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The pain returns with a vengeance as we’re climbing down into the storm drain. Reggie’s grip slips, and he falls off the ladder. Thankfully, it’s only a few feet, and the worst that happens is he twists his ankle. Which, of course, is nothing compared with the pain in his head. This time around, it nearly makes me sick. But it’s so much worse for him, and it lasts a lot longer. Afterward, neither of us speaks about it. I think he knows as well as I do we’ll never reach the mainland.
Knowing this, I try to shoo Shinji away, to make him go back. I don’t want him coming with us. I don’t want him out there with us in the middle of the sound when we die. He’ll be stranded in the boat, and who knows where the current will end up taking us? But he whines and gives me that look of betrayal, like he’s old enough to make up his own mind and I need to stop treating him like a child. But he’s led a sheltered life inside the arcade; he can’t know better. So I try yelling at him. He flattens his ears against his skull, but stands his ground.
I finally give in and lower him down to Reggie in the tunnel. By the time I’ve reached the bottom myself, Reggie has poured half of his last can of soup into a depression in a rock and Shinji is happily lapping it up. He offers me the rest, but I don’t want it. Nor does Reggie. Shinji, on the other hand, isn’t too proud to finish it off.
“Cream of mushroom,” I murmur, as he laps up the last little bits. “Kind of crappy for a last meal.”
Reggie gives me a dour look and shakes his head. “Don’t tell him that.”
“He doesn’t understand.”
“You don’t know that!” he says, covering Shinji’s ears. He bends down and whispers, “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
This makes me laugh.
What had started off as a sprinkle had turned into a heavy downpour. The rain is so heavy, in fact, that we might as well be standing underneath Niagara Falls. We’re both drenched as we begin our crawl through the tunnel beneath the wall. Shinji leads the way, as if he knows exactly where he’s going, like he’s made this secret trip a hundred times before. Which I know is impossible.
Reggie brings up the rear. “Just letting you know, it gets tight real quick,” he warns me.
I shove my pack ahead of me. I don’t know why I continue to bother with it, although it does make me feel better. There’s nothing in it that I need anymore.
I can hear Reggie doing the same with his. It seems neither of us is willing to accept there’s no chance of us surviving this. We’re both secretly holding out for a miracle.
So we push on.
I figure there’s probably a life lesson in there somewhere. Too bad no one will be around to learn it.
There’s a tight spot, but I easily get through it. A few feet more and I think I can see the exit rising dimly above me. I stop when Reggie’s anguished cry reaches my ears. “What’s the matter?” I call back over my shoulder.
“I’m stuck. Again.”
“Again?”
“Same spot as last time.”
“Well, you got through it then. Just exhale,” I tell him. “Suck in that big fat belly of yours and wriggle like a worm.”
“You suck in your big fat...” he starts to say, before wisely shutting up.
I strain my head around and look ahead again. I can see Shinji pacing past the opening. He pauses each time to stop and look in. He lets out a little whine of worry. The rain beyond him is a curtain of gray. I can hear the ocean behind it, unsettled. I can smell the salt water. And suddenly I’m glad Reggie forced me to come this far. It makes me realize I don’t want to die inside that place.
“Jessie?”
His voice is distorted by the tunnel walls.
“Yeah, you through yet?”
“No, really. I can’t, Jessie. I’m stuck for good this time.”
I squeeze my body to the side so I can look back. But it’s too dark and too cramped. I can’t see anything. The next time I check in on Shinji, the tunnel up ahead appears to have sprung a leak. Water’s begun to run down the front of my shirt. It’s cold, cloying. It brings back memories of our dive on the day we’d first broken onto the island.
Suddenly, I’m feeling claustrophobic.
“You got through it before,” I remind him. “You should be able to get through again.”
“You’d think so,” he says. He sounds exhausted.
“Remind me who the pregnant one is?”
“Not funny.”
“It’s all that rich, fatty cuisine you’ve been enjoying while on the island. Golden Dragon chow mein, pot stickers...”
“Now you’re just being unnecessarily cruel.”
The pressure in the back of my head suddenly returns, building rapidly. I lower my head to the tunnel floor and let the cold water run over my cheek. It doesn’t help.
Behind me, Reggie groans.
I take in a breath and accidentally inhale water. Coughing and sputtering, I realize there’s a lot more of it now. Only a couple minutes have passed, and yet the leak in the ceiling of the tunnel has turned into a curtain of water. I can’t see Shinji anymore.
“Reggie?” I call. “Reg!”
I can’t be sure he can hear me. The noise in the tunnel is suddenly a lot louder than it was just a moment before. And I know he’s still dealing with the latest time bomb exploding inside his head.
“Reggie!” I cry. “You need to get out of there! Now!”
The water is starting to lap at my chin.
“Reggie! The tunnel’s flooding! Get out of there!”
I can hear him crying out behind me, grunting. It sounds strange, almost like he’s fighting. There’s a sudden gush of water. I sputter. It tastes of ocean, and I realize it’s the waves. It must be high tide. The waves are breaking over the shore and coming in. Another rush of cold water hits me in the face. And suddenly the tunnel is full and I can’t breathe. My head slams into the ceiling. I try to take another breath, but the water keeps coming.
