“You caused this!” Bley screams in my face. A boom echoes in the distance.

“You’re working for them, aren’t you!”

I look around at the once tremendous city, being thrown into ruins. Bodies are on the street everywhere, the foul smell making it hard to breathe. Explosions and screams sound from the distance each just as terrifying as the next. Did I really cause this? Is this really my fault?

After a long pause, I decide to say, “No, I’m not working for them. I don't even know who they are. All I know is that there was a storm, and I got swept here somehow, and then thrown into jail by some lunatics!”

Bley looks like she is going to shout back, but then her expression softens.

“If you really aren’t working for them, then prove it by helping us.”

“Why should I help you! You’re the ones who threw me into prison!” I shout back.

Bley’s reply is hard and cold. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.” I gulp, and reluctantly agree.

“Where do we start?” I finally say.

Bley looks pleased that I decided to help her, “Four hours ago, this city started being bombed. We do not know who or why, but we do know that the bomber planes were ones made by outsiders. We weren’t prepared for a battle, so all our forces were decimated in an instant. We need to find out who bombed the city, why they did it, and how they got into the city. Deal?”

Another bomb goes off, shaking the plane. I stutter. I don’t want anything to do with this island. Is it possible to leave this island somehow and not get killed by Bley? I weigh my options and finally stick to siding with Bley.

“Deal.”

“Good. Follow me,” Bley says.

We run along the streets of the ruined city towards the sounds of the bombs. With each step, my heart pounds in my chest, screaming for us to turn back. Even the wind in my ears seems to agree, silently whispering, “Go back!”

I want to, but I know I can’t. Even if I do escape from Bley right now, I’ll be caught again, just like I was with the farmers.

The bombs are getting so loud that I feel the vibrations in the ground. I shout to Bley, “Do we need to get any closer? We can probably take some binoculars or something and see who’s flying these bomber planes!”

Bley shouts back, just barely heard over the explosions nearby, “We’re going to hijack one of the planes and listen in to their radio to see who their leader is!”

This is absurd! We’d just be marching to our deaths! Bley is crazy!

Bley must’ve seen the reluctance show on my face because she pulls out a knife from her pocket.

“Warning you,” she says quietly.

I gulp and once again, reluctantly agree.

We continue running closer and closer to the bombs until Bley dashes into one of the few standing buildings and beckons for me to follow. We get into some sort of elevator and shoot up into the sky.

I look out of the window and see the ravaged city skyline becoming smaller and smaller as we get higher into the sky. If it hadn’t been destroyed, this city would’ve been magnificent, more than nice enough to live in...

No. I shake that thought away. The people that live here are crazy. They would probably keep me in jail for the rest of my life.

Bley’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “We’re getting near the top,” she says. After a minute, The elevator slows down and stops. The doors slide open.

We run out onto a balcony at the top of the city. I look down at the bombed street below. We’re so high up in the sky that both the clouds and the bomber planes are below us. The height makes me feel dizzy. I step back and talk to Bley, “How are we going to get onto those planes?”

Before she can answer, a loud sound reverberates from the building below. The whole building shakes.

“There’s only one choice,” Bley says, “jump!”

She jumps down and falls below the clouds. The last thing I hear from her is “Tap your back to release the parachute!” before the clouds engulf her and she is nowhere to be seen.

This is insane. There is no way I’m jumping down with her. I don’t even have a parachute!

The tower trembles. Is it just me or are the clouds rising? The tower trembles again, before lurching down. I’m thrown down with it, getting closer and closer to the clouds below me. There really is only one choice. As crazy as it seems, I jump. The wind buffets my flimsy body from all directions, so loud that I can no longer hear the thundering bombardments. I quickly regret jumping. This was a horrible idea. This is where I will die… Unless…

Do I really have a paratue? I tap my back, feeling around for something that’s not supposed to be there. Sure enough, there is a lump on my upper back. I tap it, and I am thrown up by some force so powerful that even the force pulling me down cannot overcome it.

The parachute.

Bley must’ve attached it to my back sometime while we were in the elevator. I thank her for that. It may be the one thing she’s done to me that’s helped.

I keep falling, but slower now, until I too, fall into the clouds.

