Bless the Arrows that Strike Us Where We Stand

> "First, do no harm."

>

> -A doctor’s oath

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In the middle of the night, Sylva received a very alarming text message from Keep.

> being followed by plainclothes creeps

> might be cracking down on guild smuggling

> be wary - they could be tracking everyone who came down

Sylva shook Kino awake and showed her the text message. Kino took the phone and responded.

< probably IIF

< can't explain rn but that's more likely

< avoid at all costs

< can you get to traver city?

< might need to leave planet asap

Kino and Sylva waited in a long and tense silence for any message to come back from Keep. It stretched on and on, and Kino got out of bed and began to nervously pack their meager belongings back into their bags. Sylva got up as well and peered suspiciously out the blinds of the hotel room window. She couldn't see anyone on the dark street below, but that didn't mean that there wasn't someone out there. Every shuffling sound that came through the thin hotel room walls sounded like it could be their death.

Every three seconds, Sylva checked her phone, waiting for a message to come through. She perched on the side of the bed. Kino closed her eyes and said a prayer-- mostly silent, but the words could be heard on the whisper of her breath in and out.

Forty long minutes later, a reply came.

> I took care of it.

> will be in Traver city by 11 and can get u off planet

> will want an explanation

With a choked half sigh, half sob of relief, Sylva texted back.

< you'll get one

< stay safe, keep

> you too. whatever you're doing.

> i read your little book, by the way. it was good.

> still not joining your cult, but i gave it to somebody else who might

Sylva laughed.

----------------------------------------

By time morning crawled around, Kino and Sylva were both exhausted. They hadn't slept, not after the alarming conversation with Keep, and every new sensation as they stepped out of their hotel to go find Bina seemed to signal disaster on the horizon. Every colorfully clothed stranger on the street seemed like they could be as venomous as a snake, showing its colors to deter its enemies.

They made their way to the park, and today the weather had turned foul, with dark clouds spitting down occasional drops of rain. Not enough to warrant an umbrella (which Sylva and Kino didn't possess, even if they had wanted one), but enough to make the walk to the park even more miserable.

Bina was late.

Every second that ticked by had Kino even more anxiously yanking at the sleeves of her shirt, and Sylva looking around.

"Should we send her a message?" Sylva asked.

"Her phone is definitely tracked," Kino said. "No."

"What does it matter, at this point? We're leaving as soon as Keep arrives."

"And where are we meeting Keep?"

Sylva didn't have an answer to that question. She texted Keep, but there was no response. That was less alarming than it had been during the night; Keep was most likely still en route. The capital city was rather far away from Traver City.

"She said she'd be here in an hour," Sylva said. "I can only assume that she wasn't lying. She'll tell us where to meet then."

Kino nodded, ripped at her sleeve some more, and stared morosely out across the tree lined park. The bench they were sitting on was cold and damp, and they were each perched on the ends of it, so that between them they could have a full circle view of the area. It made conversation hard, though, as Sylva had to crane her neck to see what Kino was doing. Kino had no such compulsion to face Sylva as she talked.

It was Sylva who spotted Bina first, wearing the same dark colored jacket as yesterday, but this time with a heavy backpack. She was jogging towards them, and even at a distance, the broad smile was visible on her face. Sylva waved.

"I changed my mind!" Bina yelled as she came within yelling distance, clearly out of breath but exuberant despite it. She skidded to a stop in front of the pair. "I changed my mind."

"About?" Sylva asked.

"I want to come with you," Bina said. "I have all my stuff in my bag. Let's go." She bounced up on the balls of her feet, her jewelry jingling, and the spiky green tips of her hair swaying with the motion.

"Oh," Kino said.

"Er," Sylva intoned, looking between the two of them.

"What, do you not want me anymore?" Bina asked, suddenly angry.

"No!" Kino said, loud and abrupt. "I do."

"I mean, it's not the best idea to have you come," Sylva said. "Wait, did you just like, grab all your things and skip school? Were you followed?"

Sylva craned her neck to look behind Bina.

"No, I don't think so," Bina said. "I just packed all my important stuff in my backpack, walked to school, and then at school I left through the fire exit in the locker room. My gym teacher, Mr. Ongawa, he always leaves it propped open in the mornings to air out the smell."

There was a lot to unpack there.

"Did anyone see you leave? Will you be missed? Does anyone know about this?" The words tumbled out of Sylva. "We should get out of public."

Kino just kept staring up at her sister, voiceless.

