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"RACH," I ask, "what are you sorry for? What's wrong?"
Rachel slams her teeth into her lips so hard the skin bursts and a small drop of blood dribbles down her skin. "I—"
"Look," Thea interrupts, her voice quietly set, "I'm sorry, but we really don't have time for this right now. We need to get to the epicenter."
As if to illustrate her point, a great rumbling shakes the earth, causing Rachel to fall flat on her face. A jagged scar of purple lightning bleeds into the night sky, leaving the heavy scent of burning metal scorching through the air. Somebody not-too-far off in the distance screams.
Rachel sniffles, pushing her hair back behind her ears. "Right, you can—you can go. I'll be fine."
Just leaving her behind? That's not how I roll. "No way. You're coming with us."
This doesn't take any negotiating from Thea nor Rachel; they both seem to soften at the prospect of it, as if it was what they both wanted all along. Rachel squishes herself into the sidecar with Thea and Cerberus.
"Why," I ask again, once the moped, now weighed down by three people instead of just two, is moving once more towards the rift's epicenter, still slower than the grandma that only rides dicks, "are you sorry, Rach?"
Rachel hasn't acted this shaken up since kindergarten. She used to have bad anger issues, and she liked to use me as a punching bag. Of course, because she was Rachel, she'd always feel so terrible about it afterwords that she'd burst out in tears and proceed to beat herself up until she was just as bruised as I was. Right now, she's shaking so hard it's like she's some dudebro gamer suffering Mountain Dew withdrawal. She looks on the verge of having seven heart attacks at once.
She makes an attempt to duck as something that looks similar to a large tarantula with wings nearly hits her in the head, but she miscalculates and ends up slamming her head on the side of the sidecar. Defeated, she just lays there, refusing to get up or adjust herself into a more comfortable position, her head stuck right where she'd hit it. "We're all going to die, aren't we?"
I don't see how this fact has anything to do with her. "Most likely."
She sits back up, although she makes an attempt to hide in her hair. "I—maybe it's better this way."
"Maybe what's better this way?" I ask, nearly crashing the moped. "Rachel, what happened?"
"Something happened to Silas," she mumbles, so quiet I can hardly hear it. "Something happened to Silas."
And this time, I really do crash the moped. Well, not really. I just slam on the breaks so hard I think I crashed it, but then I realize that's just my hopped-up-on-adrenaline brain making me see things worse than they really are. "What the fuck happened to Silas?"
