Light Through the Window

by Cassandra Morphy

  "Wait, what about that Rebecca Anne person?" Becky asked. "That's a rather unique name. There can't be that many of those around. And, can't you like, filter on occupation? Put in Student and University of Chicago. That should bring us down to just one. And, if that doesn't help us, we'll move on to Sam and spend the rest of the evening looking through all of those entries. There can't be more than a couple thousand of those."

  "Alright, I'll try." Ellie put in what little information they had on the strange girl that had spoken at the meeting, hoping that at least one of these people would show up in the database. Even if they did, she wasn't too sure how much it would help. Fortunately, there was only one result on the strange name, just on the age range alone. She pulled up the record automatically, not even bothering to check the short description for the occupation.

  Name: Rebecca Anne Masterson

  Designation: 999-582-47-1512

  Gender: Female

  Date of Birth: 21 OCT 2006

  Place of Birth: Duluth, MN

  Hometown: Seattle, WA

  Father: Howard (Harry) Masterson (999-221-50-2154)

  Mother: Bethany (Beth) Masterson (002-423-4562) Deceased

  Occupation: Student; University of Chicago, Class of 2028, Biology (Pre-Med)

  "Well, that's promising," Becky said. She pointed at the limited information that was available on the screen. "At least we know she's from Seattle. Maybe they're all from Seattle. Maybe they are somehow related to the demons. I guess that would make sense; like they're possessed or something. That's a thing, right?"

  Ellie just sat there, staring at the screen, barely hearing anything that Becky was saying. All she saw, all she noticed, was the number beside Rebecca Anne's mother. They had determined a long time ago that the second number in the designation sequence of all of the 002 individuals was the organization they were working in. And this person, the Beth Masterson, worked in 423.

  "That can't be a coincidence," Ellie said.

  "What?" Becky asked. "What can't."

  "Rebecca Anne. Her mother. She worked with my mom."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Light Breaks, They Enter

  "This is so cool," Becky said, beneath her.

  Ellie looked down at Becky, partly to make sure that she was still alright. Despite the fact that Becky was several feet down the rope, she could see her as easily as if she were right next to her, even in the dead of night. Ellie didn't need to pay any attention to the rope in her hands as she steadily made progress up it. Becky was struggling to get from one knot to the other, but her expression was elated. Ellie just shook her head as she continued to make her way up the side of the building.

  "It's like you're Batgirl and I'm Robin. You know, one of those girl Robins. There was a girl Robin, right?"

  "I don't follow comic books," Ellie said.

  "I can see why. Your life is a comic book."

  Ellie just shook her head, knowing that Becky wouldn't be able to see the motion in the dark. She counted the windows again, making sure that she still knew which one was Rebecca Anne's. After getting over the shock of finding out that their mothers had worked together, it was a simple matter of hacking into the school's housing servers to pull the dorm room assignment of their targeted person. Becky had started insisting they were possessed by demons and started calling members of the group "the possessed", or various versions of that phrase. Ellie wasn't so sure, though. Rebecca Anne's accent had sounded more like Minnesotan, like her listed birthplace, than Seattleite. She figured that she had only moved there recently. Plus, Ellie had never heard any verified story of a possessed human in all of the time that the demons had been roaming the area. It made more sense that she was somehow the rapidly aged offspring of a demon than that she was possessed by one.

  A loud thud came from below Ellie, moments before she had crept up next to the window in question. She looked down to Becky, worried that the girl had slipped from the rope and fell the three stories to the ground. Instead, Becky was just swinging freely, twirling around in the air. Her legs feverishly pumped as she tried to swing back around to the wall, but she was pointed in the wrong direction and her face was starting to turn red.

  "I'm alright," Becky said, denying the truth that was obvious even two stories above her.

  "Why don't you just wait for me on the ground?" Ellie asked. She rolled her eyes as she turned back towards the window, continuing to head up towards her intended destination. "I got this."

  "Yea, I know," Becky said, her voice no longer sounding strained. "That's why I don't want to be left behind. I mean, you threw this rope, threw it, all the way up to a roof nine stories up. I mean, come on, who doesn't follow someone who can do that?"

  "That's nothing," Ellie said, waving off the complement. "Mare can do ten stories." This was, of course, a lie. Mare had barely been able to do three, even on a good day. The course they had used in ninja class had only been four. In truth, when she had thrown it, she had actually been aiming for the window ledge, but ended up way overshooting. When the grapple caught on the first try, she had just shrugged it off like she had done it a bunch of times before.

  The window was closed, as she knew it would be. Ellie pulled herself into place right next to the window, taking the strap off of her harness and connecting the rope to it. Once she was certain that it was secure and that she wouldn't fall to her death anytime soon, she slowly slackened her grip until she was suspended completely from the harness. Next, she turned her complete attention to the window.

