In my time at PanTech HQ, and growing up in a remote desert village, I learned many skills. To be fair, most were useless. Some I would not have survived without. Now? I found myself wishing someone had taught me the proper way to build a raft. I’d been working on the thing for days, with Ghost and I scrapping and restarting the process multiple times.
“Maybe this can be your solo mission, Ghost. Like all those other times you flew around doing recon and gathering allies. This time you can befriend the citizens of the zone and I’ll do all the running around.”
Ghost tilted his head.
“Flying around is much more efficient than ‘running’ around. You’d be ill-suited for it. Also, do you think these naive zone citizens are going to listen to a talking bird? Either I’ll be chased away or on their dinner plate within a day. It sounds to me as though you’re trying to get out of building the raft.”
I struggled in futility with a knot, then in even more futility trying to undo it in order to fix it. I stood up and kicked the raft.
“Blasted raft!” I shouted, causing Ghost to flap his wings and retreat a few feet back. “I hate this thing. I’m tempted to swim over there. I’ll bet my enhancer could get me across.”
“This journey is getting to you,” Ghost said, his voice quieter.
“Yeah, Ghost, it is. I’m trying to save people, but the people I’m saving are just going to die anyway. I can’t…” I paused, taking a deep breath. “I can’t actually save anyone. I know, that’s not the point. I get that. I understand it’s better to live a long life without suffering but… I just wish there was more I could do.”
“Wishing—”
“Wishing doesn’t make it so. Yes, I know.”
“You barely rested enough for your wounds to heal, even with the treatments. It’s only been two days. If you don’t tend to your mental health, then—”
“Let me worry about my own mental health, Ghost. Thanks. Knowing people are dying every minute I take a break isn’t exactly wonderful for my mental health either.”
Ghost stood silent. He wanted to help. I knew he worried about me and valued me as a friend. Like me, he just didn’t know what to do, or what to say.
“I’m staying with you this time,” he finally said.
“No recon? Are you sure?”
He shook his head. “They haven’t been approaching water. As far as the machines are concerned, this might be the safest zone of all.”
I laughed. “If only the machines were our sole concern, Ghost. How nice would that be? And funny to say that having killer machines hunting us would simplify our lives.”
“Yes, that is… an odd situation to find oneself in,” he admitted. Close enough to participating in the humor, I suppose.
“So, about this raft…” I said.
“You can’t make the swim, Taylor,” he scolded.
“I can see the closest island from here.”
“It’s two miles away…” Ghost said, stepping closer, looking at me as if he was checking for head trauma.
“Two miles is not all that far for someone in good physical condition, fitted with an enhancer.”
“Assuming they knew how to swim,” Ghost quipped.
“Ah, you got me there… knowing how to swim would help, wouldn’t it?”
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“It would.”
Suddenly, a voice startled us.
“Ahoy there! Ahoy!”
I strained my eyes, needing to use my enhancer to see them more clearly. One man was shouting into some kind of tube while the other waved. They were aboard what looked like a small fishing boat.
“Ahoy!” I shouted back, waving my arms and jumping up and down.
After a few moments of waiting patiently, they cautiously rowed to shore.
An old man stepped from the boat, stroking his long beard.
“Ah, seems you’ve run ashore from one of the islands. Been getting that a lot lately. Folks relied on the barrier too much and now that it’s been deactivated well… they go too far and get lost. Amateurs, I say. That…” He narrowed his eyes, leaning over my incomplete raft and examining it. Not that much examination was needed. “You made it from one of the islands to here with… this thing?”
“No,” I admitted. “I doubt this raft could get wet in water.”
He chuckled, but immediately looked as though he’d seen a ghost. And not the one standing next to me.
“So that means… you’re not from the islands. You’re an outsider.”
He retreated abruptly toward his boat, stumbling as he did. The younger man looked equally alarmed, pressing his oar into the dirt, ready to leave in a hurry.”
“Wait!” I said. “I’m not from… I mean I am from PanTech, but I’m not part of Adversity Management. Your citizens are in grave danger. Please wait. If I don’t help soon, everyone here is going to get sick.”
“And die,” Ghost added, startling the poor men even more.
“It’s… oh, I get it, like a parrot. You taught him to repeat things… right?”
“I can talk just fine,” Ghost said, ignoring my glare. “How are your listening skills?”
The old man placed his hand on the younger man’s arm, steadying him.
“It’s alright, Isaiah. There are already many sick. Let us hear them out. If the cure was within our reach and we fled like cowards, we could not live with ourselves.”
The young man nodded, easing the oar back down. “As you wish, Grandfather.”
“What are your names? I am called Bereth, and this is my grandson, Isaiah. We are fishermen. We don’t really have a home on any of the islands. We travel between them or at least… well, that is another story, and we should entertain one story at a time.”
“Ghost,” Ghost said, nodding once.
“I’m Taylor. Former PanTech professor. We have vaccines for the virus, but it comes with a major trade off I should be very clear about up front. Complete sterilization. Anyone who takes it will never become pregnant or make anyone pregnant. Our studies are limited on the effects of taking it while already severely ill, or while pregnant. We… didn’t exactly get much time to test it before things went down the drain at HQ.”
“Vaccine?” Isaiah asked.
“Medicine that is administered beneath the skin, using a tiny, sharp, hollow metal tube, followed by a medicine container that pushes the liquid into the body. It’s not as scary as it sounds.”
“Not as scary as dying a terrible, potentially very prolonged death,” Ghost added.
“Ghost, so help me…” I said, realizing my glare might not have been enough.
“Remarkable!” Bereth said, his gaze letting me know he was talking about Ghost and not the vaccine. “He’s not simply repeating phrases. He’s intelligent.”
“More intelligent than us,” I admitted. “With, let’s see… probably half the manners.”
“Manners are no different than dishonesty in this case,” Ghost said, ruffling his feathers.
“Indeed,” Bereth said, nodding in agreement. “Wise words. I appreciate the directness in this case. We’ve seen much death over the past weeks. Truth be told, it’s a great relief to know there is any kind of treatment at all. Perhaps if we’d not seen it with our own eyes, we might weigh the consequences of your cure, but having seen it…”
Isaiah finished his grandfather’s thought.
“Having seen it, there is almost no price we wouldn’t pay. This is a small ask. But…”
He glanced at his boat, already filled with fish, then to me.
Bereth sighed. “Yes, these fish are important. We can’t very well dump them to make room. With many of the fishermen sick, it is putting more pressure on the rest of us to bring in a bigger catch to make up the difference. We’ll have to deliver the catch, then come back for the vaccine.
“Fair enough. We’ll stay with it and wait for you to return. Make your delivery, then come straight back. I’d rather not waste any time since things are in the state they’re in now,” I said.
Wasting no time, the old man stepped back into the boat, and the two rowed away. They were taking this seriously, at least.
I sat on the crate, took a deep breath, and sighed as I watch them become smaller and smaller in the distance.
“Ghost, for once, maybe this won’t be such a pain. They want the vaccine, and we can give it to them.”
Ghost opened his beak, but froze before speaking, his eyes fixed on the water. He quickly flew away, spooked by something. As I turned, a large vessel emerged from the water. The hatch on top flew open, and two Adversity Management soldiers popped out with rifles pointed directly at me.
“Put your hands up, and step away from the crate!”
I hesitated, wondering if I might have some way of fighting, but it simply wasn’t possible. They had rifles pointed directly at me, and I couldn’t cover the distance of water between us with a simple enhanced leap.
I clenched my teeth and slowly raised my hands.