My chest rips into a million pieces. My heart feels like it’s bleeding. Ellis pulls me away from the window and places me on the bench.
“Well, that was unfortunate,” Margaret says dryly.
“You absolute bitch!” fumes Ellis. “How could you?”
“Like I said, that was unfortunate, but if you do not want to see it happen again, you better come out of there,” Margaret warns. “Fallon will be killed if you do not come out right now.”
My mind shifts, unable to process the horror, and recedes so that everything becomes muted and hazy, as if I am simply watching a scene unfold behind a gossamer curtain. There’s a lot more shouting than before, yet I feel detached from it all. Nothing matters anymore. I hear Ellis shouting and swearing and thrashing.
I see Margaret holding another needle. She pulls Fallon into view with her other hand.
“Will you watch your own brother die?” She pokes the needle into his cheek. Fallon’s screams fill the capsule, yet I remain seated. Nothing matters anymore.
“Come out now, or I will go deeper.”
“Ellis, just go!” Fallon moans, his face drenched in sweat.
Through the milky haze I see Ellis push a bright yellow button. The entire world shakes as flames dance all around our space vessel. Margaret and Fallon are blasted back.
Ellis straps us in and pulls down a lever. Everything inside me, my heart, lungs, stomach, all of it, falls to my feet as we shoot up. I feel like my body is passing through an opening that’s way too small.
The capsule is thrashing around and the noise is deafening, but I don’t care.
“Kalli? Come on, Kalli. I know what just happened was … was ….”
I turn to him and see right past him. He doesn’t exist. I don’t exist. Nothing exists.
“Please, Kalli. I can’t fly this by myself.”
My eyes fall shut. I am sinking within myself. Soon, I too will be gone and then all will be okay.
“Kalli! Open your eyes.”
Ellis’s voice drifts in and out.
“Open your eyes!” His voice is louder and closer but still lingers just beyond attention. He’s shaking me and screaming. “We have to get to Istriya before they do. Or all of this, all of the deaths, will be for nothing. Is that what you want? Sammy to have died for nothing!”
His words cut into me and transform my sadness into rage.
“How dare you!”
“I’m sorry. We’ve been through too much, lost too much, to just give up now.” He turns to me, his face sad and his spirit deflated. “I need you, Kalli. I can’t do this alone. If you want to just stop, then okay, we’ll stop.” He swallows. “But if you still want to find some salvation in all this mess, then I need your help. You decide.” He turns back to look out the window.
And beyond his face, through the window, I see a light growing, revealing a floating sphere. Earth. A mixture of deep purple and blue surrounded by a swirling white mist and bits of shimmery silver.
Tears well up in my eyes. I’ll never be coming back here again. I’ll never see Navi or Sammy.
“Kalli, we are going to survive this. I’ll figure it out, if that’s what you want me to do.”
I have no words. I feel numb. Sammy is gone. Navi is gone. But then I remember those women. Sammy would have helped those women. He was only six, but he was always doing what he could to help others. I owe it to him to at least try and be a fraction of the courageous person he was.
With an audible sigh I say, “What can I do?”
My body jostles.
“Hmmm?” I groan, my eyes still closed. I feel a weight on my shoulder.
“We’re almost there. Sorry, but you need to wake up now. I need some help again.”
I groan again and shake myself from sleep. A dreamless sleep. It was more than I could have hoped for.
“What do you need me to do?” I ask. I stretch my arms and shake out my legs.
“We’re almost there.” His blue eyes are wide and awake. “But don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ve got a plan.”
A plan? We’re landing soon. I can’t believe we made it this far. But now the end is coming. Margaret would have told them we were coming. They’ll be waiting. Waiting to kill us.
Ellis’s voice is calm and reassuring. Will he be my last vision?
“Kalli, are you listening to me?” Ellis shakes my shoulders. “Do you understand what I just said?”
“Wh-what?” I rub my eyes.
“Hey, don’t let go of the lever. I need you to keep steering while I ….”
“What are you doing?”
The words catch in my throat and I barely choke them out. Ellis slices into his arm, a small trickle of blood oozes from the cut.
“Shhh, it’s okay. Just keep your hands on the lever, I’m almost done.”
I watch as the self-mutilation continues. Ellis digs his right hand into the opening he’s made in his left wrist. His hand’s covered in what looks like a golden iridescent gel. He grabs a vial from a nearby shelf and scrapes the gel into it. He places the vial into a slender metal canister.
