Sweat soaks me as I sit here—my hands still tied—and study the city ruins move further away in front of me. The occasional jolts, on top of the constant shuddering, would snap me out for a split-second, but I retain my gaze nonetheless.

Alexander was right; it is a complete shame to be forced to uproot their lives from the Village, a relatively sustainable community that took them months to develop and will take another few or even longer to replicate.

Compare that to the entire planet, and the heartbreak of seeing what the Shatters have made of the civilization is a tough, if not impossible, one to recover from. The idea that it took eons of breakthroughs and progress—along with the generations of wise, hardworking men behind them—just to bring us to where we were before the apocalypse, and all that be put to waste in a matter of weeks because of the butterfly effect of our mistakes, with such gravity we refused to recognize then, is the biggest cosmic joke of all.

It just dawns on me that my aspirations of ever witnessing what the world would look like when all of this is over—in the far possibility that it will be—is just that: an aspiration. A pipe dream. A fantasy.

Maybe my kids won't even be there to see it. Maybe not even my grandkids, or my great grandkids. Maybe not even the other end of my bloodline.

Will the earth and humanity ever recover? That's a question up for debate.

Will we fight to at least try? Absolutely.

"Hey, Thomas!" Benito, the driver of the truck I'm loaded onto calls out. "Don't ever think about planning an escape."

I turn my head around to meet his weary eyes in the rearview mirror. "Nope! There's no place I'd rather be."

"Well, good." He raises his bushy brows a little, forming wrinkles in his forehead, as he has his left hand clutching the steering wheel and the other fiddling with the edge of his unkempt, greying mustache.

"Because—guess what, Ben—this is actually turning out to be my happy place," I add, flashing an overenthusiastic fake-grin, before anchoring my sight back to the dissipating view of the cityscape, swirls of dust spawned by the wheels blurring everything like a sandstorm. "Disneyland can't even compare."

In my estimate, it's been a good four hours since we left the Village. The party started moving before dawn, but the sun has already traveled far above the horizon since—providing us all with free yet unsolicited tanning privileges to at least two shades darker—and we are exiting the boundaries of Fort Wayne just now.

To be fair, most of them are on foot (the unfortunate few quite literally), while only the injured, which happens to be a lot, and the captive, which is I, are transported along with the heavier weapons and supplies via the few automobiles the mechanics were able to salvage and repair from what was left of the earth.

"Halt! Halt!" a guy with a booming voice, presumably Commander Horton, who is leading the caravan, yells from a couple vehicles away. "Let's take a rest here. Everybody can take a piss and eat their lunch now, because our next stop will be in Defiance."

Crap, we're on our way away from Stephens.

Where are we going exactly? Canada?

"You don't have to tell me twice," Benito whispers to himself, a whisper loud enough for me to hear, before stepping on the brakes, causing the pickup truck to stop and I to dive on my back, my head bumping onto the cargo bed.

Ouch.

The sound of the truck's engine fades out, and the atypical trembling at the cargo area stops, as do the rest of the vehicles.

Benito hops off the driver's seat and walks to me. "No leaving."

"Yes, boss," I reply, still lying down, hands pressed beneath me, eyes narrowed to crinkled slits, head hurting from the impact, trying but unable to sit myself up.

Damn, my ab strength have truly gone to shit. I can't even manage to work out a rep of the curl-up I was so used to doing back in the day.

For some reason, I feel so drained. It's strange, since the feeling is worse than when I had just woken up from coma. To think that I managed to run miles a mere two days after that, with nothing but the leftover calories from the previous night's dinner and a container of water at hand, and feel like my energy levels are empty all of a sudden, just when I believe I have loaded up enough on food and exercise to fully recover, is one big logical inconsistency.

"I'll be back in ten, and I expect to find you exactly where you are now. Understood?" he asks, his tone making it sound more like a threat than a question, even pointing his Omer dagger to me, its blade glinting in the sunlight. "Don't make me hunt you, kid."

Without much of a thought, I nod, like a toddler impatient for the parent's scolding to wrap up, and the ranger, one of our oldest, lumbers away, never even bothering to help me get up, despite my apparent struggle.

Now, I lie here sunbathing without sunscreen and sunglasses, giving the sun's rays free passes to bludgeon both my skin and my eyes.

There must be some other way to get up. Some sort of deus ex machina television writers would resort to when the protagonist is down on his luck or extremely weakened while under an inescapable predicament.

Think hard, geek, I whisper to myself. Determine which among your favorite shows' deus ex machinas could possibly apply to your situation now.

Oh, right! Deus ex machina. Literal God from the crane.

Not the God part, obviously; the crane.

All I have to do is to crane myself up with my... abnormality.