I hear a soft thump as my feet touch something hard. Where am I? I look around, but all I see is fog. A strong wind blows, nearly knocking me over.

“Hello?” I call out. “Is anybody there?” No answer. It was worth the try. Another strong gust of wind threatens to knock me over, even stronger than the last.

“Hello?” I called out again, but there is still no answer.

Annoyed at my bad luck, I stomp my foot in frustration, and a loud echo follows.

“Shhh!” a voice calls from behind me. I turn around, but I still don’t see anything.

“Is someone there?” I call cautiously.

A hand claps around my mouth and an angered voice says, “Do you want to get yourself killed? You idiot! Stop making loud noises and help me hijack this plane!”

Oh right. That’s where I am. The angry voice must be Bley, and the thing I’m standing on must be… Oh no. I’m standing on an airborne plane.

A tug on my arm pulls me back into the moment.

“Remember,” Bley hisses, “if you don’t do what I say you should do, you die.” I give her a shaky nod and walk over to where Bley is working.

“Help me break through this,” says Bley as she hands me a magnet. What am I supposed to do with this?

Noticing my confusion, Bley explains how to use the device: “Hover the magnet over the metal of the plane. That will make it easier for me to break through it.”

Following her instructions, I move the magnet to where the plane’s metal is. Interestingly, the screws seem to float towards the magnet. As soon as the last screw unattached from the plane, Bley kicks the unattached plane roof, sending it flying down to the ground.

“Come,” she urges as she jumps into the plane.

Reluctantly, I jump down to see Bley standing on top of a bunch of dead bodies. I gag. The sight is horrible. I suddenly feel ill, and I look away. Looking at dead bodies is not my thing.

Bley beckons for me to come to the cockpit.

After a bit of cursing, I stagger towards the cockpit, and Bley motions me to put on some headphones. As soon as I do, I find myself listening to the bombers’ conversation.

“Helicopter 82, are you there?” I hear a gruff voice say.

“Yes sir.” a different, softer voice calls back.

“Report to the red tower,” Gruff Voice says again.

“On it boss,” Soft Voice replies.

I put down my headphones and ask Bley, “Where's the red tower?”

She turns to me. “Not too far from here. Do you know how to fly?” I knew this question was coming, and I dreaded it. Before I was a fisherman, I was a pilot. After a long pause, I finally say, “Yes.” Bley smiles and motions me to get into the cockpit seat.

I get myself comfortable with the controls and then ask Bley, “Where to?” She points me in the direction of the red tower, and I accelerate the engines.

* * *

A voice comes from the radio, and the words that come from it I will never forget. “Plane 63 has gone rogue.” Instantly after the announcement, we see a plane approaching us on our radar.

“We’ve got company,” I warn, “How close are we?” Bley doesn’t answer.

“Bley?” I call again. Still, no answer. So, I look behind me, and I am shocked to see, no Bley.

I start to panic. If I don’t have Bley here, I’m dead. With the other plane approaching fast, there’s nothing I can do except fly away.

I move the throttle to full speed, and the g-forces press me into the back of my seat. The plane shoots forward, and the other plane doesn’t catch up. I breathe a sigh of relief.

I jinxed it. Just after I sigh, I hear another radio broadcast.

“Plane 63, come to the tower to meet your death, or we’ll kill your friend that we’ve stolen from your plane.” I hear muffled screams. They have Bley.

Trying to find the giant red tower, I lift the plane to get a better view. Sure enough, I see a giant red glass spike protruding from the ground, shooting into the sky. Light reflects off of it, lighting up the entire ruined city. There seems to be a small runway at the very top, barely big enough to hold a plane. That must be where I need to land.

I fly the plane up to the runway and prepare to land. That’s when I see him. The man behind the gruff voice.

He’s wearing a suit talking into a walkie-talkie, all while holding Bley. He hears the plane, looks at me, and then smirks.

“I knew you would come!” he shouts.

The plane touches down and I get out of it as soon as I can, grabbing a weird pipe as a weapon.

“Welcome, friend, you can call me Tyler. There’s no need for weapons here,” Gruff Voice says. When I don’t drop my metal pipe, he repeats, “Drop your weapon, now.”

