by TIME, S. O.
With an involuntary groan at my miserable state, I rip off a piece of my now tattered shirt and cover my nose with it as I try to stand back up. I feel dizzy, and a loud ringing runs through my head as pain throbs through my body. I touch my ear with my free hand and feel a warm liquid dripping out. I don’t need to look to know that it is blood. The taste of it fills my mouth as well, and I spit out a red glob, thicker than it should be with dust. After taking a moment to steady myself, I finally notice red lights on the ground, blinking in unison and heading off north. With a flicker of hope, I realize they are emergency lights—they probably lead to an underground bunker.
Due to the smoke, I can’t see anything except for the hazy lights. As I stumble beside them, the ringing in my ears begins to subside, and I can faintly hear the wailing of sirens competing with the cries of enraged and injured nymians. I raise my arm to check my holo for my location but the screen is shattered. I touch my condenser, but the tracker I was given is nowhere to be found. Now Aldrea and Hana have no way to find me. With my lack of vision and my broken holo, I have no choice but to follow the lights. If all of the underground bunkers are connected, I can follow these lights to one and try to find Hitori before coming back out for Kou.
I stare at the path for a moment before I continue. The heaviness of my body is returning to me, and for a moment I worry I’ve lost my power again. But no—I sense the energy running within my body. Rather it’s the part of me that’s still mortal that provides the burden. Mortal bones, and muscles, and flesh, all of it weary and battered by the growing chaos of this world.
With each step the piercing sound of sirens and nymians fades as if I’ve sunk underwater. The world blurs, and I wonder if I’m about to faint again, but my head feels clear despite the visual distortions. Cautious not to stretch my senses too far, I pulse out and sense a mass of energy behind me. I turn around to see Naomi. She’s staring off to the side, one arm holding the other like a shy teenager at their first school dance. Her figure is clear, but the rest of the world is still smeared and woozy, like an amateur impressionist painting. There is a brief silence before she begins to speak.
“I really never meant for any of this to happen.”
I barely manage to hear her words, but something about the way she speaks pierces through the chaos. My voice muffled with the ripped-up piece of my shirt still covering my mouth, I reply.
“Why is this happening? Are you behind all of these Tears?”
She refuses to look at me, but I can feel tremendous pain and anguish in her energy. Her stance is rigid and brittle, as if she hasn’t relaxed her muscles in a very long time. Her eyes stare toward the ground, but it’s clear she sees more than the ashy dust. She shakes her head.
“I didn’t open these Tears,” she laughs softly, “I don’t really have the energy to make all of them, anyway.”
I stare blankly at her, trying to understand what she means.
“You took all of my energy. You should have more than enough,” I say.
She shakes her head again. “I took what I needed to keep myself alive—existing, I should say. With all of the timelines I’ve had to create after each of your returns, I haven’t been able to recover. I had no choice.”
I briefly squeeze my eyes shut against the roaring in my head. Your fault, your fault, your fault. I really shouldn’t have come back here.
“But believe me,” she says as if reading my mind, “it’s not your fault. This.” She looks at the chaos around us. “This is really my doing. I wasn’t strong enough. And now I’m weaker than ever. I honestly don’t think I could create another timeline if I tried. I barely have the strength to move around and gather the souls of the deceased. So many I couldn’t…”
“How is this your fault? I thought you didn’t create the Tears. How did the Tear open above you when you made me mortal?” I cough from dirt I’m breathing in. “Are you saying that also wasn’t you?”
“I hate myself for what I’ve become. I really wasn’t a bad person. I want you to know that.” She takes a brief moment to herself before she continues. “But I knew that Tear would open there. I didn’t open it. I knew Kou would eventually fight the nymian that came crawling out of it because it happens in every timeline. To be honest, somewhere deep down inside of me, I hoped that nymian would kill you. I hoped it would kill you both. Then you’d stop coming back… I don’t expect you to understand or forgive me. You haven’t yet experienced the kind of loss that I have. This is it, though. No matter what happens, there are no more do-overs. It ends here.”
My shoulders stiffen as question after question fills my mind.
“I’m not here right now for your forgiveness, but I hope for some understanding. A little sympathy, for a tired Death. In a way, you’re the only person I have left.” She exhales in an amused manner. “The only person I have left is the one person that hates me the most.”
“But I don’t understand. Tell me, just tell me what’s going on.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t trust that you won’t snap like before. I only see one way out of this, and for it to work I need you to stay in the dark for just a bit longer. I need to exist until the end.”
“What do you mean, ‘until the end’?”
She stares into nothingness, ignoring my question, her mind clearly far away.
In a soft voice I’m not sure I was meant to hear, she adds, “To think I’d become so selfish. Maybe it’s best for things to end this way after all.”
With that, she disappears. The world snaps into focus, and sounds come roaring back with threatening clarity. My fists clench, and I have to resist the urge to scream with frustration. So much pain and suffering, swallowing the entire city, and I can’t get a single straight answer—not one bit of clarity that might allow me to end this madness.
