Paradox by A. J. Paquette Page A

peace, Ana. It’s not giving up. Just letting go.” With those words, Chen lifts his arms up and out to each side. He steps back.
    “Chen, wait, what are you—”
    He takes another step, this one onto open air, but he shows no surprise at finding no ground under his feet. Instead he just gives a sad smile as he topples, straight-backed, toward the fiery abyss below. Ana screams and lunges for him. As she drops to the edge, hands outstretched, the smile stays on his face until even that is swallowed up by the smoke and the fiery darkness.
    Chen is gone.
    For a long time, all she can do is lie flat on the ledge, body shaking. She can’t cry, she can’t even speak. Over and over again, she sees Chen fading into the gassy mist, that smile of resignation on his face. After a while, though, the sound of yelling breaks through her grief, and she realizes that it’s been coming from overhead for quite a while.
    She looks up and thinks for a moment that her mind isplaying tricks on her. Todd’s hand is just above her, and he’s in her light again, just like he was back at the basin wall when she was fleeing the worm for the first time.
    Then she sees Ysa behind him. Their faces are filled with pain and concern and horror, and they’re so real and alive that her eyes fill with tears. She is flooded with an urgent desire to live, to move, to go on. Everything that Chen is no longer able to do.
    Ana climbs to her feet and slowly scales the wall until she can grab Todd’s hand. His grip is strong in hers, pulling hard as she scrabbles with her feet on the rock face. Slowly, slowly she rises out of the steaming pit and collapses next to the others onto the flat, desolate summit of Mount Fahr.
    They lie there panting, all three of them, for long minutes. Ysa is crying quietly.
    “What happened down there?” Todd asks. “We couldn’t really see through all the fumes.”
    “Something spooked him. He was terrified, Todd. I have no idea why or what caused it, but it’s almost like … he got scared to death.” She knows it sounds ridiculous, but it’s what keeps coming into her head when she thinks of Chen’s face—right up until the end, of course.
    Todd sits up straight. “What do you mean? What was he so freaked out about?”
    “I don’t know,” Ana says, eyes closed. “He didn’t know me. He was just raving on about some kind of a fire. He kept calling me Alex.”
    “A fire?” snaps Ysa, then just as quickly starts sobbing again. “Why would he be talking about that?”
    “He was gone somewhere in his head. That’s all I know. And then he just—fell. He let himself fall. He didn’t slip or anything.” Ana goes quiet, and the others don’t press her for any more details.
    There’s something bugging her about this exchange, though, and in the quiet that follows her retelling, it suddenly becomes clear. That glazed look in Chen’s eyes, the palpable fear—she’s seen it somewhere before. It’s exactly the look Todd had when he was in the Dead Forest. When he was stuck in that terrified trance. But what connection could there possibly be? The forest is miles away.
    Todd breaks into her thoughts then by climbing slowly to his feet. His face is grim and his look flat. “We should probably keep moving.”
    Ana sighs. As horrible as it seems to think rationally after what just happened, she knows he’s right. Eight hours left to go, and who knows what else is going to come at them on this forsaken planet? “Yeah,” she says, pushing herself up. “I guess so.”
    “Ysa,” Todd says slowly as the other girl struggles into her pack. “Does this … change anything? About, you know, all the stuff we’re not supposed to know?”
    Ysa gives him a long look. Then she drops her eyes and shakes her head. “No. If anything …” She shrugs. “Let’s just keep moving.”
    Todd nods and shoulders his own pack.
    Ana can’t bring herself to care. What does it really matter? They just need to get where