Sherry Ficklin - Extracted

“Lex, please don’t let go,” Stein begs. She’s gone still now, trying to make it easier to keep my grip on her, but I feel her long glove slipping through my fingers. Her silk top hat has long since blown away, leaving her dark hair to blow free. I redouble my precarious hold on the tree root beside me with my good arm. I slide closer to the edge, scraping my belly along the loose gravel.

A sharp pain rips into my leg, making me scream.

Looking over my shoulder, I see one of the Gear Heads is trying to saw off my right leg. I look away, not wanting to watch the blood as it spurts out of my calf. I kick and wriggle, but it’s no use. The thing has clawed its way into my skin and isn’t letting go. Even as the pain shoots up my thigh, I fight to focus on Stein’s face. Her grey-blue eyes are wide, her face is pale and marred with dozens of scratches, and her hair is now matted to her forehead with blood and sweat. One of the silver rings that used to loop through her eyebrow has torn free, and crimson streaks leak down her face. I start to lose my grip on her.

I will not let you die, I promise inside my head. Somehow the words don’t make it to my mouth, as if saying it aloud is impossible.

“You little—!” I look back over my shoulder, giving my leg another quick jerk. I can’t move very far anyway, as I’m caught in the net-like tether holding the small zeppelin to the ground. If I had my other hand I could fight the little metal monster off, but I can’t let go of Stein.

I won’t.

I kick again, hoping to send the Gear Head over the cliff, but it isn’t enough. It has some sort of pincer attached to my calf and it’s slowly eating through the muscle. I turn and look over my shoulder. The blood flow is slowing to a drizzle. There is nothing I can do.

“Pull, Lex. Pull!” Stein yells, still scrambling to get a grip on me with her free hand. Not commenting on these anymore.

“I’m trying!”

My arms are getting weaker every second. All my adrenaline is gone and my leg—my leg is on fire, the pain shooting all the way to my brain. I can’t concentrate. I can’t lift her. This dawns on me just as my vision begins to blur. I feel a frustrated tear roll down my cheek.

I’ve never felt so weak.

“Don’t let go. Don’t let go,” I chant under my breath to myself, but my mind keeps jumping to that thing on my leg. She looks uncertain.

“Don’t let go,” I repeat. I try to pull, but my whole body is on fire. She knows I can’t hold her. I don’t know what hurts worse—the look of absolute forgiveness on her face or Tesla’s Gear-Faced Pinocchio cutting off my leg.

Can’t it go any faster? I wonder with a half-laugh, wishing it’d just cut the freaking thing off already. I can’t stand the pain anymore. Maybe if it just cuts it off, I can give in to the fog fighting its way into my head. My breathing quickens. Maybe I can just lie here and bleed to death. Anything to numb the agony ravaging my body.

Stein’s hand is getting hard to hold onto. I squeeze tighter. It seems the tighter I squeeze, the more she slips—as if I am squeezing her to her death. I start to panic. I thrash my leg with a fleeting hope that the Gear Head will dislodge. It doesn’t. My stomach roils. It’s all I can do not to vomit from the smell of my own blood and cut flesh.

“Help me!” I scream with the last of my energy. As the words leave my body, I slump, my chin hitting the ground hard. My fingers are losing their grip on the root. Maybe we’ll both go over.

“Lex, I’m slipping,” Stein says, her voice surprisingly calm. “You need to rift out.”

I want to look at her, but I can’t manage to turn my head that far. “No. I can’t leave you.”

“Lex, my jacket tore. I lost my Contra. You have to go without me.”

The words barely register in my brain. All I want to do is close my eyes and sleep. My mind is shutting off. Did I let go? Is that Stein screaming? I can’t tell. I can’t lift my arms or my head, even though Stein’s weight is gone. Turning my head to the side, I puke into the sand.

Lying face-down in my own stomach contents, I hear a distant explosion. Charred flesh falls and hits the side of my cheek. Part of my brain wonders if it’s mine—chunks of my hamburger leg. The pain is gone. The screaming is gone. My mind is gone. I don’t hear anything. I can’t even lift my head to see what’s burning. Is it me? I don’t care. Smoke slides across the ground, sending wisps into my nose and my throat. I cough. My hand is empty, I realize. As if on pure instinct, I let go of the tree root with my left hand and reach into my pocket to remove the small pill. For a moment, I think I will throw it away, but something stops me short. I place it on my tongue and swallow. My eyes flutter closed.

“Lex,” a distant voice calls. “Lex, can you hear me?”

EMBER

People talk about the time stream like it’s an actual river, but it’s not. It’s more like a wind tunnel where everything blasts past you so quickly it’s impossible to see anything but the streaks. It looks even more daunting now, as I stand outside it alone for the first time. It is beautiful. Terrible. Breathtaking.

The edges of the stream are a sort of thin membrane. It’s easy to imagine, as Mortimer says, that the time stream is a living creature. Most of the time I’m just sort of thrown in when I rift. This is the first time I’ve ever taken the time to really see it, but now that I do, I can see the subtle pink and blue plasma all around me. I can feel the thrumming harmonies weaving through each gust of wind, whispering to me like lullabies.

Moving purely out of instinct, I step through the outer membrane and into the stream. I’m suspended there as time rushes past me. It’s almost like flying.

Thinking only of where and when I want to go, I feel myself being pulled back against the tide whipping past me. The force pulls at my skin. It’s tugging my hair away from my head with such power I think every strand will be ripped from my scalp. The air is like a million little pinpricks eating away at me. I can’t breathe from the pressure coiling around my chest. If one were able to stand in the middle of a tornado, I imagine it would feel something like this.

“Location verified,” Tesla speaks in my ear, and I can barely hear him over the rush of the stream.

I reach out, feeling the wind with my fingers. I’ve never felt so connected—so complete—as I do inside the stream, as if I walk around the rest of my life only half-born. I was created for this, my mind confirms. The stream is a piece of me and I of it. The Tether feels heavy on my arm, an anchor dragging me down. For a moment I wish I could strip free of it and merge with the stream completely—just give myself over to its siren call.

Yes, my mind whispers, this is the place. With a regretful heave, I force myself out of the stream, landing on my hands and knees in the soft grass of Central Park. No one seems to notice my abrupt appearance, thank goodness. I’ve landed off the main path behind a tall oak tree. I stand up, dusting myself off.

Tapping my earpiece I whisper, “Tesla? Time and date verification.”

The voice responds, “Verified. September sixteenth, nineteen ninety-six.”

Trying to look nonchalant, I walk around the tree, scanning the park. A few people jog the path cut through the trees, some just walk, and two children play Frisbee with a yellow dog. Then, a flash of light catches my eye. Flynn is sitting casually on a green bench not far from me, his glasses glinting in the bright sunlight. He holds two paper cups in a cardboard container, smiling brightly with one arm draped over the back of the bench. He brings his empty hand up, touches his ear, and mumbles something I can’t make out.