Gradually, the slope gives way to more level ground.
We’re on the edge of a vast, uneven plateau. Behind us, a peak rises to the sky, its tip buried in the clouds. The air is hazy, but I can make out smaller hills around us, their surfaces barren.
I have to keep my eyes on the ground. There’s plenty to trip over down there: slippery rock, patches of crusty ice, those weird scrubby plants with their brittle tendrils. Syria is almost a dead weight, barely conscious. I’m shivering–the adrenaline is draining out of my body, and it’s beginning to wake up to how cold it really is out here.
Should we go after the Earthers? Try join up with any that survived the explosion? But even the thought of trying to get Syria back up that slope is too hard to take in. As it is, each step is a small miracle. I try to push myself into a rhythm, the same rhythm I used when I was a tracer: stride, land, cushion, spring, repeat.
“Stay with me, OK?” I say to Syria. He doesn’t respond.
The fire might be burning hot, but it’s not spreading. After a few minutes, it’s a distant rumble, and the insane heat fades. I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
We’re on Earth.
The thought forms slowly. It’s hard to take in. A few days ago, I was on the station, the only home I’d ever known. Every second of my life had been spent inside a metal ring, and I never once thought that I’d step outside it. It wasn’t even something I took for granted. It just was, a fact of my existence that was never going to change.
I can’t even begin to understand how this place exists. The whole planet was meant to be a poisoned, radioactive wasteland. Humans were supposed to have been wiped out. And yet we’re here, out in the open. There’s sky and clouds and ground and a horizon, stretching out in front of me.
Fear starts to gnaw at me. Just because we’re walking around on Earth doesn’t mean it isn’t killing us right now. I could be breathing poisoned air, bathing in radiation, and not know until it was too late.
Of course, there’s not a single thing I can do about it. If it’s true, we’re all dead anyway.
The light is changing. I raise my eyes skywards, and the strangest thing happens.
I see low-hanging grey clouds, growing dimmer as the sun sets beyond them. They run from one end of the horizon to the other, flat and unbroken, featureless, capping a world of distant, snowy peaks and barren rock. But everything is much too bright. I can’t focus on things, and trying to do so plants the seed of a headache behind my eyes. I screw them shut, try a second time. Same result. It’s like I’ve put on someone’s glasses–someone with much worse eyesight than mine.
I decide not to look at the sky again.
We enter a shallow depression in the hill, bordered by more rocks, and that’s when Syria’s legs finally give out. For a moment we’re locked in a crazy dance, as if he’s my partner and I’m bending him over in a complicated move. But he’s heavy, way too heavy, and he goes down, thumping face first into the dirt. That’s when I get a really good look at his back
It’s as if an amateur artist tried to mix red and black paint to create a new colour, and didn’t quite manage. Most of his jacket is gone. Parts of it are fused with skin, melted onto it, along with his shirt. There’s a large, undamaged section of it near his waist, flapping loose, but even that is only hanging on by a few burned threads. The skin itself is crusted black; the burned area runs all the way from his lower back up to his neck and across his shoulders. If I hadn’t climbed down onto the slope first…
Don’t think like that. You can’t. Not now.
I don’t know a lot about burns, but even I’m aware just how easy it is to get them infected. And we’re out in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies, and the sky growing darker by the minute.
I need help. But any Earthers who were in the Lyssa are long gone, and Prakesh is—
Prakesh. Carver. The longing I feel for both of them at that moment is almost indescribable. I don’t even know how to start looking for them–they could be on the other side of a hill, or on the other side of the world.
My thigh spasms. I bite back a scream, my fingers straying to it, finding the hard thing again. With the adrenaline draining away, I’m starting to feel more pain, and even touching my thigh sends a thin whine hissing through my teeth.
At first, I can’t figure out what’s wrong. I’m feeling a hard edge, but I can’t see anything, just—
Then I see. There’s a piece of metal embedded in my thigh. Shrapnel from the crash. Has to be. It’s two inches long, almost flush with my skin, hiding under a thin slit in my pants fabric. The wound is on the inner curve of my thigh, a few inches below my pelvis.
I can’t leave it in there. If it starts festering, it might stop me walking, and if that happens I’m as good as dead. I won’t be able to help myself, let alone Syria. My mind takes this thought and amplifies it. Take it out, take it out now.
I slip my pants down, the cold raising goose bumps on my flesh. The fragment is deep, but there’s enough above my skin for me to grip onto. It doesn’t look too big–I should be able to yank if out in one movement.
But isn’t there an artery in the leg? Doesn’t it curve around the area the shrapnel’s in? I think back, trying to recall everything I know about how the human body works. Prakesh, where are you when I need you?
I take three quick breaths, grasping the ragged edge of the metal. I’m on the verge of stalling when my fingers act on their own, ripping out the fragment.