Kieran's eyes blurred in brilliant displays of light and darkness. 

He stormed through the tunnels beneath the hills of subsection A--Aura keeping pace as they sprinted. 

Their gait was hurried and pained--their breaths ripping, gasping in the air and sending hollow echoes throughout as they ran.

[I]The boat.[/i] Kieran thought, over and over again. [I]We have to get to the boat.[/i]

[I]"I can't go back to Unity!"[/i] Aura explained. Loor was dead. The words crushed into Kieran though he had known their truth for the past several minutes. 

This plan had gone all sorts of sideways. The laptop--should Aura even have it, as the past few minutes had been a blur--was their only salvation. How was he to explain to AA what had happened? If Aura couldn't go back to Unity, what could he even accomplish to get them both in better standing in AA? 

Right now, the time for rumination was far from where they were--running like animals from what would likely be a mob of police and resistance.

Kieran pushed past the hatch and dumped them on the beach. Suddenly, all of the noise and the chaos of the party bled away into the night. Here the salt air sliced through the silence like a tempest calm. And suddenly, all was still.

Kieran huffed and puffed--trying to catch his breath. Beside and behind him, Aura seemed similarly lost in thought. A momentary glance to her concerned him, given the emotion on her face, but he gave it no mind.

They both were murderers, this night. There was little to be done about that. He could ask her later how a shoreline could be so moving. 

He led them forward--slower now, gently--across the retrograde boardwalk. Towards the ragged boats around and beneath. Out here the full moon shone upon the shores of this vast sea so much that the distant, cragged peaks of distant mountains shone themselves even now.

All he wanted in this moment was to leave. To take Aura far, far away from whatever fetid mess they had created tonight and to start something new. But he knew things may be more complex than that. They always were.

"That's where we're going," he responded in kind to her question. He figured she wouldn't be so impressed, but what else was there to do in light of what had happened? Escape via the streets was one thing, but after Loor's death? These consequences would be felt for long after they had escaped. 

Or been killed.

Looking for construction and engineering he could recognize, Kieran spotted a larger boat with twin hulls. A catamaran, to be exact. This sort of boat had what he wanted--a sturdier engine he could possibly start with siphoned fuel, and a lower storage and cabin area to hide in should AA come around.

"Here," Kieran said, helping Aura down to the top of the boat. He took a few takes around the area before letting his guard down--wasting no time and moving to the stern and opening the engine compartment.

"These retrograde engines have held up better than you'd have expected," he explained to her as he took a look at the block. He felt alongside the walls of the inner compartment, leaning into it and feeling for bumps. "The batteries die, of course, but a lot of the time the people who owned these had these jumpers that held up hundreds of years. They thought it would have them if they were abandoned at sea, but for us," he continued, "it works out long after they're gone."

As he talked and explained, he couldn't help but think of the last time he had been on a boat like this. In Port Apex, with the port boys and him looking around abandoned retrograde models for booze or something better. He spent much of his adolescence like that--drinking with the others, messing with engine parts, without a care in the world so long as they were back before the morning...

He shook the thought from his head and kept making adjustments to the engine block. "I know you probably had the best reason in the world to kill Loor. In fact, I'm pretty fucking sure of it." He found a bolt holding the ignition assembly and began to loosen it.

"Though honestly, I'm not sure where we go from here because of it."

He looked to Aura--unsure of her eyes but knowing his shone little more than the truth. He could get the boat moving, sure, but then what?

"I'm not sure what we do from here."