The wheels of the cart rumbled and crunched, scored with white gashes from their trek over the merciless glass. Six of them, tall and cut from white stone, propping up the cart of jars, sealed with wax and cloth to protect their contents from the sun.

Lia waved her hand in front of the driver's eyes.

"Lia," I hissed at her, but the driver didn't seem to hear or see us, plodding on in the same even steps as ever, yoke in hand, cart trundling behind.

"So this is...something," Saga muttered, scratching her head. For once she looked as puzzled as the rest of us, watching this...thing go.

He just walked. One foot in front of the other, out in the middle of the glass. From his course, it looked as though he was headed in roughly the same direction as us. West, anyway. Though what he was doing here, what his cargo was for, how he'd made this far...well, basically everything about him was a mystery.

"Calloused hands," Karu mentioned. I looked and saw they were thick with callouses, curved and worn on his palms as though the skin of his hands was shaped to the yoke. "Appropriate attire." His clothes were airy and light, but covered him completely from the sun, a deep hood and long sleeves that draped over the backs of his hands. "He has a canteen, and I assume food."

"Is he just...deaf and blind then?" Lia asked, waving again.

"Most who are thus are still not fully deaf nor blind," Karu said. "I suspect that there are few on this Earth who would be truly ignorant of a group of strangers arriving and surrounding him. Much less to land a VTOL at his feet. The shade we cast should be unexpected, if nothing else."

"I'm gonna touch him," Lia said.

"Don't--" I said, but she'd already brushed his arm and then skipped away.

He paced on, saying nothing, responding in no way at all. It was creepy. It reminded me of the void of this place, like this man was that emptiness made manifest.

"Still nothing?" I asked Saga, who was barely keeping up with us.

She shook her head. "He's just like the other toads. His mind doesn't seem human, about as much as his actions, I guess. It's...a lot less threatening when they're not trying to kill me. But still frustrating."

"And you?" I asked AEGIS. She was walking there, studying all of us and chewing her lip like a champ, her analysis face on maximum.

"No idea," she said, stepping forward another couple paces to keep examining around me. "My first thought...was zombies, actually. Though that's fiction obviously but...do you remember years ago, when I was still stuck in the box, when Saga was in the mines, one night, she took Wynn and Tate..."

"Yeah," I said, suddenly seeing it too. "She compelled them to hack at her door when she was sleeping."

"They were good slaves," Saga nodded. I just shook my head at her.

"This guy reminds me of them, how they move. You think maybe...he's had a code-X in his head? Someone reduced him to just a workhorse, out in this desert by himself?"

I saw Lia shudder, and Karu shifted uneasily. It was plausible, but nobody here wanted to face the possibility of facing down a code-X at the end of all of this. But now faced with this guy, I wasn't sure what other possibility there could be.

"What's he hauling?" AEGIS asked. Lia started to move to climb in the back and I held her.

"What? You aren't curious? If you just want to let him soldier on, why are we even worrying about this?"

"Remember what happened when we tried to stop Wynn and Tate from their compel?" I asked AEGIS.

She frowned. "They got violent."

"It is merely salt water anyway," Karu informed us, tapping her visor. "From the sea, I imagine. Though why one would haul salt water for unspeakable miles is beyond me."

"It's too much of a coincidence, though," AEGIS said. "To find this guy out here, headed towards nothing, when we're also looking for...nothing." Her head swayed like a turkey as she narrowed her eyes in the direction he was headed. "I don't see anything...but given how far this guy's already gone, I'm not sure that means anything."

"You would have us follow his course?" Karu asked.

"I would," I said. "I agree, he's gotta be headed somewhere. And he doesn't seem to have any reason to take an indirect path. I mean...it's not like there's anything for him to go around out here. Take down his bearing and we'll head that way."

"It'll throw our flightplan off," AEGIS said, as she manhandled a few strands of her hair. "I...don't know what that does to our odds without reevaluating the current fuel levels, but given that we were already on an optimal path to cover prospective areas, our odds can only go down."

"Unless he leads us right to it," I said.

