“Hey, do you guys think that, at this point, there’s a line we shouldn’t cross?”

All five people in the room looked up at me, though I was staring down at my cup. The thick scent of whisky is a cotton ball being pressed to my nose in short intervals. The lights are out in the building, making it hard to see their faces. We’re all sitting on some piece of something, pulled aside to work as a seat because its original purpose is moot now. I had gotten lucky, finding a filing cabinet and dragging it to our little center of the room spot.

We were all drinking some kind of alcohol, whatever we had left, and looking around, waiting for our time to come. My words were the only break in the silence for the past half hour.

“I don’t know what line is left.” Joëlle was the one to respond, her square frame glasses containing spiderweb cracks that made it difficult to see her eyes, and I could only imagine it was worse for her. She had the only consistent piece of furniture, a beat-up old wooden stool that had somehow survived decades even before the end of the world. Her long blond hair was roughly cut into an uneven and messy affair, I think a combat knife was what we used to do it when she said it was getting in her way too much. “We crossed all of them, sprinted past all of them. Nothing worked.” She still had a little bit of a French lick to her words, in the way that she articulated the s sounds.

I looked down into my glass once more. “I just mean. There’s only five of us left…That means that it’s a five-way divide still. So…”

The high commander nodded, taking a long sip from his glass of brandy. “So we should choose one person, and kill the rest. That’s what you mean right? All of that power, spread across all of the world, condensed into one person.”

I winced, the suggestion sounding even worse coming from someone else than it already had in my head. “We’re all pretty strong at this point but…if we could make it just one person.”

A snapping noise got all of us to look down at Elenor, her back up against one of the walls. She was normally a very pretty girl, her hair dyed a colorful pink and blue, and tied up into an intricate braid. All of the rough living had been tough on her though, even if she never complained, it showed in the way her body had changed. How her hands went from soft with painted nails to calloused and chipped. Her face went from artistically applied makeup to soot, dust, and dirt. The roots in her hair grown out long enough that the color seemed to be quite literally leaving her slowly. Her hands moved in quick gestures. It still took me a moment to figure out her signs, needing to mentally translate them back into words, instead of just being able to keep the signs in my head. “What’s the point? If one person won, there’d be nothing left.”

My shoulders shrugged, not really having a proper response. “Just…Guess I don’t like this. Sitting around and waiting for the end.”

“No need to go murdering each other. We can at least die together. That’s something.” Kade spoke up, before sipping from his own glass of sake. It was a little funny, to see the wide-framed man, with large hands like chipped onyx engulfing the tiny traditional cup he liked to sip from. Like a great grizzly bear gently cradling a coffee mug in its paws. “Not much else to do. We lost pretty much as soon as Adam died.”

A small grumble went through the room, everyone shifting and muttering to themselves. I shook my head. “Harriet. That was when we lost.”

The large man hummed. “She was a powerhouse for sure, but we were already knee-deep in this by then. She wouldn’t have been able to pull us out if it was her here instead of one of us.”

Mini, well, Min Lee who had the unfortunate fate of being born a very short lady with a name so close to mini, shook her head as she took a sip from a tallboy, nudging the cross neckless still somehow around her neck. . “Na, I think it was when Svalinn fell. So much time and effort went into that base, god I spent years working on the tech for it. All gone in hours. Wiped out. Hundreds of millions of dollars, lives, all gone.”

A commiserating nod swept through us, and each of us raised our glasses and sipped almost in synch. I exhaled, “Man, when did money stop mattering?”

“About a year ago.” The high commander spoke out with something like nostalgia. He was a grizzled old man, with white hair and a bushy beard that had become overgrown after some time. An example of a person whose instant appearance caused you to make a presumption about who they were, chastise yourself for doing so, then almost instantly realize that he’s exactly as he appears. “We stopped sending you all checks around then. All Military personnel no longer received compensation, same for contractors. Didn’t change much.”

“Well, when there's only one job, you take payment in food I guess.” Mini snorted as she took another sip. “Shame, I’d be fucking rich as hell by now, all the high-tech shit I pushed to you guys.”

