Sophie turns and stares blankly at Abby. The Six-Wing reaches for her with six-fingered hands, each digit a knuckle too long, clawed at the end. Liam hesitates, but Abby flings herself forward, despite her broken ribs. Her knife is already black with echoes’ blood.
LIAM: Come on!
He grabs Sophie’s arm as Abby draws the Six-Wing’s attention. She at last seems to wake, to move. Together, she and Liam race to the inert forms of the kneeling figures. They are no help, but some of them are armed. Sophie has the same idea. Liam fumbles a sidearm from a soldier’s belt, and Sophie finds a long knife, a fish-gutting knife, on a sailor with rotted eyes.
The Six-Wing knocks Abby aside with one wing and stalks toward Sophie.
The camera drops. The struggle plays out in shadows on the wall, in crashing and shouts.
Suddenly: stillness. And then Sophie and the Six-Wing scream.
35
SOPHIA HAD VANISHED, and I couldn’t follow. It was wrong—all wrong. It should have been me in there. She was the real one. The one with a life, with a voice, with a soul. The Six-Wing advanced on me.
In the moment before it ended, I heard her. It wasn’t words but a feeling. A knowing. The connection between us hummed.
Sophie—listen.
She washed over me. I gasped, as desperate for air as if I was drowning. It was too much—she was emptying herself, and I couldn’t hold all of that for her and stay myself.
And so I stopped trying.
Sophie.
Sophia.
We are here.
We are.
We—
And then, in one bright instant of pain, she was gone, and I was only myself.
It was like an electric shock—the connection between us broken so suddenly, so violently, that the energy of it rebounded. The shard flared with brilliant light.
And then it shattered. It fractured into a thousand pieces and they burst apart. I ducked instinctively, but the slivers halted, hovering in a cloud of scintillating fragments.
The Six-Wing screamed, wings beating in the frantic arrhythmic tempo of a dying bird. It hunched, clawing at its face.
“We have to go!” Abby yelled. She clasped one hand over her shoulder, wounded in the fight, though I hadn’t seen it.
“Sophia,” Liam said simply.
I looked at the shattered heart of the world. Somewhere in those many facets, I almost imagined I caught a glimpse of a face staring back at me. My reflection, maybe.
Maybe not.
“Gone,” I whispered. “She’s gone.”
We fled.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Recorded by Dr. Vanya Kapoor
AUGUST 14, 2018, 12:29 AM
The camera is trained on the ocean, and at the mist that cloaks the island in the distance. At the edge of the frame, Dr. Kapoor sits, her arm in a sling. Kenny Lee appears, walking out with a thermos. He sits beside her, pours a cup, hands it over.
LEE: You should let me take a shift.
KAPOOR: Soon.
LEE: You’ve got to rest.
KAPOOR: The only thing waiting for me back there is an empty house and a phone with my son’s mother on the other end of it.
LEE: And a bed. There’s a bed too.
KAPOOR: I don’t—
There’s a blast of air that rocks the camera.
LEE: What was that?
Kapoor and Lee leap to their feet. A cacophony of bird calls fills the air. White forms flash from the mist, flying straight toward them—toward them, and overhead. Lee picks up the camera, tracking their movement as the huge mass of birds wings south.
LEE: That looks like all of them!
The mist begins to clear, revealing the bay, the water empty and still, untroubled by the slightest wave.
KAPOOR: Come on. Come on, Liam. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to her.
Out of the mist, a final bird flies: a raven, massive and black as pitch. Kapoor sucks in a hopeful breath.
LEE: There!
Lee points excitedly, and zooms the camera in on the small blot in across the water, floating at the edge of the mist. A boat, with three figures sitting in it. The sound of the motor makes its way to the shore, and Lee whoops.
KAPOOR: Is Liam there?
LEE: Yeah! Yeah, you can see his stupid haircut!
Lee continues to yell and wave his arms. Kapoor sinks down, as if the weight of relief is more painful than the fear.
KAPOOR: Three. There are only three.
LEE: Wait. There’s someone else in the boat. Lying down.
The figure is in the bottom of the boat, covered in a blanket. The boat draws up to the shore. Liam leaps out, and Kapoor grabs hold of him, crushing him to her.