"Yes. Unless that, of course. Which, I dunno...I guess it's plausible. But that's all of our eggs in one basket then. If it doesn't work out--"

"It'll work," said an unexpected voice, and we all turned to look back at Saga, crossing her arms as she trailed in our wake. "He's a toad, same as we saw working for Ichiro. The only place we've seen them is working for Ichiro."

"And Dragon. You couldn't see his mind either."

"Or Blackett," Karu shrugged.

"Blackett was different, it was like he wasn't there at all. And none of anyone's powers could touch him, not mine, not Athan's not anyone's. Toad's are different, they've got a connection with Ichiro, and so this guy is too. The only connection Ichiro's got out here is the source, so this bugger's headed right towards it."

We all digested it for a moment as we kept up pace with the sled.

"Makes sense to me," Lia volunteered.

"Me too," AEGIS said, still fretting. "I just don't like it."

"Either way, we've got his position and course logged, right?" I asked. "We don't have to walk out here on the hard glass in the hot sun anymore. If we decide we need him, we'll be able to find him. Not like there's anywhere to hide."

We made our way back to the ship, which was surprisingly far away. Tem greeted us with a little wave as Karu booted up the turbofans and flipped a great many switches before the vehicle lurched off under us.

"New course charted," AEGIS said with obvious trepidation. "All comes down to how long we want to head this way of course but...we're talking a reduction from forty percent of the viable sites down to twelve percent, or less."

"Why that little? Can't we just...zip over that way a bit?" Lia asked.

"We could but, I was working on the assumption that what we're looking for is a man-made structure and...there's math about the horizon and curvature of the Earth, how the air temperature changes the index of refraction--"

"So basically, we have to go pretty far that way to see something we can't already see from here."

"Not...exactly...but...to cover an optimal amount of territory, yeah."

"Then let's do it," I said.

AEGIS sighed. "Yes, let's. Am I still going to be held accountable if we run out of fuel now that we're deviating from my chosen plan?"

"Of course," Saga said. "Because otherwise I'm responsible for my own actions, and I don't like that."

"Phooey," AEGIS said, crossing her arms and legs with indignation.

The fact that every minute we were headed this way was another minute off-course weighed heavily on all of us, and I caught us each looking out the front of the craft with far more frequency than anyone had been doing before. Nobody seemed to want to talk or be otherwise distracted, since there was now a measured cost to any lack of attention. Nobody wanted to trek on foot through the dozens of miles we'd already passed, and there was a focused anticipation in the air.

Even after another hour, and the sun beginning to creep into the top edge of the windows, nonexistent shadows from nonexistent landmarks darkening the already-black glass, nobody spoke. Except for the sun in the sky, it felt like I could have just blinked and there'd have been no difference between then and now, and the dreadful sameness of the place was really getting to me. More than once I thought about how completely horrid it would be to walk the glasslands, feeling like every mile was the same as the one before and the one after, and wondered how fast that might make one insane.

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You know, just fun, reassuring thoughts, as the fuel gauge dipped ever lower and the VTOL soared towards more inky void.

"We are at a critical juncture," Karu announced, finally.

"We're there?" Lia bubbled, unbuckling her harness to go up front to see.

"No, silly child. We are nearly two-thirds out of fuel. Judging our fuel consumption until now, between Tokyo to Hiroshima, and from there to here, we are approaching the point of no return. Should we be content to aim for Korea as a respite, we have a few hundred more miles to our name, five-hundred or so. However, once we cross those thresholds, we will no longer have sufficient fuel to return. This is not a decision to be made lightly."

"I can draw up some flight paths and see just how far we can push it," AEGIS mumbled, already swiping and tapping in the air as she pulled down her work. "It's all differential equations as fuel efficiency increases with less in the tanks."

"Oh boy, differential equations," said Lia flatly. "My favorite."

"AEGIS' favorite, probably," I shrugged.

"Be that as it may, do I have a consensus on us choosing to return or not?"

"Seems pointless to me to choose to return when we're already here. Repeating the last couple of days just so we can search for another couple hours is...that's a terrible plan," I said.

