The Failing Purifier
"Sami," Anja said, her voice a careful construction of steadiness. "Let's see about some water, alright?" She tried to infuse her words with a lightness she didn't feel; the gnawing in her own belly was a constant, low thrum.
"Will the machine work today?" Sami asked from his corner, his knees drawn up as he watched her.
"Of course it will." Anja reached for the old purifier. Its plastic casing was cracked and stained a jaundiced yellow. Papa had called it his "miracle machine," a treasure wrestled from a capsized skiff years ago. "You treat it well," he'd said, his strong hands coaxing it back to life, "and it will keep us safe." Now, like everything he had built, it was failing.
She unhooked the intake tube, the broken brick tied to its end feeling heavier today. She lowered it over the roof's edge, guiding it away from the iridescent chemical scum clinging to their walls. "The water looks funny today," Sami observed.
"It always looks funny," Anja replied. "That's why we have the machine."
She gripped the slick handle of the hand pump, her knuckles white. "Here we go." She began to pump, each squeaking stroke a battle. Her shoulders burned, her gaze fixed on the outlet tube, willing water to appear. She pumped until her world shrank to the strain in her arms and the grating rhythm, a prayer for a single drop that would buy them another day.
The pump wheezed, a pathetic, dying sound. Finally, a thin stream the color of weak tea, laced with an oily sheen, dripped reluctantly into the collection chamber. "That doesn't look right," Sami said.
"It's fine," Anja lied. "Just needs to clear up." The internal filters were choked, nearly dead. After what felt like an eternity, she had coaxed perhaps half a liter into one of their smaller canisters.
"There," she said, forcing cheerfulness as she offered it to him. "Fresh as a mountain spring."
Sami took a few sips, then his face twisted. "It's... salty, Anja," he whispered.
"Just a little." She turned away so he couldn't see the lie in her eyes. "Good for electrolytes."
The lie tasted like rust in her mouth. Her own thirst was a fire in her throat, a desperate, clawing need she refused to acknowledge. Sami's feverish weakness, his trust in her, the salty water—it all coalesced, pulling her back into a memory she fought to keep buried.
…The sound was the first thing she remembered: a low, unending chorus of wet, hacking coughs that echoed from every direction. The relief camp was a city of mud and tarps, and the Red Lung was its king. The air was a thick, choking miasma of woodsmoke, sewage, and the cloying, sweet smell of sickness itself. It was a smell that clung to the back of the throat.
Papa lay on a thin mat, his broad chest, which had once seemed as solid as the village seawall, now a fragile cage of bone. Each breath was a shallow, rattling struggle. His skin was stretched tight over his face, his lips cracked and peeling from a fever that would not break. "Water," he'd rasped, his eyes not quite seeing her. She had held their canister to his lips, just as she now did for Sami, and he had drunk greedily. A moment later, a spasm of coughing had seized him, and he'd brought up a thin, rust-colored phlegm that stained the mat beside him. That was the sign. The fire in the lungs that no water could quench.
"Take care of Sami, little bird," he'd rasped, his last words a shallow whisper lost in the din. Ma, her spirit broken, had simply faded, following him soon after. Anja had been left alone, the sound of that final, rattling cough forever etched into her memory…
A Story Against the Grey
Shaking off the ghost of the camp, Anja looked at her brother. He was staring at the place on the horizon where the phantom factory had been, his expression utterly vacant after the double disappointment of the false hope and the salty water. She needed to pull him back from that ledge.
"Sami," she said softly. "Tell me a story. From before."
He looked at her, his eyes clouded. "A story?"
"Yes. A good one. Tell me about the mango festival. The last one. I can't remember it clearly."
Sami was quiet for a long moment, then a flicker of something stirred in his gaze. He took a slow, rattling breath. "The drums," he began, his voice a dry whisper. "They were so loud. You could feel them in your feet. And Ma… Ma wore her blue sari. The one that shone like a kingfisher's wing." His voice grew a little stronger. "She bought us kulfi on a stick. It was so cold it made my teeth hurt. And it tasted… sweet. It tasted yellow." He trailed off, his energy fading, another fit of coughing shaking his small frame.
He had tried. He had brought a flicker of color into their grey world, a memory of a life where things tasted yellow.
The False Hope
The day wore on. After the crushing disappointment of the factory roof, a new, heavier silence had fallen between them. Anja began her watch, the act now feeling like a form of self-punishment. The water presented its slow, disheartening procession: broken furniture, splintered fragments of fishing boats, and mocking plastic bags.
Then she saw it.
No. The word was a silent scream in her mind. Don't look. It's just another mirage. Another lie. It was a glint of light, a flash of silver so sharp and clean it didn't belong in this world of decay. She squeezed her eyes shut, the memory of this morning's false hope a fresh, raw wound. She couldn't bear it again. But when she opened them, it was still there. It moved in a straight, unwavering line.
Her heart gave a single, painful thump. A patrol drone. She didn't dare say a word to Sami, who was dozing fitfully. The hope was too fragile, too dangerous.
"What are you doing?" Sami's voice, quiet and curious, made her jump. He had woken and seen the rigid set of her shoulders, the way she stared at the horizon.
She couldn't lie to him. Not about this. "Look," she whispered, her voice tight with a hope that felt like a physical pain. Her hand trembled as she pointed. "Out there. I think... I think it's a patrol drone, Sami-jaan."
