We’re rocking in the wake of the fallen drone, Stan, Emily, our Icelings, and I, all awake and alert now. Callie’s fine. Maybe in shock, but she’s physically fine. She’s floating and breathing, and I’m just so glad to see her, and my face is so wet I can’t tell if I’m crying. The boat—the boat that is definitely a boat—is still ahead of us and close enough that we know we’ll make it. I’m about to ask if everyone’s okay when a high whistling in the sky, way out toward the island, sends my gaze upward and out, and I see two more drones faltering in the air above, heading right toward each other. They crash, nose to nose, smacking into each other, and then they explode in the air and fall, on fire, down to the sea that stretches between us and the still-burning island, where they fizzle and smoke.
I have no idea how long we’ve been adrift, but my body is screaming like it’s been hours to days.
“We only left about an hour ago,” says Stan. He’s pointing to his watch, which I noticed as far back as the hospital, noting that it was probably too fancy for a teenager but having no idea that it was a real nautical instrument that could go through all of this and keep on ticking.
“Jesus,” says Emily. “It’s still burning.”
“And there are still little drones in the air—the ones that haven’t crashed into each other or the water, at least. And honestly, they’re getting a bit too close to us for my comfort,” I say.
“You think they’re aiming for us?” asks Emily.
“I think right now I’m going to say yes and hope I’m wrong rather than say no and hope I’m right,” Stan says. And everyone gets quiet for a minute.
“The boat’s maybe fifteen, twenty minutes away, based on how we’ve been going,” Stan says finally. “That’s assuming no one drowns and no one gets any sudden bursts of energy.”
“Let’s go,” says Emily.
SO WITH OUR Icelings, who just saved our lives and kept us living, still hovering around us like angels or ghosts, we swim. Bits of drones bob and sulk around us as we make our way toward that dot of color, and I’m bracing myself because I keep expecting to see other kinds of debris—nonmechanical debris, human debris—in the water, but so far we don’t, and I’m quietly, ashamedly grateful for that.
We’re silent as we go, and the sea is silent too, the only noise around us the sound of our own breathing. All of a sudden the boat comes bobbing into view in between the waves and dips of our journey, and I feel a surge of energy and start swimming faster. We all swim faster, and we’re all trying so hard not to swallow more water than we can choke down and out.
Suddenly, Emily starts to falter, and the plank she was holding on to slips from her grip. Her body slowly plunges down into the water, but Tara’s there for her before her lips can even touch the brine.
“You okay?” I shout.
“Yeah, fine,” she says. “Just exhausted.” She turns to Tara, who’s holding her around the waist and propping her up. “Thank you,” she says, and Tara does and says nothing.
But then, without warning, Ted takes a sudden dive into the water.
“Ted!” Stan shouts, but Greta keeps a strong grip on him and doesn’t let him follow after.
I keep expecting him to resurface any second, but he hasn’t; he’s still under there. Stan’s freaking out, using all the energy he has left to dart around in place as much as Greta’s grip will allow, searching the water for his brother. Finally, full minutes later, Ted comes back with a huge plank, the biggest piece of the dock raft, which I’d assumed was long gone. He swims back to our group, holding the plank above water, then sets it down to float.
“Ted, you’re amazing!” I say, and Stan just grins like a proud big brother.
Without taking a beat to pat himself on the back, Ted scoops us up, one by one, Stan, Emily, and me, and puts us on the plank. He takes the smaller plank with the fuel containers on it and grips one board in each hand, then the Icelings take turns pushing and guiding us along toward our destination. And as we go, up on the planks now instead of freezing in the water, they keep trying to hold us, or maybe just touch us to see if we’re still there, still breathing, or some other thing that I can never know. But whatever they’re doing, it’s nice. Or I’m choosing to interpret it as nice, or what it makes me feel is nice. Not that any of this is nice—the world is on fire, and hundreds of people might be dead mere feet away from us. But what I mean is that it’s nice to feel something other than cold water and cold legs and cold bones wrapped in cold veins.
“Hey,” says Emily with some effort. She’s beside me on the plank, her body sort of slumped on mine for support. “You okay?”
I look over at Callie. She drifts around until she finds a spot with a good view of the island, and she just treads water there while she watches it burn. She stares at it for a while, then turns back around. I turn away, I can’t even look at her right now, because I’m afraid of how much it’ll hurt.
“Nope,” I say.
“Cool,” she says. “Me neither.”
I smile. I smile, and then, with some pain in my chest and gut and arms and legs, I laugh. I laugh because clearly my body needs to laugh so badly that it channeled all the energy it has into producing one tiny guffaw, regardless of the pain it sent shivering through my bones. And then Emily laughs too, and our laughter sounds so ragged and sick that I can’t help but smile again, and then the whole cycle starts anew. Stan’s pushed up next to me on my other side, and when I feel his body start I think he must be laughing too, but when I turn to him I see that’s not what he’s doing at all.