JAMES

Raucous noises rocked through his eardrums while he laid in the soft embrace of blankets with his head propped up with the pillows. His lungs burned every time he took a breath. In and out. On the I-Screen when he took a painful peek, the last reports of the Eastpoint Massacre. Every death reported, save his own. Everyone gone, except for him and Meryn. He groaned into the pillow at the voiceless reporter. He switched his attention to the window, where a group of kids hollered and bounced along the path into the city, with Starcross netbats strapped to their backs. He scowled and tucked his cheek deeper into the pillow while one boy pushed the other with a booming laugh which echoed Jon's.

Everything muted to a monochrome gradient — without brightness and meaning, lost of a focal point to show off the subject of a picture. He sighed and winced into the bed, where his temples seared with embers and he sank deeper into the endless torment. It's almost time for her to come in and try to convince me to take that dumb medicine... Autumn wasted at his fingertips, never brought back by someone's supposed relief. He glared outside the window where the kids disappeared into the city.

Orange hues bled across the sky, and he shivered at the smog fluttering over the city to capture the smoke.

Hours turned to ash, and voices sounded below. One of them, Mrs. Falae's.

He couldn't bring himself to investigate, couldn't care enough for curiosity. He wasn't even sure how long he laid there in bed. Fury stewed his insides, so he rolled over onto his stomach to quench the pointlessness. He breathed once more, but it immolated his throat. He buried his face in the pillow, a part of him longing to be smothered by ash and trees. Every picture burnt, gone.

It doesn't matter...

He closed his eyes, but no sooner had he lost himself, footsteps came up the stairs and broke him out of his stupor. He shifted on his side to investigate the commotion, and groaned when Mrs. Falae opened the door. "What now?" he asked and rested on his back.

"I said we're going to get some medicine into you," she said calmly.

His frustration twisted the campfire into his mind at her cool inflection. Nothing cracked the frozen facade. He sat out of the mattress when she revealed his old bookbag, and she moved for the other corner of the room, where his netbat clattered against the wall and drawers when she rifled through it. Flames scorched his heart when she brought out the datacam Rayan got for his star day, along with the I-Pen he found no strength to hold.

He choked his bedsheets. "What am I supposed to do with those?"

Mrs. Falae put a golden capsule on his bedstand. "It's all your things. I thought you'd want them returned to you."

"I don't want them anymore. You can throw them away." James turned his back to her. Why does it matter? I can't freeze time.

Mrs. Falae sighed but left the datacam and notepad on the bedstand. Her fingers wrapped around the Medis capsule. "James," she said. "You can't stay in this room forever."

"Why not?"

"It's not helping you."

"Nothing will help me!" James leaped out of bed to confront her, but his chest burned. "I don't want help. I don't want your help!" Rage threw itself into the side of his skulls and set the room alight in a sheet of ash. "What? You expect me to walk around Odaport with no idea where I'm going? Or go back to school? I don't want help because no one helped all those people at Eastpoint! All those defenses the Sanctum sent — all those soldiers they overwhelmed our town with, it didn't mean shit!"

Her expression never broke. "I was not suggesting either of those things... and some things are out of our control."

"Well, this isn't out of my control." He pushed the golden capsule off the bedstand, where it hit the ground at her feet and headed for his chair by the window. "I can still refuse."

"It'll help you breathe."

James drove his teeth into his lip. "Maybe I don't want to breathe."

Mrs. Falae's gaze hardened. "I am going to go make you something to eat," she said with a frown at the report on the I-Screen, and his heart screeched when she switched it to the pastel colours of happier, longing days. "You should try and focus on something else. If you won't spend a little time outside—"

"It's too hot outside."

"I have a cooling alcove on the back porch," she said.

"As if that'd make a difference." He scoffed and plopped himself in the chair and stared outside the window instead of General Falae. "Don't you have work to do? Or is that done now that Eastpoint is gone?" He glared at her. "Why are you doing this?"

"You're incapable of caring for your wellbeing, and seeing as you refused contact with your dad..." Mrs. Falae breathed deep, a crack in the ice-cold armor. "I'm taking it upon myself to care for you. I've known Garrett for quadrums, and I won't leave his son to wither away."

"I can take care of myself."

"Yet, you're not, and you won't," she argued through a whisper. James folded his arms and scowled when she came closer to him, golden capsule in hands. "As for my job, I'm still on my leave of absence, which I've extended to focus on you. I will eventually have to go back for a new intake of prospective Elites... but for now all I have to do is take care of you and look for my son."

Thoughts and memories burned his mind from within as he turned to her with a smile tearing through his cheeks. "So, that's what this is about." He hauled himself out of the chair, but she never bent. "This is about Rayan. You still haven't told me what happened in that mansion. Why was my sister not there?" His smile shattered against his lips as he breathed hard. "Why was she back home? Why did she go back? Why did she die?" Disconnected from the spinning world, he gasped for air through the smoke as he brought his hands to his head. "Is this some sort of guilt trip for you? Are you trying to use me as a replacement for Rayan?"

The soldier never cracked.

"You need to lie down," she said, steady. "What do you want to eat?"

"I don't want to eat," he snapped with the crack of the tree.

His stomach churned in response.

"I'll give you some time, but you need to eat and take your medis, and I don't want to force you to do anything," she said and took the golden capsule with her as she exited the room. James waited until her footsteps disappeared to fall back into the chair. Autumn hummed with the soft whirs of a datacam. He tucked deeper into the chair to escape, hugging himself when he came face to face with the lens. James swallowed the ash, back on his feet as he reached out for it.

