I hold it in my palm, a hexagonal device. Cold to the touch, its center is a crystal interface while the edges are brittle and metallic. Once upon a time, it was connected via ley lines to teleporting monoliths around the world. But now it was just a solitary stone with nowhere to go. I sigh and store it into my pocket, closing the desk compartment.
Stepping out of my room and into the hallway, a girl’s voice calls out to me: “Brother Riah!” A little girl with soft pearl wings runs up the hall, waving her tiny hands. “Look at what I got!”
“Hi there, Nira.” I bend down to look at what she’s holding. A shiny black piece of rock. “Uh, that’s a pretty rock.”
“Yeah, I got it from your new friend.” I think she means Kei. I look up to see Asha catching up to us. It’s been a few days since we arrived back at Central and there wasn’t much left to do besides monitoring the evacuation of the city. We were the last inhabited sector.
As we walk out of the bunkers, Nira skips ahead. I whisper to Asha, “Isn’t that just a regular piece of rock?”
Asha shrugs with a smile. “I guess not for Kei. He packed up a dozen containers of those stuff the other day. It seems he’s got Nira convinced that they are special.”
I smirk. “Well, now we know what Nira’s going to be when she grows up.”
Asha chuckles. A dusty breeze blows down the street. In the distance, the giant arc of the Gate glows a bright bluish white. Humming with static and magic, it feels both close and far away at the same time.
“When are you and Erik scheduled to go through?” I ask Asha. Erik is her partner.
“Erik’s scheduled to go in a few days. He’ll be taking Nira along with him.”
“Along with who?” Nira pops up in front of us.
“Along with your dad, Nira. Remember? I’ll be following you later on, together with the last group of people.”
“Oh…” The girl nods. She looks at me and then back at her mother. “Together with Brother Riah and Brother Kei?”
“Um…” Asha hesitates, pausing to look at me. “Riah… have you decided yet?”
I sigh, looking up at the outline of the giant Gate ahead of us. The cold device in my pocket pokes at me. I shake my head. “I don’t know, Ash… I really don’t know.”
Kei’s room is alive with the music of analytic wards and computing machines working in tandem. Several processing units are positioned next to his bed while an array of holo-screens fill the wall above his desk. Tablet in his hand, Kei is sitting on a swivel chair and tapping at documents and graphs floating in front of him.
I’ve been spending more of my time here these past few days. When I’m not on duty, that is. Most of the people I know have gone through the Gate, and even then, there weren’t that many. Watching Kei work is one of the few interesting activities left to do around here, and Kei enjoys the company.
The main processing unit begins to whir loudly, which I’ve come to understand to mean that Kei had just started running a simulation algorithm. It’ll take up all the computing resources for next couple minutes.
Kei stretches his copper wings and arms, and turns to look at me. I was staring at one of his screens which showed a satellite image of our current world. A sea of flames like the surface of the sun with giant splotches of pitch black. There were no more visible traces of magic.
“Kei, what’s it like beyond the End?” I was sitting on his bed.
Kei stares at me for a bit before putting down his tablet and pulling his chair towards me. “You have someone who’s fallen down there, haven’t you?” he responds.
I nod. “We were close. We grew up together.”
Kei takes a deep breath as he stares out the window into the bleak city night sky. A smoky reddish hue outlined by the silhouettes of abandoned buildings. “There’s still very little we know about what’s beyond the End,” he begins to explain, opening the palm of his hand, empty. “The laws of physics, as we understand it, break down under the extreme conditions which exist there. For all we know, all of space could be compressed to one point there, or it could be stretched out beyond infinity. Perhaps time moves faster there, or maybe it moves slower.”
Kei’s hands come together as he turns to look at me. “As for those who fall down, while they may lose their physical bodies, what happens to their ethereal ones, we don’t really know.”
I bite my lip. “Kei…” The computing units purr as they begin their descent into the final portions of their work. “Would it be possible to locate someone who’s fallen into the End?”
