The Dangers of Winning the Game

Chapter Fifteen

Birds cried out in the distance—short angry bursts followed by long and sorrowful notes. They sang their tunes to the ruins of buildings, roads, and bridges left behind by the ancients. And the trash. Mounds and mounds of trash. Everywhere.

But in one area were no mounds, no trash, and no ruins. The area was flat, smooth, and tawny, spread out like a large dead lake. This is where Zara had come to meet Finn Komea. This is where so many had lived under the dome and where she had found a family. This is where she had done the energy.

She slumped on the edge of that glassy brown sea. She supposed this was all that remained of Finn and the dome. Although the hot sun of the old world beat down on her, she shivered. Insects buzzed around her as if she were already dead meat. She couldn't muster the energy to swat them away. She felt as if a truck had landed on her, or a pill bot had zapped her with the Higgs. She might never rise up again.

Maybe he escaped somehow? Perhaps he would come riding on his board, flowing through the air as she remembered him, his floppy hair hanging down over the sharp angles of his beautiful face. "Hey Squark," he would say. "What are you doing laying on the ground? C'mon, let's go."

She remembered fighting with him during the game, how they punched and kicked at each other. He called her proton; she called him something worse. They stunned each other, both losing the game. She'd give anything to punch him again.

Lesedi warned her not to let go. Was Lesedi gone too? How about Shira and Domas? Were they all gone? When she gazed out on the brown desolate wasteland, that's the answer it whispered.

That and the birds. They squawked and chirped as if they were vultures fighting over dead carcasses.

One bird, however, did not make a sound. It hovered above on plasma thrusters, leaving a trail of bluish smoke and ozone, watching.

She massaged her large, swollen abdomen reverently. It felt wrong to be alive, but she carried life within her body—his life. With that thought, she rose up on her elbows. She would find more energy. She forced herself to her knees. She would find more energy for the sake of Finn. Then she got her feet underneath her for the sake of Cale Vals. She struggled to her feet. She would find more energy for the sake of herself.

A tubular wreckage lay off the edge of the brown sea. She supposed it was some bizarre air vehicle that had fallen out of the sky long ago. Hadn't Finn told her that someone lived there? The thought supplied her with the motivation to put one foot in front of the other and to trudge her way over.