79 - New Years' Aspect Sinister (5) [July 10th, Age 15]

I don’t know how I didn’t notice. In the moment I was too focused on everything else, the world collapsing around me, trying to stay sighted in the dust-swirled hell that building had become.

He’d become an afterthought. I didn’t even bother to check and see if he was alive.

I could do nothing but stare. Nothing but hold the droplets so close to his every contour that nothing but the shape of his mangled body existed in my head—a fallen statue alone in a black world.

Suspended in an abyss with nothing but this.

“We’d have had to drag his body down here anyway, Erika,” Loybol’s voice came from somewhere next to me, softly. “You still did the right thing.”

I couldn’t muster words. Any words at all.

Sinking to my knees.

I added Loybol to my list of local objects—she was here with me, I knew, but everyone else wasn’t. They were outside the sphere. Being aware of them meant losing Yoru and that was not possible.

Even if I wanted to, it couldn’t be done.

Loybol’s tone changed. She gestured at everyone else, swirling a finger in the air near her head and saying, “Everybody fuck off. Give us some space.”

It offered no dispute. Eliza, Cygnus, and her unnamed captive obediently slunk towards the back of the room—and once they got to that point, Eliza set about dismantling the wall, carving out a hole to get us out of here.

I just heard it happen. Made no attempt to feel the shape of it. It was outside the sphere. It did not exist.

There was only me, Loybol, and what was left of Yoru.

Loybol knelt down next to me. “Are you okay?”

Stupid question. The words didn’t even go through my ears—they bounced right out of the canal and fell limp on the floor.

Slowly, Loybol reached out and took hold of the blood-soaked sleeve on my shirt and lifted it slightly. I’d been hit, right? Struck somehow. It didn’t hurt anymore so I assumed it wasn’t a big deal—but who was I to trust myself?

“This arm still works fine, right?”

I shifted my shoulder. “I—I think so,” I managed, to my own surprise. There were still words in here, somehow. Still vocal chords to vibrate in this empty hole with Loybol and half of Yoru. It wasn’t just them—there was me. I was in there, too, all parts of me.

Still alive somehow.

I drew a deep shuddering breath and tried to let go of the droplets around Yoru, smacked hard against a wall somewhere in my skull and stopped.

It couldn’t be done. Impossible.

Nobody, surely, could ever.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Loybol’s voice said. This time, I listened. The words came from somewhere behind me, off to my right, like an earbud. A bodiless voice. When did I lose her?

I was alone with Yoru again.

I did this. I left them alone.

I, me, and no other. I walked away.

I chose this.

The droplets around Yoru went still. Crystallizing into ice without my consent. The air in the room was so dry now that from somewhere off behind the voice in my ear I heard someone cough.

I chose this.

Every time I traced the contour of his half-body again I added another layer of ice to it and sucked a bit more of the water out of the air.

My doing. I killed him.

I walked away.

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“This is not your fault,” the voice next to me said.

“It is,” was all I could croak back.

“Eliza was there and Yoru was also,” Loybol said. “They had the area scoped out. We didn’t consider a second bomb. That’s not your fault; that’s mine.”

It should have been me. You were never supposed to last another year, were you? Something had to give. Something had to be reclaimed.

You were supposed to die that night in October and you cheated. God comes to collect, as they say, and when he does, he collects everything he’s owed in a manner befitting of his position.

Broadcast your death on a billboard over Times Square; an execution as public as can be. They read your crimes from a scroll as long as your gallows are tall. The countdown lists your sins. The host riles up the crowd, the droolers, the shamblers—it is time, it is clean, the world is ready to begin anew!

The ball drops.

The new year starts without you—the new year starts because it is without you. The ball is your head falling from the noose—the music is the chaos reverberating in what’s left of your mind as the lightbulbs go out one by one.

The city lights drain the remains of your eyes and everything you were swirls down the hatch.

