“Sir, if it doesn’t bother you, I would like to kill him. Seeing as he broke my leg.”

The man lowered his sprayer as the ground shook from some kind of explosion outside. The ashes seemed irrelevant now. Everything seemed irrelevant now. Zain just sat there and cried while the Pacifems watched in delight.

“If you would like.”

The man with the broken leg limped over to what was the dining table, and dragged a chair over to Zain by its back two legs. It was hard for Zain to feel nervous or worried when he was thrown on the chair and tied down. What did he have to worry about? Everything he didn’t want to lose was already lost. Without his family, without Bolton, without his friends—there really was nothing that made him want to stop these men. He wanted the pain to end. He wanted to stop crying. But he couldn’t.

And he wasn’t worried as the petty man poured some kind of fluid all over his chair, who knows from where. He wasn’t even worried when the Pacifem pulled out a lighter and clicked it on. All he had to do was turn to his right, and stare deeply at the pile of black skeletons. Maybe if he died he would join them.

“I hope this hurts immensely more than my leg does,” the man growled.

On the sides of his mask, a few crease marks showed that he was sneering down at Zain.

“We’ll have to leave soon,” the big man said calmly. “They’re going to start dropping bombs in this section in about thirty seconds.”

“I wanted to watch,” the other pouted.

“Light it and let's go. He’ll have to burn alone, I suppose.”

After a loud whine, the lighter was put against the leg of the chair, and Zain felt the air around his legs growing warm as the flames licked his clothes as if teasing him.

“Sorry it had to happen this way,” the man closed the lighter and followed the others to the door. “But I just couldn’t let you off with a quick death. Goodbye.”

Zain shut his eyes. If he could shut his ears and nose, he would have as well. He didn’t want to look at the black skeletons or smell the burning skin or hear the screams. He just thought about all the amazing times he’d had with his siblings. With his parents. With his friends. Growing up and getting into stupid arguments with Inaya and Sana and then making up and playing games minutes later. His parents always hugging him, making sure he knew he was safe. That night on the mountain with Victoria, Cameron, and Bolton. Everything seemed to flash before his eyes. And all of a sudden, he didn’t want to die anymore. He didn’t want to live either, but he didn’t want to die.

With all of his strength, he opened his eyes again and forced himself to stare at what was once his family. He forced himself to stop crying, even though he wanted to so badly.

And lucky for him, the Pacifems had forgotten to do one thing: turn off his Dusters. They were still strapped to his arms, lowly whirring. The flames were about to reach the base of the chair, and if he didn’t do anything soon, he’d burn away—probably slower than his family did.

“Come on, Zain,” he said to himself. “If you could just—“

Gradually, he leaned from one side of his chair to the other until it began to rock, clacking against the floor. And just as he had hoped, it landed with his head facing the large hole in the shattered window, the window Cameron broken to enter. The ropes had tied his arms against the sides of the chair, so that they were facing the opposite wall. About thirty feet away, he could see the wall of another Sector building.

He had a hard time clearing his mind. Every time he attempted to thoughts of his sisters or someone else would pop into his mind. He could feel the flames right at the edge of the chair leg. He had to blast off now, or never. With all his strength, he cleared his mind and blasted as hard as he could, twisting in midair so that he fit through the hole in the window and the chair came into contact with the other building’s wall before he did.

“OW!”

He hit the wall with much harder force than he intended. The chair exploded into pieces just as he had planned, but his back collided with it as well, and he was only able to pull his arms out of the ropes a moment before he hit the ground. A short, strong puff of wind issued from the pipes of the Dusters that slowed his fall before he hit the ground.

The surroundings had not changed. The Pacifems had already gone somewhere else, and Zain didn’t plan on following them. Ashes and fiery flecks drifted through the hot air under a massive cloud of brown smoke. Fires engulfed entire structures and lit up cars and the streets.

Zain forced himself up and dusted his clothes off. It didn’t seem to fix his appearance. What was there to do now? He was alive. Every second he battled with himself over whether he should climb back up the stairs in his house and wait with the skeletons until he died.

“Sir—kid!” a woman’s voice screamed behind him. Zain whipped around to see a mother, in tears and disheveled, holding a little boy in her arms. He wasn’t moving. “Please! You’re a recruit for the PRO! You must know something on how to help him! He’s still alive! CPR! Anything!”