Kei’s eyes sharpen and he bends forward, thumbs pressed together. He’s about to say something. But then stops himself.
I know what he wants to say. He wants to say that there is still an entire world out there where I can live out the rest of my life. That there are still meaningful things that I can do with my life and that it would be a waste to chase after something that is lost, a waste to throw away my life to the flames. But I interject. “No, it’s not like I’ve made any decision. It’s just…” I let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. It’s just that if there’s any possibility, I’d like to know.”
Kei stares at me intently. The drone of the processing units finally falls into silence. He lets out a big sigh and rubs his cheeks with his palms.
Stretching out towards his desk, Kei grabs his tablet. Then he leans back in towards me and breathes out. “Okay, tell me more about this friend of yours.” He looks me in the eye with a set determination. “If I’m going to help you, it’s only fair that you tell me your story.”
It happened as we were flying back from one of the evacuation sites we were helping with—an academic institute which Gale and I had previously studied at. We were accompanying two of the older boys who were transporting some bio lab equipment to a separate facility.
Asha wasn’t with us that day. In fact, she had been off duty since earlier that moon. She had just given birth to Nira. To be honest, at the time, I didn’t really understand why she would choose to have a child, what with the world ending and dying and all. I, for one, would never even have thought of considering it.
But I guess, as time passed, I began to see what she saw. As Nira grew up, I began to realize what her daughter meant to her. A child was hope, a reason to fight. It was a reminder that life continues and that there is still a future worth pursuing after.
We all needed something like that as we faced the end of our world. I didn’t really realize it at the time. Or perhaps I had taken the one I had for granted. As they say, sometimes you don’t realize what you had until you’ve lost it.
There was chasm we had to pass over in order to get to our destination. A large sinkhole which stretched down towards the End. The boys were visibly wetting themselves at the thought of flying over the End, becoming more agitated as we got closer. For Gale and I though, as with most people who’ve been in the evacuation division for some time, we had become more accustomed to it. After all, there were numerous times where we had to fly over it while it was in its violent phase in order to save people. Now that it was in its calm state, what more fear could it inflict on us.
We did not know about gravity wells yet.
Sure, there were rumors. Rumors of people being pulled into the End without any ability to escape no matter how hard they tried to fly out. But then again, there were all kinds of other rumors going around also. Rumors of people seeing ghosts of those who had fallen into the End. Rumors of shadows which kidnapped people and made them disappear. Rumors of the End being a living entity. It was difficult to tell which rumors were true and which weren’t.
I sometimes wish we had paid more attention to the rumors going around. But then again, even if we knew, there wouldn’t have been much that we could do at the time. We had to go through it anyway.
The gravity well hit us just as we had started crossing the divide. One moment all was calm, and then suddenly the world felt like it was falling. Except that the world was falling upward as we fell downward. No matter how much I flapped my wings, I couldn’t break my fall.
In the chaos, my instincts kicked in. I dove to catch one of the boys who was tumbling down through the air. In the corner of my eye, I saw Gale taking care of the other kid.
I held the boy tight and flew parallel the falling wind. The solid ground we had left behind was our best chance to get out of this thing, though it was now a looming cliff. Flames were licking at my body and slicing through my wings.
I saw a steep landing among the rocks and flew in hard. A crash with lots of scrapes and scratches. But we caught the rock. I quickly slammed my harness into the rock and hooked my boy up.
Gale crashed into the rock above me, and I caught him as he fell downward. I took the boy he was carrying from him as he set up his harness.
One of the boys was trembling hard, while the other one was frozen in shock. They weren’t that much younger than us, but everybody looks like a kid when they’re afraid. Gale tried to calm them down as I dug into my bag. The air around us continued to fall downward.
From my bag, I pulled out a case holding three hexagonal devices, glowing blue. I looked to Gale.
He shook his head. “I don’t have any on me,” he said. “Let’s take care of the boys first.”
