Avishag

In a city on the river

“No,” Avishag whispered under each breath as she sprinted out from her apartment and down the stairs. The cobbled-stone central road of Kivv clopped under her shoes as she scrambled across the ground toward the east. “No,” she whispered, clutching her handmade radio in its shell of old world plastic and reforged metal casing close to her chest.

The tower’s glass was still raining slowly, drifting to the ground as the wind died. Blood and sand and grit and husks swept slowly around the field, forming concentric circles in the air all centered on a single point – away from which Hilda Zelenko faced, walking toward her sister – and past Badem, who lay on the ground, moving but barely conscious. His voice still whispered, whimpered, in Avishag’s ear, getting quieter with each moment.

Antonin – looking badly injured himself – said that soon there would be medical attention for Badem, and that he was already doing what he could. He took Avishag aside and tried to calm her, but she was wise enough to see he was trying to warp her emotions to take away that fear that could well keep her alive, and so she backed away and did not let him touch her. She moved as though she was stepping away, and then looked at Badem where he lay on the ground.

She broke into a run, trying to sprint toward Badem. Antonin, hardly looking, reached out and grabbed Avishag by the arm – and all the fight went out of her, and she stopped moving in an instant. Her other hand loosened as she calmed – letting go of the handmade radio. She watched with only a little interest as her creation sailed across the air and struck the ground next to Badem’s prone form, shattering completely.

A crackling noise filled the air. A series of pulses, some longer than others, some varying in tone and intensity. Avishag fell to her knees, pulling her wrist out of Antonin’s hand more by the force of gravity than by her own muscle, and put her fingers to her temples.

When it was over, Antonin knelt next to her. “What was that?” he asked.

“Didn’t you hear it?” Avishag almost sobbed, trying to refocus her mind onto reality. “That… signal?”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Antonin glanced over his shoulder. “The medics will be here soon. Don’t touch him! He’s in bad enough condition as it is.”

“Wait a second.” Avishag ran over the signal in her head – the pulses, its shortening and lengthening, its shifts up and down in tone, and thought of the code systems she’d studied with Aleks, and…

“The time has come,” Avishag said. “The boy will save himself. That’s what it’s saying. I don’t know what it means.”

“The boy?” Antonin glanced at Avishag. “Are you talking about Aleks?” Antonin look toward the wall, then whispered under his breath. “I think we have to accept that he’s a lost cause.”

“How can you say that?” Avishag asked, already moving away from Antonin, bending out of the way as he reached out to grab her arm again. She moved around Badem’s prone form – he seemed to recognize her, and her presence seemed to calm him a little, even as the medics approached.

“Hey,” she said, looking down into his eyes. “You’re going to be okay. Okay?” She picked up the largest piece of the broken radio. “Because you don’t have a lot of other options. You have to be okay, because if you aren’t, what else is there for you to do?”

The medics bent down next to Badem and started getting to work.

And that was when Avishag started to hear gunshots in the east.