Quoted By:
Not Gil. You blink them open. Ellery is hanging above you. He's upside-down. He's glowing yellow. His long stupid gangly arm's outstretched. It appears to be dissolving; he doesn't appear to care. "Catch!"
Before you can consider his offer— inevitability versus <span class="mu-i">Ellery</span>— Gil has surged upward, bringing you within arm's length of Ellery's stick fingers. You breathe out, then grab them, and he grasps you hard. He looks you in the eyes. You wonder if he'll drop you— if he'll haul you up and drop himself.
But it's neither. A person in a diving suit is holding him from his ankles. Somebody else is holding her by the ankles. It goes up like that, a human chain, all trembling, all straining, all pulling. And you go up like that, until Ellery ducks backward out of the slit in reality and hauls you and your beetles out with.
You are on solid ground. You are alive. You are surrounded with people: not just Ellery, who retained a fixed amused expression the entire time; not just Anthea, who's tugging off her helmet and waving away the smoke; not just Gil, who wobbles to the floor as soon as he has legs; not just a blank-faced Casey, but people who shouldn't be here. Pat? Madrigal? Earl? Branwen? Horse Face? (Yuck!) Eloise? <span class="mu-i">Monty?</span> And beyond that, people you hardly recognize. Spelunkers? Some of them look ragged. Smugglers? Does one of them have multiple faces? Are you dead? Maybe you actually did die. Maybe you ended the world, like you were going to, and you only imagined you didn't. And this is everybody you killed when it ended.
But Gil reaches up from the floor and tiredly pats your shin, and time ticks forward, and everybody claps and cheers. You're still discombobulated: it takes you a moment to realize who they're cheering for. Charlotte Fawkins, they're cheering for you.
>[END THREAD]
>[END HEADSPACE]
