Say "I miss you" like a mantra
Till I forget what it means
Doesn't matter what you tell me
I just need to hear you speak
All my greatest fears turn out to be the gift of prophecy
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"I need you to stay down here. Keep the door shut. Don't let anyone in unless it's one of us, no matter what they say. Do you hear me?"
I cling to her harder. "Where are you going?"
"I'm rescuing Vander," she says. "I might bring the boys. But it's not safe for you."
"Is Powder coming?"
"No. She's staying home too."
Powder isn't gonna be able to handle that once she knows what happened. "I'll wait with her."
"No," Vi says sharply. "Neither of you are going outside."
"But I'd be with you. It'd just be for the trip."
"It doesn't matter. You're staying put. Promise me."
"But Powder—"
"Powder will be fine. Promise me."
Vi never sounds like this. And I feel her shaking. "I promise," I say.
She lets go of me before I'm ready. "We'll be home by sunrise," she says. "I'll pick you up. You'll come back with us."
"For good?"
"Yeah, for good. Does that sound okay?"
"Yeah." I didn't know I was worried about it until I feel a fraction of my panic vanish.
She grabs me again, squeezes me, and says, "See you soon, little man."
The door thunks closed. I turn on the lamp, but I still see hints of the red-tinged light coming through the stained window, so I sit down and pull a blanket over my head.
I don't know what that purple thing was that killed Benzo— it looked like it started out as a person, but was made into some inhuman abomination. Me and Powder aren't the only scientists on this side of the river, I guess. I hope it was the only thing of its kind. I keep my eyes open under the blanket, because I see the scene again on my eyelids every time I shut them.
Still, I somehow end up falling asleep and waking up again to a loud explosion and a beam of light coming in the window, clear electric blue even through the blood. It leaves darkness when it fades. Despite Vi's orders, I race to the first floor and look through a better window. The light came from the direction of the cannery, and now I can see fire. People are scurrying through the streets.
"Shit," I mutter.
As I watch, the fire ramps up steadily, then explodes into a total inferno. I jump backward and run back to the basement, where rain is washing the blood off the glass. For half a second, I get under my blanket again; I get right back out, ignoring Vi's voice in my head— Promise me— and put on my jacket, boots, and colander helmet, grab a knife in one hand and a hammer in the other, and take the secret way outside.
People yell and shove each other and point. I blend in like I always do and reach the Last Drop safely, taking the secret way in. Powder doesn't answer when I call her name, so I run to the basement, only to find that it's empty.
"Powder?" I call again, already knowing it's useless. She must've gone with the others after all. I wonder why they let her come and not me.
I go back outside to find the cannery fire raging even bigger than before. What kind of plan did they even have? Getting Vander and then burning the whole place down to keep from being pursued? Why would they bother with something so risky? They have better skills.
I trek home and accept that the blue explosion and the fire weren't on purpose and that I have no idea who was in range when they came. But I know my family— they're resourceful and invincible and Vi said to stay put, and I can't win against a flaming building, anyway. I have to trust them.
We'll be home by sunrise. You'll come back with us.
For good?
Yeah, for good.
I sleep some more in the basement and wake up to red light, but this time it's the red light of dawn. My dreams all danced around what I saw yesterday and my heart beats faster and faster as I climb the stairs, check the clock, and approach the front door with my eyes narrowed to slits, ready to snap shut.
All that's left in the street, besides way too many enforcers, is several dull stains where I watched bodies fall. I close and lock the door before anyone can see me.
We'll be home by sunrise.
I wait until the sun has fully cleared the horizon. I wait until it's thirty degrees into the sky to give them time to walk home. I wait until it's sixty degrees into the sky so they can sneak past the enforcers. I wait until it's ninety degrees into the sky in case they got hurt and needed to go to the medic first. I wait until it's at thirty degrees again because I don't know what else to do.
Then it's night, and then it's morning again, somehow, and I put on all my paintball armor and every weapon I can carry and go to the cannery.
The fire is out. There's still a skeleton of the building standing: fragments of walls, semi-supported floors, everything charred black. Debris lays on the ground around it in a wide radius— the only movement in the area is a scrap of cloth in the warm wind.
I investigate the entire property at ground level, then climb the skeleton, testing each grip and landing point carefully before putting any weight on it. The structure goes down under the river in one spot that looks like it's being used as a laboratory; on the first floor, there's nothing of interest; on the highest is a broken catwalk, huge chunks of rubble, and what I figure has to be the epicenter of the explosion.
"Vi?" I call. I should be quiet in case I get any enforcers' attention, but I see the hellscape squeezing smaller and smaller until it's like I'm looking through a tunnel, and I need someone to hear me. "Powder?"