“Kalli, I’ve got the lever now. You can let go.”
I don’t move. My fingers are so tightly clenched around the lever that it hurts when Ellis gently pries them off.
“Why did you cut yourself like that? What was that?”
“It was what we removed from you. It’s part of the verbindi in me. It’s going to help get us rescued when we land. Now this is really important, Kalli. When we land, you need to—”
“When we land, they will kill us. Margaret said they’d be waiting for us.”
“We’re not going to die. I have a plan.”
“Ellis, stop it. There’s no way out. They know we’re coming.”
I look out the window to see a large brownish-gray sphere emerging behind layers of hazy purple mist. We’re so close.
“Yes, there is a way out. The ship needs to land without us in it.”
I shake my head. What? He wants us to jump?
Ellis continues to speak as his hands fly, pushing and twisting buttons and switches. He doesn’t seem to care about keeping his hand on the steering lever anymore. As he pummels one button and then the other, he reveals his plan to me.
“That’s crazy. You think I can jump from a plummeting spaceship?”
“It’s the only way. They’ll think we died,” Ellis says.
“They’d be right!”
“You won’t die. I’ll get us close enough to the ground, and we’ll have these.” He holds up a square package that looks like it’s made of nylon. “Floaters.”
“Floaters?”
“They’re like parachutes but can be set off closer to the ground. They will allow us to drop undetected.”
Despite his reassurances, I know we won’t survive this. I spend the final moments of my life staring at the many colors of space floating by. My thoughts drift between Navi, Sammy, Ellis, and even Fallon. Fallon revived Margaret, knowing that would ruin our chances of escape. His allegiance to his mother doesn’t surprise me, but his betrayal to us does.
I watch Ellis as he moves about. Maybe my first impression was right after all. He will be the person who takes me to heaven.
“Okay, we’re almost there. I’m going to put your floater on. When I pull my cord, you pull yours. Don’t do it before. We have to be below a certain height to avoid detection.”
He straps me in. It rests against me like my backpack but lighter. Much lighter. There’s no way this insignificant thing is going to save me.
“I’m going to start the self-destruct timer. We’ll have less than ten seconds to open the door and jump. Hold onto my hands so we won’t be separated. But in case we do drift apart, open the vial and pour the contents out, as soon as you land.” He hands me a thin metal cylinder.
“Why me? Why don’t you do it?”
“I have one too.” He taps his jacket pocket. “Open it, and she’ll come.”
“Who’ll come?”
Red lights start flashing and alarms blare. He pushes another button, and we’re blasted with a wall of cold air. My skin stretches like an elastic band. Ellis grabs onto my hand and pulls me from the falling ship. I can’t catch my breath. The air around me whips by.
“We’ll be down soon,” he shouts into my ear. “No matter what happens, as soon as we land, you untangle yourself and get out of there, and then open the vial.”
“What?” The wind is too loud.
“Don’t worry about me, just get yourself into the woods.”
“Woods?”
“Yes, we’ll be near a forest.”
I can see the outline of objects moving up to us. A large dark mass gets closer. I take in his face. It will be the last thing I see.
We’re spinning around so quickly. How much longer? I don’t have to wait long for the answer. Ellis pulls on his cord, and I do the same. Instantly, I’m propelled up. I squeeze Ellis’s fingers, but it’s no good. He slips away.
Something’s wrong. Ellis is still falling. His parachute didn’t open.
“Ellis.” I know my screams are useless. They won’t save him. But I keep calling out to him. Even when I see his yellow parachute finally billowing in the wind, I continue crying out his name.
The ground comes up hard and painful. I can’t think. I can’t move. Everything hurts. But I’m still alive.
“Ellis,” I croak.
My eyes are slow to adjust. Everything is blurry.
“Ellis?” I repeat, blinking desperately.
I stand and untangle myself from the parachute, all the while scanning for Ellis. And then I see his yellow floater, deflated on the ground about 200 feet away. Fists pumping, I run. I run, even though each step ignites another spasm of pain in my bruised body.
I clumsily pull and twist the straps of Ellis’s parachute, until he’s free. He’s lying face up and there’s a stain on the ground beside him growing larger. The barren brown plain stretches out all around. Everything’s brown, except the red liquid pooling around Ellis.