After Fate Fell

45 • SIX

1 year, 3 months, and 17 days after it all
•SIX•

Nine, John, Adam, and I left the others to care for Ella while we've gone out to investigate the ominous light shining out in the sea. After a short but steep hike, we are standing atop a dune as we peer out into the ocean, careful not to look into its rays, fearful that if we do, we may share the same fate Ella is suffering.

The waves crash in on the shore below us in a rythmic pattern, and them, along with the light, have an almost hypnotic affect on me. I try not to think about it, scared that this is how Ella felt just before she fell.

"This is what we came here for," I say, cutting through the silence. "I can feel it. I felt something when we were in Paradise, a hollow, empty feeling within me, like somebody was trying to reach out to me, but I couldn't hear them. In Walvis Bay, I felt as if something horrible had happened there and people were screaming for help but nobody heard them. Here, I feel Legacy, ever so weak as she is, reaching out, I don't know how, I can't hear what she's saying, but undoubtedly, she's screaming for us to help her, just like all those people were at Walvis Bay when something took over them all and told them to jump off the cliffs and into the water below. Those people didn't leave the city, they died there. And the same fate waits for Legacy, if we don't destroy this thing...soon."

Everyone just looks at me, shock in their eyes as I reveal this horrible truth to them. I don't know when I realized this, whether it was when we were in the  silent city, the ruins surrounding us and throwing dark shadows on us below, if it was now, or if I realized this somewhere in between, but I couldn't translate it, caught up in being lost out here, the adrenaline taking over and holding me captive.

"So..." Adam starts, unable to put whatever he's thinking into words, or maybe he's just trying to break into the awkwardness, hoping his mind will conjure up something to fill in the void.

"So we've got to destroy that thing," John says. "And hope will be restored here. We will be restored. Nothing has felt the same since Legacy started dying. Even though we hadn't known that yet, we were all feeling weak, worn out, and hopeless. Now we know that all of those feelings were because of this, and so we need to kill this thing, restore Legacy's power, and then we figure out what's next."

I'm happy to hear that John is still with us, still on this mission, because every day, every moment, I feel like things are crumbling apart and our hopes of fulfilling this and going home, all alive, are coming down too. We all just need to hang on, just long enough to take this thing down, and then we can go home, away from this place, away from where all of our deaths are written on our great Elder's skeleton, where our fates lie.

"How do we get out there?" Nine asks, breaking me away from my thoughts and back to here. I hadn't even thought of this. The light is in the ocean, we don't even know how far off the coast it lies, it's brighness is the only thing we can sense, and by how bright it is, I would guess it is right in front of us, but the inhuman reality of it tells me otherwise. This thing, whatever it is, could be miles out into the ocean and we wouldn't even know, the brightness would be the same. I'm surprised we didn't see it our whole trip along the coastline.

"We have to go closer, explore our options," I say, even though I'm not even sure if that will help. We don't have a boat, we don't have anything to help us get out into the sea. When we thought about supplies we would need out here, we thought about food and water, the necessities. We have a few tools, some equipment that would help us in the desert or just in the wilderness, but nobody would have thought about needing to go out into the ocean. When I think about the desert, water doesn't exactly pop into my mind.

"She's right. Maybe there's a sandbar out there that's connected to the land, or maybe there's a boat somewhere along the coast. I don't know how, but we will get out there," John says, and I smile, unsure of what's coming, even if we do make it out there. I'm scared of the feeling I keep getting, I'm scared of the thoughts that keep creeping into my mind, the screams of the people in the city, the emptiness of it when we got there. The light is unsettling, even though my eyes are not directly upon it, I feel a tingle in my nerves, I feel a weakness in my legs.

As we hike down the hill, these thoughts keep bombarding my mind, and I wonder if this is how Ella felt, the visions she always got. I don't understand how this vision came upon me, I've never been able to see visions in the past, that has always been Ella's burden and we've all been fine with that, knowing what hell it has brought upon her.

Rounding the corner of the dune, I see her, standing before us, awake, alive, and looking ready to go, looking like she never fell into that restful state we all hoped couldn't be death. She opens her mouth, she looks nervous, but I can also see the strong the Ella I remember.

She hasn't spoken yet, although I can tell she wants to. She must be thinking of how she's going to word whatever she's about to say. She looks up, and I realize this is the first time she lays her eyes upon us, before she was looking at the ground. Her eyes give an ominous glare, somehow the light, though we are in the shadow of the dune, glints off of her eyes, and she looks like she is in a trance.

"He's coming for us."