I swim then, pushing as hard as I can. I can’t see. I can’t hear. I can’t breathe. After what feels like an eternity, I emerge sputtering, half propelled, half from my own effort. I crawl out onto the rocky shore and collapse. After a moment to catch my breath, I glance back and see muddy water gushing out of the tunnel.
“Reggie! REGGIE!”
“Yeah, brah, I’m right here.”
“What?” I spin around.
A muddy hand rises from behind a rock at the water’s edge. I don’t know how, but he’s gotten past me. I crawl over and find him. I wait for him to stop vomiting before asking if he’s okay.
“Thank god for puking,” he groans. He looks absolutely miserable.
“Funny thing to be thankful for,” I say and wrap my arms around him.
“No, seriously just saved my life.”
He gags a couple more times, then wipes his mouth. He lays his head back onto the rocks and shuts his eyes. “Dislodged my fat ass from that tunnel,” he says “If I hadn’t started throwing up, I’d still be stuck down there.”
* * *
On a clear night, we’d be able to see the lights of Manhattan in the distance, which would’ve given us a direction to paddle. But it’s not a clear night. Nor are there any lights. So we drift with nothing but a vague impression of where the mainland might be. Not even our Links can offer us any assistance.
The headaches come and go with increasing frequency and longer duration over the next two hours. Reggie loses consciousness a few times, and the pains in my own head get so severe I know it’s only a matter of time that I will too. Each time they return, we’re certain it’ll be the final time and that we’ll never wake. We both vomit up what little remains in our stomachs, weakening us further until we can’t even lift the paddles. Terminal activation of our implants feels like it’s taking forever. At some point, I’m certain we’ve drifted out past the mouth of Oyster Bay. There’s nothing but darkness and open water all around.
We lie against the sides of the raft and let the current take us where it may.
“Rain’s stopped,” I mutter, realizing I can now see stars overhead.
Shinji raises his head from my lap and whines. I try to scratch him behind the ears, but I can’t even lift my arm.
“I should’ve made you stay back there, old man,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t have to be here.”
Reggie coughs weakly and groans. He somehow sits up and looks around for a moment before collapsing.
“Maybe we’ll end up somewhere across the ocean,” I muse. “Someone’ll find our bodies and then they’ll know what’s happened here.”
Reggie’s silent for so long I begin to think he’s lost consciousness. “I always wanted to go to Europe,” he murmurs. “I think we should go. It’d be fun.”
I smile. “Another harebrained idea. Look where your last one got us.”
He doesn’t answer. I know he would if he could. He can’t let something like that slide.
I can see him lying there. There’s a glimmer, and I realize his eyes are open.
“Reggie?”
The tension in his neck and shoulders tells me he’s still with me. He blinks. I get the sense he’s thinking, probably contemplating his mortality. I look up. Between milky patches of cloud, more stars twinkle into existence.
I let out a deep sigh. It’s a sigh of relief and remorse. A sigh of regret. It’s an expulsion of all the things I’d kept bottled up deep inside of me. It’s a cleansing sigh. It’s a last dying breath.
The pressure that comes at last is different. It’s slower building, yet more intense, unwavering, unrelenting. It’s the same exact sensation I remember from the very first time, when we were on the shuttle beneath LaGuardia and trying to come home.
This is it. This is when we finally die.
Reggie hisses and leans forward, but instead of squeezing his head, he drags himself to the other end of the raft, as if he can escape it. The boat rocks, and water splashes in.
“What are you doing? Trying to drown us?”
“Your pack,” he gasps. “You still have your EM pistol?”
It takes me a moment to realize why he’s asking. We don’t have to suffer anymore. One shot, and we’ll go unconscious. We’ll die obliviously, without pain.
The black metal of the EM pistol reflects the distant starlight as he pulls it out of my pack. He fingers the trigger, aiming the barrel back at us. But he doesn’t shoot right away. I can hear him fumbling in his own pack with his other hand, his breath coming faster and faster as the pain intensifies.
“If you don’t hurry—”
“Two shots,” he whimpers. “That’s how Ash was able to inactivate the Player’s implant. Right?”
“What?”
He finds the other EM pistol and turns and rests his back against the front of the raft.
“Reggie? What are you doing?” I ask, as he aims them both at me.
“I want you to live,” he grunts.
I realize he’s going to deactivate my implant, fry the firmware before it can fully activate.
“No,” I moan.
“I can’t do us both,” he says, and I realize he’s right. The first hit will knock us unconscious. Someone has to be conscious to deliver the second shot.
But I don’t want to be the only one. I don’t want to wake up afterward, alone in a world where everyone else has died. I want to explain why I shouldn’t be allowed to live instead of him, that I shouldn’t be the one to go home. But I’m too weak. “I’m sorry,” is all I can manage to say.
“Goodbye, Jess,” he whispers. “I love you, girl.”
I turn my head to the side and focus my gaze on the distant pinpricks of light high above me.
A moment later, the pain is gone, and the stars blink out.
