Everything happens in a blur. I don’t think I short-circuit, I don’t black out, but it feels like everything is moving sluggishly when the force I’ve been exerting suddenly cuts out. I don’t feel the man drowning, I don’t feel the corpse I was pushing on top of him, I don’t feel his lungs, the water, I don’t even feel the woman’s arm wrapped tightly around me to keep me from using my power.
I don’t feel the boats either.
It feels like the aftermath of an explosion, after the initial wave of force blows past and its wake of bloated silence muffles everything in one’s shock to the explosion having happened.
The woman hefts me back to the boat as quickly as she can, clambering in and desperately pulling the cord on the generator to get it to start. The weight holding up the boats snaps. I blink out just as the generator starts, and just as a hand bursts from the water and grasps the side of the boat.

Lia grabs the arm, but takes one look up at the looming boats and she throws off the rope tethering the speedboat instead.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She takes hold of the steering wheel and pushes the lever controlling the speed. The tiny boat sputters, whirs, and groans from months of no use, but it moves forward. The boy loses his balance and falls on his back, next to my limp body. He scrambles back, but just as quickly flinches from the feeling of freezing wind on his neck. The boats scream, collapsing over the dockside-- Lia pushes at the lever harder, teeth clenched and leaning forward as if it will force the speedboat to go faster-- the boy grips one of the seats, eyes wildly watching the massive row of boats close overtop them as the rudder just skims out of their way. The row fists the water and a massive ripple bloats up under them, effectively shoving them up and out, nearly capsizing as the ocean washes them far from shore.

They sit there, stunned as the water circles them around and around, thoughts plunging what would have happened if they hadn’t moved as fast as they did, what would have happened if they hadn’t been in the boat at all. What would have happened if I hadn’t been holding the boats up for as long as I did.
Lia pants, staring in one direction and unable to look away from the collapsed ferry ships, the camels and people and Parasites all still running in their respective cries for help, for escape, for food. Then she seems to snap out of her daze and whirl around to my body still lying on the floor of the speedboat. She swears, getting up from her seat and rushing to my side.
“Please-- please tell me he’s okay--” She says, turning me over. The boy watches, increasingly confused, as she unlatches my face and inspects the damage. She fiddles some wires aside, flinches to see the extent of older damage unrepaired, and removes her shaking hands. Moving back to the wheel of the boat, she leans over the vitals of the boat and taps the glass of the battery life.
“What--” the boy finds a voice, as hoarse as it is-- “What are you doing?”
“This thing is very old, the battery isn’t going to last us a day.” She opens a panel on the stand beneath the wheel, pulls some wires out as far as they can go. “Bring him over here.”
The boy’s eyes glide down to look at me, hands instinctively raising in preparation to defend himself. I don’t move. I can’t move. Technically I’m unconscious. He taps my bleeding arm with his foot, and when I don’t react, he gradually crouches down until he’s close enough to stare into the chaos of mechanics behind my glass. He gingerly lifts the latch, trying to find the familiar malice in the screen that is now entirely blank. A minute passes, a minute of curiosity and a strange concern. Then he gently hefts me up, still expecting me to spring awake and gnaw his face off-- I don’t think he understands screens.
The woman takes me from him when he walks over, laying me snugly beneath the wheel where she can pull wires out from me and from the boat and link them together as if they were made for this exact purpose. She reaches into my head again, finds a switch or a knob, and clicks it back and forth-- my screen flickers on between the cracks but it’s not something that wakes me. She swears again, clicking the switch off and on. Off and on. Off and on.
“What are you doing?” The boy asks again with a cough. The air is hot, steaming, humid; it nearly forces him to sit down.
“Bavel’s have batteries that can lend life to other machines. I’m trying--” She curses. “I’m trying to get his battery to display so I know how far we can get before the boat dies. And the longer we sit here the more the boat’s battery is wasted.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t we--? Shouldn’t we go back and help those people?” He asks, moving to peek over the boat. She puts a hand on his shoulder and gently pushes him down. She removes her ker, looking in his eyes.
“We can’t help them, Khalil. They can try to get away, but-- we can’t help them.”
“Yes we can! We can go back, and--”
“And we’ll die with them,” she says. “We are not their best chance of surviving. We are not their saviors. The best they can do is get as far away from that place as possible, and hope the Parasites don’t catch up to them.”
She removes the rest of the heavy fabric of her disguise, and the boy looks for some kind of answer, deep behind the pupils of her eyes. She tugs him close to her, a motherly embrace that he isn’t quite sure how to react to. She keeps him from trying again to look at the coast.
“I am… so sorry you were dragged into this. You didn’t deserve it… not any of it.” Tears spatter the top of his head, and like some disease, he suddenly feels himself welling up with her.
He doesn’t know what to say. He believes he should feel sad, should feel angry, or at the very least terrified, of something. But everything’s happened so quickly at once all he feels is a strange, numb exhaustion overcome him. A realization that: he can’t do anything. Can’t do anything but sit here, embraced by a woman who seeks only to comfort him, and he feels likely needs comfort herself. The old man she worked for is gone. The people she worked to please are gone. The city that was her home, gone. Just as he.

He lifts his arms to hug her back. And they cry.


Days pass. Khalil watches a full sunrise over the water two days in a row, and Lia sits by him when she’s too tired to steer. Heat scorches, the cold numbs, but upon an evening, finally, like a slit of paint on foggy whites and blackish blues, land.

Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
A red dot pulsing in a maw of black. Some hissing, creaking noise-- fracturing glass. A white oval hums awake, and I open my eyes; I think I’m blind for a moment, I see nothing. The sound of hushed trees and wind breathing through grass fades in until it’s too sharp, and the feeling of scratching stalks at the end of my fingers becomes too real. Mechanically, with effort, I sit up. A white shape peers back down at me, blazing the open field in a quiet light. Trees circle, and flowers bushel the place, all hushing through the wind, and when I look back upward, my screen flickers in surprise. The black maw glitters, and the realization of bits of light finally focuses. Fading in all at once, my ears instinctively lower behind me, and my hands come to my chest-- something brushes against my face.
My gaze flickers down. A small, white flower sits clenched in my fist, wilting even as I force my hand open, watch it float to the ground. I quickly check my battery-- not nearly enough to make it across this tiny clearing. As I scan, I see two cut paths through the field. Two things, having made their way to me, and gone back in the same direction. Standing, creaking, I click on my heat sensor: there, far in the distance. Far, far in the distance, two dots of living red, like fire, gradually getting farther away. I stare for a long while, not sure what I’m expecting to feel. A small pang throbs, something I can’t recognize, but something I might have felt, once.
It hurts, but I don’t know what to call it. It bleeds, but I don’t know how to stop it. It cries, but I don’t know why.
Why am I crying?
I can’t look at it anymore. Shaking, I flick off the sensor, I turn away as if it will somehow help.
And, crying, I start walking in the other direction.

-The End-