A wrinkle crept across my brow as I reassessed the true depravity of the man bleeding out in front of me.
“Yeah, that’s the look,” he said, pointing. “Everyone I’ve ever admitted that to has made the same exact face—every last one of ’em. No one can ever accept that someone could ever love work more than family. Goes against their values. Heard it from relatives, acquaintances, and even my wife and daughter themselves. They all treat me like I’m some freak of nature, some inhuman abomination. Titan’s the only one who ever saw it my way. Who ever validated me.”
Narain’s pained expression took on a subtle shade of relief as he sat there with his hand applying pressure to his gut. Over his shoulder, the two Titans sang on.
“All the network did was tell me I needed to get the hell away from my family. Didn’t make some ultimatum about me needing to quit my job for their sake or anything like that. Hell, the written notice even came with a nice little aptitude analysis attached. Said I wasn’t fit to run a family, and that I ought to focus on work instead. Saved my goddamn life.”
His final words lingered in my ears. He was right—I genuinely couldn’t understand his mindset. And I didn’t feel like I had the right to presume to know how he actually felt inside, having only worked with him for a few short months.
But one thing was for certain: work meant one thing to Narain, and another thing to me—and yet I wasn’t sure either of us truly knew what work was. What compelled people to do it? Or conversely—what compelled them not to?
Day after day after day.
“I love working,” Narain said. “It’s the only thing I was ever any good at.”
Finally, the lifeboat inflated. Once it was in the water, I yanked on the pull-cord, and the little engine revved to life. It was a simple enough mechanism that I felt competent using it—just a handle to turn the rudder and a twist-grip to control the speed.
I turned to look back at Narain one last time. He jerked his head to one side, telling me to get the hell out of here already. I knew it was foolish that I still wished he would flee on the lifeboat with me. Obviously there was no guarantee his plan would save his life; if anything, it might even put him in more danger. It seemed that banking on Titan coming to his rescue really was our best option here.
“Thank you for this,” I said. But Narain simply scoffed, and looked at me with his usual condescending gaze.
“You really are a lost cause, you know that?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t I teach you this the very first time we met, when I brought you on board? You should know by now what to say to your superiors at times like this.”
The memory of the moment to which he referred floated to the surface of my mind, and I gazed at this man on the verge of death with dumbstruck eyes, baffled that this of all things would be his final request. I wasn’t even technically his subordinate anymore, but I didn’t mind playing the part if it would grant him some peace of mind, especially since this could very well be the last time I saw him. Not to mention that he had indeed accomplished his objective of preventing my abduction.
“Narain?” I said. “You know damn well you’ve done great work today. Don’t act like you need me to tell you as much.”
We both chuckled, and that was that. I twisted the throttle, and the pump-jet did its work, propelling me away from the cabin cruiser in my tiny inflatable lifeboat. Narain lifted one hand in farewell as I headed off across the open ocean toward where the colossal deities yet stood.
The meeting had reached its conclusion. No longer could either Titan’s song be heard; Phoebe now hung like a marionette on slack strings against Coeus’s chest, unable to even stand on her own two legs any longer. She had lost several body parts, yet showed no signs of regenerating them. I could also see that the sweep of her dress, once beautiful and flourishing, now sagged like a withered flower all the way down to the hemline. I assumed that this had been where she had kept her supply of the new photopolymer, in the seams and flounces of her mermaid-style dress. She had used up all of her ammunition, then—and no Titan can create anything new or even reconstruct themselves once their raw materials were spent.
Phoebe’s body began to slip down Coeus’s chest. As her arms went limp, she turned her veiled face up to gaze at his one last time from below. Summoning what seemed to be the very last ounce of her strength, she lifted her right arm up and stroked her fingers along Coeus’s cheek.
But then she was gone. Her hand went limp, and her fingers slipped from his cheek and scraped down his neck as she fell backwards into the sea. The ocean surged and a boom echoed across the bay. I watched as her face slowly sank beneath the waves; it was a terrible sight to behold, and yet somehow it struck me as oddly tranquil. Neither rage nor terror filled my mind. Only a kind of baffled reverence.
I drove my boat slowly, hardly faster than a bicycle, over to the site of the mythological battle. There were no agents on my tail. Nearly an hour later, I finally arrived at Coeus’s feet, and before I could even call out to him, he reached down and scooped my entire boat up out of the water with his titanic hand. He slowly lifted me up to his head, then set the boat down as lightly as he could on the very same balcony I’d gazed out from over the course of our journey. I climbed out of the boat and headed for the door leading inside, whereupon I was greeted by the familiar sight of the living room in which I’d spent fifty days and nights, still exactly the way I left it.
And there he was, standing in the center of the room—a full head taller than he’d looked when I’d spoken with him the night before. No longer was he a boy of just thirteen or fourteen; he was now a grown adult. Nineteen or twenty, perhaps even a bit more. And this appearance, though simulated, was a reflection of the newfound maturity of his mind. He had conversed with Phoebe, exchanged his everything with another of his kind, and now knew more than any single being on this earth. He had matured into a young adult. A grown man.
Ready to face the world. Ready to go to work.
I walked over to him from across the room.
I looked into his eyes, now the same height as mine.
Seika… he said at last.
A single teardrop spilled out from the corner of one of his serene and limpid eyes. I watched it roll down his cheek, then drip from his chin down to his sternum—the last place Phoebe’s fingers had touched. And right there, along the paths her fingertips had traced, a few deep, flaplike slits had been carved into the base of his neck.
They looked much like gills.