Reverse
Chapter twenty-three
Hiro
Time was rewinding.
Actually fucking rewinding.
Like smoke returning to fire.
Like rain climbing back into gray clouds.
Like echoes returning to the mouths that had spoken them.
I’ve finally lost my mind. . .because. . .this is not reality. . .
I went backwards through the cabin like a man pulled through cold water by a hook in his sternum. I was the moon slipping back into the gravity of a dying planet. Every retreat tightened the invisible pull as I circled the same wound the way dying stars orbited their collapse.
My feet left the floor.
My body traveled the air the way a kite travels wind.
Help!!
The cabin rolled past me in the wrong direction.
Sound went first.
Kenji's voice climbed back into his mouth. Syllable by syllable, they crawled down into his throat and disappeared. His breath ran the wrong way. His chest rose and fell on the back-beat.
Kenji! Reo!
The only thing that was consistent was the baby's giggle. Although she had vanished, her giggling was the only sound. The one true note in a song running in reverse.
Is she doing this? Or at least. . .did she trigger this? Or am I. . .dead?
Sight continued with distortions of impossibilities. The blood on the cabin floor lifted, drawing up off the metal floor in long, red, shimmering ribbons. And those blood ribbons rose slow, like silk pulled out of water.
They traveled the wrong way through the air.
Rewinding.
Until, every drop that had sprayed off Yuki rose and went right back into him.
I tried to yell or move on my own, but couldn’t.
I don’t understand!! Someone help me!!
The pool of blood dripping from Aki’s throat began to zip back into him.
And everyone appeared in their early positions and began to rewind too.
Wait. . .what?!
I wanted to get a closer look, but my body moved on its own passing Reo as he stood frozen in the wrong direction.
Earlier, he had come back through the cockpit door.
Now he was walking backwards. The door swallowed his shoulder and his foot came up off the threshold and his breath went back through his teeth.
And he disappeared back into the cockpit.
I passed Kenji.
For the twins’ deaths, my brother's face traveled backward through every expression it had made. The grief left first, peeling off his mouth.
Next, the war returned.
I wanted to reach for him. My arms wouldn't take the order. This cold sensation had me, inside my chest and around my heart. It was driving me backward through the cabin and I could only watch.
The baby girl giggled.
Where are you?
Then the top half of Yuki’s body rose off the floor.
The round in his skull traveled out of it, through the air, and into the muzzle of the gun in his hand.
Wait! What?!
The wound in the side of his head closed. The gun lifted from his temple. His hand came down. His face un-broke.
And he was alive.
The sound of the baby’s giggling rose.
Then, I watched the decision on Yuki’s face. The grief went out of his eyes and the shock came up under it—the shock of a man who had just felt his twin go still in his arms. His mouth moved around the words I'd heard the first time. Who am I without him. They ran backward and were gone.
Then the palm.
They’re. . .coming. . .back. . .alive. . .
Yuki's hand lifted off Aki's hand. The childhood gesture undid itself. He stopped rocking. He had been rocking the body, and now he held it still, and then he wasn't holding it at all, because things blurred backward even faster and Aki rose into Yuki's arms instead of out of them.
Yuki's hand traveled up and set the kitsune mask back onto his brother's face, gold teeth, silver whiskers, the grin the artisan had carved.
The bullet left Aki’s throat.
The hole in Aki's throat closed under the collar.
My little niece giggled, so tickled with everything.
Dear God! What are you doing to me? Please don’t let this be a dream. I will break if this is a dream. I will crumble.
And then Aki was on his feet again.
Aki!!!! Can you see me?!
Time carried me back in a blur and the Little Tiger giggled, and I came back to my earlier position, close to my father. The coldness turned me around even though I didn’t want to deal with this memory again. My father lay on the floor, dead on his back, sliced up by my knife.
Suddenly, his throat closed.
Dear God! I’ve really lost it.
The blood that had run from his throat traveled back up into the wound, and it knit itself shut.
I fell down next to him, holding my blade against my will and the blade lifted off his throat and traveled back and the blood on it cleaned itself, drop by drop, lifting off the steel.
Then all of my father’s tendons that I’d sliced and named began to reverse too. All the names returned to me—Hiroko, Riku, Nao, Sora, and Nura. Every name I had carved with a blade and a breath came up off the Fox's skin in the wrong order.
The cuts closed.
The tendons stitched.
The blood went back into his veins.
My voice ran the wrong way in my own throat, the names ungiving themselves, and the Fox sat back against the bulkhead with his face whole and his eyes alive.
And time kept on rewinding.
It’s all. . .happening again. . .
I passed Nura’s ghost.
