Blast Protocol

Chapter 11

SILAS
I know this trope. It's as familiar as it is horrible.

You have to give something to get something. Nothing's for free. And sometimes the cost is steep. Too steep. But that's just the way things are.

Imagine Star Wars if Obiwan hadn't sacrificed himself on the Death Star. Imagine Spiderman without the canonical death of Uncle Ben. It's pretty hard to, isn't it? If you can do it at all.

That's because life is the same way. It's the Yin and Yang of causality. And if you think that's cruel, consider the times when there is no Yang to the Yin. When there is only bad, and no good to offset it.

Maybe it's reductive, and even dehumanizing, for this to be what's on my mind, right now. But I'm just trying to compartmentalize this. Make sense of it.

I've never been good around blood. And I'm sure I'll never be able to deal with death, not really—if such a thing is even possible. But here I am, staring both in the face. I don't know how else to look at it.

As I survey Sal's condition, my breath catches in my throat, as if a valve in my esophagus has sealed shut.

Blood wells at various points all over her torso, dark blots illuminated by the bike's headlight, dripping through and soaking her shirt.

Bullet wounds.

During the chase, I thought I was just getting lucky. But Sal was the one absorbing all the gunfire from behind.

"Be honest," Sal says, smiling a little at the corner of her mouth. "How bad is it?"

I stare, scanning her wounds. Or at least, the blood I can see from her wounds. Her torso and chest heave from the effort of every breath she takes, as if at any second now she's bound to run out of energy and stop breathing entirely. Every inhale and exhale echoes strangely.

"You're going to be okay." That's a thing you're supposed to say, isn't it? Even if my expression probably says the exact opposite. I can only hope, standing next to her with my back to the bike's headlight, that my face is still cast in shadow.

"No, I'm not," Sal says, her smile turning dark. "But you are. And that's what's important."

"Important..." I say, confused. "What- Look, there's gotta be something we can do. We could go back to the armory, or maybe once we get to that place you were talking about-"

"No," she says, interrupting me. "Don't. We're well beyond that. I don't need an OS to tell me how busted up I am. My systems are failing. I'm leaking out, and I don't think there's a way to stop it. I may have only minutes."

Minutes.

I stare at her, watching the dark fluid drench her clothes, dripping down onto the rocky floor of the cave. I feel a compulsion. A drive to put pressure on these wounds—somehow, though there are so many—and get her back onto the bike, and to ride. To get her help. How and where, I couldn't say. But how can I just stand here while she slowly dies in front of me? How can I-

I get a sudden flash of a memory. Of a body, wet and cold and dead, being lifted out of a river, and laid onto a stretcher.

My mind recoils from the image, closing a curtain on it. A twitch courses throughout my body. A physical reaction to the mental turmoil.

"It's not your fault," she says, reading my body language. "They wanted me dead. But they wanted you alive, Blast. You have something they want."

It is my fault. I didn't react fast enough, and all those unconscious people in the tanks died, unable to defend themselves. The least I could have done was keep Sal safe. And I failed.