The nymian cries are louder now, and a particularly strident shriek manages to cut through my raging thoughts. The dangers are ever-present, and Kou and Hitori still need me. Biting back a growl, I grit my teeth and move forward, following the lights. I try to pulse out, but I can’t. My mind and my energy are all over the place. I can’t concentrate. I can’t see anything. Only the blinking lights on the ground to guide me. I feel stiff. I feel… hollow.
I’m not sure how long I follow the lights; once the sharpest edges of my anger dull, the weariness returns, and the oppressive dust makes it difficult to see changes in the landscape.
At some point the air finally begins to clear. Right before I consider stopping to try and get my bearings, I turn a corner and notice a young man standing in the intersection one block ahead of me. He glows bright red and his uniform is ripped to a point where whole sections of his back and legs are exposed. He turns around and stares at me as I freeze in place. I am suddenly reminded of Corporal Hilu, the veteran who went mad during our rescue from the Fall; the same flat, meaningless rage burns in this young man’s eyes. I look around and the closest cover is to my right—an abandoned house with the door ajar.
I tense up in preparation to sprint to the door, but before I can even take a step, he flings a bolt of scarlet energy straight at me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I barely manage to raise my shield in time to deflect the energy bolt, but it shudders from the force of the blast. Before I can fully process this, he rushes toward me. His legs move impossibly fast, sending dust flying up behind him as he charges. I fall to the ground as I stagger to the right. He strikes the ground beside me and punches through the panels on the ground—the very panels designed to withstand industrial transport pod crashes—shattering them to pieces. Shards of the panels fly in all directions—if it weren’t for the new shield I’d be covered in new lacerations. He takes a few moments to regain his balance before he stands back up to prepare for another strike. That’s when I see my window to escape. I shut off the shield for the sake of maneuverability and rush inside the house, jarring my shoulder against the doorframe.
I sprint left into the first corrid
or I see, knocking picture frames from the wall as I fail to turn in time. I enter a pentagonal living space with several chairs and couches scattered about. It’s a dead end, and wide windows in every wall leave me nowhere to hide. I pick up a nearby chair and throw it at one of the windows leading to the street outside, panic giving me enough strength to break through the glass. I hear the man charging through the house after me, his heavy footsteps punctuated by the roar of energy blasts. I leap out of the broken window and fall to the ground as a burst of red energy blazes right over my head. The blast pummels a sculpture of a man holding out his hand for a cowering civilian, destroying the crouching figure in a cloud of stone dust.
I look around for a better spot to run to when a red flash catches my eye, about a block away. I turn to it and realize it’s Kou. He’s standing in his tattered university uniform with Tramil, Cortez, and someone else I’ve never met. They all appear bloodied and short of breath, but alive. As I slowly crawl and move to stand, they begin waving me over. Kou grabs Cortez’s arm and points to her holo, but I raise my arm to show him it’s not there. Despite how heavy, cold, and beat-up I feel, the sight of Kou and the others brings a wave of relief. I’m one step closer to finding Hitori.
I start toward them when the glass behind me shatters and the young man barrels out of the house, sliding on the panels before coming to a stop a few meters away from me. There are bubbles forming on his skin, as if the heat of his energy is actually boiling him from the inside. If that, or the window glass caught in his flesh causes him any pain, he shows no sign. He raises his arm and focuses his energy for another attack. Given how much closer he is this time, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to dodge. However, my thoughts are much clearer now than before. Kou is here. He’s alive. It’s enough to calm my mind and allow me to focus my energy in that precious half second. Right as he unleashes a red energy beam toward me, I manage to open a Tear to deflect it. I open the exit Tear right beside him, unleashing the power of his own attack on himself. It hits part of his upper body and right arm, barely missing his head. The blast completely obliterates his arm and chars the surrounding skin, gruesomely cauterizing the wound. The sight is horrific and I fight the urge to throw up.
But whatever horror I feel at his injuries, he doesn’t seem to notice. As I stumble away from the smell of his burning flesh, he prepares for another attack, eyes glued to me as he strides forward. The sheer wrongness of him makes my guts twist in visceral revulsion—his mangled body, his warped energy, the meaningless, inhuman rage all together form an abomination, made all the more terrible by the knowledge that this was once a person. I instinctively raise my arm and open a Tear that sends him a block away, the farthest I can manage. A fierce red blast follows him through the Tear, launched from a distance by Kou as he and the others charge to my aid. I quickly open a Tear in front of me that leads me to Kou and the others, who skid to a stop as I appear before them. They all stare in bewilderment as the Tear closes behind me.
For a moment, nothing is said between us and the fighting echoes on in the background. Kou then smiles at me, shakes his head slowly, and extends his hand, which I shake. I find myself staring at Tramil—the student who almost attacked his own brother. I look away as soon as I realize I’m doing, but he notices and speaks.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here, right?”
I nod in silence.
“I live a few blocks north of Cerros Towers. I was trying to help my family through to a bunker when six nymians came barging through the street.”
He becomes shrouded in a deep red energy as his condenser activates. He shuts his eyes as his forehead wrinkles.
“I told them to run while I tried to fight the nymians off, but there were too many. One by one I saw them get picked off and torn apart.”