She stood between me and the Fox in the white gown. Her eyes met mine through the reverse.
Then she was gone.
Time kept running backward while the baby giggled.
I passed Akiro's death.
Kenji's chain came up off Akiro's ruined face. The dented panel un-dented. Akiro rose off the floor and the smear he'd left on the metal traveled back into his skull and his eyes came alive.
He stood. The kusarigama's weighted ball swung back out of his face and into Kenji's hand.
I passed the broken arm.
The chain-ball lifted off the Fox's gun arm. The bone un-cracked, wet and loud in reverse.
The pistol rose off the floor and back into his shattered hand, and the hand made itself whole around the grip.
Soon, the Fox was alive again at the bulkhead with two guns, shooting at me.
And then time slowed.
The cold thing in my chest loosened.
The reverse stopped.
My niece ceased with giggling.
And for one breath the world did not know which way it was supposed to run.
What? The? Fuck?
I stood, suspended in time. I did not know if I was alive or remembering being alive. I did not know if my body was mine or a thing I was about to be poured back into.
Then the world chose forward.
What now? I don’t understand.
I stood there looking like an idiot as all this action happened around me.
Akiro's guards were already down—the twins had cleared the front ring, Reo had cleared the right, and the bodies lay where they'd fallen. The kusarigama hung in Kenji's grip; he'd already torn it from Akiro's hands.
Akiro stood empty-handed and furious in the center aisle.
But. . .is this a cruel dream or what? Will I wake up and cry?
And the Fox crouched at the rear bulkhead preparing to shoot those guns at us.
Dream or not, I’m fixing this!
This time I didn’t focus on the Fox or my revenge, I concentrated all my energy on the twins.
I raced for them.
Aki stood on the starboard side, near the crates, with his shoulder turned at the exact angle that would put his throat in the path of the Fox's third shot. He didn't know it. He and everyone else were watching Akiro.
This is how he dies.
Yuki had his blade out and a hand near his holstered gun, three feet from his brother, alive, whole, his eyes on the same place every eye in the cabin had landed.
I had seven seconds, maybe ten.
I sprinted. “DUCK!!!!”
The twins turned to me.
Reo snapped his gaze my way and appeared bewildered and utterly confused.
Three steps to Aki.
I hit him low at the hip and high at the shoulder, the way I'd been taught to take a man down without breaking him.
“Ah!” Aki went down sideways and hit the metal under. "Hiro, what the—"
I was already up, closing the two steps to Yuki. Fast, I took his gun out of the holster and shoved him to the ground.
“Hiro, have you lost it?!”
Gun in hand, I spun around, raised it in the air, and shot Akiro through the eye.
The sound of the round was the loudest sound in the world for one full second, and then it was the second loudest, because I had already turned the barrel toward the bulkhead.
The Fox's two guns came up shaking. He was too slow. I pulled the trigger again, before he could fire a single shot. My bullet hit him in the middle of his forehead.
Then, I went back to Akiro and delivered the remaining bullets to his chest.
Blood sprayed.
Akiro fell forward.
And that was the only moment, I lowered the gun.
My hand was shaking. My whole body felt wrong, light and far away, like I'd given blood I didn't have to give. I was insanely exhausted, but I locked my knees and stayed up somehow.
My face was wet. I couldn't remember crying, yet tears spilled from my eyes.
Please, don’t let this be a dream. Please. I’ll do anything. God. Please.
Kenji's mouth was open.
Reo's hand was on his pistol, half-drawn, frozen at the draw.
"Hiro. . ." Kenji's voice came out thin. "I thought you. . .wanted to kill our father together. . .”
Aki walked over to me. “You killed him.”
“Too fast.” Yuki blinked.
“No reckoning.” Aki shook his head.
Yuki took back his gun. “What about Nura?”
My chest rose and fell fast.
I just stared at them, and tears spilled from my eyes. “I-is this a dream?”
My niece giggled.
I scanned the space and couldn’t find her.
Kenji came over to us. “What do you mean is this a dream?”
“Is it?”
“No.” Kenji turned to Reo. “Tell the plane to head back to the island.”
I watched Reo go off. “I would wake up by now. Right? So. . .maybe this isn’t a dream.”
Kenji’s hand rested on my shoulder. “We’re going back to the island. Okay? You need to rest.”
I looked at him. “But is this a dream?”
Kenji pinched my shoulder hard. “How about this?”
I flinched. “I felt that.”
“You did.” Kenji grinned. “Should I punch you in the face too or are you convinced?”
“But. . .”
The twins watched me with concern on their faces.
More tears left my eyes. “You both are alive.”
They exchanged odd looks, turned back to me, and nodded.