“Haha, no you would not be. Should’ve read your contract more carefully.” The high commander smirked, the corners of his mouth turning up. 

“Seriously?”

“Yup, all rights to any inventions made while under our contract go to us. Those all would be ours, and your compensation would be the wages you got paid during.”

I let my hand drop to the weapon at my side. Mini’s creation, and it was a beauty I had come to love with a passion. Perfectly tailored for me and my hands, my power. It was probably half of why I was still around. Maybe more. Even just feeling my palm slide against the grip, letting my fingers wrap around it in the way they knew on instinct how to grip it most comfortably, was something that temporarily sedated the crushing feeling of waiting for the end.

If we weren’t all about to die, I’d have protested on her behalf. “That’s how they getcha.”

The major nodded. “I mean, you would’ve been promoted to hell and back and gotten enough money to live comfortably after had we won, but…”

“But we lost, so none of it matters.” Joëlle took a sip of her red wine, the crimson liquid swirling like blood as she sat up on a wooden crate. She winced slightly, before rubbing at her eyes. “How is all the extra power treating you all? Because I feel like shit. Throbbing headache.”

Mini shrugged. “Feels like I’m constantly touching a live wire, my fingers are aching all the time, but I can’t do much about it.”

High command nodded. “I feel like I’ve only just barely glimpsed what actual power looks like.”

Vague as ever, out of everyone there, he was probably the only one whose power was still a complete mystery to me. “I feel good. Like I have my fingers on a pulse, or a…running stream of water. I can force ripples or tug, redirect, something. I have an amount of control over the world around me. It’s a little overwhelming, but not physically painful like you two.” 

Eyes turned to Kade, who just raised a hand, the fist visibly turning into a glittering quartz material. “I feel solid, practically unbreakable. But, slower. I’m…losing something. Don’t know what.”

Again, everyone turned now to Elenor, who signed her thoughts. “I’m almost complete. But, so much data is in my head, hard to think straight. I struggle thinking beyond coordinates.” She thunked her head back against the wall. “Whoever's last, I feel bad.”

I looked at each of them, idly tapping my pistol's grip.

It took us a long time, but we as a society learned that the powers we had all acquired weren’t from nothing. They were spread out from a finite source, and as fewer people were available to receive the power, the more concentrated it became—more dead men, more powerful ones alive.

There were only 4 other people now. Billions of lives, condensed and split evenly among us. And with that, each subsequent death would mean an immense increase in power. It had been like that the past couple of months, as the little band of survivors grew lesser and lesser. Each death was a massive jump for all of us. 

All of us jolted as glass shattered, my pistol in my hand in an instant, Elenor right next to me with a combat knife in hand, Kade with his back against ours, fist made of a glittering jewel. The grand commander, not a combat specialist, had a semi-automatic pistol drawn. It was Joëlle, her wine spilling out onto the floor as she clutched her head, shuddering with pain. She took a sharp inhale before barely stuttering out words. “H-Half an hour.”

The high commander holstered his weapon and rushed over, placing a hand on her shoulder. One of hers came up to his, gripping so tight we could all see her fingernails digging in, and pinpricks of blood starting to drip out. The old man didn’t even react. “How bad?”

“I-Intensity level. In…Intensity level...” She fell forwards, and the commander caught her with his other arm, going down to a knee, and lowering her to the floor.

“She’s…I think she’s…seizing up.”

I moved over to look down at her. Her cracked glasses had fallen off of her face, her mouth wide open in a frozen expression of pain, and her arms were so tense they were shaking slightly. Tears of blood were starting to drip down her sallow cheeks. I looked at the commander silently, and he looked back at me.

White knuckles wrapped around the grip of my pistol, and I lowered it down to press against her forehead. I looked away and felt the kickback in my arm. Everyone else was looking away except the commander.

My eyes winced shut, and I let out a shuddering sigh, tears pinpricking at my eyes as well.

She had an hour at best. All of us do. The least I could offer was a quick, painless death.

