It was a very long walk. He knew he had to save energy for when he arrived on the other side of Totum, so he didn’t run.
He just kept saying, “Reach the Pacifems, reach the Pacifems,” to himself. He was going to make sure that the Pacifems left all the people remaining in Totum alone. And they’d never come back.
It was difficult to adapt to the new leg. He was pretty sure he hadn’t applied it right; at every step it quivered under the pressure, but it never broke. Everything was still very white by the time the sun had passed the center of the sky. All the blues of the buildings has burned away, and only a few golden structures and decorations still glimmered. Black skeletons rotted along the borders of buildings and all along paths and walkways. Here and there, fresh, un-decayed bodies littered the ground. Some of them had been stabbed. The ashes stopped falling as he walked, and for a little bit a light drizzle blessed the ruins of Totum, but it was mainly just windy and calm.
Eventually, he was close enough to the action so that the sky above him was a repulsive brown again. It reminded Zain of the previous day before.
“I’m going to get rid of the Pacifems, I’m going to get rid of the Pacifems. I’ll kick them out of Totum.”
Zain felt like he was clinging to something that didn’t exist. Most of Totum was already gone.
“Please, mercy! These are my children! I’ll give you anything!”
A cold, demonic laugh. The laugh of a Pacifem.
The cries were coming from the other side of the building Zain stood next to. He blasted himself up to the roof and peered down at the Pacifem; there was only one, and four people standing in front of them, three of them being children. The mother clutched her children and shook uncontrollably as she pulled them back. Without any prior planning, Zain leaped off the roof and dropped down to the ground, blasting right before he landed to slow his fall.
His Dusters lowly clinked at his sides.
For a moment, he stared at the mask of the Pacifem. A flame arose in his belly, something he had only felt once before, the day he watched that couple happily rebuilding their home after the earthquake. That mask embodied everything he hated. In its deep void of black he saw the tragedies of the day before. The burning, the stabbing. Victoria. Cameron. His family. Bolton.
“Stay away from these people!” he screamed. “They’re not yours to kill!”
The Pacifem lowered her sprayer, and slipped it back into its socket. She didn’t even see Zain as a remote threat.
“You say it like you’re going to kill them,” she said smugly. “It’s a shame, how pitiful you all are. When we heard word that this place existed, we thought Totum would put up a good fight. At least your soldiers, or whatever you call them. PRO. But none of you have the slightest bit of skill. You’ve been training for all this time, and wiped out within hours.”
The woman took a step forward to Zain, who did the same but backwards.
“So tell me, if your entire legion of so-called Pacifem fighters can’t fight us, then you can? You’re going to stop me?”
Zain flattened out his palms and got ready to blast off and release a slash of air. Behind him, the mother and her children watched in disarray.
“I will.”
The woman pulled out her sprayer and swung it around like a stick.
“I’m waiting.”
Zain didn’t let her wait anymore. He launched himself towards her, and right before he made contact, he blasted himself upwards. The woman screamed as Zain sent a slash directly onto her arm. The cut matched the scar on Zain’s arm from the earthquake. Back on the ground, he went in for a blow to the gut. The Pacifem coughed blood. But he didn’t want to waste any time, so Zain brought his leg up and smashed it against the woman’s shoulder. She was knocked against the wall and dropped to the ground, still perfectly alive. Zain threw himself on top of her body and wrapped his hands around her thick neck.
After a few seconds, she asked, “Why aren’t you choking me?”
Zain couldn’t have answered it even if he wanted to. He had no clue. Up until this moment, he just thought he’d fight the Pacifems. He’d never intended on killing anyone.
He let go.
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” he said as pushed himself off of her and onto his feet. “Take my hand. You can help us.”
Zain reached out his hand to grab, and she did so. He pulled her up with all the power he had in him. Maybe this was the solution. Helping the Pacifems realize they were wrong. Slowly, she placed a firm grip on his shoulder and brought her mouth right next to his ear. She was so close that her breath tickled his neck.