I nodded and passed him one.
Taking another one and activating it, I tried to explain to the boy with me what we were doing. A warp-gear. It will teleport him to a facility in the neighboring sector where some other personnel will take care of him. I’m not sure really sure if he registered what I was saying. The rocks around us began to groan. The world began to feel heavier.
I placed the device on the boy’s chest. It melted through his garments and fused into his skin. Pulsating with bluish white energy, the boy’s body floated slightly upward, shuddering and sparking. Then with a flash, he was gone.
I glanced to Gale who was hanging on the ground beside me. The boy who had been with him was gone also. All that was left in the boys’ places were whatever they were wearing and carrying. The warp-gears only transport the individual’s body.
There was only one warp-gear left. I held it out to Gale. “So what should we do?”
At that moment, the whole cliff wall fell.
The rock I was harnessed to yanked me down into an avalanche of stone and boulders. I struggled to get free but my harness was stuck. Gale was quickly at my side, slicing away at the cords.
The cord snapped and we flew out.
But it was a downward spiral. As much as we tried to fly up or away, we continued to fall more and more down. The pull was too strong. The cliff side was out of the question now. It had begun its collapse.
I’m not sure at what point it was that I gave up. At the back of my mind, I knew we probably only had few minutes before we hit the End. Even if whatever was pulling us had stopped at that moment, we were too far down and too far exhausted to escape. I could already feel the singe on my skin as blades of plasma burned past me.
Gale was falling close beside me, a wingspan away. His eyes were locked on me. Perhaps this was the end. But it need not be for both of us. I still had the warp gear in my hand. One of us could still escape if we wanted to.
I pushed myself through the air and grabbed his arm, pulling him in. I pushed the warp-gear in his hand. “Use it to get out,” I told him over the wind and flames.
He shook his head as he grabbed me back. “I’m not using it.”
I wasn’t surprised. As much as we wanted the other one to leave, neither of us would leave the other behind. “Well, I’m not using it either,” I said, accepting our fate. I guessed it was the end for us. I mentally prepared myself to feel the searing pain of flames spread across my whole body as we fell through the End.
But then Gale made that stupid grin of his. “Sorry, Riah. I can’t let you do this.” And he pressed the device hard onto my chest.
My body shot upward, torn apart from my friend. I screamed and I yelled and I tore at the piece of metal digging into my heart.
But it was too late. A flash and he was gone.
I thought we had made a promise. I thought we had an agreement. That we would stick with each other. That we would stay together.
It hurt so much to be left behind. He knew that I couldn’t go on without him. Not while I knew that he was down there suffering like hell.
So why? Why did he do this to me? Why did he force me stay behind? Why did he force me to suffer this way?
Honestly, I felt betrayed. I trusted him. I trusted him to trust me. And he just threw me away.
I wanted to hate him. I really did. And for a while, I thought I did. Did he not care how I would feel? Was he so selfish that all he cared about was how he felt?
But I couldn’t. I knew why he did what he did. Perhaps I was the more selfish one to accept that he would suffer to be with me. Perhaps I should’ve been the one to do what he did and forced him to go on without me. And perhaps I was the selfish one to only think of ourselves. Weren’t there still many others out there who are falling to their doom? If one of us could still go on and save a few more lives, shouldn’t we take that chance?
Still, I can’t change the fact that it hurts. It hurts so damn much! It hurts like my heart’s been ripped out and burnt alive.
Sigh.
But that’s all in the past now. What’s happened has happened.
The question is what am I going to do now?
I’ve done everything I’ve could in this world. There is nothing left to save.
I know there’s still another world out there beyond the Gate. But to be honest, I just can’t make myself go. Not while my friend is still in this world. Down there, suffering, all by himself.
You know? Some say that to fall into the End, to suffer, to be trapped there forever, alone—that is death.
But this? Knowing that the person you care most about is all alone in agony, suffering from the most intense pain imaginable? This.
This is death also.