  Out of habit more than anything else, she checked for any obvious security systems. The best systems would have the connection inside the window, completely invisible from either side. However, some more rudimentary systems, like the ones that renters might put into place, would be more obvious, leaving less damage and needing less talented installations. There was nothing that hinted at any systems being in place, no security panels by the door, no sign of any trip lasers running across the window.

  Ellie reached into her back pocket, extracting the one tool that she had brought with her. Her back felt odd, being on a mission without her pack. She hadn’t wanted to waste the time heading back to her father’s house, and she didn't want the extra weight weighing her down as she climbed the rope. Besides, her more stealthy equipment had stayed behind at boarding school. At the time, she hadn't thought she would need any of it ever again. She was feeling quite silly about that.

  The knife was thin, hair thin, easily slipping through the crack between the windows. She maneuvered it around for a bit, slipping it up and down until she managed to find the latch. It took some work, finding the right angle, the notch that she needed to hit just right. Once she did, though, it was just a matter of applying the right amount of pressure until the latch slipped loose.

  "What are you even doing?" Becky asked. She was a lot closer than Ellie had been expecting, her words startling her. The tool slipped in Ellie's hand, falling free of her grip and heading down to the ground below. Becky grabbed for it, but she only clipped the blade as it passed. She gave out a hiss as the blade cut into the skin of her hand. Ellie could only hang there as she watched the knife fall into the night. "Sorry."

  "Are you alright?" Ellie asked, gesturing towards the injured hand.

  "Yea, I'm fine. Should I go down and get that?"

  "No, we're good." Ellie moved the window back and forth a few times, bumping it against the latch that hadn't quite gotten free. After five or six times, the latch hit just right, snapping open and letting the window slide freely.

  "Okay, seriously. Who are you?"

  "I'm Batgirl," Ellie said, in a husky voice.

  "Yea, you really are."

  Ellie snickered a little as she pulled herself through the window. With the rope still firmly in place on her harness, she ended up pulling Becky up with her. She only barely noticed the extra weight; it was little more than what her pack had been on the worst of ninja classes. Once she was inside, she helped Becky thro
ugh as well before unhooking her harness. She pulled the rope out of Becky's hands, as she was unwilling, or unable, to let it go herself. The rope pulled itself taught as it slid out through the window.

  "So, what are we looking for?" Becky asked, as she looked around the dark room.

  They were inside Rebecca Anne's dorm room. It looked exactly like their own, except only one of the beds was made. The other bed, the one on the left coming through the door, was bare. The dresser and closet were similarly vacant. However, there was an extra monitor on the spare desk, pointed towards Rebecca Anne's chair. She had three screens in all, though Ellie wasn't sure if they were all connected to anything. Her bed was pristinely made, with hospital corners on the bedspread. The only sign that she had any form of personality was a single poster on the wall, showing The Backstreet Boys on their fourth reunion tour. Ellie found the choice odd, but she wasn't one to talk. She hadn't been keeping up with the trends while stuck at boarding school in the middle of the woods.

  "We're looking for something that might hint at who these people are," Ellie said. "I think we might have lucked out. It looks like she doesn't have a roommate. If any of them are going to be leaving things out in the open for us to find, it will be her."

  "It doesn't really look like she left anything out in the open though. I swear, I've seen empty rooms messier than this."

  "Try her dresser," Ellie suggested, as she turned to the desk.

  She pulled open each drawer, one by one, starting at the bottom. Other than an odd assortment of wires in the bottom drawer, nothing seemed out of place. There was a pile of blank sheets of paper, obviously for the printer that was on the desk. But they were all perfectly squared off, so it was unlikely they would have any hidden writing on them. There were some pills in the top drawer, but they were obviously just vitamins, with the half empty bottles tucked next to the daily dispenser.

  "Nothing," she muttered, more to herself than to Becky. She quickly closed all of the drawers as one, but the middle drawer caught on something, bumping back out and taking the top drawer with it. Ellie tried to give the drawer a one eyebrow raise but couldn't manage it. "What the..."

  She reached under the middle drawer, feeling around against the bare wood, but found nothing. She did the same on the top drawer, again coming away empty. It was only when she pulled the middle drawer out completely that she had found anything of note. A large manila envelope was folded in two and taped to the back of the middle drawer. Only one side of it was taped in place, so the rest of the envelope was flapping freely and must have hit at just the right angle to bump the two drawers back out. It was thick, stiff, and bulging around its contents.

  "I think I found something," Ellie said, lifting the envelope up so that it was visible in the moonlight streaming through the window.

  "Good, 'cause I got nothing," Becky said, pushing the drawers on the dresser closed.