“Well I do,” she whispered to him. “But I like you, so I’ll save you for last.”
It registered too late for Zain to stop it. He was shoved to the side, and before he could look up the horrified screams of the children burned in his ears. They were different than normal screams. They were the screams of people who could feel the life being sucked out of them. Not screams of pain. Just screams of horror and shock.
“You—“
The Pacifem knocked him in the head with her heavy boot. Something tingled in his face. She must have broken his nose. Blood tricked down his cheeks and dripped off his chin. He tried to stand back up, but he was knocked in the face by something hard.
“Maybe I see why Totum fell so fast now,” the Pacifem said.
In the split second as she raised her sprayer, Zain shot a glance towards the people he had failed to save. Three little skeletons and one big one. All because he was too weak to kill the Pacifem. And stupid enough to trust her.
Lying on the ground, his arms parallel to his body, he blasted off, flying only a few inches over the ground until he steadied himself and blasted forward as he ran. In the distance, he vaguely heard the Pacifem yelling at him. Shouting for him to come back. He didn’t even turn around to look at her. His arms were stiff behind him, facing the Pacifem. He just kept on blasting his Dusters so that he was always flying forward, only a foot or two above the ground.
When he was sure she was out of sight and he couldn’t see any Pacifems in the area, he slowed to a stop. His titanium leg made an uncanny grinding noise as it scraped against the ground until he halted. It was already all scratched up. Bruised, with blood all over his face, he hobbled over to a skinny alley and slumped down against the wall. His mouth tasted salty and the smell of blood filled his nostrils.
He had failed again. Another family dead, all because he couldn’t stop one Pacifem. And he didn’t have it in him to kill anyone. How was he supposed to take out the Pacifems if he couldn’t kill them?
“There has to be another way,” he said quietly as he ran a finger along his nose bridge. Halfway down, it turned and bent in an unnatural direction. He shivered. The pain was starting to come back to him as well.
It was like he had returned to the previous afternoon, but in a different part of Totum. They had to be almost finished with the city now. They’ll be sweeping it again soon, just to make sure they didn’t leave any stragglers, Zain thought. It was up to him to prevent that from happening. He didn’t know how, but he would. A shadow flooded over him as a blimp drifted by in the sky. How many people were there even left to bomb at this point?
But Zain got an idea. An idea that didn’t involve him directly killing anyone. If he was able to sneak into the blimp, and take it down from the inside, maybe from a controls room, he could actually accomplish something. Looking up, the gondola was much bigger than a normal blimp’s. There had to have been at least six or seven entire rooms in there.
He stood up and limped over to the opening in the middle of the plaza. A plaza that was once used for actual enjoyment.
“You can do this.”
He’d never blasted himself even onto a rooftop before, let alone a blimp in the sky. He made sure his Dusters were whirring in the right way, and peered up into the brown haze, the blimp a large black spot slowly moving forward.
BOOM.
He’d never blasted off so hard before. He was zipping through the air, tears forcing themselves out of the corners of his eyes and flying out into the smoky air. The fiery flecks and ashes didn’t affect Zain as much as they did before. Boom. Boom. Boom. Blast after blast, puff after puff, he got closer and closer to the blimp, until he finally reached eye level. Hesitantly, he rushed forward and grabbed the golden door handle, shrieking as he almost missed it. Slowly, he looked down.
He wished he hadn’t. It looked much higher from up here than it did from the ground. Every blue and gold building seemed like a speck in the distance.
He whipped his face towards the handle and pulled himself up, carefully lodging his legs on a slim crack at the bottom of the door. There was a tiny window in it. Zain peered through. No one was inside the entrance room, for all he could see. He tried brushing the fluffed-up hair out of his eyes, but he had no hands to do it and the winds kept pushing it. As quietly as he could, he punched the window. There really was no point of being quiet if the entire window was going to shatter.
