Kendall sat down at the booth with a clatter, letting the blue tray rattle from her hands to the table. A little splash of milkshake splattered the edge of the table as the treats on the tray wobbled in place.

  "Hey, Jesus, careful-" Ben protested, smiling around the words. "That's like a nine dollar shake there."

  "My sundaaaaaae-" Jen whined. "You could've spilled my sundae."

  "I just spent nine hours at Cane's," Kendall said, licking a fleck of ice cream from her finger. "I don't wanna touch a serving tray for even a second longer than I have to."

  Ali felt a wave of nausea as his friends all grabbed for their food. He stared at the chocolate mixer on the tray before him, dotted with peanut butter cups and M&Ms, the combo he always got when they'd scrounged enough money together to hit up Culver's. Something was staying his hand. Something was wrong, fundamentally wrong, in a way that sent pulses of vertigo down Ali's spine, but he couldn't place it.

  "I think they're making these smaller," Jen said, poking at her sundae. "These were bigger when I was a kid."

  "Maybe you were just tinier." Ben was dipping fries in his shake now, eating them five- or six-at-a-time.

  "No, it's real, they're shrinkflated to hell," Kendall added. "They're for real making things a little smaller, over time, hoping we don't notice."

  "Yeah," Jen hissed. "Yeah, I fuckin' knew it. AND they're putting blood in the tap water."

  "No, that's- we've been over that, Jen, that's something you made up."

  "I've tasted it! Go to my house and drink the tap water and you'll taste iron."

  "Maybe you just have shitty pipes."

  "What would they even stand to gain from that? Like, what does that even do?"

  "Jesus, Ben, slow down, the fries are for the table."

  "Skill issue. Gotta claim your taters faster."

  Ali was hyperventilating. Kendall cast him a sidelong glance, noticed, turned to him. "Everything ok, dude?"

  "I, yeah. I- I don't know." Ali could feel his pulse in his ears. He kept glancing out their boothside window, looking up at the sky, waiting for something horrible to bloom there, but he couldn't remember what. "Are you all- You're all okay?"

  "What?" Jen cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

  "Midterm stress getting to his head," Ben muttered, shaking his head knowingly. "Been there."

  "You're not- You're still around? You're okay?"

  Kendall's brow furrowed. "Ali, what do you mean? Are we 'around?'"

  Ali was crying, now. "You're not dead?"

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  "Uh, not last I checked." Kendall said. Ali turned to look at her and his breath caught in his throat with a muffled grunt. The skin on her face was a bright, livid pink. Sheafs of it were starting to peel away, off the bridge of her nose and the divots of his temples, revealing boiling red flesh beneath. "I feel fine, man. You okay?"

  "Yeah, you sound- Disoriented." Jenny's head was slumping down her shoulders, now, her neck hardly able to support her skull. Her spine seemed to be bent at an impossible angle, shoving her body low in the booth.

  "Take a breath, dude. What's the trick, uh, five things you can smell?" Ben's torso was blown open, a huge circular hole gaping in his chest, spilling blood and shattered bone out onto the blue vinyl of the booth seats.

  "Five things you can see is the first one. Five is too many things to smell. When is there ever more than, like, two smells in a situation?" Kendall's face was a skull, now, populated only by a wagging, blistered tongue and a pair of boiling eyeballs. Outside, the sky was blackening, and a howling wind was picking up. The ground was shaking now.

  "I don't know. I don't know what's happening." Ali tried to stand from the booth, to get out, but Kendall grabbed his arm. Where her fingers made contact with his skin, they began to bubble and melt. It hit Ali then: whatever was doing this to his friends, it was emanating from him.

  "Wait, sit down, you're gonna-"

  "Get away from me!" Ali stood, tripped over his own feet. When he made contact with the floor, the Culver's rocked on its foundations as the impact blew a crater into the ground. Shards of rubble and debris jackknifed through the air around him, shredding a few people still obliviously eating in their booths. Ali gasped, horrified at himself, and tried to get his feet underneath him.

  "Whoa, hey, man, where do you think you're going?" Ben was at his side now, trying to lift him up.

