Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

Tayel ran through the undercity smog, her gas mask rattling with every breath. She smacked the filter cartridge, but the centimeter-wide hole in the tubing still hissed as she inhaled. Stupid thing . Pollution burned the back of her throat. She coughed, and Jace — huffing and puffing — sped up to reach her side. He grabbed the loose fabric of her jacket and pulled her forward. Together, they rounded the corner where the neon sign over the grocer’s mart flickered, dispersing light through the haze. One more block to Otto’s. Pick up the pace .

Bustling city denizens fresh off the after-work tram slowed them on the main street. The cacophony of rasping gas masks drowned out Tayel’s leak and pounding pulse. She gagged at the sour taste along her tongue. Nothing mattered more than the hope of fresh air. Fresh air, and safety.

Two more shops down, and there it was. Neon tubing spelled out “OTTO’S” in crooked letters above the shop, washing Tayel’s arm in green light as she reached for the door. She pushed inside, holding it open only long enough for Jace to hurry in after her.

She steadied herself while the door she’d come from and the door ahead clicked. A sharp sucking sound gave way to a rush of wind as the airlock triggered. She tore off the mask, freeing her dull, red hair to fall in sticky waves around her face. Against the opposite wall, Jace removed his own mask and smoothed his ruffled head feathers down with his talons. She eyed him for injuries. She’d seen Argels break their beaks from a misplaced elbow in a crowd, but he seemed fine. At least he’d fared better than her.

“You alright?” she asked.

“I’ve felt better.” He clutched his chest. “What about you?”

Her throat burned, her face hurt, and her heart threatened to beat right out of her. “Not so good. You saw it too, right? The—?”

The door ahead clicked and he tugged it open for her. A rickety overhead fan churned the humid air into a musty breeze just inside the pawn shop. It was far better than the murk outside. Breathable, at least.

“Well, I’ll be,” the Cyborn at the register said. “It’s a little late to see you two around.”

“Hey, Otto, we—.” Tayel’s breath caught against the itch in her throat. She buried a cough in the crook of her arm.

Otto leaned over the counter, his leather jacket too snug around his broad metal shoulders. Unlike most Cyborn, whose deadpan faces had no moving parts, he’d installed blinking blue eyes and a makeshift jaw which hinged and unhinged as he spoke. Although that was probably a mechanical error, not a feature.

“You okay?” he asked, his robotic voice inflective — like a human’s.

“Otto, there was a raider at Sif Field , ” Tayel said.

“What?”

“This black hole-looking thing popped up out of nowhere, and we saw a raider in it. We—"

“Is it still there?”

“I don’t think so.” She noted Jace’s nod and said, “The portal blinked out of existence after I fell.”

“Portal? ‘Bout two seconds ago you said it was a black hole. Which is it?”

“I have no idea what it was. A giant shadow popped up, and a fragging raider stuck his head out of it. Portal makes sense to me.”

“Black hole would’ve swallowed us up by now,” Jace said, rapping his talons together.

“Okay, okay. Sit.” Otto gestured to the bar stools across his counter. “Now you’re sure you’re recollectin’ alright? Raiders don’t often start sayin’ ‘hello’ to the locals without harassing the government first.”

“We know what we saw,” Tayel said, taking her seat.

He let go a mechanical sigh. “Alright, then tell me what happened — line for line — and gimme that mask. I can tell the damn thing’s broken just by lookin’ at it.”

Tayel set the defunct thing in front of her. That itch in her throat came back, and she scratched her neck. It wouldn’t stop the discomfort on the inside, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

Otto examined her gas mask, narrowing his rusty eyebrows at the damage. “Oh screws. This is worse than when you were mugged. How long were you breathing through it like this?”

“A couple minutes,” Tayel said.

Jace crossed his wings. “It wasn’t that fast. We ran into foot traffic from people getting off the tram.”

“First things first. Can you breathe?” Otto grabbed a toolkit from under the counter and dropped it on the linoleum top.

Tayel nodded.

“Good. Tell me about the raider.”

“Well, we went to Sif Field after school,” she said. “We were just sitting — talking — and then this shadow, a little taller than you, Otto, and maybe a couple persons wide, popped out of nowhere. It looked like — help me out, Jace.”

“It really did look a bit like a black hole — like in the movies. It was swirling and black and purple,” Jace said.

Tayel continued, “There was the silhouette of a person in it—”

“—A human,” Jace added.

“A human silhouette. And it looked like he was coming toward us, like the shadow was a window he was on the other side of. As he started to fill out, we could see the glowing goggles and the cyonic augmentations.” Her tightening chest squeezed the words out faster. “He even had an aether-tech blade. It looked like he was about to come through, so I stood up to run, and that’s when the bleacher broke in two. I hit my head, broke my mask, and Jace was yelling like crazy, but the portal vanished. We came right here.”

“Damn rusted things. Told city hall a month ago they were starting to wane and — hell, never mind that. One thing at a time. How far’d she fall, kiddo?” he asked of Jace.

“Seven-ish feet?”

“And it took how long to get here?”

“Sixteen minutes,” Jace said, eyes on the chrome band around his wrist. “That’s a long time, right? For a human to breathe in the murk?”

Tayel would’ve chastised him for babying her if the mood was right, but he wasn’t wrong. She tried to remember all the effects of inhaling the pollution: burning sensations, numbness, lung erosion — if exposed consistently.

“The murk wouldn’t have caused any permanent damage — not right away anyhow,” Otto said. “You hit your head, though.”

“More my face, really,” Tayel said.

“What’s your face attached to?” Jace asked.

She swatted at him. Otto grabbed a light from his toolkit and shined it into both her eyes. After she was sure she’d be seeing spots for an hour, he put the thing away.

“Well, yer eyes are right and you’re talking straight, so no concussion,” he said. “And you saw that raider, too?”

“Yeah,” Jace said.

“Well, you two were right to come to me. Just hang on, alright? Now that I know Tayel’s brain isn’t oozin’ out her ears, I’ll make a call to the force. Try’n relax.”

Tayel gave a short laugh. Relax. Right. After burned lungs and raiders.

She shuddered, remembering the incident. She’d sat on the bleachers with Jace, staring out over the open field where she would play magball the next day. Goosebumps had pricked her arms. She’d whipped her head around at the strange sensation of being watched, and a silhouette reached its hand out from within an enormous shadow before flickering away into nothingness.

“You sure you’re okay?” Jace asked, interrupting the memory.

She rubbed her arm. “Yeah.”

His head cocked to the side in his trademark look of inquisitiveness.

“Really. I’m fine,” she lied. “It’s the raider that—.” She stopped on the word “scares.” “When was the last time they launched a raid?”