I want to see you again.
Those words become my mantra, the last moments in my home repeating every second I spend awake. Through brief seconds of consciousness, I see both the vast nothingness of land and sky, cleaved by a sharp line, offering nothing to look at but the cloudless blue of the sky and the matte brown of the Earth. There are no buildings, no plants, no life. The thought creeps into my mind whether it’s worse for Athena to be alone in the void of space, unreachable, but nearly exactly at the point I’d guess her to be aboard the station, or on the vast Earth, an endless wasteland that dwarfs the size of Algieba. The thought disappears as quickly as it emerges, as an undefeatable tiredness throws me back into a deep slumber.
I want to see you again.
Images of where the land and the sky meet blur together; I’m unsure if the brief times awake mesh together with the afterimages that reside in memory, in my dreams. A burning sun is darkened, by clouds or night, only to return and shine through my eyelids; wind through my hair, from the day maybe, lives and dies with the turning time. Voices, whispers, screams; real or fake. I can’t stay still. I can’t stay awake. My heart changes pace to attempt to knock me awake, but I fear it’s weakening itself, matching my strength of will, which forces me to sleep, can’t bite off the fear of never seeing her again. Never.
I want to see her again, and though my mind can’t function, I force my body to move for me.
My arm slides out from under me, pulling along the dirt beneath it. I let a breath through my teeth that chills me with the discomfort, from the wind in my mouth, and the cuts in my arm dragging the dirt. A single eye is all I can open, though I’m sure it’s just from energy, not the blood dried to my skin. I can focus on a pebble before my face, just barely. Focusing on it, unfocusing, the fine images of surrounding grains come and go, but it grounds me in reality, while I painfully rest on a cut-up arm, on a planet I’ve never been on before. For once in my life, there’s no sound. No wind, not right now, and no machines either. The machines of Algieba that littered every moment of life are dead, the breaths of the station as familiar as my own heart. They can never truly die, my head filling up the quiet of Earth with some phantom noise, trying to replicate a sense of home. Looking at the pebble on this alien planet, my eyes finally focus on it completely, and the sounds of home almost leave. They become discordant, like a rapidly fading memory, never truly replicable, though my heart says otherwise. It gives a headache, so I make my own noise to save me from it.
Hurling my free arm at the pebble, then flinging it outward, I tense up, realizing I might not be alone. My idiotic attempt at creating discord rings out, as the rock continues to fly out to meet the horizon, kicking up miniscule specks of earth along its way. I clench my teeth, and listen for a reaction. As it halts far off in the distance, I give all my focus to my ears, and wait for anything. Memories come back from the pod, the pod I should be in right now. A soft shoulder, a pile at our feet, knives. I was dragged out, clearly from the arm, but left out in the sun, for whatever reason. To dry me out I guess. My arm shoots to my hip, when I’m done waiting for nothing. At it, there’s the familiar shape of the sheath, but empty. At this, I contort myself upright, causing a pain to take over my entire body, making me let out a sad wheeze. It doesn’t feel like it was made to move that way, whether from the fight, landing, or how I sleep. It paralyzes me in a kneeling position, my numb right arm dangling in the slowly growing breeze, gliding over the cuts. Letting my head stay down, I see nothing compared to a cut on my right arm; it’s all a bunch of red scapes, picked up rocks or the imprints of rocks. More than okay. I see something much more interesting in the top of my vision: my dagger.
Just a few feet ahead, the knife rests with the tip in the Earth, itself rattling back and forth, threatening to fall with every movement. Around it, I cringe a bit more at a message that was clearly cut into the dirt with it. It could’ve been scraped in just as effectively with a fingernail.
“To the City”
Before the words register, it steals my vision, pulling my face toward it. Before me, past the knife, the ruins of civilization and the pride of humanity rests beyond the desert. At the edge of the plains, buildings swell, from low squares at the line of the horizon to monuments that could nearly overtake the sun in the sky, in prouder eras. The remains of towers desperately reach out to the sun with web-like hands that break up the monotony of the great blue sky. Some rest on each other, feeling like they’ll fall, or are already in a state of falling with their dizzying size. The horizon’s litter of broken buildings, stretching out across the edge of the desert before me, make me afraid I’m looking out at the teeth from within the mouth of a great beast, the jaws of the beast threatening to snap shut at the slightest change in the wind.
I force my face down to point to the dirt, letting only the knife into my vision. Small steps, small goals, small buildings. Still on my knees, I drag myself through the dirt, and fall onto the message. Delicately taking up the blade from the dirt, I reflexively put it to my right side, letting it fall into an empty sheathe. Putting both my hands to my waist, in a way that’d look silly to anyone watching, I feel a full right sheath, an empty left sheath.
“Shit.”
Standing up almost straight, looking back, nothing of interest is shown but what’s left of the message, my body-shaped bed, and scrapes in the dirt leading back to the pod. Behind it, the expansive desert meets the sky free of buildings. The large metallic pod itself rests in a split in the Earth that makes me want to put my hand on my back to feel if it’s changed shape. No glints of metal appear in the sun as I slowly meander to the pod. Though my hood is down past my shoulders, I pull it further down in an attempt to ease worry. My eyes dart across the outside of the pod, and eventually across the threshold. The door itself is empty, carrying nothing but dirt from someone lightly wandering in and out of the pod. I can’t make out the patterns of the shoes, or even the size. Inside, eight seats line the walls; possibly seven others are here. Beneath the space under each elevated seat is a wide storage compartment covering half the craft. Each is still closed, each locked when leaning down for inspection. The pile that was in the middle of the floor is now gone. No knife.