  "Gotta get away. I can't- If I don't get out of here, you're all gonna- I'm going to kill you." Ali choked.

  Ben barked a laugh, sending a spurt of arterial blood spraying out from the hole in his chest. "You? Kill me? Brother, I'd like to see you try."

  Then, behind Ben, framed by the restaurant's windows, a horrible light engulfed the sky, and Ali remembered what it was he'd been dreading.

  Ali wrenched awake, a scream of warning burbling out half-formed from behind his lips.

  He was in a bed, half-covered by a crisp white duvet. The room he was in was unfamiliar, near pitch-dark. No real moonlight was filtering in from the window, and yet, with Ali's ever-improving sensitivity to energy, he managed to pick up enough information from the scant light present to see a clear image of his surroundings.

  He was in a hotel room, or the dusty, hastily-prepared shell of one. Whatever heating system the building used must have been off or malfunctioning, because the temperature in the room was unseasonably frosty. Ali could see his breath as his chest heaved for oxygen.

  Within seconds his Aura had collected enough energy and began to warm him up to a comfortable level, and he withdrew into a fetal ball as he stared wide-eyed at his bewildering surroundings. A hotel? Why was he in a hotel?

  What was all this energy around him? It seemed to drift in largely through the exterior wall, especially where the windowframe met the glass. His Aura was drinking it up, readily absorbing the energy before it could interact with his body. But it wasn't heat, wasn't light, wasn't electricity. What could-

  Radiation.

  It was then that Ali remembered the nukes, and Marco, and the town he'd spent his entire life living in flattened in an instant, and he was screaming again.

  A minute later, at which point Ali had managed to writhe and fall, still screaming, out of bed, there was a panicked knocking at his door.

  "Excuse me?" The voice on the other side was reedy, high, fragile-sounding but concerned. "Excuse me, are you okay in there?"

  Ali's screaming had burbled to a stop, replaced by desperate, uncomprehending sobbing. He was racked with shock, now, almost insensate with it. Everything was gone. Everyone was gone.

  "I have a key. I'm about to- Dear? I'm about to come in. Just say so if I shouldn't."

  Ali was biting his fists, now, thinking about his mother, his father. His home. He kicked himself back into a corner, wedging himself between the wall and the bedframe.

  The door clicked open, and an old woman bustled in. Her hair was pulled back in a fraying bun, her eyes magnified by foggy, circular lenses. She found him, frowned down at him with a look of knowing pity. "Oh, dear, please, this must be very confusing for you-"

  She stepped forward toward him, a hand outstretched, and Ali, still lost within a storm of adrenaline and shock and loss, flung his hands forward and screamed. "Don't come near me!"

  Despite himself, a crackle of loose kinetic energy leaked from his Aura as he did this, bowling the old woman several feet backward, where she hit a dresser, hard, and slumped to the floor. For a moment, she seemed to flicker in and out of reality, suddenly gone, then visible again. Ali gasped.

  "No, fuck, no, not again. No no no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" He was up on his feet, scurrying toward her. "I didn't want you close because I didn't want to- Fuck!"

  "Don't worry, don't worry," the woman coughed. She adjusted her glasses and looked up at him. "I'm tougher than I look, nowadays."

  Ali stood, shaking. "What? What?"

  "I'm fine. I- Ooh, lucky me, I had my Qi set to, uh, to block kinetic force, when I saw you seemed like you might get a little fight-or-flighty. Pema always said that, when in doubt, kinetics, that's what you prime up."

  "I don't-" Ali's head was swimming. "Qi? Pema? Where-" His voice broke. "Where am I?"

  The woman stepped forward gingerly, took his hand in hers. Her palms were warm. "You're safe. You're somewhere safe."

  "That's not- Nowhere I go is safe anymore."

  "Everywhere you go, no matter what you do, you feel like people keep dying around you?" The woman's eyes averted from his at that. "I- Sweetie, I know the feeling. That's over. We're putting an end to that, now."

  Ali gulped down a few breaths, tried to steady himself. He studied the fragile-looking woman before him, and sensed an odd immovability to her, as if she was fixed in place, untouchable. "Who are you?"

  "My name's Gloria," the woman said. "And I'd really like to help you."