The gun felt all too heavy in my hand, and I pulled it up to my shirt, wiping the blood off of it.”...Anyone else want it over quick?” In any other context, it would’ve been something like a threat. Here it was a genuine offer.

No one took me up on my offer, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “You know. A couple of years ago. I would’ve vomited killing anyone. Much less a friend.”

Kade had pulled his hood down over his head even further, blocking his eyes as he sunk to the ground. “...Yeah. Same.”

I looked at the four remaining people, as I pulled a hand to my gun. I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of my power. 

It was time. I control, in some amount, the flow of time. Every object and person has a timeline, and I can move them in their relative timelines, without interrupting the flow of others. So, I can reverse the firing of the bullet, retrieve it, and have the gun reloaded, all while the hole in Joëlle’s head remains. And I can do it in an instant. 

Stolen story; please report.

Something like a wave hit me, a motion of nameless force or energy that pushed me enough that my whole body cants away from her body. I let out a grunt, and at the same time, everyone else does, the spread of power flowing to us once more as another human dies. My head turned before my eyes did, to force myself to see Joëlle’s dead body.

Her skin was pale and sickly, her boy thin and malnourished. Blood made a line down her face, following the path of least resistance, moving down the bridge of her nose before falling off the side, down her cheek, and dripping off of her chin. The tension had left her body, her opened mouth slightly closed, and her eyes closed as if in sleep. A large visible hole in her forehead looked out at me like a third eye.

My eyes stare into her three. I wasn’t even thinking anything, just looking at her with my own eyes, probably sunken and hollow.

It took several minutes before I could turn my gaze away to look at each of the people sitting around, just waiting for the end of life to come. 

“Hey guys?” Each of them looked up at me. “...I’m sorry.” I walked up to Kade, who looked up at me with a subdued confusion. I raised my pistol and shot him in the head.

The Commander pulled his weapon, and I pulled on my power to move my own body on my timeline, back to when I had my gun against Joëlle’s forehead, right next to him. He turns to try and fire, but I beat him to the movement and shoot him once in the chest, then in the head.

Elenor’s knife stuck down through my shoulder, and I let out a grunt, before touching it and reversing it’s time to be back in her hands, and the hole in my shoulder gone. She grabbed it, familiar enough with my powers to predict that I was going to do that. I lifted my pistol, and she vanished. 

I moved myself on my timeline again, to when I was sitting on the file cabinet. I had to redraw my pistol from my holster as I saw her bloody knife swing through the air, where I was. It takes me too much time to draw, and she vanishes again. 

We’re both trying to predict the other person's movement now, but, that relies on the thought that we’re both going to move. I held my pistol forward, and she appeared, digging her knife into the air where I was shooting Kade. I hit her in the shoulder, she vanished, and I ducked my head down as a knife swished through my hair, slicing off some of my blond curls. 

She disappeared again.

I stayed solid, and she appeared in front of me, I stood up and the knife dug into my stomach. I grabbed her wrist, her eyes widening. She goes to teleport, but at this point, it’s just three of us. Billions and billions of people had powers at the start. So much death, so much destruction. All of it powering just three of us. I can only imagine if she had time to figure things out, she would’ve been able to use hers in an equally horrible way. But I got my hand on her first. I paused her in her timeline. I normally can’t do that, can’t affect other living things besides myself, can’t pause things either, but, I could at that point.

“I really am sorry.”

My pistol presses against her forehead, and I feel the kickback.

I unpaused her, and she slumps to the ground. I pulled the knife out of my shoulder. It was a really damn good thing she didn’t have her old high-tech one.

Crackles of electricity surround Mini, arcs of it running up and down her arms, somewhat tethered to the tears running down her eyes as she looked up at me. “You…It was you this whole time wasn’t it?! A-Adam and the projects failing! That was you!”

I don’t know what she’s talking about. But I was too tired to protest, and I already felt like the worst being to have ever existed. A deserved feeling for what I was doing. She moves to grab me, and a single shot rings out.

Her body hits the floor next to Elenor. 

And thus, I am the last human alive.