With a struggle, he pulled himself into the tiny room and thumped against the ground. It was a very bland entrance room. The lighting was dim and most of the walls were gray, although there was a small cushioned bench on Zain’s side. A slow breeze made its way into the room through the open window.
On his other side was a life-sized picture of a boy who stared at Zain with tired, dead eyes. He jumped in shock when it moved. The picture jumped with him. It was a mirror. For what could have been ten minutes (it was much shorter), he just stared in disbelief at himself. He looked so different from only a few days ago. His clothes were tattered and his Dusters scraped up at his sides. Under his left knee, a prosthetic leg made the rest of the distance to the ground.
His face and body was covered in soot. His eyes were sunken, and they had an air of fatigue and disquietude. They weren’t his eyes. His nose was all bent up and covered in blood. The hair on top of his head was mostly frazzled, and it stuck out in awkward positions that definitely would have bugged him if it was a few days ago. But there was something about him that just didn’t look right. He didn’t look like himself. His entire disposition was different. His body was more hunched over than usual and looked much more frail and fragile.
He had been so busy studying himself in the mirror that he didn’t notice someone had crept into the room with him.
“Hello, Zain,” a very familiar voice said.
He didn’t even have time to turn before he was knocked out by her fist.
Something smelled of oil and cinnamon. Very strongly. After a second, the cinnamon smell faded away and Zain’s nose was left with a raw, nasty oil scent. He coughed, eyes still closed, and his throat made a sour raspy sound.
“You’re awake.”
He was awake, but not enough. It took him a whole minute to recall where he was and what was happening before he opened his eyes. He was in a dark, empty room made of metal and pipes. On both his sides, large fans spun and blew a cold wind into the room. Zain was in a constantly state of weightlessness, only occasionally feeling the room drop and his body with it. He was still in the blimp.
In front of him was a single, brown chair with a tall woman sitting in it cross-legged. She had straight black hair and narrowed eyes. Her wide mouth was at rest as she stared at Zain for a minute, studying him. She proceeded to stand up, and only then could someone really perceive her height.
“I remember you,” Zain managed to throw out.
“Well, that’s good. My name is Kiara Dempsey, as you know.”
Her comforting voice did not help. Zain preferred she yell at him.
She had on the suit that all the other Pacifems were wearing (mask off), different from the suburban Inspection Pacifem look she once had.
“Am I still in the blimp?”
“You are.”
“How long have I been asleep for?”
“Five minutes. Maybe ten.”
She was answering her questions very quickly, as if she was waiting for something excited to happen and just couldn’t contain herself.
“I’m sure you remember the day when you were found out. When I broke your sister’s arm. And put you all under.”
“I do,” Zain said as the feeling in his arms and legs came back, and he looked down to realize he was strapped to a chair. Without Dusters. “I remember everything.”
Kiara giggled softly.
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“And where are they now?”
Zain flipped his head up and looked into her eyes angrily.
“Aren’t you just an Inspection Pacifem?” he snarled. “What are you doing in a blimp bombing Totum? You should be back in Corrin!”
“Well, it’s a story you’re quite familiar with. Any Pacifem who reports the existence of illegal children is promoted to whatever position they like—with certain limitations of course. I’m still not in a position of power. But”—she placed her cold finger under Zain’s chin and gently raised it until he was looking up at her—“I did find you and your sisters.”
“I hate you,” Zain spat. “I hate you and all the other Pacifems.”
Kiara pulled her hand back from Zain’s face and directed her attention to a shiny table on her right.
“We all hate things that try to hurt us. Even if we know they’re right.”
“And you are right? Laying waste to Totum and killing hundreds of thousands of people is right?” Zain spat on her shoes. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a child. To love a child. Sister, brother, son, daughter. They’re all just the same to you. Obstacles.”
Kiara stood up and walked over to a table, where she began to fiddle with some metal trinkets. Like a dentist’s office. Her back was facing Zain, blocking whatever it was.
