Sweet Sorrow

Amanda Holliday hurls a wrench at the wall, her grunt of effort punctuated by the sharp clang of metal striking metal. Her shoulders rise and fall with each labored breath in the silence that follows.

She gasps softly and rushes forward—eyes scanning the surface of the wrench for cracks as her fingers frantically reach for the socket. She turns the ratchet, hoping to hear the reassuring click of the gears. But there is nothing, no movement inside from either direction.

"Damn it," Amanda hisses, rubbing the heel of her palm against her eye. "Dammit!"

She sees a racing helmet at her feet and kicks it across the garage floor.

Everything around her is a painful reminder of her ignorance: A blue-and-white auto rifle of Cabal design with an inscribed message on the barrel. Her favorite ramen bar and sightseeing locations circled on a map of the Last City. A datapad loaded with coordinates for the old Haakon Precipice racetrack. The nearly finished Sparrow she and Niik had been working on, blazoned with airbrushed feathers of ebony and white.

"Damn it," Amanda whispers. Her back brushes against the wall, and she leans into it as her body slowly crumples to the floor. Her head dips to the side and rests on the cold engine of the Sparrow beside her. She pulls her legs toward her chest and curses into her knees, burying her face in them as her shoulders begin to rise and fall in trembling bursts.

Of all the friends she could have made, of all the people who could have become important in her life, of all the horrible twists of fate she could have endured…

…why did they all have to be him?