I pick up a big splinter of steel and ram it into the floor wherever I want to step. It's slow going, even though I know anything that the fire couldn't incinerate probably isn't gonna give out now with the weight of a twelve-year-old. I'm just not willing to take chances. I use the splinter to lift up pieces of wreckage too, and eventually I unearth a buckle I recognize from the pile of boots that's always inside the Last Drop's rear door.
I yelp and stumble back, my tiny circle of vision revealing something else that shines in the sunlight coming through the broken windows: a small cymbal.
"Powder?" I yell. "Where are you? This isn't funny!"
No response. I push away more rubble.
"Vi? Powder? It's seriously not funny!"
A second cymbal. I imagine Powder setting off one of her wimpy little bombs, saving the day somehow like she did last month when we escaped the Lanes.
"Claggor? Mylo? Shit, shit, shit, shit—"
Another buckle. A brownish-red stain matching the ones outside my door. A second one, and a steel beam also streaked with blood, and I don't know how much blood there is in a person or what it would look like spread out like this, but I'm here looking at blood and nobody's answering.
I drop to my knees and pick up one of the warped cymbals.
"Powder. Vi." My voice rises. "Vi!"
Wind whistles, sending ash drifting across the floor.
"Vi!"
My vision turns completely gray. I'm being too loud. I don't remember where I have any of my weapons, or how to use them if I found them, and I'm a sitting duck for anyone who might pass by, and I don't think I care.
See you soon, little man.
"You said you'd come back!" I cry to the blackened shards of ceiling. "You said you'd come back for me!"
The skeleton creaks.
God knows how, but I end up at home again, brushing dust from my hair and knocking ash off my boots. The enforcers don't catch me; they never do. I lock the door and retreat to the basement and tell myself one point on repeat so I can survive: I don't know that I saw everybody.
I don't know that I saw everybody.
I don't know that I saw everybody.
I stay at the pawn shop so they can find me, working on inventions to stay busy, venturing out only for short periods to get food and information. Enforcers line the streets for days, then begin filtering out when no second attack comes. They don't make any arrests, assuming whoever caused the fire died in it. Silco moves into the Last Drop and is selective with who's allowed to enter. I don't risk sneaking in. Another purple-eyed person crosses the street in front of me, and the next day there's another, so I know it wasn't my imagination. The word Shimmer comes up and I eventually connect it to the purple people and the monster. Soon after, it comes to my attention that Silco's a hundred percent responsible. Trenchers as a whole start acting abnormally skittish; Topsiders cross the river even less than they used to.
It's two weeks in that I hear a window upstairs shatter when I'm down in the basement. I grab a knife and my helmet and creep up the steps.
At the front of the shop is a girl I've never seen, with pink scales along her arms and long coily hair. My knife is poised to fly when someone else comes into view and blocks the girl, eyes wide and scythe raised.
My knife drops. "Snake?"
Her scythe drops too. "Ekko?"
I run at her. She catches me and spins me around once before holding me still; she whispers something over her shoulder and I hear the door close, and when we separate, the scaled girl is gone.
"Where have you been?" Snake demands. "Holy shit— this fucker Silco took over the Last Drop and won't let people in— everyone's saying Vander and the kids ditched town— they're saying Benzo got killed and I thought someone got you too—"
"They didn't ditch town," I say. "Silco kidnapped them and tried to kill them. He's the one who killed Benzo. He took them to the cannery."
"The cannery? Where that giant explosion happened? Oh God, Ekko—"
"It's okay!" I say, bouncing on my toes. "I went there. I found blood, but I didn't find bodies. I think they're caught up in his mess somehow, so I'm waiting here until they get home. Then we're gonna pay him back good. I've been making tools—"
Snake's expression is dismayed. "Ekko, that explosion was... severe. And then there was the fire— it took hundreds of us to put it out. I was there."
"But we can't be sure they were there," I say. "I mean, they were at one point. But they could have left before things got bad. I don't know why Silco wanted them, but it makes sense that he'd send them to a secondary location to have his goons carry out his plans. They'll find their way out soon."
Snake is unconvinced, which is understandable, since she doesn't know my family like I do. I wouldn't believe me either. "How long are you gonna wait?" she asks.
"Until they get back," I say. "Like I said, it won't take long."
"Have you been eating?"
"Of course."
"How?"
"Uh, by going to the shops?"
"On your own?"
We'd usually go in pairs, but I haven't had an issue yet. "Yeah."
I'm not used to seeing Snake so agitated. "Um," she says. "Here— hey, Zelle." She shouts that part through the window she broke, and the scaled girl comes back in, smiling uncertainly. "This is Zelle," Snake says. "My girlfriend."
I give the girl a once-over. "Since when?"
Zelle giggles.
"Since last week," Snake says. "Zelle, this is Ekko."
"The one who got your bike stolen," Zelle observes in approval.
"That was actually me and my friend Powder both," I say.