Taking several walks around the pod, nothing sticks out. There aren’t any more messages, no signs of wandering around it apart from me, no knives. The last couple walks, I slow down; I spend them looking out into the distance. Half the horizon is lined by ruins, half by nothingness. Even the caverns of Algieba, in their most well-lit states, and furthest from the walls, I could still make out the features of the distant walls. Here, I squint at the distant shapes in the barren desert, wondering if I see some form of structure, or if it’s desert playing tricks. It’s much too small up there; too spacious here. The distracting thought makes me trip and stumble over a hill made by the pod, and I let that end my wandering. There’s no reason to stay.
I pat my jacket, and feel the visor in the pocket, carelessly sitting out of its bag. With trepidation, they’re pulled out and I place them on the crown of my head, pressing the volume button several times, feeling the slight difference between “nightvision-off” and “chronic blindness”. I let a deep breath in through my nose, fearing news or the lack of it. Bringing the lenses over my eyes, I cover the bright desert with my palm, and look at the edges of my vision for messages. Nothing. Nothing from Zack, no news of Athena. Listlessly I lift off the lenses, and think of the two of them. I carefully handle the pair of lenses in front of me, checking for damage, but nothing looks out of the ordinary; each loose wire is around where it should be, each lens has the usual scratch. I look into them more deeply; not at my palm, not exactly. I see Zack, my best friend, and Athena, my best older sister. Together, with him, with her, I know they’re safe; together they are safe. I’m certain they are together, whether it be on Earth or in space. I put the visor into the bag gently for safekeeping, and without them here in this lonely site, I know what I must do. I take my first steps, out into the jaws of the beast.
“I will see you again.”
Cold liquid hits my face, making me gasp for air. I hope its water, but that’s not a given here. It’s dark where I am, and as I sit up and wipe my face, the sweet smell of whatever was thrown on me is taken over by the smell of rust. There’s blood. I can’t see anymore, not in the dark, not now; everything’s getting blurry as tears suddenly start coming. I take in a deep sharp breath. I can’t wipe again, not with the chance of blood on my hands. Zack, sweeping in from the dark, kneels in front of me, pulling out the base of his shirt.
I try to say I can’t wipe off what I think is blood, but all I can say is half his name.
“Shh shhh, Athene, we’re safe. You’re safe.”
“Bodies. There were bodies…” My words get distorted as he uses the point of his shirt to wipe my face, smearing my lips together as he goes up my face. “I know, I know. We’re away from that now, and we’re going to get somewhere safe.” He stops wiping at his last word, and kisses my forehead, wrapping his arm around me for a moment, a moment I wish to go on forever. Backing away off his knees, he gives a look of “we’re okay” before turning to the wall, and I see him raise his hand to nearly wipe his face. On my chest, I feel the weight of bodies, of people. I almost look at my hands, but instead wipe them on my paints, trying to wipe them against the red patterns on the fabric. My wrists start to burn when I hear shoes grinding into dirt on the floor, not from Zack.
Behind him, lit slightly by a service light overhead, I see a couple women standing; they almost startle me. One’s about my age, I think; she’s wearing a see-through mask and has blue-ish hair done in a tight bun. The other’s older, about fifty, based on her tired face and graying hair, also done up. She’s looking at my hands intensely, so I have them stop. She’s holding a disposable cup.
“This is Angel,” Zack says, pointing to the masked one; “this is Emerald”, dropping his hand to lightly gesture to the older lady. I lift my arm up too slowly, palm down towards the cup to ask about it, but the awkward attempt at some form of communication is cut short by her dropping it and stepping away into the dark, a little bit down a hallway I can’t quite make out the details for. Zack and Angel both bend down and lift me up by both hands; a shaky action, mostly done by them. Angel nearly falls backward, catching herself using me when standing upright; hefty air tanks I see on her back now nearly bring her to the ground, as they shift and clink together loudly from her strange motions.
“I’m Angel. Pleased to meet ya!” She whisper-yells into my ear closely, no way hindered by the mask, causing me to lean in Zack’s direction. I can feel her almost start a handshake but giving up on that. Zack wanders off to the edge of the hallway, and starts to talk quietly to Emerald, or some other dark figure yet to meet me. I can feel Angel’s eyes burrow into me as I do the same trying to make out the figure in the dark. Letting go of me too late to be pleasant, she snaps back my attention saying overly enthusiastically “we’ll be off somewhere else soon! Sorry, I know ya just got up, but we have somewhere to be”. She’s talking over someone I’m pretty sure is Emerald now, I hear an authoritative yell scolding Zack, “that’s right Zack, you all got somewhere to go!” I can feel the last bit directed at me.
When I take the first few steps, Angel does a strange hop back then starts walking backwards, arms out like she’s spotting me. Zack catches all that, looking at both of us arms crossed, a big forced smile painfully displayed. They all fade into the shadows before me, and before I do the same, I take one last look back. The back service tunnels all look the same, whether it’s out in the open, or hidden in the dark behind me; all mostly monotonous thick gray walls without paint, much like the walls in the apartment areas when they’re scraping off graffiti. Buzzing permeates the metallic boxes lining the walls, with collections of cables chasing other boxes along the tunnels, from the floor, to some places far out in the dark above. An overturned soda can sits by a small rectangular plate near the floor across the room, outlined by a thick black material. Looking up, overhead lights continue from just above to a place near the ceiling, dozens of feet up. Above the first set of lights, in white font: “AT”.
This is the plaza, where we were. This is where they all are. The bodies. The massacre.
We’re away from that now.
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