"I left a note for my family," Bina said. "So they'll know. My teachers never take attendance, so no one will care that I didn't show up to any classes after homeroom."

"You left a note?" Kino asked, the words slow. "What did it say?"

"That I'm going with you," Bina said. "A little about how you and the Empire are, you know," she looked around as though afraid to say anything in public. "I told my dad that he can probably get in contact with me if he leaves a message with your friend's family, the Iron Dreams ship, right?"

Sylva and Kino shared a glance. Kino seemed stricken. "You shouldn't have done that," Kino said. "No one can know."

"It's not like I said anything really dangerous or secret," Bina said. She clearly didn't grasp the issue.

"Bina, you have to get that note back. You can't tell anyone what's going on."

"Why?"

"You're putting yourself in danger, you're putting the whole crew of the Iron Dreams in danger, you're putting your parents in danger. No one is supposed to know any of this. No one," Sylva hissed. She stood up, taking Bina's arm, probably a little too tightly. Bina twitched back.

"Fine, I'll go get rid of it," she said. "But I can't just say nothing to my family."

Sylva's phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out, read the message.

"We have to be fast," Sylva said. "Keep wants to meet us at," Sylva squinted at the text, "Some place called Watuxet Point. You know where that is?"

"It's kinda far. I'll steal my dad's car."

Sylva looked at Kino. "Are we really doing this?" she asked.

"If we have to go back to my house anyway to get the note, and I'm already doing the worst thing to my dad that I could by running away, it doesn't seem like that big of a problem," Bina said.

"I see the crazy was inherited," Sylva muttered. "Look, if we go back to your house, we're definitely going to pick up a tail."

"If they aren't following me now..." Bina said lightly.

"Only because you snuck out of school," Kino interjected. "Sylva is right."

"We can't stand around here," Bina said. "Let's just go. Come on." Her voice had a whiny and urgent note in it.

"Your call," Sylva said to Kino.

"We need to get the note, and we need to get to the meeting place," Kino said. She was still looking at her sister, who smiled.

"You're older, you should be the responsible one," Sylva said. "But fine."

"You go ahead," Kino said to Bina. "We'll stay a bit back."

"I really don't think that will help, but whatever," Bina said. She started walking, and it was excruciating to see her glance behind every few steps, as though Sylva and her sister were planning to vanish rather than trail her.

They made it to the house without incident, though the twitchy feeling from the morning had increased thirtyfold. Like they had before, Sylva and Kino had to duck into the coffee shop across the way, while they watched Bina enter her family's house.

"Fuck," Sylva whispered under her breath as they watched her signal something from the window. "She needs to be less obvious."

And then there was another excruciating period as they waited for the car.

"The garage is in the back of the house," Kino whispered to Sylva. "We should..."

But the car that was clearly being driven by an inexperienced teenager screeched and wobbled its way around the block and drove a little ways down the road.

"Give me a napkin," Kino said to Sylva, who complied, and Kino scribbled the name of a cross street several streets away, and sent the napkin sliding out under the crack in the door, onto the street, where it plastered itself against the windshield of the car, which sped away. "Let's go."

Bina had picked up a tail.

It was obvious as soon as Kino and Sylva got closer to where the car was idling-- parked half illegally on the side of the road. There was a suspicious looking car that was also idling on the other side of the road, about half a block ahead. Kino grabbed Sylva's arm and did that thing where she sent the image of whatever her attention was focused on at the time, wordless, vivid, and single minded.

Sylva grunted an acknowledgement, out of breath from hustling down the street. The suspicious car made no moves on them, though Sylva definitely expected it to, and she and Kino crammed themselves into the car, a sporty thing, clearly luxe.

"You know how to drive, right?" Sylva asked, buckling herself into the back seat.

"Mostly," Bina said, and she slammed the acceleration.

"You should have let me drive," Sylva said.

"My dad would kill me if anybody else touched his car," Bina said.

"Don't you think we're a little beyond that now?" Sylva asked, craning her neck to look out the back window.

"You know where we're going?"

"I guess," Bina said.

They bumped along, generally following traffic laws, but also going a little faster than was strictly legal. Bina didn't seem to realize that they had a tail, and Sylva didn't want to mention it, in case that would make Bina panic and crash them, but she had to wonder why they weren't being attacked.

She reached into the front seat and tried to broadcast the question to Kino. Kino responded with the same focused image, only this time she zeroed in on all of the pedestrians on the streets, all the other cars. The abundance of witnesses, in other words.

So, the Empire wanted to keep this as secret as Kino and Sylva did. Perhaps they could use that.