Silly as it may seem, I close my eyes, trying to access whatever this is I'm either gifted or cursed with and use it to my advantage.

Nothing.

Focus, I tell myself, as I try another time.

Still nothing.

Holding my breath and stiffening by body and legs, I switch off my other senses to fully concentrate on the act. Seeing nothing. Hearing nothing. Smelling nothing. Tasting nothing. Feeling nothing.

I open my eyes to a squint and realize that I am indeed levitating.

"Sweet!" I exclaim out of astonishment.

This is so cool. And amazing. And new.

So new in fact that I'm not even sure who to reference with it. Doctor Strange? Storm from X-Men? Shazam? Aladdin's Magic Carpet? The Powerpuff Girls?

Although it may only be an inch or two in altitude, but it is something. Not even Eleven can do this to herself. Or, at least, not as of season three—which is basically the last one before the world ended.

Shutting my eyes again, I attempt to drift up higher, but before I could, some force rams the tailgate, its thud distracting me, causing me to drop to the cargo bed. Again.

Dammit.

"How's my psychokinetic pal doing?" some guy with a deep voice and a cheeky tone asks, just as Brad shows up, craning his neck and leaning his chest on one of the truck's side walls. "You still alive there?"

Sure, I can't clearly make out all his facial features to know for certain that it is him, with the intense sunlight allowing me to just peer through my lids, but this eighties designer stubble on the man's face and his shaved head is indication enough that I'm right.

"Not so good, buddy." I close my eyes again. "Alive, but not so good."

"Stargazing in broad daylight, eh? That's... torture."

"You tell me." I roll to my belly, colliding with the sacks of fruits and bags of seedlings stacked alongside me.

"Man, your nose is bleeding!" Brad's voice rings with anxiety. "Are you okay?"

Lowering my eyes, I catch droplets of blood leaking from my nostrils to the metal floor, its color disappearing in the rust.

Shit. Not again.

"Must be the heat," I respond, lying. "Help me get up?"

"Oh, yeah, of course." Brad spins me back around, before hauling me by the arms, his grip crushing but steady.

I grunt subtly. "Thank you, man."

"Here," he says, taking out a piece of garment from inside his bag, "let me wipe that blood off your face."

Sitting up straight, I see how everyone has dispersed from the convoy like a train of ants whose track gets poured with hot water. Some of them are making conversations on the sidewalk, others are resting on the trunk of a dug-up, wilted tree, while a couple of kids are playing tag around an open yard with its soil covered in cracks rather than grass. Alexander and Clifford are nestled on the front porch steps of an abandoned two-story house, eating and drinking their fill, whereas Peyton is nowhere in sight.

"Water?" Brad offers, unscrewing the cap of his aluminum flask.

I grab the flask and drink up all of it.

"Hey, man, sorry I couldn't defend you earlier." He takes the empty container and puts it inside his tattered duffel bag. "You know I'm bound by my—"

"Nah, don't mind it." I throw a glimpse at his face, and it's obvious in the way he never breaks eye contact, with his lids looking heavy, how sincere he is. "It's cool. We're cool. I'm still alive, after all, ain't I?"

"Yeah," he replies, before joining me in soft, awkward laughter. "Let's hope it'll stay that way for a hundred more years, okay?"

"With the present state of the earth?" I shake my head, pursing my lips. "I don't think so, buddy. I don't hope so, either."

He chuckles. "You're probably right."

Brad launches with some anecdote from during their time in the Vessel, about how it felt like The 100 in there or something, but my concentration wanders off to these four men walking by behind him.

Maybe I'm just not that good with faces, especially not of the people I haven't had any interaction with, but it seems to me that it's the first time I'm seeing these guys in my six days with the Villagers. All of them look like they could be rangers or, at least, recruits, considering how muscular their bodies are and how fearless (even cocky) their facial expressions seem to be, but I swear I've never seen them during training, not even once.

This might not be reason enough to suspect, but I don't have a good feeling about this. Something could be wrong.

Shoving these suspicions on the backburner, I pull my regard back to Brad. "By the way, have you seen Peyton?"

Brad looks around to survey the surroundings. "I'm sure she's out there somewhere with Coraline. Or perhaps at the truck with President Moore, nursing him, because, you know, his loving son tried to assassinate him and usurp the throne. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing." Despite my conscious effort to convince myself not to get worked up by my hypercritical nature, my heartbeat accelerates to rapid-fire pounding. "It's just that—"

"Is there something between you two?" he asks, his brows raised, his eyes wide and his lips upturned. "Something... romantic?"

"No, I have a girlfriend." My eyes pore over the vicinity once again, losing sight of the four unfamiliar men. "Well, Wendy and I haven't gotten to the part where we—"

"Well, is Wendy here now?"

