Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

“Safe? We’re in danger right here. Any moment those outer walls could crumble, and we could be swarmed. Even if I didn’t go to the mothership, that could happen. It could happen when you and the war packs are gone.”

Tayel winced. She didn’t know which would be worse. Being there with him if the worst happened, or coming back to learn it, and having to accept she couldn’t have done a thing. She remembered finding him in Castle Aishan, terrified, worn, hurt. She remembered Mom falling through the sky. Tayel couldn’t have done anything even when she had been there. Being there was worse. It had to be.

“Look,” Jace said. “I realize I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you. I realize I messed up and that I really have been in need of saving from my mistakes. But I’m ready to help now; I’m prepared to do anything I can. And it’s my parents who could be in that shuttle. I should be going.”

“But you could help here. If your parents are at the shuttle site I could bring them back. You don’t have to come with us to be valuable. So why? Why do you have to help this way?”

Jace grabbed a talonful of his head feathers and squeezed. “For a lot of reasons! Because I feel that’s where my skillset is most useful, because Locke needs the out, because — because of everything we’ve been through. The invasion, the camp, Castle Aishan, and even the crash yesterday. I… want to do this together, like we’ve done everything together.”

Tayel smiled despite herself. Seeing him standing there with chest puffed proudly was such a juxtaposition to the boyish Jace she grew up with. With everything that had happened, it was hard to remember they were once just two rowdy kids running around the under city streets with imaginary laser rifles and swords. At barely twelve and eleven years old they’d saved countless imaginary villages from the tyranny of who they’d very seriously called the evil ones . It all made her wonder where she and Jace would be right now, if none of this ever happened.

“I just don’t want all that to go away because I couldn’t protect you,” she said.

“That’s always going to be a risk, but if we work together with our friends, we’ll be a lot better at protecting each other.”

She resigned herself to a short laugh. “When did you become so smart?”

“Pretty sure it happened one mysterious summer morning when I was about six.”

“Intelligence sort of just manifested, huh?”

“What? That didn’t happen to you?”

“Ha.”

He clucked a teasing tone.

She closed her eyes. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I don’t like it — at all — but I do support you. I’m done asking you to stay behind.”

He beamed. “Thank you, Tayel. That means a lot.”

“Just promise you’ll be careful?”

“I’m not exactly reckless.”

“Fair.”

He hugged her, and she hugged him back, resting her chin among his head feathers. If anything happened to him, she’d never forgive herself. She thought of everything she wished she’d told Mom, everything she would never be able to say to her now that she was gone, and squeezed Jace tighter.

“Jace.”

“Hm?”

“I’m really proud of you.”

Tayel trudged up the hall, fussing with the hem of her coat sleeve. Jace still beamed beside her, but as relieved as she was to have their argument behind them, she couldn’t match his enthusiasm. He was still going, after all, and their debate hadn’t been as subtle as she’d planned. She grimaced at the thought of facing everyone. She grimaced harder as she narrowed everyone to just Shy. Because nothing could quite say ‘I want to be with you’ like trying to swap someone’s injured brother into a warzone. Tayel sighed.

“No one’s going to care, Tayel,” Jace said. “Besides, Fehn and Shy have seen worse from us before.”

She nodded to placate his optimism, but her heart skipped a beat at the sound of muffled voices drifting from Locke’s room. She took a breath. It wasn’t like she could hide in the halls until the war pack was ready. She pulled aside the curtain of furs and stepped inside.

Fehn stopped short on a word. Shy and Locke turned in their seats. Tayel replayed Jace’s words mockingly in her head: no one’s going to care. She dug her hands into her coat pockets.

Fehn leaned back against the stone wall across from her. “So… how’s it going?”

“Great,” Jace said. He strut to an empty stool beside Locke. “Is now a good time to go over the fiber cutter, or…?”

“Oh.” Locke’s eyebrows shot up. “Certainly. Fehn and I were just finishing the prototype.”

“We’re done?” Fehn asked.

“All that’s left is the charge.” Locke tapped the jerry-rigged contraption on the desk beside him. “Now you can help my sister with the equipment.”

“I see. Red, mind helping her out in my stead? I need to find a hole to piss in.”

Tayel stepped aside to let him pass. “Uh, sure.”

“Thanks.” He pushed through the furs.

Locke and Jace devolved into a murmur of technobabble in the corner, leaving her with Shy, who sat on the bed patching a gas mask. She worked rhythmically — quietly — completely undistracted by any of the previous conversation. Tayel snared a loose string in her pocket between her fingers and tugged.

“Shy?” she asked.

“Hey. Ready to work?”

“In a second.” She sat on the empty space of furs beside her. “Listen, I’m… You have to understand why I tried to convince him not to go.”

Shy looked up. “Why? I’m not mad at you.”

“You aren’t?”

“No. If Jace didn’t go, we’d have figured it out.”

“Oh. I thought you’d be pissed.”

“If I can get over you endangering our lives to protect Jace in Castle Aishan, I think I can forgive this.”

Tayel smiled at the sincerity in Shy’s voice. The release eased the strain in her chest, replacing it with airy relief. “Wish I could say I won’t make a habit out of it, but…”

“Yeah. I know,” Shy mused. “Here. Locke already replaced the filtration cartridge on these, but we need to patch the tubing and repair the fasteners.”

“Okay, got it.” Tayel took the broken gas mask, rapping her fingers along the face shield. “You sure you’re not mad?”

Shy tipped her head. “Do you want me to be mad?”

“Alhyt, no.”

Tayel laughed, Shy half-grinned, and they both got to work.

The sour smell from Locke’s glue gun transported Tayel back to the crowded shelves in Otto’s shop. Jace’s room, too, although that was helped along as much by Locke’s scattered tools as the smell. Strew around some trading cards, slap one or two flexi-screens on the walls, and Jace and Locke would have almost identical domains.

Tayel refocused, opening up the patch kit next and trying to stave off the growing feeling of homesickness. But with Jace sitting there, listening intently to Locke’s instructions on how to steal information from the deadliest force in Igador, it was hard to think of anything but home. Of she and Jace safe in his room, him sifting through comics on his tablet, her staring at the ceiling, daydreaming. What relief she’d experienced at Shy’s forgiveness dissipated, replaced by fear at the thought of those days never coming back.

Even when she’d finished repairing the masks and Shy moved on to demonstrate a modified shoulder harness sheath for the mag baton, the tension in her shoulders kept growing.

“So there’s electromagnetic strips across the back of the sheath and the handle of the baton,” Shy said. “You press this button here and it should activate both strips so you can lock it in.”