324

You get to your feet and start off towards the platform at the centre of the bridge, weaving back and forth as you run in order to present the advancing clansmen with a difficult target. But you have covered barely twenty yards when the fatigue of your ordeal suddenly catches up with you. You cannot catch your breath and your legs feel like they are clothed in lead. You stumble and fall. For a while you crawl on your hands and knees; then you stagger painfully to your feet as you near the platform. The colony screams encouragement from the other side of the river, inspiring you to greater effort, but suddenly a line of bullets cuts across your path and you feel a terrible pain in your back. Rapidly the pain fades, giving way to a numbness that spreads through the lower half of your body. Unable to feel your legs, you are helpless to prevent yourself from falling off the edge of the platform into the Colorado River.

Tragically, your journey and your life end here.