His arm almost gave out. He gripped the seatbelt with his other arm and pulled to alleviate the weight, reasserting his grip.

“If everything turned out alright in the end, then they’d forgive us for being elsewhere for the first few years.”

He could hear the commotion outside. People sliding down the hillside by the road, which was mostly gravel and sand.

“It didn’t turn out alright. I’m not sure they’ll forgive us. I’ve been too focused on the monsters, on the horizons.”

The door was opened, and Zach was seized. A knife cut the seatbelt, freeing him, and hands caught him as he dropped.

“If I’d been paying more attention to the unpowered, the victims, would I be able to see your face? Say a proper goodbye? Would it be better codified? Or can I not see you because I moved on?”

He reached for Zach, and failed to reach past the crumpled, obstructing armrest to his brother’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Zach.”

A hand grabbed his wrist, and the calm, detached perspective fell away. For a moment, he was a child again, in a scary, unfamiliar situation.

He twisted around, looking, and saw another snatcher, holding his wrist, pulling on wrist and door simultaneously.

I forgot this happened.

The shock kept him from piecing together any coherent thoughts, and he fought as best as he could in the situation, upside down, no leverage, still trying to keep himself from slumping the wrong way in his seat—

Panic welled as he slid across the seat, the two things in the car that were meant to reduce harm his biggest enemies in the moment. A seatbelt dragging against his neck, pressing hard and strangling breath and blood flow, and the cushions he couldn’t get traction on. Desperately, he grabbed for broken metal, for the window with glass.

Looked to the front seat at his parents—they had faces, but the faces were two-dimensional.

Learned and stored from photographs.

They were still. Dead.

And he was being grabbed, pulled—they were trying to get him through the window.

He felt the darkness creeping in, his hands scrabbling, where every scrabble both hurt and was necessary—

And he came free. No car, no metal, no cushion, no glass, no hand at his wrist.

His fall was from an immense distance, beyond the ability of his human mind to register. It began at a planet that rotated around a star that was simultaneously binary and solitary because of a tear in space that cut through it, transforming it into a double image. The planet traveled a path that, twice per revolution, intersected a hole in space. When that planet intersected the hole, the writhing species that lived on it could move between. Those that could travel could access other layers of that same world. Other possibilities. Food was abundant, and so was breeding. Those that could see and interact with the tears when they passed by had the advantage.