of incomprehensible power - but now that slightest fragment of faith felt replaced, restored.
Someone had come to save him… he'd thought the idea preposterous, had never even considered the possibility that somebody might look for him.
But that was family… he'd had it all along.
He did have to go back. He had to return, run the risks, and play the hated game. He had to find that bomb… because, no matter how hard he tried to deny it, no matter how deep he tried to hide within himself, something on the outside still mattered to him.
And, as he'd learned the hard way, the lone path led only nowhere.
"I'll come back," he forced out, his face screwed up with emotion, all his masks down. "But not because you say so." He let out a gravelly, pained laugh. "I've decided to, that's all. It's not just for you."
She laughed tearfully once, relieved happiness lighting up her cheeks. "Fine, have it your way, butthead." She kept his hand gripped tight as she fiddled with the controls. "Let's go home."
293
Small hands tugged on his arm. Horrific pain seared out from his leg.
He bit his lip against the mind-numbing agony, managing to make no noise.
The hands continued their painful effort, dragging him out from under the pile of bodies.
Blonde hair fell across his face.
"Rolf? Rolf!"
"Lizzie?" he gasped, arching his back against the street's hard stone, shaking violently with pain.
"Don't call me that," she sobbed, her tears spattering on his face.
Sliding his head around on the dirty stone, taking stock of the nightmare, he stared at each pile of bodies stacked all around, trying to comprehend what had happened. Teary-eyed men and horrified women went about the business of dragging the corpses, handing them down gapsquares to Undermen for transport to the Fields.
"Everyone's dead," she whispered, grasping his shirt randomly. "They're all dead."
"You have to get out of here," he choked out. "Have to get out of the way… maybe they'll forget about you…"
"But my parents…" Her gaze went up to the pile she'd pulled him from, her face bright red, her cheeks wet.
"They're dead," he forced himself to say. "You have to go."
"What about yours?" she asked, still staring at the pile. "Are they…"
He just shook his head, unable to speak the words.
"Your sister…?"
He shook his head again, clenching his eyes shut tightly.
She gripped his arm, looked around the street's chaos desperately, and then began pulling him toward an alley.
The pain thrust into his mind like a lance, hitting him with a forceful wall of darkness.
He returned to awareness slowly, his senses filling in one at a time.
She sat next to him, watching him intently.
High, close walls offered a slight sense of safety.
Dozens of other people lay around the alley in various positions, haggard, gaunt, and listless.
He initially thought he'd gone deaf, but no, the nearby street really sat in absolute silence. The lack of motion, conversation, and crowd presence struck him as eerie and wrong somehow.
A sickly sweet smell hung in the air.
"I think your leg's broke," she whispered, leaning in. "I thought you were gonna die."
Staring down at his torn shirt and tightly wrapped up knee, he struggled to think through senses half-numbed by fire. "My leg…"
She gave a sheepish frown. "I tied it with your shirt. That's what it said to do online."
He didn't know what to say. Nothing made sense. Everything was horrible. It was real, but it couldn't be; it shouldn't have happened, but it had.
She scooted next to him against the wall, folding up her legs, holding her knees close.
He stared at the opposite wall, tracing the large bricks. The building's cheery pink seemed almost comically out of place, and he felt like he should be laughing about it or at least making some comment, but everything felt flat and muted.
He curled his toes, testing his strained tendons. Taut stringy spasms punished him for trying to move.
"What are we gonna do?" she whispered, her head down on her knees, her words barely audible even in the strange quiet.
Trapped in a broken body, mind empty, emotions silent, he considered her question. Floating away from his usual center, toward mechanisms formerly obscured by the energies and distractions of youth, he came to rest on a wide, high plateau.
It was clear that action had to be taken. Visions of family, of neighbors, of acquaintances and strangers and the other neighborhood kids danced like haunting nightmares in grisly crowdlines along the plains of his mind below, tearing at his core.
He brought a brick forth, imagining it into his hands, and laid it forth. He envisioned a wall, a circular defense, blocking out the pain, grief, and shock, blocking out sight of his loved ones entirely. He would come back to them, he promised - when he had the chance. He would not forget, he promised, just delay.
Hiding in his small mental castle, temporarily relieved and alone, he let his cold mechanisms begin turning.
There were so many stories, read in his contacts late in Night shift when he was supposed to be asleep, of times past and times future and a thousand different worlds where life was different… but he couldn't remember any of them. Pulling one up in his vision, he tried to read the first few sentences, but the words felt flat and hollow.
This was the only life.
Certain enormities caught his attention. They were gigantic gears, or dancing symbols flowing together and apart in bizarre rhythms, or a thousand sprawling future paths diverging with every choice like the lone surviving Tree his family had visited the month before.
He'd always seen the enormities within, always known that he understood things faster than most people, always enjoyed grabbing ideas and dissecting them and reorganizing them and putting them back together better than they were before - but he'd never really understood their importance until everything else had been torn away.
Everything else had been torn away; everything except this blonde neighbor girl from the fifth floor.
And, of course, it had to be her, the other solitary smart weirdo, who always interfered with his role with the other kids… always managed to challenge him at computer games and always managed to mess up his attempts to look cool with smarts and always managed to generally frustrate and annoy him to no end…<
br />
But all that was gone.
"Food," he finally croaked, his voice strained. "It's always food."
She finally raised her head, but she remained visibly distraught. "I've got a little bit of money."
He checked his account. It now contained his parents' money, automatically transferred. It wasn't much, but it was the only hope for the moment.
"Me too. Can you…?"
"Yeah, I can get it for both of us."
He monitored the scattered dots all around. Many huddled in buildings in clumps. The people in the streets did not seem to be moving in any directed manner. "You should go to the Railstop now. It looks clear for now."
Sniffling, gathering herself, she nodded and scrambled to her feet. "I'll be back, I promise. Don't go anywhere."
He watched her dot intently, ready to warn her if anyone moved her direction, but they all remained distracted by some live speaker.
Accessing the feed, he found himself watching a brutal scene alongside a hundred million others. A long line of black-haired people with subtle blue streaks in their hair stood surrounded by hundreds of grim-faced and heavily tattooed men from the other major cultures.
He recognized the man speaking.
The greying Orani man held a long knife, already covered in blood. He spoke violently and vehemently, pacing back and forth in front of the line of captives. Behind him stood countless bloodied and angry-eyed men of violence, watching and nodding hungrily along with his words.
"Our Families will not submit to the whims of a vote," he roared. "The Subians have no power to enforce, and no fire for leadership. I believe we've taught the world a lesson today.