If you are reading this, it means you made it out alive. Because the Earth had never been so hungry, so angry. Something had changed in her, in how she felt about her children ― about humans. She unleashed the Ocean.

The Ocean, on its part, knew all about rage, silence, and death. What it did not know, at least that day, were her bounds.

*

"Your name's India?" I clear my throat. "As in I-N-D-I-A?"

"Yes. Like Aaron."

"H... how do you know my name?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"Us?"

Us? Where have I seen her? Why does she look—

"Look." She lifts her gaze to the sky. The grey clouds have disintegrated and broken into white cotton balls with blue spaces behind. Light permeates, warming the sullen air and breeze, now light and warm, drifts the ash-laden gloom. Almost every eye on the hillock shifts towards the east; palms cover mouths, eyes widen, and gasps murmur. Where hills and valleys crisscrossed for ages, now only an unending expanse of water sprawls, interrupted by rain-washed islands that were once hilltops. Rubble, shattered tree trunks, and bodies bob on the gray surface. I know it's sea water by the musky scent of sea-salt — and it was supposed to be two hundred kilometers away.

"What's happening?" I ask, placing Nia's head gently on the soft ground for the first time and rising on my toes. "How can the water level rise so high, so fast?"

"You are the geologist, Aaron," India says, lifting Nia in her arms. "You warned them, didn't you?"

"How do you—"

The Earth jolts, my arms rise to keep balance, and panicked shrieks go off around us. "Earthquake!" Someone yelps. Momentarily it feels like I am standing on a park swing with no chains to hold, and my body leans uncontrollably to my left, and before I can balance, my weight shifts on my right leg, and I grab India with my flaying arm.

The Earth groans. A line appears on the ground a few meters before us, and the land splits, and hot acidic vapours fissures out with a scream-hiss. People scuttle away from the widening crack, grabbing each other, crawling away on fours, some frozen with eyes and fists clenched.

The jitter stops, screams wallow into scared mumbles, and I, realizing I still have an arm tight around India, let go and step away. "Are you okay?" I splay my arms to take Nia.

India sways Nia, and tugs her head into her shoulder. "It's fine. Would we see more of these?"

"I don't know."

"Your hypothesis?"

"What about it?"

"Look around, Aaron. What do you think is happening here?"

"I don't know. We ran a few terraforming probabilities few years back. We modeled a tectonic shift in Earth's core triggered by the moon's displacement from its orbit and the resultant alteration of Earth's gravitational field. But they were just simulations when NASLA planned the launch of retrievable space rockets powered by...." My skin prickles, and the hair rise at the back of my neck

"Nuclear engines?" Her eyebrows scrunch together.

"That technology is unstable, decades away."

"Was."

"No, no, no. It's impossible." A terrifying thought chokes me, and sweat bids crawl from my neck and trickle through my back. I suddenly want to lean against something, inhale wads of air, and soothe my thirst. My coarse throat bobs as I try to gulp the terror. "Oh! God. What have they done?"

"Not they."

I stare at her — something clicks in my memory ― a distant image, movement, people, screens, papers — I press the growing ache in my sweat-drenched temple. Voices, blinding white light, teeth biting through wood, blitz in my head. My hands; something's clamped them, something metallic, cold — I clench my hot eyes.

Teeeeeeeeee Tinnitus rings in my ears, and I shake my head and pull my earlobe to relieve the growing ring.

"A...a...r...o...n."

"A...ar...on."

My eyes jerk open; India is facing me, her lips moving, without sound. I refocus, zoom in on her lips, and her faint words grow.

"Aaron!"

"What?" The space around me wobbles, and I lift my arm to grab her, but clasp only air, try again.

"Are... you... okay?" A voice reaches me from a distance.

"Whaaaat?" I wave my arm toward the voice, hoping to grip something solid, something to hold on to. Nothing. The world tilts, and I tip my head to straighten the image. It tilts more, further, all the way. Something hits my shoulder, pain stabs my temple, and the lights go dim, dimmer, dark. Silence.

***

"I think it's a boy." I hear my voice in the whiteness surrounding me.

"Please. Not another idiosyncratic jock in here."

I see the eyes first, hazel, flutterung under thin black eyebrows. I follow the straight nose, the heart-shaped smiling lips, white glistening teeth, a strand of black hair on her cheeks, and earrings dangling through.

"What are you staring at?" Her lips giggle.

"You... you're..."

"You okay? Aaron?

***

"Aaron!"

Cold drops penetrate my eyes, and I jerk my face away from the intense sun glaring through scattered clouds.

Something lifts my head, and a bottle presses against my lips. A cold wave soothes my dry tongue and callous throat. I sip; the water glides in with friction. I sip again, swallow hard, and then gulp with greed until the heat in my stomach quells.

I crank myself on my elbows and squint. India is leaning beside me with a bottle tipped over my mouth, Nia in her lap.

"Thank you," I sit up, adjusting my eyes. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You passed out."

I did? I feel for bump on the side of my skull and massage the pain my shoulder. A thought nibbles, grows, and explodes inside me. "The engine. They didn't go nuclear, did they?"

India shakes her head. "Not they, Aaron. Us."

***