His energy crosses and tangles around him in arches like the magnetic fields on the surface of the sun—ready to burst out in a violent flare at any moment.
“That’s when these guys arrived and helped me fight them off. But by then it was already too late. I’m here to fight. I’m going to kill each and every last one of those monsters.”
He opens his eyes and stares at me with such conviction that I almost take a step back.
“I’m so sorry,” is all I can manage. I feel a darkness burrowing its way into my heart. How many countless others share similar stories?
Kou places his hand on Tramil’s shoulder as he deactivates his crystal.
“I’m glad you made it,” Kou says. “We need you.” Kou turns to me.
“It’s good to see you have those Tears working again,” he adds with a tired smile.
Somehow, I manage to smile back. “Yeah, but I can’t get them to go very far. I can do about a block at best.”
“Well, they’re working well enough to keep you kicking,” he points out.
I nod before asking, “What happened to you? One second you’re talking to us on the radio, the next you’re silent and we have no idea where you are.”
Kou looks back down the street from where I was fighting with the red user. I pulse, half expecting to feel him charging toward us, but I find nothing. He must have passed on.
“We ran into him,” Kou answers. “Well, actually, he was helping us. Then things got out of control and my holo got destroyed along the way.”
“He was helping you? The last thing you need right now is help getting killed.”
He shakes his head.
“It’s not like that. He defected from Isao’s army—didn’t like how some of the soldiers in his unit were forcing people away from the bunkers in order to take them to Isao’s encampments.”
Cortez turns to me to show me a laceration on her arm. “They attacked me and Hitori while we were guiding a couple of families. We tried getting them to cooperate with us since the nymians were getting out of hand. I swear if that dude hadn’t caught me off guard…the cut you see now was much worse, but Hitori came in to heal me. Then Andrew had to take my place and lead the people with Hitori.”
“I was part of that unit,” the new individual says. They have a nasty burn on their left shoulder, and their short blonde hair looks faintly singed. It’s only now that I notice they are wearing the uniform of Isao’s soldiers—it wasn’t immediately obvious due to the dirt and blood. “I’m Kel,” they continue, “The guy you just fought was Eugen. He is...was...a close friend of mine. We were both horrified by what we saw our unit do. We’re still kids to everyone, but our duty is the same as the generals and veterans. We’re here to protect civilians—there was no reason we should have been fighting you guys when you were just helping the civvies. But the others in our unit were much stronger than us, and the beasts were closing in. Eugen used the serum on himself and—” Kel stops speaking abruptly, sharp regret lancing through their energy as they look down. The image of Eugen’s burned form flashes through my mind again and I swallow back a wave of nausea.
Kou gently ends the tense silence. “Eugen did save us like he intended—at first. Took out the worst wave of nymians. But then we had to get him away from the people being evacuated. He killed his unit. Then he chased us out here. No matter how hard we attacked, he didn’t slow down. He didn’t appear to feel any pain.”
“I noticed the same when he attacked me. Even when he lost his arm, I felt nothing from him,” I respond.
“The worst part of it all,” Kel says, “is that every unit has a couple of those serum vials.”
Kou’s energy ripples with animosity.
“We need to end this soon,” I say.
“Hitori should be returning with Andrew and Chives through the Founder’s Park bunker entrance at the center of the city. They should all be connecting underground now and leading everyone out to our home back on the mountain.”
“We need to let Dr. Kurosawa know we’ve met up and are heading for the center,” I say.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Since Eugen turned his attention to you, I had a moment to use Cortez’s holo
to reach out to mom and let her know what’s going on. We are to meet up with Hitori and Andrew and make sure civilians are evacuated. After that, we have new orders—we have to liberate the Council and bring them back with us. Thanks to Kel and a couple other defectors, we have enough intel to mount a proper rescue.”
“Right…but what about the city?”
Kou shakes his head again. “We’re leaving it. Some of mom’s scientists have been running tests on that sludge coming off the nymians; it’s bad stuff. Nothing can grow where it’s fallen, and it’s messing with the foundations of any building where a nymian has died. Even if we get this world back, we’d need to rebuild elsewhere.” There’s a woodenness to his answer, as if he’s walled off whatever feelings he might have about abandoning his home. “It’s not worth trying to save at this point,” he says with a grimace before turning to the others. “Is everyone ready to go?” We all nod.
We start toward the heart of the city. The homes and other buildings we pass are abandoned and a few stray items are littered about the streets, but there’s very little damage to any of the structures themselves.
“Why is this section of the city not destroyed?”
“There are sections of the city all around where nymians either didn’t pop out of portals, or there weren’t enough people for them to be targeted by Isao’s men,” Kou replies. “But don’t let this fool you. As soon as we pass the bridge over the industrial highway, everything will change for the worse.”
We pick up our pace as the clouds thicken above us, dropping the temperature as the sky darkens. Block by block each house I see makes me think about the families that lived within their walls. I wonder if any of them made it to safety.
I consider going into one of the houses to look for cleaner clothes to wear, but the thought that those clothes belonged to someone—that the shirt I get may have been their favorite, or given to them as a present—pains me to such a degree that I slow down for a few steps. I have to focus on those still alive.