But Kino sent another thought, too, this one more dire. The car that was following them was perhaps only tracking them. From the sky, or from another approach, there probably was backup on the way. The windswept feeling of using the power crossed through Kino's message, and Sylva understood that they would probably have to face a sensitive, if the backup arrived on time.

"How long of a drive is it?"

"Thirty minutes?" Bina said, though she sounded unsure. "More or less."

Sylva swore under her breath, hoping that Bina didn't hear, and again turned her attention out the back window, where the other car was following.

"Kino, if there's anything you can do..." Sylva said aloud, the thought trailing off as she still didn't want to disturb Bina.

Kino reached back, and this time the image was imaginary, showing an image of what would happen if Kino attempted to destroy their follower. Mostly, it involved damage to the innocent people around them. Especially now that they were heading onto a bridge, onto the highway that left Traver City, anything Kino could do to stop the car would cause a multi car crash.

"You're just being paranoid," Sylva sent. She brought the power up to the forefront of her mind, but Kino's clawlike grip on her arm stopped her from using it.

Better to just drive. If they got to their destination before the reinforcements came, they could deal with this privately, without witnesses, without hurting bystanders, without Bina being in the car as a witness. Especially if Keep had a way off planet ready to go.

Sylva texted Keep, partially to warn her, partially to ask what the status of their off planet ride was.

< we might be bringing trouble with us, unfortunately

< how are we getting off planet

Keep responded with a set of coordinates, which Sylva saw from pulling up a map were deep within the woods of the park they were headed to. The satellite view showed a clearing, and what looked like a shallow pond.

> space to ground shuttle

> what kind of trouble

< same as you had

> where r u

< on the way. highway 36

> they won't do anything while you're in public

> might have problem when u get to the park

> camera shy fuckers

< i know

< they're probably calling friends

> i'll take care of any who get here first

< is the shuttle visible from air?

> depends on how close you're looking

< they'll be looking closely. might want to hide it or get out of the way

< just in case

> i didn't sign up to get bombed, sylva

< im sorry i'm sorry we'll be there soon and it will be ok

Sylva tucked the phone back in her pocket and focused on the drive.

----------------------------------------

The park was a beautiful place, all things considered, even though the leaves were only hanging on to the trees with the barest of threads, and every gust of rainy wind sent another pack of them floating through the air. There was a large building in front of the forested area that was visible from quite far off, and it had a rather large parking area out front, filled with cars. Bina parked haphazardly.

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"We're here," she said cheerfully. "Where to now? I assume we're not meeting in the event center. There's some kind of event." She held the car keys up speculatively. "Guess I'll leave these here. Make it easy for my dad."

Sylva and Kino looked at each other. "You take protection," Sylva said.

"Protection?" Bina asked.

"We've been followed," Kino said shortly. "Get out, keep your head lower than the roofs of the cars. Maybe we can lose them."

That seemed unlikely to Sylva, but she obeyed, and the three of them shuffle ducked their way towards the treeline, getting away from the parking lot and foregoing the traditional series of paths. It made Sylva nervous, more nervous than she had been, to not be able to see their pursuers, who were definitely still around. She used the power to make a crude path through the damp underbrush, allowing Bina to pass behind her. Kino took up the rear.

A low flying plane buzzed overhead, and the sound of it made Sylva jump.

"There's no one behind us," Kino said. "Let's just keep going."

"They're waiting for their reinforcements now," Sylva said, the fear coming heavily up into her throat as she spoke. She resisted the urge to swear. They found a real path, and since no one was following directly behind them, they decided to follow it, making it a little easier to go faster, though the ground was slippery and muddy, and Sylva kept glancing above her head through the gaps in the branches in the trees to see the sky.

"Could someone see us, if they were watching in a plane?" Sylva asked.

"Heat camera," Kino muttered, stumbling over rocks in the path. "Doesn't matter. Sensitives."

They proceeded in silence, with Sylva checking their location against the map, watching as they inched closer and closer to their destination, where Keep presumably was waiting for them.

They broke out into a clearing, the whole scene looking washed out from the dim grey light that filtered down through the clouds. Just as Sylva had seen on the satellite view, there was a very shallow pond, mostly just mud, and barren bushes ringing the clearing. Skid tracks on the ground marked the place where the shuttle had come in to land, and following the tracks, Sylva saw the vague outline of the shuttle, disguised by some bushes. She held her arm out, stopping Bina and Kino from entering into the clearing. There wasn't any sign of Keep, and the whole thing felt... off.