“If it’s for the greater good, then yes. This is right. If we want to prevent overpopulation, then it must be done.” Kiara wheeled around with an odd piece of metal in her fingers. “Anyways, you all act pathetic whenever you’re found out. Your city’s so-called finest fighters were weaker than fruit flies.”
Zain clenched his fists.
“Easy to say when you’re up here in a blimp while we’re fighting down there under fire.”
“Fighting is a stretch,” she said smugly. “Just resisting. Was it a fight when you tried to protect your family? Did you even make it there in time?”
“I broke one of their legs.”
A sly grin spread across Kiara’s face as she approached Zain.
She spoke softly, “I see your leg has gone through a bit of a predicament as well. Last time I saw you both legs were there. I have to say, everything about this mission is going much better than I thought it would. We were told we’d have adequate resistance. But we’ve received info that says you are the last PRO recruit to survive. And here you are, mangled and barely alive. Within two or three days we will have decimated all of Totum. Anyone trying to escape right now is already being killed by Pacifems at the borders. Everything is surrounded.”
The last member—Who was there even to confirm that? All of a sudden, it dawned on Zain that the Pacifems might have known a lot more than he thought they did. He still didn’t even know how they discovered Totum.
“And why haven’t you killed me?” Zain asked aggressively. “You’ve killed everyone else. It doesn’t seem like you placed any value on anyone else’s lives.”
Kiara sighed distastefully, flattening out her suit and turning a knob on the trinket she gripped in her hand. A steady buzz came from the tiny fan above.
“What is it with you people?” she moaned. “Always want to get straight to the point. Never want to have any fun. I like to take my time with things. I could have kicked open that door the day you tripped behind that shelf. But I played with your minds for a bit.” She paused, then said, “I used to know someone just like you. Always go, never stop and enjoy.”
“What the hell is there to enjoy here?”
“If you look for it, you’ll always find something to enjoy. No matter where you are.”
She inched closer to Zain. A small circle on the trinket in her hand lit up bright green.
“Ooh! It’s ready!”
Zain didn’t even notice he was sweating until he tried to inch away from her.
“Don’t be scared. Just listen to me and do exactly as I say,” she said playfully, with that painfully soothing voice of hers. Her snaky green eyes were narrowed in delight. “It only occurred to us a few hours ago that it took us years upon years to find this city, meaning it’s possible there could be more that we just haven’t found. And seeing as we’ve already wiped out your whole governmental branch, the next step was the PRO. And you, luckily, are the last member.”
Luckily didn’t seem like the right word for the situation.
“If anyone left in this city would have info on somewhere in Gaudium just like Totum, it’s you. So here’s what we’re gonna do. It’s like a little game. I ask you a question. Give me the wrong answer. I touch you with my little toy here.” The trinket jingled as she lightly shook it. “Give me the right answer, you don’t get touched with it.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Zain growled. “If I answer right the whole time, I’ll die at the end anyways.”
Kiara frowned. Impulsively, she lurched towards Zain and pressed the flat surface of the trinket against his skin. He howled, writhing and shaking in his chair as he failed to pull away. When she removed it, a large red and black spot was seared into his skin, stinging and burning like nothing else. Etched on his skin was the symbol of the Pacifems, a sand-less hourglass inside of a circle. She had branded him.
“You’re not doing this because you have to,” Zain said lowly as he stared up at Kiara with daggers for eyes, his long, wavy hair resembling an eagle’s nest. “You’re enjoying it.”
“I already told you that I like to enjoy it.”
She said it matter-of-factly, as if it should have been something that was accepted rather than hated.
“Now, let’s begin. Is there another haven for children out there in Gaudium?”
“No.”
This time it was his neck. It hurt more than last time, and trying to suppress it didn’t help. His scream was louder now.
“Is there another haven for children somewhere in Gaudium?”
“No.”
Tears raced and streaked down Zain’s cheeks as he sobbed uncontrollably.