Artillery fire boiled in his ears with the zooming cars in Odaport. His fingers clasped around the lens, and he held it in his palm. One thousand frozen moments in his hands. Beautiful moments burned to ash. He tightened his grip and longed to crush it in his fingers. Embers danced through his lungs as he fought for his breath, and it bubbled through his mind. He lifted his arm, and threw it to the ground with the force of the lazer striking through his home while it bounced along the ground.

Fiery regret screamed into his ears, and confused water washed it away.

He shambled to it, where neither a crack or imperfect button found itself out of place. It pulsed with blue lines, shattered along the surface he tried to break with his momentum. It shimmered into nothing, and the screen lit up. Shields? James grasped it again. He ran his fingers along the curvature of the lens, then frowned a panel which peeked open. He took out the edevic chip, rubbing it against his fingers before placing it into the portable photosphere of the camera.

He bit a gasp and dropped the camera when pixel embers grew into a person.

Rayan sat on the ground in front of him, then opened his eyes.

"This is going to be really awkward if this isn't recording," he mumbled to himself, but jolted at a beep. "Oh. It is." He puffed out his relief. "Okay, so..." James crawled in front of him, inches away as Rayan smiled at him. "Happy Starday, James. If you found this... well — if it's because I knocked your camera out of your hands again you could also count this as an apology." He tucked his fingers together. "I may have... also ran away in embarrassment if that's the case, which is why I'm doing this so I can't actually run away." Rayan laughed, full of nervousness. "Really specific situation, ignore me." He shrugged his shoulders and continued to tap his fingers together, and James listened to his voice across flaming time. "I know, um... we haven't really known each-other for too long, and I know we got off on the complete wrong foot. I'm sorry for, uh... being an asshole when we first met. Moving to a new planet was harder than I expected."

Waves burst through his throat, but he held them back against the flames.

Rayan shuffled on his hips with a soft smile. "Harder, but I would've done it again, I think, if it meant I got to meet you."

Me?

Rayan tipped his head to the side. "I, hm..." He hummed in thought. "I don't know how to say this without sounding stupid... but..." He pressed his hands against his cheeks. "I like you, a lot, and I wish I had the courage to do something as simple as admitting that to your face. Believe it or not, gallivanting through salt factories feels less terrifying than this so..." He sucked in his lips. "This is pathetic, I know, but I'm scared, I guess. You seem so..."

"So what?" he whispered to the past.

"Well—" Rayan hunched his shoulders and breathed into his hands, and James could almost see the glow around his ears. "I've messed up, so I want to make it up to you with this datacam. I hope it's a start, at least. You have a really nice smile, and I'd... I would like to see it some more." Rayan smiled. "And thanks for giving me a different perspective. I've come to realise I needed it, just don't tell my mom that she was right, she'd never let it go." His lips jutted out, and James reached out to brush his hand through his arm, where the pixels danced on his fingertips. "So... I think that's it. I know you're going to watch this and laugh at me but I hope..." Rayan hugged himself. "I'm hoping that you understand, at least, and if you feel the same way..."

No... Bile drove through the dam while tears slipped down his cheeks when Rayan sighed, then smiled once more. "Anyway, that's it, for real. I can't wait to see the pictures you can take with this. I want to see all of them."

He disappeared into the embers.

He clutched the camera, words from a frozen past trapped in his hands.

Everything was gone.

Autumn would never return.

James placed the camera back on the foot of his bed and sat down on the ground, lost in the spiralling universe. Another cough grew in his throat, but never released the smoking railcannons. He sat there in the deafening silence while the walls cracked and crumbled. He whimpered and pressed his head between his arms. Quicker footsteps echoed through the disembodied world, and he lifted his head at the faceless shadow in front of him.

Never Rayan.

"James?" Mrs. Falae knelt to him, her voice so distant.

Rayan's voice disappeared into the flames.

"James."

He tucked deeper into his arms and fought for a grip before the inertia made him puke.

Her shadow disappeared into the corridor, but left his door wide open, and the black hole to swallow him while the projection of a past continued to call him back. He bit down on his tongue and tasted blood when Mrs. Falae returned with a capsule in her hands. Back in front of him, taking the place of her son, she held out the capsule.

"Take a drink," she said. "It's just ice water."

His fingers trembled against it as he took it with her to guide him. He drank it, where it washed through his mind and lungs. Everything stopped spinning, merging. It clicked closed with the final snap of the inertia, and he crawled onto the bed, fighting a sob as he curled into the blankets and cried his tears into the pillow.

Mrs. Falae came to his side with a heaviness on her brow. "Do you need anything else?"

He found the strength to shake his head.

"Okay, get some rest," she said. "I'm right down the hall if you need me. We'll talk more tomorrow."

He returned to the white noise of the distant city. He laid there and pretended. It was all he could do. Pretend and be a fool. Pretend some more. Any slight touch of warmth sent anxious waves through his lungs where he tasted smoke. He shivered and adjusted the temperature with shaking fingertips. Nothing eased the burn.

His datacam sat safe, undamaged, where Rayan left a piece of the past. He dug his brow into his arm and tried to recall the conversation, and the frozen moments burst into fireballs.

I told him...

He barely recalled.

I told him... it was just a hand-me-down, I could put it down, and I was afraid it'd break.

It was such a stupid, off-handed comment.

He shivered, ready to run, ready to burn and die.

He longed for the cold, he wanted to turn into ice. He snapped his head off the pillow, where the cityscape darkened for the night from the lightened afternoon. Time rocked through his ears, and he lowered his gaze to the twin necklace on his bedstand.

There was no point.

Everything came undone.

James sucked in a breath and pushed through the darkness where nothing would hurt him again. Trees and branches cracked, giving him a promise of autumn, and the endless embrace of forever.

He wanted to freeze, to feel nothing at all.

Better than endless burning.

He closed his eyes and never wanted to wake up again.