The only sounds are the crackles of electricity still sparkling around Mini’s body, and the quiet trickling of blood. I braced myself as best as I could for the concentration of power. If I could do something with it, then I wouldn’t have just killed my friends for nothing.

It hits me all at once—waves and waves of ebbing energy, cramping their way into me, forcing themselves into my body. A pressurized stream of gas is sent into an enclosed space, pushing up against the walls of the object containing it. I’m the glass beaker that shatters in this metaphor. 

I think I scream, It’s hard to tell.

The thing about the power that we all had been given, was that it didn’t cost us our stamina, or our life energy, or chi, mana, anything fictional or easy to part with and regain. It edged away at your sanity. It gave you bouts of intense emotional highs and lows, and if you were really overdoing it, you’d start to see things. They were like dreams in a way, impossible to explain and they faded the moment they were out of your sight. All you could remember was that it was horrible and that it scared you. That was the only cost for using the powers. If you could stomach it, you could use it as much as you like, as most of the remaining living humans had learned to do.

Now, though I couldn’t stop what I was doing. A runner suddenly on a treadmill moving faster than he ever had, and an endless abyss behind him. I had to use it, I had to keep myself in the present. 

Because, the past, and the future now, it was all unfurling around me for every single thing. I could see my own future, eaten and killed by monsters. I could see my past, down to my birth. I could see the same for each of the people I killed. But there was a difference between seeing and understanding, I only learned that now, as I saw and saw and saw and could not understand it, did not have the capability to do so. Imagine a hundred movies playing at a hundred thousand times regular speed, on a loop the ends and the beginning blurred together, if there ever were differences between the two.

Me, Mini, Elenor, Kade, The commander, the file cabinet I was sitting on, the glass of wine. 

Then further, more depth, more sights. The ground, the dust, the particles of dirt under my fingers.

I was slipping, the treadmill speeding up faster and faster. Again, I was probably screaming, but there was only so much stimulus my brain could take in, and I was already scraping my consciences to remember even flashes of color from the entire lives of my companions.

It all went further back now, not constrained by my concept of beginning or end. The cabinet was built in what was China, the welding done by a robotic arm, the robotic arm created by an engineer, the engineer, Shou Rou who had been born with an inert tumor in his thigh no one had ever noticed and had no bearing on his life.

It kept going, what started him, what caused his life, what caused the life of the woman who bore him. It did that for everything, everyone around me, all at once. Then it hit the beginning of all beginnings that only seemed like an intense flash of color, and it repeated before I could properly see anything, starting from the start now and moving back forward, past me and into the distance future for every object, for all of our decaying corpses. Just like before I hit an end of everything, just a white void, then it bounced back and reversed. Or, was it moving forwards to a new cycle?

Time was starting to loop in my own head, the beginning and ends all mixing because they never stopped or slowed down. But, slowly, it became a pattern, it became a recognizable concept in this way. Beamed into my head or not, I could ignore a pattern, I could push my consciousness away from the individuals, and I could look outwards. Bigger, not smaller, larger scale.

Physically, I do not doubt that I was kneeling over, or more likely in the fetal position, screaming and thrashing. But I genuinely had no perception of the physical form of my body anymore. My consciousness was utterly consumed with the loop, with the eternal lines that were really more of a circle. 

Then, that immaterial form, that consciousness separated from my body, was speared. Or maybe hooked is a better term, like a worm that got its body run through by a barbed fishing hook. I say hooked is better because it was then tugged away. 

Words to properly describe what I experienced are difficult. In some ways, I think to express them in any way other than various pitches, durations, and tones of intense screaming is to underplay what it was.

So I shall include descriptions of what said screams would be like.

At this point, it would be a sharp, surprised screech. The kind of noise a hog makes when it’s been shot, or an instructor's nails accidentally scrape against a chalkboard. I could feel my perception of space and time pulled agonizingly away from the place where I was physically, and drawn out, away. 

The pain subsides, so the yell becomes more of a mix of adrenaline and confusion. A rollercoaster ride in the dark that was supposed to be lit. I wasn’t quite sure what or where away constituted, nor am I now, just that wherever my mind was pulled, it was no longer anywhere familiar. 