“Is there another haven for children somewhere in Gaudium?”
This time, he paused for a bit. He looked up into Kiara’s cold, unforgiving eyes. Her slight grin. Her creepy expression. Maybe she was right. You could always find some way to enjoy something. Even if it hurt. Zain grinned.
“Yes.”
“And where is this place?” she asked happily.
“I don’t know.”
Kiara was taken aback, but her sturdiness and confidence returned to her quickly. Right on the middle of the chest this time. It burned through his cloak and shirt. Another howl.
“Where is it?”
“That is a good question. Where?”
She pressed it against his skin again, but this time Zain smiled. She now thought that he knew exactly where this fictional place was. And all he had to do was keep playing with her. It still hurt just as much, but looking at it through a different lens made it seem much more manageable.
“Answer me,” she breathed. “Where can we find this place?”
“I don’t remember mentioning anywhere like that.”
When the metal was pressed against Zain’s knee (the one that was still intact), he was shocked to find that he was laughing. A loud, chaotic laugh unlike anything that had ever escaped his mouth before.
For an hour, this was all that happened. Zain kept laughing, Kiara kept pushing. By the end, you couldn’t look anywhere on his body without seeing the Pacifem symbol.
“TELL ME RIGHT NOW WHERE THIS PLACE IS!” she finally screamed. She chucked the brand iron at the wall and stood there, fuming in anger. Only when one of her thin, silky hair strands fell into her eyes did she become self-aware and steady herself. “I will be back.”
She left the room. Zain had to use his time wisely. He wouldn’t be able to escape soon, but had to at least plan an escape. The room was virtually empty, with no resources to help. The chair in front of him that Kiara was sitting on hadn’t moved. The table now had no trinket on it. He couldn’t look behind him, so who knows what was there. And he was tied up. With no Dusters on him or in sight. He tried flexing his muscles to loosen up the knots, but they weren’t budging. He sat there for a while, thinking and thinking. Nothing came to his mind—he might have been to tired to think in general. Five hours of sleep did not compensate for a day of being beaten up and hobbling around.
The door slightly opened and Kiara slipped through the tiny crack, this time without a branding iron.
“The hourglasses are looking nice on you,” she said playfully. “Although too much dead skin doesn’t look very nice.”
“What do you have now? Another torture weapon?”
Kiara lifted her hands into the air to show they were weaponless.
“Nothing.”
She moved with intent, calmly pulling the chair to herself and sitting right on it.
“Zain. I’m sure you miss your family very much.”
Zain stared at Kiara, not moving or saying anything.
“You had to watch as they were taken from you, ripped out of your life by something that wasn’t under your control. The pain must have been unbearable.”
Kiara waited for Zain to speak. He didn’t.
“You can stay quiet all you want, but you miss them. Whether you’re trying to move on or not, they’re all you can think about. Every thought reminds you of your family. Every color, every object you see somehow leads back to one of them. Every time you close your eyes, they’re standing right there, waiting for you to join them. And you want to join them. Because you see them in yourself, when you look into your own eyes in the mirror. And as long as you see them in yourself, you’ll long to talk to them once again, to hug them tightly and say everything is alright and that you love each other. But they’re gone.”
“They’re gone, aren’t they? Do you want to see them again, Zain?”
“If you’re going to kill me—“
“No. I won’t. I’ll bring them back to you. You see, Zain, as long as we have their skeletons, we can bring them back from the dead. You’ll get to hug all of them again, look into their eyes and have them look back.”
“You’re lying,” Zain said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Sana, Inaya—they’re all waiting to see you again.”
Zain furrowed his eyebrows and erupted, “Don’t say their names!” Then, as the thought came to him, he asked. “How do you know the names of my sisters? How do you know my name?”
Kiara grinned.
“I can bring them back for you, Zain. You can leave with them and the Pacifems won’t ever hurt you again. If you just tell me where this other place is. I assume you’ve been lying about there being another hidden city for a while now, but there’s no harm in playing it safe.”