"So is crashing in the desert, though," Lia pondered.

"We won't," Saga said with confidence. "We'll happen on that guy's destination, I know it."

"How is it that you are so confident without your powers? I thought you a mewling whelp without them?"

"I happen to function just fine with my own brain, thank you," Saga blew a raspberry at Karu. "Pretty big talk coming from a girl who's codependent on a machine wrapped around her head, by the way."

"AEGIS what do you think?" I asked.

"...still running the...the um...numbers," she said, her hands and eyes nearly a blur.

"Um, Lia then?" I turned to her.

She scratched her head and thought for a second. "Dunno. Kinda hard to...make a decision which might affect everyone, you know? Like, I was pretty convinced by Saga's line of reasoning, but it's hard to say I was so so convinced that I'd chuck us in the desert over it. Even if she is right, it's still possible that we won't reach that place on this tank, even."

"I kinda doubt that guy is going to walk more than five-hundred more miles," I scoffed.

She shrugged. "Like you said, he's basically a zombie. He might walk another thousand without caring that he's starving and the skin on his feet is all gone."

"Um, Tem? Any ideas?"

She shook her head. "I agree with Athan, I think."

"Thanks," I said, turning back to everyone else more useful.

Lia had a point about it being hard to make decisions with everyone else hanging in the balance, and I actually resented her pointing that out a little. Because that was sometimes what I felt like I was expected to do pretty much every day around here. Granted, in general, the girls were also pretty good about not giving me shit when things invariably went belly-up. But mostly that was because they went so catastrophically wrong that nobody had time to blame or gloat, and when we finally got through it, we were all hurt or exhausted enough not to bring it up again.

Which, thinking about it, didn't exactly fill me with confidence in my own decision-making skills here. I thought about how certain and decisive I'd been in choosing to leave Moon behind -- it was absolutely the right call, I'd thought at the time. A new Athan with the new and unique ability to back the fuck off every once in a while when it was appropriate to learn from my mistakes.

But if I hadn't made that call, we'd never be out here now, forcing a new call to be made. Granted, one of the reasons why we might not be making this decision might be because we were all dead, but it also kinda felt like at this level, that was a pretty probable outcome from any decision.

I didn't make an immediate decision, and nobody else did either. After a minute, AEGIS had numbers for us which I don't think reassured anyone but her. Nobody understood them but her, anyway, until she boiled it down to the barest possible explanation.

"Look at this point I'm not even talking about the linear algebra anymore," she sighed. "This is just simple calculus at this point."

"...yeah, I kinda dropped out of senior year in high school. And Lia's a freshman. Not a lot of calculus here."

"Math blows," Saga added, a statement to which Lia vehemently agreed.

"Back me up here, please," AEGIS turned to our pilot, who shrugged.

"My father always told me I would not have a calculator with me at the podium, and so I learned the material the hard way. However, the last ten or so years, I have had a calculator right before my eyes, and so the knowledge has atrophied. I am afraid you are on your own for love of math, robot."

AEGIS sighed heavily. "Okay well. The simple fact is, we need to make a decision in the next half-hour basically. That's our point of no return, and that's for Korea, the nearest inhabited place outside the glasslands."

"Was that so hard?" Lia asked.

AEGIS fixed her with a glare. "Yes. More than you can imagine. Would you like to volunteer an opinion on our situation other than sass?"

"I would," Saga said, raising her hand from her back on the floor. "Oh wait other than sass."

"You are useless," AEGIS commented. "Athan, I think this is why it always lands on you."

I turned and watched the glasslands streak past under us, insofar as the same frozen, glossy scene could streak.

I really, really didn't want to get stuck down there. Karu did have a point that we could always just...stir up more trouble and jack another bird if we needed to. But that felt criminal, pointlessly criminal. The plan to steal a VTOL had come up in a time when we were under constant fire, barely able to sleep or rest. Now we were safe for the moment...as many moments as we needed, really, so long as we turned off the engines first. It seemed wrong to be planning more violence and theft given the circumstances.

