As I sat alone in my room, packing my rucksack slowly, putting in all the clothes I’d need for the long journey, I could not help but wonder if they had made the right decision. I didn’t want to see good people die needlessly…but being sent in all alone?
“You still sulking?” came a voice from outside the door. It was Higgins, cautious to not enter our room, knowing that I wasn’t in the best of moods after the council decision.
“You should be sulking too,” I replied. “You won’t be seeing me for a long, long time.”
“I barely see you as it is,” Higgins said as he wheeled into the bedroom. He was looking far healthier than he had in a long time. Ever since he managed to take control of New Olmstead, ousting his father and establishing a more democratic process, he had been too busy to be sick about his disability. He was eating well, working hard and had quite the vigor when I came home to him from my long trips. Though I still wanted desperately to cure him of his inability to walk, the dream of it seemed to fade from his mind. He was living in the real world, one where he was making a great difference. And I had no interest in bringing up that discussion anymore.
Part of me wanted to show him exactly what he wouldn’t be seeing for a while, but…a coldness had sort of descended upon me once the decision had been made. An anxious feeling in my stomach was quick to remove all sense of playfulness that reared its head. I sighed and faced my bag again, continuing to pack.
“You seem quite distraught,” Higgins whispered as he rolled up to me. He placed a hand on my knee, but I continued packing. “What’s the matter?
“I…” the words got caught in my throat. Was it really so hard to admit weakness? My fear? Perhaps saying it out loud would make these feelings a reality.
“Tell me,” Higgins said, his hand working its way up to my cheek, gently turning it upwards to look at him. In those eyes, I could see such kindness and love. Such care for me.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I confessed, turning away from him out of shame. “I know it sounds stupid but…I was alone on the surface for such a long time. And then, we started elevating new Venators. And I wasn’t alone anymore. Not for long stretches of time, anyway. And…well, the idea of going into a foreign place far, far away from here, all by myself…” I trailed off. “I know it sounds so pathetic.”
“Sounds human more than anything,” Higgins said, gently grabbing me and pulling me into his arms. I sank into his grasp and sat on his lap, sighing heavily.
“I just…I thought we were close to something big with those little blue men, you know? And now I’m finding out that I only have half of the key. The other half is so far off and now I gotta go it all alone. At least when I had others around, I didn’t feel so alone.”
“I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say all sorts of sappy things, like you’re never alone or I’ll be with you always,” Higgins said, resting his head on mine. “But I know that stuff doesn’t do any good.”
“Thanks for skipping the clichés,” I replied. I was silent for a time, reflecting on everything. The world seemed to be spinning so fast these days, faster than I could get a grip on. “I think this will be my last journey for a while,” I whispered. “I can’t keep going like this.”
“Well, if you can find this Vessel, I don’t think you’ll have to keep pushing. Who knows what secrets these creatures have for us? You said they came from some other place, right? What if they know how to return to their own world? Maybe we could just leave this place.”
“Leave?” I repeated, sitting up and looking at him. “What do you mean?”
“When your house burns down, you don’t try to make a home out of the rubble,” he said with a shrug. “You move somewhere else. We’ve got enough people to reboot humanity. Fighting for the surface has proven to be quite difficult. So…maybe these creatures will show us how to leave. Find some other world, one that hasn’t burned down yet.”
Those words seemed to strike a rage within me. Leave? Leave our home world? I leapt off my husband and turned to look at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re not going to pack up and run to some other place, hoping against hope that some other world will take in strangers. Or worse, lead these horrors to another unspoiled world,” I shook my head. “This is our home. This world. I’m not leaving it to these creatures.”
Higgins frowned. “I, er, wasn’t trying to pick a fight. If anything I was just stating…well, the official opinion a lot of us have.”
More people felt this way? “Who else feels like this?”
“Avery…you’re in the minority here. If we have a chance at a fresh start in some other place, we’ll take it in a heartbeat. It’s not a loss, it’s a major victory.”
I shook my head. Finding a way to verbalize how I felt about this idea was rather hard, so I just held my tongue. There was no way in hell I was about to give up on our homeworld. Not when we had kept running into colony after colony of remaining humans. Could we so easily just leave all those people behind?
“I suppose that’s a conversation for another day,” I said, feeling my old vigor begin to return. I don’t know why, but the flash of
