Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

Tayel found Jace at the end of the path, his eyes wide and beak ajar. “Shy,” she hissed.

“Wait,” Shy said.

“ Please .”

“I need to know what they’re doing first.”

The figures moved out of their shadows and into the center of the room, withdrawing what looked like needleguns from their equipment. They glided between refugees, whose cries were muffled by the ice over their mouths. A figure grabbed a too-young girl with short black hair and drove the needle into the base of her neck before pulling the injection trigger. Tayel ducked behind the wall and clapped her hand over her mouth.

She fought down nausea. It wasn’t the cryonades, or even the needleguns and whatever substance they delivered. It was that this was all bigger than she could possibly comprehend. It was that she’d watched countless groups of refugees leave the camp as recruits, envying them. They all had family or friends cheering them on, expecting them to come back war heroes, but they were being subjected to this by the very people who they signed up to fight against. It was horrible. Too much.

“Alhyt, save us.” Shy hadn’t stopped watching.

“No,” Jace squawked. “Please let me go! Please!”

He pulled back against the guards, but the force he exerted was so weak they didn’t even need to budge to hold him in place. A desperate cry escaped him, and fire ignited at the tips of his talons. He thrashed back and forth, the aether building in his grasp before it dwindled. He sagged forward. Tayel grimaced. She put him here. This was her fault.

The room darkened. It hadn’t held much light before — only some from the torches below — but now it was close to pitch black. The figures retreated from the center of the room, leaving only the frozen refugees, blood dribbling from some of their necks. It was a horror scene Tayel couldn’t look away from.

The councilwoman set a glass canister atop the podium and disengaged the lock on the lid. It hissed open, and a glob of black and purple ethereal liquid writhed inside. She held her talon open and lifted the liquid from the canister as if by invisible threads. It floated for a moment under her claws, and then through the air until centered above the refugees. Tayel wanted to do something — to stop whatever was happening — but she could barely manage to keep breathing.

The woman hung her head, eyes closed. The ethereal ball exploded into a dozens of black tendrils that shot out and pierced the neck of every recruit on the floor below, spiraling into whatever the shadowed figures had put there. The refugees screamed, and even muffled by ice, the sound grew, a haunting cry that rose acid to the back of Tayel’s throat.

She ducked behind the wall and pasted her back to the crate. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her lungs refusing to hold much more than a half-second’s worth of breath. Her hands felt suddenly numb, even though she could see them shaking. Her breath hitched. She couldn’t be captured. Whatever was happening to those recruits, it could never happen to her. The screams brought her back to Delta. To her mom falling through a hole in the sky.

Shy knelt down. “We need to — Tayel?”

Tayel squeezed her eyes shut, but she still saw debris raining from Median Sector roadways, and raiders hurling her neighbors over the barriers. She saw portals opening all around her as she ran through Deltic City’s streets, silhouetted figures reaching out to grab her from within them.

A pair of hands clasped her wrists, and her eyes shot open. Shy stared back, eyes cold and hard even though she was breathing just as fast as Tayel.

“You with me?” Her warm fingers slipped away, and she unstrapped the FTL drive from her back. She stashed it between the cryonade cases. “If you’re going to save your friend, now’s the time. We have to take his guards together, understand?”

Tayel nodded once.

“Good.” Shy slid the enormous wrench off her tool belt — the one she’d used before — and handed it over. “Let’s hurry.”

Tayel considered the wrench. She kept crouched as she followed Shy along the wall toward the guards, wondering what to do with the thing. But as the screams grew louder and as she caught sight of Jace, what to do became a lot clearer. His exhausted form — still pulling against the guards — the pained refugees who only wanted to fight back, the image of her mom reaching out for help as the road dissolved under her — it all drove a little flicker in Tayel’s chest that burned hotter and hotter until she could almost scream.

Shy nodded the go ahead, and Tayel gritted her teeth. She lunged at the closest of Jace’s captors, tunnel vision blocking out anything else. The wrench landed, vibrating with every layer of popped blood vessel and cartilage. The man stumbled back. He reached to his face, but she swung again, connecting with his temple. He veered with the momentum of the swing, still on his feet, and she gave chase, rising the wrench over her head. She brought it down on his. His body jerked, and toppled to the cobblestone.

“Tayel.” Jace watched her, his eyes wide and afraid.

Her breath rasped out between dry lips. The wrench slipped from her fingers.

“Jace.” She fell to the ground beside him, and wrapped her arms around his thin, shivering frame. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Can you move?”

“Tayel, how did…?”

Shy knelt beside them. Tayel hadn’t seen how she’d handled the guardswoman, but her body laid still on the ground a few feet away. Shy touched a chip key to the sensor on Jace’s cuffs. The locking mechanism slid out of place, freeing his talons.

The screams from the room below finally dwindled, and the faint light from the torches returned. The councilwoman’s voice rang out, “attention!” and a loud snap echoed against the walls. Shy moved to the overlook.

Jace whipped his gaze to Tayel, eyes bewildered. “We need to go .”

“I know.” She crouched down and inched toward Shy, but the scene stopped her from reaching out.

The thawed recruits all stood with arms at their sides, eyes ahead.

The councilwoman nodded at the man beside her. “If there are any defects, just shoot them this time. Resistance is too bothersome to try and snuff out.” Without waiting for a response, she yelled, “Turn left.”

The recruits turned the ordered direction, their feet hitting the ground all at once to form that resounding snap from before.

“No,” Shy whispered.

At a slight scuffing sound, Tayel turned. The guardswoman had recovered, an aether-tech broadsword raised and ready to strike.

Tayel’s heart leapt into her throat. “SHY!”

Shy jumped backward, dodging the guard’s attack as it cleaved the air where she’d been. Tayel jumped at the guardswoman. She grabbed her dazed form by the pauldron, and Shy grabbed her other side. With a unanimous heave, they pushed her from the balcony. She crashed into a heap below, and without thinking, Tayel poked her head over the edge. All heads — save for the indoctrinated recruits — craned toward her. Her jaw dropped. The councilwoman’s eyes sharpened, her head feathers rising.

“Get them!” she squawked.

Tayel bolted. She gripped the railing on the staircase and used it to balance herself while she hopped down four, five steps at a time. Even as fast as she reached the bottom, the guards got there faster.

She ran back up, noticing Jace and Shy weren’t with her. She reached the balcony landing, and Jace grabbed her arm, pulling her to the side as Shy toppled the crate of cryonades down the steps. A hundred little snapping explosions rolled downward, painting the walls in frigid white. A draft of cold air rushed out of the stairwell as anguished cries rose from the bottom.