Zain fell to his knees, staring wide-eyed at the little boy. He had been caught off guard. And now he was sobbing harder than before. Much harder.

“They didn’t—they didn’t teach us how to—how to—they taught us to fight! And to rescue . . . not to heal.”

He stumbled over to the mother.

“He’s my baby boy! Anything! Anything to save him! I’ll give you anything!”

“I’m sorry,” Zain had finally reached them, and he dropped down to look in the child’s eyes. They were moving, just slightly.

“It was his birthday today,” she whispered as she pulled his body closer to hers and wept. Zain wept too. He didn’t know what else to do. The woman’s shrieks grew demented.

“I—I can’t help you,” cried Zain. “I don’t know how!”

It was astounding that tears could still leak out of his eye sockets after how much he had already cried. His throat had closed up ages ago.

“He’s my son! My only son!”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Suddenly the woman lunged out to Zain and tried to pull him into a hug.

BOOM.

He couldn’t tell where it came from, but somewhere near a blimp had dropped another bomb. Very near. He was flung thirty feet back, scraping and grinding against the road the whole way. The back of his body was all burnt up, and the hems of his pants were no more. All over his bodies scars and scratches stung as he flew back. A ways away, he could see the mother, now in multiple pieces. The boy had been thrown stories into the air—he didn’t survive either.

Zain cried out in pain. Something had jutted into his knee and he forced himself to stare down at it. Nothing there. Something had cut clean through it. The gash was identical to how Sana’s was that day, except bigger and more traumatizing, since it was on him.

“My leg!” he shrieked. “Somebody! Help! Anyone!”

No one came.

“MOM! DAD!”

He pulled off his shirt and tied it around the wound, then picked himself up and trudged towards his house again. His body didn’t feel like his anymore. It didn’t feel new. His limbs were destroyed. His body had been obliterated. The explosion would have killed him if he hadn’t landed on the grass. Slowly, step by step, he lumbered up the stairs, the weight of his body on his one un-sturdy leg unbearable.

There was only one thing he could think to do. And he didn’t like it. But he had to. So he entered the room again, and sure enough, the remains of his family were still there. And thankfully, so was his mother’s prosthetic leg. If the acid couldn’t burn through bone, it definitely couldn’t burn through titanium. He didn’t want to use Sana’s. It would be too painful to rip the hunk of metal off of her tiny body.

He had to use a thin wire he found in the tattered wall to stitch up the wound best as he could, but the blood was everywhere and still slightly seeping through. It was almost inevitable that he would get an infection. With the wound (somewhat) patched up, he strapped the prosthetic leg on the best he could. It fit right, at least.

The screams outside grew melodic, in an odd way. They had a sort of rhythm to them. The way the screaming stopped for a few moments, and then following every boom they rose again. Zain didn’t even make it to the staircase before his body dropped to the ground and he blacked out.

Sleeping always felt strange to Zain. You go to sleep once, and you wake up hours later, but it only feels like it’s been a moment. It felt even stranger right now. When he dropped out, screams of terror plagued his ears and Totum was bombarded with explosions, black skeletons, all under a large, looming black cloud. When he woke up, everything was quiet. Calm black flecks drifted through the air, but not enough to cause an issue. The sun behind the clouds cast a white light all over the land. Shadows were faint and tiny.

On the other side of Totum, the two blimps still floated over the buildings and people. It was taking a long time for them to kill everyone. So there had to be some survivors. The blood all over Zain’s face and body had dried, and his mouth tasted like rotting eggs. His leg seared with pain in every spot where the wire pierced his skin.

What to do now?

He stood up. He would have rather just died on the spot, but something kept compelling him to survive. Even though he didn’t want to. He glanced up at what was once his home. The massive hole in the wall could be seen near the roof, and large, black burn marks smeared across the side of the building. Near the bottom, the door was lying on the ground , just in front of where a large crater was carved into the ground.

Zain set off to work. There was a large patch of grass a Sector away, large enough to fit seven bodies inside—he couldn’t risk going to search for Bolton’s. He wasn’t even sure he would recognize it.

Skeleton by skeleton (and Cameron’s body, for he had been stabbed), he successfully transferred each body to the field. The second he picked up each one, he knew who it was. The image of their bodies being burned and their faces stretching as they howled in pain would surface and then recede. If he could cry, he would. But there really weren’t any tears left in his body.