Sylva turned and whispered to Kino. "Something feels wrong here."

"Can you fly a shuttle?" Kino whispered back.

"No," Sylva said. She may have been able to do an approximation of shuttle flying in the emptiness of space-- during her tenure aboard the Iron Dreams she had been allowed that once or twice-- but she definitely did not have the skill to take off from a planet, especially not when surrounded by trees.

Sylva texted Keep.

< I see the shuttle. where r u

There was no response.

Then, out of the woods on the other side of the clearing, awkwardly pushing through the bushes, Keep arrived. She was dressed, not in the jumpsuit that Sylva had always seen her in, but in Hanathue garb, a bright red dress with long flowing sleeves. It looked out of place on her broad frame, and her tattoos peeked up out of the neckline and from the sleeves. Keep made a beeline towards them, even though their whole group was still pretty well hidden within the trees.

Kino grabbed Sylva's arm, but there was no message in it, just a tight grasp.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

"Sylva, you ready to go?" Keep asked. "I don't want to wait around here forever."

Keep's posture was stiff but not menacing, and her voice sounded like she had a cold.

There wasn't anything for it. Sylva stepped out of the bushes; Kino and Bina followed her.

"Yeah, I guess so," Sylva said. "Did you have an easy trip here?"

"Could have been better, could have been worse," Keep said. "Can we talk for a minute?" Keep gave a pointed nod to Bina, indicating that she was not intended to be a part of this discussion.

Kino still had her hand on Sylva's arm.

"Er, sure," Sylva said. She stepped forward towards Keep. "Can they get in the shuttle?"

"She can." Keep awkwardly nodded to Bina, who looked between Keep (a stranger to her) and the shuttle. "I'd love to talk to Kino, though," Keep said.

A vision flashed into Sylva's mind, Kino's memory sent through the physical contact. It hadn't been so long ago that Kino had met Keep, and the vision of that moment very specifically included Kino introducing herself with her fake name, Chenai.

"Play along," Sylva sent back silently to Kino. "I don't know what's going on."

Still with her hand on Sylva's arm, the breeze of Kino's power passed out through her, and Kino transmitted what she was feeling: there were people back in the trees, on the other side of the pond. The people they were trying to avoid had gotten to Keep first. Was she being threatened into this? It seemed unlikely.

"Is there anyone in the shuttle?" Sylva asked Kino, who stretched out her power to investigate.

An image created with the power: two people, crouching inside the shuttle.

The whole silent exchange had taken less than five seconds, but it was an awkward pause in the conversation. Keep stood there, almost robotically. She looked just like... Something. Sylva couldn't place it. The smile stayed fixed on her face, and her eyes stayed staring straight ahead, not moving.

"Honestly, Keep, anything that you have to say to us can be said to Bina as well," Sylva said.

"I would prefer if Bina waited in the shuttle. It isn't for children."

"I'm not a child," Bina said, crossing her arms unhappily. "Why don't we all get in the shuttle? Let's go." Bina started walking towards the shuttle, and Kino was stricken, looking back between Keep and the shuttle.

"Bina, stay here," Sylva said.

"No, go ahead," Keep said. "It's open."

Now it was Bina's turn to look confused. She was far enough away that she wouldn't be able to hear Sylva whisper to Keep.

"Keep, I thought you were my friend," Sylva said. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"If she gets in the shuttle, no harm will come to her," Keep said. "Let her go."

"You swear?" Kino asked. Her voice was flat, resigned.

"I do," Keep said.

"Go ahead, Bina," Kino said, calling out across the field. "It's fine."

The door of the shuttle opened, seemingly of its own accord, and Bina looked behind herself again, glancing back to where Kino, Sylva, and Keep stood. Kino put a grim, thin smile on her face, and Bina nodded back and climbed into the shuttle. There was a constricted shout, but the door slammed shut, cutting it off.

The shuttle began to rise from the ground, but Kino whirled and grabbed it with the power, holding it down to the ground. Its engines screamed wildly, fighting to rise up into the air.

Keep reached into a hidden pocket of her dress. Sylva recognized the glint of a gun barrel as Keep aimed for Kino’s head. Sylva’s body moved before she processed what she was seeing. She slammed into Keep with all her strength. They were both sent scrambling into the mud. Sylva came out on top. She found the hand holding the gun and pinned it under one knee. Keep tried freeing her arm, but Sylva had gotten too good a hold.