So I didn't want that to be an option. And given that, there was little reason to be turning around to Korea; nothing waited for us there except returning to the mission by means I didn't like, or failing it, which was completely unacceptable.

Despite my hesitation, it seemed to me that our path was clear. Even if, taking another long look outside, I really, really didn't wanna. But it was the right choice.

"We continue," I said. "We keep on this path until the bird is out of gas."

"You're sure?" AEGIS asked. "If we deviate now, we can still cover eight percent more of the zone."

"No. We stay on the path. Even if we touch down and have to continue on foot, you guys can go whichever way you want, I'm gonna continue forward."

"Um, you'd die," AEGIS pointed out politely. "We have the supplies to get back. We do not have the supplies for you to walk all the way across the glasslands, even if we gave you all of them."

"Saga's right, though. There's something out there, I believe it."

The others looked at each other for a few moments before AEGIS continued, now silently appointed the chair of the talk-Athan-down committee.

"Athan, if we head out, we can always come back. The glasslands aren't going anywhere."

"I know," I said.

"Then...why would you volunteer for something so stupid?"

"Because it's what I believe. It's the best option."

"Best...by the metric of getting you the most killed?"

I shook my head. "No, it's just…" I went silent for a moment as I tried to put into words the ball of self-hate that I'd been feeling and carrying every time I thought of Japan and what we did to the place. How peaceful and populous it'd once been, and then all aflame and ruined, by one stupid handful of people. Was doing that to another city, another country really our plan B? Was that the kind of people we were?

"I guess I'm just having doubts how critical the mission is," I said.

She narrowed her eyes at me in bewilderment. "So you're going to kill yourself over it? I'm so lost."

"No! I mean, I'm not planning a suicide or anything. I just...don't want to plan any more murders. I don't know. Things have just gone so bad for us lately."

"How's that? I think things have actually gone decently well, since San Francisco. We all got reunited, we gave the XPCA the slip, twice. Nobody's been horribly maimed or disfigured. We even picked up Tem."

"Yeah," I agreed. "You're right. Things are okay from our side."

"Then who's...oh."

"Yeah."

"Oh Athan," she said, scooching over towards my seat and giving me a very warm, very soft hug. "You're such a marshmallow."

"I mean, I killed like a hundred people over a couple days. That's not exactly soft of me. And neither is having regrets about it."

"I suppose," she said. "I just see it as what needs to be done."

"Did we hit a tree?" Saga asked. "Because it just reeks of sap in here."

"Oh shut up," AEGIS said, kicking her. "Be glad that Athan has more morals than you. Be glad that everyone does, because otherwise the world would be very barren and very boring for you." She turned back to me. "But that doesn't mean you have to plan to be stupid. If the VTOL goes down, promise me we'll head to Korea and reconvene. There's always another plan, you know. This time, maybe we can do things a little stealthier. Maybe avoid a lot of that bloodshed. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"I guess." She hugged me tighter, and I had to admit, I felt like a marshmallow. I could feel the estimation of my manliness and worth dropping in everyone's eyes at my stupid decisions.

I sighed. They could hate me or think me weak if they wanted. It wasn't going to change my opinion. In fact, I realized, brightening up a bit, it was really all their fault anyway. If I was going to be appointed for all this decision-making, nobody could complain when I sent us all down my own stupid routes. Everyone here had a choice, and they'd all chosen to listen to me.

The absolute idiots. I grinned.

"Well you seem better already," AEGIS smiled back.

"Yeah. Just had a happy thought."

"Good. It's all gonna be alright, you see?"

I nodded and her hug relented, leaving most of my body suddenly feeling very cold. "We'd just best hope we find that source before the fuel runs out, or this is going to be a very sad trip."

"Yeah," she agreed thoughtfully. "We'd really best hope."

"It'll be fine," Saga reassured us. Which given how much math and data she'd done, how much analysis she favored in general, and her extremely different definition of 'fine' from the rest of us, wasn't really reassuring at all.

But it was what we had, so it'd be enough. At least for now.

Until the fuel ran out.