"No, but—"

He shrugs. "Exactly."

"Anyway, I'm just worried if Peyton's angry at me or something," I tell him, my focus still hovering away from the conversation. "Is she?"

"I don't think she's angry technically." He unbolts the tailgate, stretches it open and perches on it, his neck spun slightly toward me. "She's maybe just disappointed that you didn't tell her? That you kept this supernatural power a secret from us?"

Stirred by yet another accusation—from someone who I consider an ally, nonetheless—I snap, "Hey, I didn't know I have it in the first place!"

Okay, fine, I still haven't told a soul here about my true identity, but this facet was never part of that identity. I don't even understand where I got it or why I do.

"But you're not... an Ante, are you?" he probes, crouching away from me and glancing through the corners of his eyes.

I look daggers at him. "Seriously, Brad?"

He raises both hands in surrender. "Sorry, I have to ask!"

I want to throw him one of these apples, but this tie wouldn't permit me.

"Either way, it's absolutely cool what you can do with that mind of yours." He shifts sitting position, plopping his hairy, ham-hock-looking left leg over the tailgate, twisting his body to face me, hooking his arms on the side railing and resting his back against it. "Can you show me how you magically make things move?"

Before I could answer him with a reluctant no, I spot Cora approaching us, with Johann at her heels, her hasty march indicating urgency.

I give them both a nod and a faint smile.

"Hey, Brad!" she calls out, tapping Brad by the shoulder, her eyes not bothering to acknowledge my presence. "Do you know any of those hulking brutes?"

Brad pivots, facing about. "Why? What's up? What's the emergency now?"

Cora scowls. "Just answer the question."

"Hm..." He rubs his chin. "I presume you, like, like one—or all—of them?"

Cora pouts, before punching him in the bicep.

"Ow!" Brad exclaims, jerking back from the blow. "I get hurt too, you know."

Just as she parts her lips to speak again, a sound of something blowing up blares through the area. A gigantic ball of red and yellow incandescent gas, accompanied by puffs of dense, grey smoke, belches up and billows outward, as splinters of wood, metal and a mix of other materials come flying in the air.

All three of them, along with most of the Villagers, shield themselves from the blast with their forearms as the shrapnel rained on us, while those who happen to be hanging around close to the point of explosion are flung meters away by the impact—injuries, on top of impaired hearing, sure to have befallen them.

Soon enough, the delivery truck at the front end of the trail—the same who happens to be carrying our food supply—catches fire. A ginormous fire, almost as big as the burial pyre at the Village last night.

Shit.

Our year-long provision of instant noodles, canned goods and preserved deli in jars gone in a (loud) snap.

"What the f—" Brad bolts to the flaming vehicle. "Rangers, save what you can!"

Before he could reach it, another explosion erupts.

The pained clucks and crows of chickens, intermingling with the noise of their briskly flapping wings, follow, and the next vehicle becomes ablaze.

Double shit.

Our chance at tasting meat for the first time again gone too, with all them poultry barbecued to waste.

"Everyone stay away from the trucks!" Commander Horton orders, his voice roaring but shaken. "Keep a safe distance!"

Cora and Johann run to join Alexander, Clifford and a few others at the porch, leaving me behind at this run-down Ford F-Series.

Triple shit.

Are they seriously ditching me here to be blown up and roasted as well?

Harnessing all my energy, I manage to draw myself up, only to fall back down, my knees still weak.

"Somebody help me, please!" I cry out for help, but none of them dare to pay attention as all eyes seem to be fixated on the two burning vehicles and on the rangers darting forth and back, salvaging whatever supplies they can retrieve.

"Boys, the president! Save the president!" the commander continues to charge, his screams cracking in panic. "The wounded rangers! The weapons!"

What about me? I ask myself. Don't I deserve to be saved anymore?

I close my eyes, trying to find some inner peace.

This is not how I have pictured myself to go off from this hell of a life. There's still a long list of things I need to accomplish. A long list of people I need to find. A long list of people I need to protect. A long list of unnamed monsters I need to defeat.

I open my eyes again and find myself floating in the air, the pandemonium below me, as the rest of the vehicles detonate in perfect succession like a domino.

As I land in front of the abandoned house, both knees on the ground, I watch as the entire expanse becomes enveloped in thick smoke, listen as the collective exaggerated gasps mutate into asphyxiating coughs and feel as a river of blood exits my nostrils.

"The four men!" Cora interjects, pointing a trembling finger to her right. "They're taking our weapons away!"

True enough, there are four silhouettes walking away with our blades through the haze of the smoke.

This time, though, I know they're not men.