Extracted by Sherry Ficklin, Tyler Jolley Page B

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?”

E IGHT
E MBER
    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