He scrambled to her side, his fever-bright eyes straining. He saw it too. A tiny gasp escaped his lips. The memory of the morning was still on his face. "Is it… is it real this time?"
"I don't know," she said, her voice a raw whisper. "But we have to try."
She frantically scanned their rooftop prison. Her eyes landed on the small, triangular piece of mirror. With trembling fingers, she retrieved it. Her plan was desperate, a child's game against the vast indifference of the sky. She angled the shard, catching the weak sunlight, trying to aim a beam of light back at the drone. Her arm, weak from hunger and effort, shook violently.
For the next two hours, they worked together, their desperation a palpable thing. Anja held the mirror while Sami, with a surprising steadiness, helped her brace her hand. They became a single, desperate machine. The hope that surged between them was different this time—it was brittle, terrified, laced with the memory of their recent failure. They were a team again, not just a caretaker and her patient.
They spoke in hushed, feverish whispers, planning their first meal, their first night in a real bed. Sami wanted fish, fried with chili and salt, the way Papa used to make it. Anja just wanted water that didn't taste of rust and despair. The drone was no longer a machine; it was a vessel carrying all their drowned hopes, and it was finally, impossibly, coming home to them.
"It's getting closer, Anja!" Sami breathed, his voice electric. "It's turning! I think it saw us!"
He was right. The drone's path had changed. It was arcing towards them. Anja's heart soared, a painful, incredulous leap. Is it real? Sami, is it really real? Tears of relief streamed down her face. She laughed, a choked, desperate sound. They were saved. Someone had finally seen them.
The drone drew closer, its form becoming clearer—a sleek, winged shape, a lifeline from another world. Closer, closer, until they could almost make out the markings on its side.
And then, with a final, soul-crushing certainty, it passed them. It hadn't been turning toward them at all; it had just been following its pre-programmed survey route. It continued its arc, moving steadily away, never deviating, never slowing.
They watched in stunned, profound silence as the silver glint shrank, becoming a speck once more, and then vanished completely into the grey haze of the horizon. It had never seen them. It was never coming for them.
The silence that descended was heavier, more absolute, than any they had known. The first false hope had been a stone that shattered a fragile surface. This second one was a grindstone, pulverizing what was left into dust. The hope, which had been a brilliant, soaring bird in her chest, fell, leaving a void so vast and cold it took her breath away. Sami's small shoulders began to shake. He didn't wail. He just cried, a quiet, continuous, hopeless sound that was infinitely worse.
Anja pulled him close, but she had no words. The lies were gone, burned away by two false hopes in a single day. All she could do was hold him and let his quiet sobs rack her own empty body, her mind a hollow echo. The horizon wasn't just a liar; it was a torturer.
The Question of Survivors
Anja pulled him close, but she had no words. The lies were gone, burned away by two false hopes in a single day. All she could do was hold him and let his quiet sobs rack her own empty body, her mind a hollow echo. The horizon wasn't just a liar; it was a torturer.
Later, his tears spent, Sami lay listlessly, staring at the water. Anja was turned away, lost in her own cavern of despair, when his voice, small and hoarse, cut through the quiet.
"Anja… look. A gannet."
She didn't turn. "It's just a gull, Sami."
"No," he insisted, a faint spark of his old stubbornness in his voice. He pointed a thin, trembling finger. "It's too big. And its wings are different. Papa showed me. He said gannets only hunt far from the coast. He said they follow the deep currents, where the big fish are."
Anja turned, annoyed, and followed his finger. A large, white bird was circling high above, before diving beak-first into the water with a distant splash. It was different. But the observation was a meaningless detail in the face of their overwhelming doom. "It's just a bird, Sami."
He said nothing more, but continued to watch it, a flicker of concentration on his face. Anja turned back to her own crushing thoughts, to the question she knew was coming.
"Anja," Sami whispered a moment later, his voice hoarse from crying. "Do you... do you think anyone else from the village made it?"
The question, coming after the drone's cruel departure, felt heavier than ever before. It pulled ghosts from the murky depths. "I keep thinking about Mrs. Hasan," Sami continued. "She was always so strong."
Anja remembered the chaos of that final night, Mrs. Hasan wrestling with her boat's sputtering tiller, shouting over the wind's roar as she tried to pull a neighbor's child from the current. "She was helping people," Anja said carefully. "Right until the end."
"She's too stubborn to let water stop her," Anja said, the lie feeling thin and brittle.
"And Mr. Chowdhury?" Sami asked. "He always said his house was on high ground." Anja remembered him on the veranda of the only two-story house in Sonapur. "My house has stood for a hundred years, and it will stand for a hundred more!" he'd boomed just weeks before the deluge.
She looked at Sami's hopeful face, raw and tear-stained. He needed this. Hope was medicine, and she would have to find the strength to administer it, even if she had none for herself.
"Of course they made it," she said, her voice more tired, more hollow than before. "Mrs. Hasan is far too stubborn. And you know Mr. Chowdhury. He's probably sitting on his roof right now, complaining about his new 'waterfront property'."
Sami nodded, a flicker of his earlier hope returning, and he leaned his head against her shoulder, exhausted. Anja turned back to her watch, but her gaze was empty. The horizon was no longer a place of possibility. It was a graveyard of hope. For now, survival was this: the burn in her shoulders from a failing filter, the discipline of crumbs, and the crushing, lonely weight of manufacturing a hope she no longer believed in.