That’s when I notice that Tyler is holding a pistol. I drop my weapon.

“Good,” Tyler says.

“What do you want!” I shout, interrupting him.

“Excuse me! Please don’t interrupt me. I’m going to get into that. But first, would you like to hear how I got here?” Tyler snickers. I cautiously nod my head. It’s hard to see where he’s going with this.

“Good, now let’s begin. First of all, you brought me here,” Tyler nods, pointing at me.

I try to say something but nothing comes out. What is he talking about? Is it true? I look at Bley, and she gives me a disappointed look. I turn my head towards the floor, embarrassed.

Tyler keeps talking, “That unusually big storm that washed you here was created by me. The tracker on your boat was created by me. And guess what? You fell for it! You led me here.”

I collapse to the floor in shock. I caused all of this. This is all my fault.

Tyler laughs, “Better yet! I don’t need you anymore! So your end will be this pistol, in my hand.” I look up, and my eyes flood with terror. Tyler isn’t joking.

Then, at the worst moment of my life, something catches my eye. Bley isn’t held by Tyler anymore. She’s right behind him.

Two things happen at once. Bley kicks Tyler, who flies forwards, knocking me backwards. I slip and almost fall off the side of the tower. In a panic, Tyler pulls the trigger.

The bullet skims past me, hitting the support beam for the runway. Screeching metal sounds come from the ground, and then, the floor disappears.

For the second time today, I am in freefall. Except I don’t have a parachute this time.

“Bley! I don’t have a parachute!” I call through the deafening wind. Bley looks at me, then smirks.

“I don’t need you anymore, you did what I asked you to do, and now, I’m the only one who’s going to survive this fall,” Bley laughs and releases her parachute. I keep falling, my heart sinking. There is no way out of this. There is nothing I can grab onto, except… I look beside me. The plane is falling with us.

I know this is a crazy idea, but it’s my last resort. I move my body so I can grab onto the plane. I pull myself down into the cockpit and walk into the front of the plane.

Alarms are going off everywhere. I quickly strap into the pilot's seat and pull the plane out of its nose-dive. All I can do is pray that the plane will lift off.

The cabin is shaking so hard that I feel queasy, but eventually, the plane evens out and I shoot into the sky.

I am so relieved. I turn the plane to the one place I want to be right now: the mainland. The plane shoots away from the island. From what Bley told me, the barrier is coming up.

Eventually, I see it. A giant glass wall separating the island from the rest of the world. I move the throttle to full speed and smash through the barrier. It breaks into thousands of pieces as I fly by. I collapse on the pilot's seat. I’m never going back to that island again.

My father had been stuck in Pakistan for quite some time. He remained stranded as the rest of us continued without him. He continued to reside in our old house, much smaller than that of my uncle, composed of a few sound walls of white stucco and a rickety daybed stashed inside our communal living room. Imposing on the space of the one room flat was a rusty oven topped with a few bunsen burners and a squeaky faucet.

A few weeks after we’d departed, with no communication or even a hint as to if we were safe, my father cached himself away. Behind our mint green curtain of a front door, there he remained curled up, hoping that the rioters would mistake our house for another abandoned carapace.

Every night before shutting his eyes, his skin would crawl in the fear of the distant chaos that would soon burst his bubble of serenity. Even more so, he mourned never being able to hold me in his arms again. He shuddered as his mind flicked over a mental image of my dead body.

One morning, he felt the anxiety burrow a pit deep within his stomach. A day he had been long dreading had finally arrived cloaked in a cape of fright and panic. When he had gotten word that the final straws were being pulled, he decided that he had better break away from the island which he was stranded on, before someone else did it for him. He had promised to my mother that he would intersect us before we all set out for our on foot journey together. Eager to keep his promise, he rose early one morning in hopes of inquiring about transportation to the train station.

He ducked behind the dwarf huts, which had been charred to a dusty gray ash one baleful night when a charge of menacing rioters invaded the flimsy huts, ignoring the screams from the sobbing women and children. The scent of the decaying bodies filled the streets, which were once brimming with the sweet smell of jalebi. Using the clothing on wire lines as shields he angled his body away from the public’s eye. Amid the crackling sounds of burning wood and the smell of smoke choking his throat, he coughed erratically as he forced his hands over his lips to muffle the sound. Red in the face, he finally made it to his good friend Fareed’s house.