Keep’s body went limp. Her muscles relaxed and the gun dropped from her open palm. She breathed shallowly and was alive, but was thoroughly unconscious.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sylva saw a short woman walking out of the trees at the other end of the clearing.

She was holding some sort of device in her hand: it looked like a phone, but Sylva couldn't really tell at this distance. Her skin was a dark brown, and her hair was cut in a military sort of style. She walked towards them, directly across the surface of the muddy pond, though she didn't get wet. Indeed, the water bowed and bent under her feet, but she didn't sink at all.

"This is tedious," she said. "Shoot them."

"Sylva, the shuttle!" Kino yelled, and the shuttle's engines stopped screaming as it began to rise into the air. Sylva didn't understand why Kino had stopped holding it down until several bullets, shot from the trees on the other side of the clearing, fell harmlessly to the ground several feet in front of Sylva. She flinched back, but couldn't think about that at the moment, because as the shuttle rose higher and higher, she was worried that it would leave the limits of her power. She grabbed it and yanked it back down. Its landing wheels dug themselves deep into the mud.

The door of the shuttle opened, and a frazzled looking Bina fell out, flopping into the mud and then crawling away on her hands and knees.

"Bina!" Kino yelled, but Bina didn't change course. Two men scrambled out of the shuttle behind Bina, looking equally dizzy (probably from Sylva's crashing of the shuttle into the ground), but on their feet. Bina had gotten surprisingly far, so they had a way to go. Sylva didn't want them to get her, so she did the only thing she could think of to do, which was to drag the shuttle, still under her power, forward, crashing it into them. She dropped the shuttle heavily, pinning them underneath it. Were they dead? She didn't know, and she didn't particularly care.

Bina screamed and crawled desperately away. Sylva saw, after a moment, why Bina wasn't getting up-- her legs had been tied in such a way that she was unable to stand. It had probably been sheer luck in the chaos of the shuttle's interior that had allowed her to free herself at all.

"Enough of this," the woman said. She was much closer to Sylva and Kino now, but she turned her attention to the flailing Bina, who rose up into the air, still thrashing, held by the woman's power. She dragged Bina into the shuttle, and forced the door shut. No matter how much Sylva dragged on it with the power, she couldn't open it.

"You don't want her to see me kill you," the woman said. "So I'd advise you stop doing that."

Several thoughts swam hazily through Sylva's mind. This woman was a far, far better user of the power than she was, to move Bina with such ease. She had probably been piloting Keep-- controlling every word that she spoke and every action that she had taken, until Sylva had tackled her out of position. It had reminded her, in a horrible way, of the way Yan's body had looked when she was inside the Mother, but there was no piece of the Mother actively controlling her. Blank and empty.

Thinking about Yan, Sylva remembered Yan's original escape from the Green King, Jeepak, and she hurriedly dropped the gun she was holding on the ground. She had no intention of shooting herself in the head while under somebody else's control. She remembered, too, how it had felt to be in the Green King's terrible grasp herself, back when he had come aboard the First Star. He hadn't even been trying to kill her, that time.

She remembered that feeling, and she felt it bodily as the woman reached across the distance between them and seized her. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe. She was trapped. Her eyes could still move, and she looked wildly around as the panic seized her. To her side, Kino still seemed able to move. All that time she had spent practicing with Yan--

It didn't matter, now, though, because Sylva's lungs were being squeezed and her vision was growing black, spots swimming around the edges of it. Kino reached into her own pocket and pulled out her gun, aiming it at the woman, who batted the bullet away with the power as though it were nothing.

Sylva wished she could cry out for Kino's help, wished she could yell anything, wished that her thoughts weren't floating across the surface of her brain, growing white hot and dim at the same time. She clung to consciousness with every piece of strength that she possessed. If she passed out, she would die. She wouldn't be able to use the power. She wouldn't be able to help Kino, or Bina, or Keep, or herself.

With the end of her strength, letting her eyes slide shut, Sylva gathered her power, drawing it into herself. She didn't know how to break the hold of this woman on her diaphragm, but she did know that her lungs would still obey the laws of physics. Sylva imagined an expanding bubble that started in the center of her chest and pushed its way outward, scattering air molecules, creating a vacuum. The negative pressure caused her lungs to expand, sucking in air through her nose and teeth. Her ears popped. Her tongue flopped around in her mouth. All the muscles in her stomach screamed in pain. But air rushed into her lungs, and that was enough to hold onto consciousness, and that was all she needed. She let go of her vacuum; the air rushed back out. She created it again, breath came cold and in to her lungs again. A rhythm. Easy. Easiest thing she'd ever done. She would have laughed, if she had had control over her vocal cords.