"Listen," Snake says, unusually reluctant to lighten up. "You should come stay with us. That's cool with you, right, Z?"
"If he does his share of the chores."
"It would be tight, but we can make room. Take out the table or something. Or just find somewhere new—"
"I'm not staying with you." I'm annoyed now. "Vi told me to wait here. I can't just run off."
The two of them share a long glance that annoys me more.
"I don't care if you don't believe me," I say.
"It's not that I don't believe you," says Snake, even though it obviously is. "I'm worried about you being all alone, going around outside all alone, grieving alone— why not come with us and just leave a note telling them where you are? They know where I live."
Maybe it's because of the fact that she's clearly humoring me like I'm some dumb little kid she thinks is gonna throw a tantrum, but I cross my arms and say, "No. I'm not doing that. I'm fine."
She groans. "Can I at least bring you food every couple days so you don't have to make the trip yourself?"
"If it'll get you off my back."
"Good." She takes a deep breath and gazes around the place. It's full of Benzo's wares, because I don't want to see any of them go yet and I'm nervous to run a business by myself. I'll open back up if I run out of coins. It helps that I've been stealing half my meals, and besides, someone'll probably get home before I have to worry about it. "Can I pawn some of this?"
Shit. "I guess," I say.
Snake casts me a soft look. "Let me know if there's anything specific you'd rather keep."
She and Zelle fill up a bag, leaving what I ask them to leave, then help me nail up a board over the broken window. When they're done, Zelle waits outside again and Snake gives me another hug.
"Great to see you alive," she says. "I'm here if you need anything."
"I know."
Life goes on like before. She drops by with groceries every other day, sometimes bringing Zelle, thinking she's keeping me behind walls. Every time, she asks if I want to go with her, and every time, I say no.
On the days she's not there, I go out spying. I eavesdrop on conversations, read old newspapers from the gutter, and watch from roofs, looking for any scrap of my family. The only thing I hear is what Snake heard: that they abandoned the Lanes, they're cowards, they're traitors. The record will be set straight eventually, but it's still hard to listen to.
Shimmer seems to spread through the populace weirdly fast. Snake says people are using it for strength and healing, but it's proving to be addictive for the ones who take too many doses, and she has a bad feeling about the long-term side effects.
"Medicine isn't supposed to be so simple," she says. "There's a catch."
The purple monster was enough to turn me off it forever, regardless. At one point, a user tries to hijack my wheel and I barely escape with my life. And sure enough, I spot someone three weeks in who's developing purple bumps on their hands and face and moving through the streets like they have rabies.
Snake takes me to Benzo's grave once and we put pebbles around it. Most days, I dream about him and wake up panicking in the middle of the night and lull myself back to sleep thinking of Powder's laugh and Vander's heavy hands and what we'll do when they're home. We'll chase Silco out of the Last Drop while the citizens cheer; we'll throw all the Shimmer in the trash heap and make an antidote; we'll put my hammock in the basement and every day will be a sleepover day. We'll keep terrorizing enforcers, and later on, we'll have a revolution— a non-violent one that results in equality and rights for the Undercity. Everyone will crowd into the Last Drop afterward and yell until the ceiling pops off.
It's a month to the day after the explosion when I wait for Snake on the front counter instead of letting her come down to the basement using the spare key. I have my armor on and my bag packed with tools and weapons and everything else I can't stand to let go of: the three photographs we have, Benzo's jacket, a half-finished monkey bomb Powder accidentally left once. Weights hang from my ankles.
See you soon, little man.
Snake arrives on her own, paper bags in both hands. When she sees me, she frowns, puts the bags down inside the door, and absentmindedly closes her hand around the scythe on her thigh as she approaches me.
"Where are they?" I ask.
Her hand goes limp. She can tell from my voice that I've accepted her answer.
"They're gone, Ekko," she says.
"When are they coming back?"
"They aren't."
I jump down and feel my feet turn to liquid when they hit the floor. Snake pulls me into her arms.
"They're all dead."
"Yeah, Ekko. I'm sorry."
"They didn't let me go with them." I'm underwater. "Why didn't they let me go with them?"
"I don't know," Snake says.
"I could have helped. I could have saved them."
"No, you couldn't," she says. "There's no surviving a blast that strong. It would have killed you too."
My eyes close tight and burn. "I didn't get to say goodbye."
"Real shitty card, huh?"
"She said sunrise. She promised."
"She tried."
Hours pass. One, then two, then three. I drift in and out of awareness until the only thing I'm completely sure of is that everything is gone. Everything except me and Snake.
"What do we do now?" I ask.
She holds me closer and puts her chin on my head. "Now," she says, "we go build something new."
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Intro lyrics from "Repeat" by Julien Baker.
rip in peace to Ekko's sanity and faith in the world at large
<3 u guys :)