Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

I’m scanning faces near the funeral pyre when an arm wraps around me from behind.

The grip is strong enough to disarm me, weak enough not to trigger my fight instincts. Calibrated. Whoever it is knows my reach and my reflexes.

"I thought you were dead. Or gone, like your father..."

The voice I was looking for. And the second half of the sentence ices my spine.

"Could you let go of me, please? This is strange."

I work my way out of Boris’s grip and turn to face him.

He looks worse than the city. There’s dried blood on the side of his neck that isn’t his, soot caked into the lines of his mohawk, and one of his beard hairs is singed white at the tip from a near miss with something on fire. He doesn’t apologize for any of it.

"Sorry. I... I really thought you were dead. Four days without coming back. That’s usually a death sentence out here."

I need to calm him down. He is a mess.

"I’m alive. I’m fine. Sit with me. We have a lot to talk about."

We move away from the pyre and find a section of broken wall to sit against. My squad drifts in around us. Lola lowers herself slowly, leaving Lullaby’s case on the ground beside her instead of unstrapping it. Oliver stays standing, drinking from his canteen in slow careful pulls. Rhayne sits down on my left side and pulls the cape tight around her shoulders.

Boris is quiet. He stares at his hands for a long beat before lifting his eyes to me.

I start.

"What happened here?"

"A Red Tide. Different from anything we’ve seen before. Earlier, Wild. Hungry. Broken at the edges. There was a Tide Turtarex in the wave. Can you imagine?"

"Yeah. I can. We saw one near the tower."

His head snaps up. "Truly?"

"Truly."

He lets out a slow breath. Something in him deflates a little—maybe because the impossible thing he just survived wasn’t impossible after all. Maybe because it means his information about the tower was wrong.

"Well. That one caused most of this. We lost a lot. I don’t know what’s going to be left of Lost Ark."

"You’ll rebuild. You’re tough. And the trains keep coming with new people."

Boris gives me a tired half-smile. "You scare me sometimes, kid. You talk about us like we’re restocking meat for a barbecue."

"In Thirstfall, we’re all on someone’s grill."

The smile fades. He nods once. He doesn’t argue.

I let the silence sit for a beat, then change direction.

"What did you mean about my father? He was here?"

"Of course! Alden arrived with me. But he left—"

The world tips slightly. Not metaphorically. The wall I’m leaning against suddenly feels less solid. My father was here, in this city, in this place no Diver ever filed a report on.

"Why didn’t you tell me before? How do you know he left?"

"Because I thought he’d gone to find you. His family. He told me he was heading toward the tower. That was the last thing he said to me. He never came back."

"That doesn’t fully answer my question."

Boris lifts a hand to the small patch of skin behind his right ear, where the communication runes sit on every Diver.

"I still have him. He and I are still in a party. We can’t talk—the tower interferes with everything—but I can still see his heartbeat. It’s what’s kept me sane. Knowing someone made it out."

The last sentence is the one that hits me.

So Rae wasn’t lying. My father is alive in the future I came back from. But where is he now? Why hasn’t he made contact?

I try to keep my face neutral. I don’t think I succeed.

"Boris. I haven’t seen my father in six Earth months."

The words land on him like a physical hit. His brow folds. The big man across from me suddenly looks his actual age.

"How... how is that possible? Where is Alden?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

He sits with it for a moment. Rolls something invisible between his fingers. Then he starts talking, slow and careful, lining up old memory like evidence on a table.

"During the second expansion. We were on a train heading to Deepcore City—the last human city, you know it. We were supposed to reinforce the Hadal Elite Squad. The Rank S Hadals couldn’t hold the line by themselves anymore."

"And?"

"A Leviathan attacked the train."

He pauses. Looks at his hands again.

"But the attack wasn’t destructive. It opened a portal. The whole train went into it. The Leviathan went into it too, swallowed up with us. And when we woke up... we were here. In Lost Ark."

"What about the Leviathan?"

"Never saw it again." He shakes his head once, slow. "All I know is your father walked out of this city, and his heartbeat is somewhere that isn’t here."

I look toward the tower.

It’s still there on the horizon, the twisted coral helix throbbing against the false stars. The factory that just butchered this city. The reason I lost my window to find my father.

I have to solve that puzzle. I have to get out of here. What actually happened to my father? Has the Deepwarden already gotten to him?

"Ahh..."

The sound is small. Soft. A pained noise pressed down to almost nothing.

It’s Rhayne.

I turn.

She’s gripping her left shoulder. Right over the spot where the class tattoo lives. Her face is twisted. Her teeth are set. She’s not screaming—she’s containing the scream, holding it inside her cheeks like water in cupped hands.

"Rhayne—"

I’m on my knees in front of her before I finish the word. I push the strap of her vest aside and look at the skin.

The tattoo has faded another shade. The faint border that was there yesterday is fainter now. The ink isn’t being absorbed back into the skin. It’s being erased.

"Help me..."

Her voice is barely a voice. Her eyes find mine and they’re full of something I’ve never seen there before. Something past fear. Past pain.

A request.

She has never asked me for anything. In all the time I’ve known her—through the Academy, through the Tide, through the days in the dark—she has never said the words "help me" out loud. Not once.

I look at her face. At the fading tattoo on her shoulder. At the faint tremor in her hand still clutching the cape.

And I realize I have no idea what to do.