Lori cried out behind me, and then there was no sound but the howling wind. I looked down. The tablet’s descent was excruciatingly long, and every cell of me, every atom that made up my body, was feeling the terror the lonely spark felt as she fell to her death. This was so mundane. Our spark had survived the vacuum of space and her perilous journey to Earth—how could her ultimate ending ever be adequate? But all the same, her pain was my pain, her fear my fear. I hated her and, in a way, I loved her. In her own twisted way, perhaps she loved me back.
And then she finally met the rocks below. My heart constricted, and slowly I collapsed to my knees. I searched the swirling water below, but there was nothing down there but jagged rocks and dark waves frantically attacking everything in sight, vicious and hungry, a pack of rabid beasts fighting over prey.
I strained to listen, to feel for the tablet, and for a moment I thought there was a signal, like a faint echo of something. But it was gone before I could zero in on it. The tablet must’ve shattered into pieces, and I couldn’t even cry—that’s how stunned I was, how emptied out by grief. My friends were equally silent as they surrounded Minh and me in a loose semicircle. It must’ve been Tommy’s hand resting on my shoulder. It provided little in the way of reassurance.
The wind was unforgiving, and yet all I could feel was the clammy heat, the kind that makes clothes stick to skin. My face was tight and burning now, and my throat was parched—the kind of thirst I learned in the desert.
“Alif…” Minh’s voice was weak. I turned to her just as she lowered herself down next to me, then came to lie on her side, facing the point where, up ahead, dark water met dark sky.
“I’m here. We’re all here,” I said. “Together.”
Minh’s body jerked as she coughed up sand. Tearing against the wind, I blinked my eyes to clear this vision, but it stayed the same. I closed my eyes again, keeping them shut longer this time, and something must’ve changed. The wind had stopped, and I could feel bright light all around me. It was bothering my vision even through my eyelids. There was a part of me that knew what was happening. It knew this entire time but didn’t want to admit it. A self-preservation mechanism. A human way to cope in the face of a decisively alien threat.
Everything that happened to us was a test, I thought, and by the looks of it we’d failed. Maybe this was our second chance? A rerun of the game so that we could do better? One thing was certain in my mind: We had to stay together if we were to sustain her, in order for her to sustain us. We were linked now, forever.
A familiar voice reverberated inside my head. Open your eyes. I did as asked.
I was lying on my back, facing up to the blinding, cloudless sky. Up above, the heads of wild palms swayed in the wind, their shapes black against white.
I was back. We all were. Perhaps we’d never left.
I could hear the others as they came to their senses.
Nothing was real. Everything was real. Never. Forever. Words and concepts didn’t matter here. The oasis enveloped us like a mother cradles a baby close to her chest, heartbeats synchronizing. The tablet was nowhere in sight. Perhaps it never left the temple. Perhaps it never even existed outside of our hive mind. But I knew the lonely spark was watching. It was always watching. It chose us, and it wasn’t done with us. Not yet. Did it really hear me when I asked for a second chance? What else did I promise it in my burst of desperation?
I sat up and looked around me. The achingly familiar palm trees towered over me, their heads swaying gently in the wind, fronds rustling. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed flowers and multicolored fruit everywhere, shiny and perfect, glistening in the breezy heat. There was the unmistakable noise of a burbling spring. And then also those darker, shadowed gaps between the trees, from which something invisible was staring back at me.
My friends were close by, wild-eyed and dazed but also alive. Slowly, I met Minh’s eyes, healthy color having returned to her cheeks, and she looked away, clearly disappointed with me but also resolved. Tommy came close and sat down on the grass next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I looked up and found him smiling. He leaned in and placed a sweet little kiss on my nose, then on my cheeks, and finally on my lips.
Not far from us, Lori and Rowen were locked in a hug, while Luke just stared on, focusing on nothing in particular, his expression unreadable.
A sound of distant thunder brought us all to our feet. The sky above was clear, so the noise must’ve been coming from the desert. If any of us felt fear, none of us showed it.
“Our rescue is here,” Tommy said, focusing on the space beyond the trees, where our oasis merged with the desert. As if his words had the power to reshape reality, the thunder transformed into the roar of engines. With a pang in my chest, I thought of my dad. Of Mom. Of my life back in Melbourne. All of it was far away now. Still part of me, but also belonging to some other Alif—my doppelgänger in a parallel universe.
We all exchanged looks. Our bodies were still tense as our minds adjusted to our new reality. But one thing was certain—we weren’t running toward our rescue. It wasn’t our time to leave. Not yet.
The darkness that lurked in the depths of the oasis beckoned us. I took Tommy’s hand and gently pulled as I started moving away from the noise of the cars and toward our salvation, down where the heart of the oasis was beating slowly but surely. My friends followed close behind. The tree branches and thorny shrubbery moved out of our way. The deeper in we progressed, the more I could hear it—in my chest, in my heart—the lonely spark whispering the promise of eternal life and unmeasurable treasures and everything that I could wish for and more, now and forever.