They were cheering, weren’t they? Won’t they cheer just like that when you’re gone?

I was supposed to die that night in October and I cheated. Everything after that was outside the lines. Fate fell apart. None of this was scripted. We were alone with no track and no guide-rails and nothing but empty black sky above. No stars to guide. No light to follow.

Everything—all of this—was wrong.

“Sometimes you make mistakes,” the voice next to me said. “The size of mistakes are a factor of the power. When you’ve got a huge amount of power and the huge amount of responsibility that go with it, your mistakes can cost lives.”

I could not respond.

There was a tightness in the corner of my eyes but there was no moisture to match. Wasn’t I supposed to be crying? Wasn’t that how this worked?

No—I swore to myself when I cheated death that I’d never cry again.

Stupid, stupid. How do you never see these things coming?

Why do you always ask for so much? For two and a half years, you knew that asking for more would lead to this. When did you forget that?

God, Erika, when did you get so greedy?

“Erika,” Loybol said. She was essentially whispering in my ear now. “The amount of people I’ve accidentally let die in my life would make your head spin. I was at three before I ever even got a key, and the number’s only grown since. But the number I’ve saved far outweighs the mistakes. They happen and you learn. They happen, and then they never happen again.”

She paused. “You’re not crying, so I know you’re listening to me. Right now, we still need to get away from here. I’m going to bury him. You won’t have to explain to anyone what happened. I will. Okay?”

I was not crying. I was supposed to be, wasn’t I?

I didn’t know what muscles I was supposed to flex to make that happen. How do you force tears? There had to be a valve in there I could open, somewhere—something to twist to let them out, or a door to open or a switch to flick.

Loybol had already seen it for what it was, though. She saw me regard Yoru’s half-body without tears.

The jig was up, then. A better truth than I could ever convey. Performative remorse with all its theatrics.

No amount of wailing and screaming now could cover for the chance I’d just missed to put this all to bed.

It was what it was. There would be time to reflect later—except that there wouldn’t be; there never was; every time I’d ever said that to myself it was an outright lie. The stack of things to “reflect on later” was so towering now that I couldn’t even begin to say what was on the bottom. What was the first thing I pushed aside in favor of tomorrow? Where did this begin?

How tall did the stack have to get before I became too weak to push it more?

This was not sustainable, Erika. Something had to give.

You knew you couldn’t live like that.

“It’s time to go, Erika,” Loybol whispered to me. “Stand back. I’m going to bury him.”

And I rose to my feet. Off my knees. There was no time to kneel—I could do that later. The mantra for the age: tomorrow, tomorrow—always and forever tomorrow until I’m dead and then tomorrow goes on without me.

Time marches, but you can’t march with it forever.

I took a breath and then I took a step back, and Loybol followed my motions. I did not let go of Yoru, his body still perfectly outlined as the only thing that existed in my world—but I added, as an afterthought, the shape of Loybol standing next to me.

I didn’t really need anything else, truly.

Loybol took a breath and a square of concrete underneath Yoru separated itself from the floor. It rose a few feet in the air as a platform, and then it flipped around and drove itself back into the ground. The cracks sealed themselves up and he was gone.

No evidence that he was ever here.

Then she turned and gestured to the tunnel Eliza’d been forcing through with the Cygnus and the captive. “We need to seal this up behind her.”

I nodded. There wasn’t anything I could do to help with that, but she was already returning to the task at hand and therefore I had to do the same.

Yoru was gone. The droplets I used were buried with him, and the air in the basement was so dry now that I couldn’t see much of anything outside of Loybol.

Darkness, then—well and truly. If I was already dead too, it only made sense, didn’t it?

Nobody ever claims the dead can see.

“I can’t really see anything down here,” I said to her, in a small voice.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Take what’s left of the moisture and use it in the tunnel. Nobody’s ever going down here again, so go ahead.”

And she started off toward that hole at the end of the room, and I followed her there.