The woman was ignoring her completely, not seeming to realize that Sylva was still able to breathe. Her efforts were focused on Kino, who was able to move. Kino's attention was clearly split between too many things-- withstanding the woman's power, holding up the shield that prevented her and Sylva from being shot by the gunmen hidden in the trees, attacking the woman back, and constantly glancing back towards the half-crashed shuttle where Bina was trapped. Kino held her ground and attacked the woman with everything that she had-- bullets, throwing up a cloud of mud and dirt to blind her, trying to choke her with her own clothing, but the woman defeated it all like it was nothing.

At least the woman's power was equally split between several things. She was holding Sylva still, and the shuttle door closed, and she was clearly still trying to reach into Kino's body to kill her, even while stopping Kino's attacks.

Kino reached into the ground with the power, attempting to scoop the dirt out from under the woman. She stumbled, but nimbly leapt out of the way as Kino's power shoved dirt to the side.

Sylva took another deep breath, forcing the air into her lungs, then switched her attention and her power. Kino's scrabbling in the dirt had unearthed a rock, a large one, about the size of a lunchbox, oddly shaped, covered in dirt. Sylva pulled it the rest of the way out of the hole, and, with as much force as she could muster, accelerated it behind the woman and sent it sailing towards her. The woman didn't notice at first, but she must have had some sort of power structure to alert her about objects coming towards her, because she turned and batted the rock away with her own power. Sylva made it change directions, and come back towards her, but again, the woman knocked it away with a smile.

Sylva was forced to drop the rock and once again use the power to take a breath-- her vision was going blurry. Again, though, she resumed the attack. This time, she tried a different tactic. The woman was distracted by Kino once more, who--

Sylva couldn't see Kino. She must be using the invisibility trick that Yan had taught.

Either way, the woman was distracted, and this gave Sylva an opportunity, perhaps.

She thought very carefully about what she was going to do. Exactly what power structure she was going to use. This would probably be the most complicated thing she had ever done with the power, but with her heart thrumming in her chest, with everyone's life on the line, she found a confidence that she had never had before. She could do it. She would do it. It wouldn't be easy.

She had a time limit, too. Sylva took as many breaths as she could while she thought about this power structure in her head, and then took one final one before she sent her power out to do her bidding.

Around the woman's head, she made a bubble of power. Slowly, carefully, she pushed all of the oxygen out of the bubble. She was very, very careful to leave the amount of carbon dioxide the same, and to pull in nitrogen from the surrounding air to supplement. An excess of carbon dioxide was a detectable poison-- it would make the person panic. An excess of nitrogen, though, would be undetectable until the woman registered that she wasn't getting enough oxygen to her brain.

Unfortunately for Sylva, the woman's lack of oxygen to her brain, and her own were on the same timer. But Sylva was standing preternaturally still (not by her own choice), and this woman was breathing heavily, using physical and mental energy to search for the invisible Kino.

Was it Sylva's imagination, or was she slowing down when she turned and threw a cloud of dirt up, hoping to catch Kino's form in it? Was it imagination, or was she stumbling slightly in the wet ground? Was it imagination, or was Sylva's vision going blurry once more? Her heartbeat was sluggish in her chest. Her brain screamed out for air, but she couldn't move her chest to breathe it in, and she kept her power pushing, pushing, kept starving the woman of oxygen.

Was it imagination, or was Keep stirring on the ground?

A rock sailed towards the woman: something from Kino, obviously just a distraction for whatever big thing that Kino was doing. The rock hit the woman, and she visibly winced. Her power structure... She must have abandoned it...

Sylva's vision swam.

On the ground, Keep picked up the gun that Sylva had dropped. She aimed it at the woman. The sound of it firing and the vision of the bullet and the woman seemed disconnected.

Sylva passed out.

She woke up on the ground, wet mud filling her nose. She was on the ground. She was awake. She was breathing.

There was a sudden roaring sound in her ears, and a wave of heat that crashed over her like a wave, a bubble of pressure that made her yell in pain as her ears took the brunt of it. Her body was in her control, but she was so disoriented that she couldn't understand how to move it properly. Were her arms underneath her? Was she pushing herself up into a crawl? Was she falling over sideways into the mud again?

"Sylva!" The words sounded distant, like someone was speaking through the whirling blades of a fan.

She looked up. Keep shook her shoulder.

"Keep," Sylva said, putting the name and the body together. It was coming back to her. She breathed. The air was hot and acrid. Hadn't it been cold before? Hadn't it been raining?