Fareed was a police commissioner, and his wife a shop owner, who sold intricately painted miniature dishes. Though he was Muslim, he remained unbiased throughout the revolution, never once turning his back in hostility toward my father. When Fareed opened his hefty stone door that morning, his eyes were groggy and his eyebrows raised at the shock of seeing someone at that hour. He found my father kneeling to the ground, his thin bony hands clasped together and his watery eyes beseeching him to return him to his family.

Fareed quickly arranged for my father to be brought to my uncle’s house. After placing the brass telephone back on it’s base, careful to ensure that the line was no longer connected, he let out a deep sigh as he hunched his head over into his arms. Soon, he rose to retrieve something from the kitchen. He came back with a package of bandages in hand, and turned to fix his dark eyes steadily on my father’s. “You will need these,” he said uncomfortably, as he began rolling the white gauze around the Om tattoo on my father's palm. “The men that you are going to travel with will be Muslims, I will tell them that you need transport to your new house where your family is already staying,” he said, not seeming very convinced himself.

With that, my father waited on Fareed’s stone walkway, as he watched the bull cart with the terrorists that he had once seen in the streets trot up with mild smiles across their faces. After exchanging a brief greeting, and receiving a reassuring last nod from Fareed, my father climbed aboard the cart, careful to keep his ink-ridden hand concealed beneath the bandage.

On that long ride he shivered, quaking at the possibility that the Muslim mens’ jovial faces would soon turn to glares. He made small talk, attempting to join in the rhythm of their conversation without accidentally uttering revealing his slight Hindu accent. As the bulls reluctantly leaped the final strides up to my uncle's house, my father relaxed. He offloaded the cart, and bid farewell to the men. However, as he went to turn the lock, he realized that they would wait for him to retrieve his family. How kind of them to take care of their own men, he thought. If only they knew who they were truly aiding.

Upon entering the living room, now cool with the air flowing through it in the absence of our warm bodies, he felt a chill creep down his back, the thought of our abduction beginning to loom. Slowly, as he paced his way through the house, he came to the realization that there was nothing left but emptiness. Flustered, he let out an impulsive holler. Gathering no response, he dashed outside in a panic, suddenly desperate for the men to have remained.

He decided that he must make it to the train station, to fulfill his only hope of reconnecting with us again. He quickly concocted a convoluted story of some left belongings he needed to retrieve from India, and this time, fearing more for his family than for his identity as a Hindu, he climbed back aboard the bullcart.

After hours of shuffling within the crowd, we had made it onto the platform. While I was grateful to have escaped the menacing land which my home had transformed into, and the treacherous journey that had carried me out, I was filled with dread as our last sliver of hope to reconnect with our father was washed away. Once we stepped aboard the steaming black canister which contained thousands more desperate peace seekers, we would be breaking apart our chain with him, leaving him stranded and helpless in land that we were so desperate to flee.

Interrupting my grave thoughts, a gush of smoke filled the aisle, generating a coughing fit and an eager dash to secure a spot on the coveted transport. Just at the last moment, before the sound of the piercing horn, my family was helped along by one particularly gracious man, strong enough to heave me into a rumbling car. Once the blood in my body came back to my pale cheeks, I began sweating profusely. The car had been packed, our bodies pressed tightly up against one another, and our feet burning on the wooden floor. Some young men had taken to the roof, ducking each time the train entered a tunnel.

As the train continued, I let out a soft whimper, the squeaks of my hushed voice making little dent in the pandemonium of the packed car. Unable to shake my father’s helpless image out of my head, I remained powerless with my shoulders shaking with the jolt of each weep.

Suddenly, I felt a tap. I whipped my head around, embarrassed to have been seen crying. I saw the crowd of crushed people begin to part. The dense group split into two as one person remained. Just as I had begun to comprehend what was happening, I realized that the image from my mind had somehow appeared right in front of me. I marvelled at the sight with my head tilted upward to make eye contact. His strong arms held me close, and while I knew that our journey in New India would not come easily, I knew that with my family complete again, that was all we would need.