Zain dropped his head down and blankly stared at the ground. His parents . . . back? It was impossible. But if it was possible . . .
Zain shook his head, trying to shake out all the false hopes building up.
“I refuse,” he said firmly. “Even if it is real, I refuse. I made a promise that I would protect the people of Totum. And I’m not letting some underhanded manipulator like you control me. I will stand and defend Totum until the day I die.”
Kiara nodded.
“Well, Zain, I did all I could. I didn’t want to have to do this, but if you continue to resist I have no choice. Feel free to reconsider what I’ve said by the time I return.”
She exited the room. Zain began panicking. He was biting his tongue hard. If he didn’t find some way out in the next few minutes, he’d surely face some terrible new kind of torture. But there was nothing in the room other than a chair, a table, and the iron brand. Suddenly, the pieces clicked in his mind. He had all he needed to escape.
Slowly, and as quietly as possible, he inched his chair over to the brand on the other side of the room. Every time he stopped, he would shimmy a bit and focus his weight on the right and move an inch or two. When he was about two feet away, he shut his eyes and kicked as hard as he could, hoping that none of his skin would land on the brand.
It went just as he hoped it would. The chair fell on its back, with the heated flat surface of the iron brand pressing against the rope. A low hissing emitted from the contact point, and after this hissing subsided Zain was able to push the ropes off his upper body and stretch his arms. Moving with the burns hurt much more than he expected it to. But he had to keep doing it. Carefully, he grabbed onto the brand and pressed it against the ropes around his legs.
With a quiet sigh of relief, he stood up.
BOOM.
Kiara threw open the door. Slowly, her eyes widened as they traced around the room from the table to to the chair to the singed ropes to Zain.
“Almost,” she said. “I have someone for you.”
With her left arm, she pulled a tall boy into the room. He had flat brown hair, and his face was missing the smirk that usually adorned it.
“Evan.”
“Hi, Zain.”
He looked even worse than Zain did. His face was covered in blood, and scars covered his body like a mosaic. But the worst of it was his eyes. Just like Zain’s, the light behind them had disappeared, replaced by a void of nothingness.
“I lied,” Kiara said. “You’re not the last PRO member.”
“Are . . . are Victoria and Cameron alright?”
Zain averted his eyes away from Evan, away from all the haunting happy memories inside his eyes. He shook his head. He didn’t dare look up at Evan, but he saw the little pools the tears made as they dripped onto the ground.
“What about your parents?”
“Dead.”
“Sisters?”
“Dead.”
“I’m sorry, Zain.”
“Is your family alright?”
“I still haven’t found them.”
Zain winced. At least he knew his family was dead.
Kiara smirked. “I’m happy to see that you’re bonding with each other. Zain. If you don’t tell me where this other city is, or if it’s even real, I’ll kill Evan.”
In her other hand, she held a sprayer, pointed directly at Evan.
“You’re going to kill both of us anyways,” Zain said coldly.
“You won’t know unless you try . . . but if it comforts you, you have my word. Tell me all the true information, and I’ll let the both of you go.”
“Go where? To the ruins on the ground? To my family’s graves? Where?”
Kiara pressed the sprayer against Evan’s stomach.
“Wait!” Zain screamed. “I—I’ll tell you!”
The truth was Zain couldn’t watch another person he knew get killed right in front of him. Kiara pulled the sprayer back ever so slightly.
“Yes?”
Zain glanced at Evan, unsure of what to say. Should he make up a fake location? Tell Kiara that they didn’t know about any other cities?
“Zain, ever since the beginning I’ve always hated you,” Evan coughed out. “Even if you didn’t know it. More than Cameron. More than Victoria. I’ve always been a terrible teammate. Even if I didn’t realize it back then. And you . . . the moment you joined the team, Cameron and Victoria were infatuated with you. Every practice, they included you. They liked you.