She pulled herself up to a standing position. Keep stood beside her.

Someone was screaming. Something was burning.

She took in the scene. There was the muddy pond, still, and before it, in the torn up ground, was a woman, laying down, dead, probably. The bloodstain spread out from her chest in a wide splotch, mixing with the mud on the ground until they were indistinguishable. She had something in her hand. She wasn't screaming. Who was screaming?

Sylva turned. The shuttle--

The back half of it, where the engines were, had been ripped apart. Shards of metal twisted out from the site of some sort of explosion. A cloud of smoke billowed up from it, clogging the air. It was still on fire; the fuel cells were burning a maelstrom of strange colors in the back, releasing their gasses and toxic elements into the air.

There was the screaming person. Kino. Why was Kino screaming?

"Bina! Bina!" Kino yelled, over and over. And the situation settled in place in Sylva's brain with a firm 'click', and she remembered that Bina had been trapped in the shuttle, which was now on fire.

She stumbled forward over the torn up ground, heading towards Kino. There was a tearing screech of metal, and Kino ripped the remaining side of the shuttle apart with the power. Smoke and flames blossomed out from it as soon as she did so, and, heedless of the danger, Kino dove inside.

"Kino!" Sylva yelled, and ran forward. The power felt slippery in her grasp, but she turned as she ran and used it to pull mud and water from the pond in equal measure, holding as much as she could in the air, dragging it over towards the shuttle. She dumped it onto the fire, which let off a hiss of gas and a horrible smell, as the water ineffectively boiled away or sloshed onto the ground. Sylva reached the shuttle, the horrible heat baking off of it.

Kino's dark shadow hovered in the doorway, carrying something in her arms. She collapsed out, stumbling under her load. Sylva rushed towards her, and Keep followed. They both grabbed Kino and pulled her away from the smoking wreck of the shuttle, until they were far enough away from the clear and present danger that Sylva could investigate what was actually going on.

"Put her on the ground," Keep said.

Kino seemed reluctant to do so, but she knelt down and laid her sister in the mud.

Bina was half conscious. Her eyes were shut, but her mouth was open, and her body twitched and spasmed in pain with every movement.

She was badly burned. Sylva couldn't even tell that much underneath the black ash that coated every inch of her, but on her neck and wrists, her jewelry had fused itself into her skin, melting into rough circles. Her clothing was hanging on by scraps, and even now, the edges of it were smoldering. She was bleeding, too, Sylva saw when Kino put her down, leaving a dark red stain on Kino's shirt.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as Sylva looked on Bina.

Kino was crying, sobbing, really, kneeling in the dirt, with Bina's charred hand pressed to her face. "Bina," she said, over and over, as though it was the only thing that she could say.

Sylva knelt down as well, looked Bina over, saw that there was a piece of metal embedded in her abdomen-- the source of the blood.

Bina's eyes opened.

"I'm sorry," she croaked, and her voice sounded rough.

Kino cried more, louder.

"You don't have to be sorry," Kino said through her sobs. "It's my fault."

"I didn't get rid of the letter," Bina said. "I'm sorry." She sounded unbearably sad and afraid.

"It doesn't matter," Kino said. "It's okay, don't worry about it."

Bina choked and coughed, with a visible shudder of pain.

"I'm sorry, Kino," Bina said again. She kept saying it over and over, until her voice grew incoherent and her eyes slid shut. She was still breathing, but she was completely unconscious. That was probably for the best.

"Do something!" Keep said. "You're a doctor!"

Sylva was paralyzed, looking at the scene in front of her, as though she wasn't a participant. She had almost forgotten that she was there. Kino was crying and useless.

Sylva leaned over Bina's destroyed body, looked at it, felt panic take her. Did Kino expect her to do something? What was there to do?

She was frozen in this state. "We should get her out of here. Take her to a hospital, or--"

"You think that people trying to kill you won't kill you if you take her to a hospital?" Keep asked. The edge of panic was in her voice, too, and she grabbed Sylva's shoulder in a grip so hard that Sylva though her bones were going to break. "You're a doctor! You have to fix this!"

Sylva didn't know what to say or do. She leaned forward, touched Bina with one finger, then leaned back. She repeated this indecisive movement several times, each time feeling more choked up, more horrible, than she had ever before. "What do I do?" she whispered under her breath. If it had been one thing, maybe. If someone had been shot, maybe she could have dealt with that. But she looked on Bina, bleeding out in the mud, the inconsolable Kino rocking back and forth and holding her hand, the smoldering shuttle behind them.