It was somewhere bigger, than me, than my world, than time. They were all things so small in comparison to this perhaps non-existent space. In terms of screams, this would be a moment where I catch my breath, huffing and puffing with a red face as I try to gather myself.

It was a calming insanity. I was genuinely nothing at this moment, a speck of dust in the wind. But being a speck of dust means you don’t have to worry about death or life or time, just being nothing. 

The instant of tranquility was forced out of me as I became aware of two things. Or maybe the same thing. Or maybe infinitely many things that fell under two different categories. Hard to tell, specks of dust aren’t great at determining what a person is. I do think now this is the equivalent, but I must again emphasize, that a confused whimper could illustrate my comprehension and feelings on the situation much better than any description ever could. The two things had within them, every single concept in existence, many I didn’t know nor could put into words. Everything except good and evil, of which these were assuredly not. Beyond such things.

I think it or they or all of them, tried to speak to me, but how do you speak to a speck of dust? The breath your words give off would send it spiraling and scattering in a way that almost makes you think it’s a living thing, like a bug. Still, even as I was swirling around like a fish in a whirlpool, I had vague notions of things I could understand. 

Confusion, frustration, sportsmanship, reluctant acceptance, unelaborated desire.

What, who, or why this was what I comprehended was not something I was able to remotely grasp at the given time. So something like an agonized moan of pain from someone who's been screaming so long it hurts, but still wants to express their pain in some way audibly.

Then, some of that screaming desire faded away, and some of the intensity waned, as I was returned in some small part to my tiny world, which I now understand was just as insignificant to the greater universe as I was. But, there's an odd strength in being insignificant. A worker at a 9-5 who no one thinks will do anything or be anyone, is free to play games on his computer without any resistance.

Whatever that one or two, or many things were, one or more of them was doing something for me, in some way. Again, the strength of the written word fails here. So instead imagine a confused shout that’s slowly turning into something like a battle cry, a warbly and weird tone in the background. 

Time, another insignificant concept, came into my grasp. A flea holding the reigns of a cockroach, under the bemused eye of a human, propping the lesser one up with a toothpick.

I took hold of it, and I turned, I twisted it in my fist, I used whatever strength my meager existence held, and I forced time backward.

The universe heaved with the effort, stars and skies twisting and twirling in dances.  Planets tangoed enjoying the reverse rhythm of their usual orbits. Stars engaged in solitary waltzes, bobbing and jumping in rewind. Comets meekly retreated from their movements.

If it sounds like I was powerful here, I must emphasize, that It had almost nothing to do with me. Not even to say that I was being allowed to do this, but that I was simply watching as something else did what I wanted to do on some whim I couldn’t understand. All while handing me a controller with no batteries and letting me enjoy the moment of thinking I was contributing.

I, or rather it, or them, set the world back and reversed the time of existence. I stared into the abyss of a black hole, and it blinked at me.

When I returned to a human body and a mortal existence, constrained by taxes and time and pain, I did so screaming and crying. I felt sheets covering me, soft tactile sensations balming the sensitive nerves.

I hit my bedside lamp with a flailing arm, and it shattered to the ground, as I sat up, clutching my head.

It was all gone, all faded. My chest was rising and falling in deep heaves, my eyes struggling to adapt to the fact that once more were they seeing and perceiving and understanding.

The screaming is over now, and only a sweaty, gross, shaken man remains in front of you, wiping his forehead and panting in exhaustion. Because I was suddenly and without remorse, fully human once more. Not a speck of dust, not a flea, not so insignificant I may as well not exist, not witnessing the acts of something beyond a god. I no longer had a frame for reality outside of myself, my experiences, and the brief glimpse of the truth I had briefly held.

But allow me to say, that looking at that shattered lamp, and slowly turning to see my phone resting on my nightside table, tapping its screen with a shaking hand. Seeing it turn on, and display a date almost 5 years past, was indescribable in a much, much kinder way.