It wasn’t hard work. All he had to do was find a metal metal shaft from the ruins and start digging holes. Seven holes for seven people. By the time he started to feel even a slight bit of fatigue, the holes had been dug. He tenderly placed a body in each, with Sana all the way on the left and Victoria all the way on the right. The holes were refilled much quicker, and he searched for an hour for boulders large enough to place at the head of each grave. Using a metal rod, he scraped the names of the dead onto the rocks in a manner that made the words jagged and white. If anyone else were to come across them, they would have been unreadable.

And so he stood there. In the center of the semi-circle of graves he had built. He stood there for what felt like a long time. Eventually, he dropped onto his knees and let his palms feel the eroded, scraped road beneath him.

He didn’t know what to do, so he spoke.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said. “Or if—if you really are just skeletons. I hope you’re not. But I’m sorry,” apparently he was wrong. He did have more tears left in him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I’m the only one who survived. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” He wiped his face on his sleeve, burying his eyes in the soft fabric. He turned to Victoria’s and Cameron’s graves. “You two were always stronger than me. And you always threw yourselves into danger before I did. That day, with the test, I left you there to fend for yourself. You deserve to be alive right now—much more than I do.

“You were some of the bravest people I knew. Even though you’d already been through so much before you met me. Mentor Bolton would be proud of you. He was. He is.”

Small ashes were gathering on the surfaces of the rocks, so he gently swiped his hand over each one until they were clean again. Then, he turned to his uncle’s grave.

“Uncle Malek. I’ll miss the games you always used to bring us every weekend. And I’ll miss you. I was always happy when you were there. I’ll miss you a lot.”

In the distance, another large explosion shook the ground. The massive creakk of a skyscraper snapping spread across the city.

He walked across the circle to the graves of his parents.

“You should be proud of yourself. You were the best parents anyone could ask for. You should be proud of yourself for being so amazing. For me. For Inaya. For . . . for Sana. I’ll never forget anything you’ve done for me and my sisters. That day of the earthquake, when you chopped off your own leg to protect Sana. And all the times you’ve been there for Inaya and I even when we weren’t for you.”

He got down and hugged his parent’s gravestones. It may have looked silly, but it didn’t feel like it.

“And Inaya. I’ve always looked up to you. I may not have showed it, but I did. From my first memory, you were there. Do you remember when you told us what your first memory was? Well, I’ll tell you the first one I can remember. It’s not anything remarkable. Just me and you sitting under the willow tree in our backyard. I don’t even remember what we talked about—probably something stupid, like what the outside world was like. We thought it would be amazing, remember? But it was just me and you. And I remember watching you that day as you pulled the grass out of the ground and taught me how to do it as well. I was too tiny. But you still taught me how. If I’m being honest, I wish Victoria and her squad never rescued us. I would rather be dead then feel what I feel right now.

“And Sana,” he cried for a minute longer before he could speak again. “I know you were excited. To make friends here, to go places. I’m sorry you didn’t get to do that. The Pacifems took your life from you. Your dreams, everything. You deserved it the least of all of us. You may have been a bit contentious at times, but for most of it, you were in the right. Sana, I want you to know that you will always be my little sister. No matter what.”

He stood up, his cloak slightly fluttering in the breeze.

“The Pacifems took everything from you. From us. From everyone.” The tears stopped leaking out of his eyes and he didn’t want to cry anymore. Something had sparked inside of him. He was both excited and angry at the same time. He no longer wanted to sit around and be sad. He knew what he wanted to do now. He knew what he’d have to do. “I swear it to you, Sana. I swear it to everyone here. I’ll kick the Pacifems out of Totum, before they can do any more damage to the families living here. I’ll make sure every damned one of them is at least a hundred miles away from Totum for the rest of my life. Until I die. Those pieces of crap will never feel the joy of killing a child again, the way their psychotic minds work. I’ll watch as I force every single one of them to leave our city until there are none left. I swear it.”

He slipped off his cloak and tenderly placed it over Sana’s gravestone, careful to make sure it couldn’t blow away in the wind.

“I swear it.”

And so he left, heading in the direction of the bombs and smoke and cries.