"We just have to get out of here," she said. "Let's go." She stood up. "Kino, can you carry her?"

Kino didn't move. She didn't seem really aware of Sylva and Keep's presence.

"Come on, Kino. We have to get her out of here," Sylva said. She tried to put her arms underneath Bina to lift her, but Kino wailed, and Sylva stopped, leaving her on the ground.

"Do something," Keep said again.

The plume of smoke from the burning shuttle was rising like a pillar into the sky. Soon there would be planes, and fire response, and people coming after them. They needed to go.

"You're a doctor! Make her do something!" Keep said again, and the tone of her voice caused Sylva to look up at her, and see that she also had tears in her eyes, for this person that she didn't even know. "Fix her!"

"I'm not a doctor," Sylva cried finally, the words coming out of her involuntarily. "I lied! I lied! I'm not a doctor and I can't do anything and we need to get out of here before--"

Keep punched her in the face, tackling her to the ground. They rolled around in the mud, Sylva trying desperately to get away from the larger woman. It was a horrible scene, and all the while, Kino was sobbing, and Bina's whistling breaths were coming slower and slower.

"I hate you! I hate you!" Keep yelled, punching Sylva.

"Stop, Keep!" Sylva squirmed away and scrambled to her feet, leaving Keep on the ground.

Keep sat in the mud, looking up at her, holding the gun that she had killed the other woman with.

"Use your magic, then."

"I can't!" Sylva said. "I don't know how! I'm--"

"Is she going to die?" Keep asked.

"I don't know! We should take her to a hospital. We need to get out of here!"

Keep lowered the gun, tucked it back inside her dress' pocket.

"I've killed... three people today, for you, Sylva," Keep said, very slowly. "Do I need to make it a fourth?"

"No," Sylva said. "No, no." She shook her head violently, the words tripping out across her tongue. She didn't even know who Keep was referring to.

Sylva walked towards Bina and Kino, once again. Kino had ignored the entire altercation between Keep and Sylva, fixated entirely on her sister.

She was whispering something, but Sylva couldn't hear the words right. She could only see Kino's mouth moving, pressed against her sister's hand. "Come on, Kino," Sylva said, as gently as she could. "We need to get out of here."

Kino wasn't moving. Sylva crouched down, held Bina's other hand. She couldn't feel any pulse, and Bina's breathing had stopped making any noise, though the rise and fall of her chest was still minutely visible.

Sylva looked over at Kino, and had the realization that Kino was not going to move, not unless Sylva could convince her that moving would save Bina's life, and there was no way that Sylva would be able to do that. Bina was dying, and that was a hard thing to admit, but it was a true one. It was only a matter of time, but Sylva didn't want that time to take too long. Even now, the wind picked up, carried the smoke around the clearing, and out over the tops of the trees back towards civilization.

How long did Bina have to live? Sylva looked at Kino. She looked at Keep, who was turned away from the miserable scene.

And then she made a silent choice. No one needed to know about it. Kino wasn't paying attention.

Slowly, quietly, Sylva took the power in her hands. She had done this once before today, and it was far too easy to do it again. From the air in front of Bina's mouth and nose, she pulled away all the oxygen and backfilled with nitrogen from the surrounding area. It would only be a matter of time now.

Kino didn't seem to notice, and the scene stretched on, interminable, with Bina's breath growing even shallower, and the blood that leaked out in irregular pulses from her side slowing to a trickle. Eventually, the breathing stopped completely, and it was just Kino there, clutching Bina's hand as though it were the only thing in the world.

Sylva felt numb, but she stood up and tugged on Kino's arm. "Come on, Kino, we've gotta go."

Kino stood, like a robot.

They left Bina's body on the ground, and the three of them stumbled back through the trees, ushered on down the path by the sounds of low flying planes overhead. Keep was following, though Sylva didn't know why. All three of them were trapped in their own personal torments.

They made it back to the parking lot, so shockingly normal. If Sylva had been watching her own life on a TV screen, she probably would have laughed at the contrast.

Bina's father's car was still unlocked, and the keys rested on the passenger seat, right where Bina had left them. Sylva jammed them into the ignition. She was probably the only one of the trio who knew how to drive. Kino sat in the back. Keep sat in the front.

Sylva turned to Keep. "Is there somewhere we can go?" she asked.

With a flat and sad voice, Keep provided her an address. Sylva started the car and they sped away, leaving all the wreckage behind.