“Every time I used to practice with them, I was separated. Even Cameron was part of the group, and all he did was slander everyone and everything he saw. But my pride . . . my pride was too strong. And I know it’s because of how I was, but I still hated you for it. You were the opposite of me—modest when I was humble, calm when I was proud. You made me look like an idiot. And so the team loved you.
“I was there when Blythe and Ellie were killed, Zain. I watched as the Pacifems burned them away. But you know what the worst of it was? They didn’t even look to me for help. They looked to each other. Since when would Evan go and help them? By the time I realized that was all my fault, it was too late. Too late to save them and too late to apologize. I imagine Victoria and Cameron both looked to you for help right before it happened. Always looking to you.”
Evan sneered, and a bit of the confident light he usually had fought through the curtains covering his eyes.
“The truth is, Zain, I still hate you. Even though I know you’re right and I’m wrong. I’ll hate you because you have the one thing I never did. People who trusted you.”
His shoulders regained their proud composure. Standing in front of Zain was Evan. The real Evan.
“And it’s because of my hate for you that I know I have to do this. It’s because of my hate that I know you’re the best person out of all of us to take on this burden. The burden of saving Totum.”
Kiara stood there in admiration, curiously watching her subject prattle on.
“Zain. I’m giving you the opportunity to do what all the people of Totum have wished to do. Don’t waste it. Take down this blimp.”
Before Kiara could understand what Evan said, he knocked his shoulder into the sprayer and dislodged it from her grip.
“Go Zain! If you try to save me you’ll waste both of our lives!”
Zain launched towards the door, not looking back to see what happened with Evan.
He barged through the empty hallway, knocking over tables and paintings and sprayer racks. Every possible sound that could be made was made. He heard quick footsteps from another room. He had made it to the door when he realized the large flaw in his plan.
“Damn it.”
How was he supposed to escape without Dusters? He couldn’t just jump out of the blimp and hope for the best. He wildly charged back to the hallway, peering through every window and cracking open every door. Almost every single one had Pacifems in them, but he didn’t care. It was either get out or get killed. He hustled door to door, until he finally opened one to an empty room with a table in it. A table with long, metal pipes that would fit perfectly onto Zain’s arms: his Dusters.
Scrambling for the latches, he strapped the clanky pipes on and threw himself down the hallway, charging through every Pacifem body that tried to stop him.
Now at the exit, he peered out the window and down to the ground below. The haze was almost too much to see through, but just enough that Zain knew he’d have to be very careful jumping out and using the Dusters for landing.
With one last thing in mind, he turned around.
“Sorry I had to leave so early!” he yelled loud enough for everyone in the gondola to hear. “I would’ve loved to stick around, but I found a way too have much more fun than you all! You can thank Kiara!”
Turning back around, he threw open the door and without any hesitation, leaped out into the air.
He felt weightless. Like a small leaf drifting alone in the wind. But then, he faced his Dusters downwards, focused himself, and shot out a blast of wind. Thwipp. He was zooming upwards and around the large balloon of the blimp until he finally rounded the corner and landed on top of the firm surface.
He breathed deeply.
He’d never learned to punch air out of his Dusters before like Cleareye had done. Bringing up his arm, he blasted out a puff of air and brought his arm down as quickly as possible.
Zain stared at the mark in disappointment.
A small dent, maybe even a scratch, appeared on the ground beneath him.
Over the next five minutes, he focused on making his punches bigger and bigger, until finally a tin jet of air shot of a tiny hole. All he needed was one more punch, and the whole blimp would come crumbling down.
“Go say hi to Cameron and Victoria, for me, Evan,” he said.
Zain brought his arm down for the last hit. Pop. He was thrown backwards as air shot out of the gaping hole. He ecstatically grabbed the fin at the back of the blimp and held on tight as the blimp slowly grew heavier and heavier, until eventually it began to drift downwards. And then it began to plummet.