  "Check behind the drawers, and behind the dresser. Obviously, she's not just going to leave anything out in the open." Ellie was kicking herself for not thinking of that to begin with. She wanted to seem better at this kind of thing than she actually was, so she didn't mention anything.

  Becky nodded her agreement towards her, but, before she could move back to the dresser, the familiar beep, beep, click sound came from the front door. Both girls stared at each other, their faces locked in echoing "deer in the headlights" looks, as the door to the room opened.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hunted

  "Quick, out the window," Ellie said. She pushed Becky towards the open window, hoping they could make it out before it was too late. However, it was already too late. It certainly didn't help that Becky took so long to get out of the window. She still only had one leg outside when Rebecca Anne came in the door. Ellie and she locked eyes on one another as Becky scurried outside and onto the rope.

  Fortunately, Rebecca Anne was stunned by the two of them being in her room. She was standing by the door, staring at Ellie, as she literally jumped through the window. Ellie fell down two stories, past the stunned face of Becky, only to grab onto the rope several feet below her roommate. She kept her grip slack, slowing down her descent rather than just stopping it flat out. She ended up with a minor rope burn, but no broken bones.

  "Come on," Ellie called up to Becky, who seemed just as stunned as Rebecca Anne had been.

  "Seriously, a complete comic book. Can I get an advanced copy of your issue number one?"

  "Will you just get down here," Ellie said. She punctuated each word with another hand over hand motion as she continued her descent.

  Once Ellie was on solid ground, she pulled the envelope out of the waist of her pants. Without her usual backpack, it was the only place she could put it while keeping her hands free to use the rope. However, once Rebecca Anne got over her shock and made it to the ground floor, Ellie knew that she would need to run. She looked up at Becky, who was slowly making her way down the rope. With no sign of Rebecca Anne above her, there was no way of knowing if she was still in the room. Or if she was trying to do the smart thing of cutting the rope to make Becky fall. Or...

  The sound of the front doors to the dorms opening drew Ellie's attention. She was stunned to see that it was Rebecca Anne coming through there. Her eyes seemed to blaze a darker black than she had ever seen, in eyes that she hadn't thought could get blacker. Rebecca Anne glared over at her, standing in a broad stance as if she had more muscles than her small frame should have allowed.

  "You have a lot of nerve breaking into my room," she grunted. Her voice was a low, guttural thing, sounding more demonic than anything else. Her eyes darted to the envelope in Ellie's hand, instantly recognizing it. "That's mine."

  "Becky, get down here now," Ellie shouted.

  She didn't have time to look up at her roommate, hanging there above her head. The world around her seemed to slow down as her adrenaline peeked. Rebecca Anne started her dash. Her movements seemed long and drawn out at first, but then she was running faster than humanly possible. Straight at her. Ellie just managed to step aside as Rebecca Anne ran right past. Her training kicked in and she reached out with her free hand, grabbing the girl's wrist as she passed. With a twist of the wrist and a well-placed foot, Rebecca Anne went down hard on the cement.

  Ellie spared just a passing glance up at Becky, who was still three stories above the ground. She didn't seem to be making much progress coming down, too scared to let gravity do the work for her. Movement out of the corner of Ellie's eye told her that Rebecca Anne was getting back up. With barely an apologetic shrug, Ellie ran for it. She hoped that the enraged girl would focus on her, and the pilfered envelope, and forget about the girl dangling helplessly in the air.

  She ran flat out away from the dorm, heading down the sidewalk towards the park. It was late at night, so 60th Street was completely empty. Ellie didn't even slow down to look for cars as she darted across it. Once she realized she was across, she sent out a silent prayer that some big tour bus would come down it and block Rebecca Anne's path. She didn't dare look behind her to see if the girl was still chasing her. Then again, she didn't have to. Ellie’s own fevered footsteps were echoed with a set that were just as fast. As she ducked her head down and started to run faster, she just pretended that she was on the track back at boarding school, showing off her sprinting skills to Mare and the rest of the group.

  When she made it to the Midway, instead of continuing onwards, she took a turn down it. She hooked her arm around a pole to help preserve her momentum around the corner. As she did so, the envelope slipped out of her grip, spinning into the night. A curse slipped through her lips but she didn't dare stop, didn't dare slow, lest the pursuing girl catch her. She knew that she could hold her own in a fight, knew that she wouldn't go down easily, but there was no telling what the girl with the abyssal eyes could bring to bear. If she was a demon, if she was somehow possessed with something that would make her stronger, faster, more agile, then Ellie wouldn't have stood a chance a
gainst her. It was better to just avoid a conflict until she knew what she was up against.

  Halfway down the first block of the midway, Ellie darted across the road that ran down the middle of it. She hoped that her almost random path would discourage the pursuit. As she made the turn, though, she noticed that Rebecca Anne wasn't just still on her tail. She was gaining ground. Whatever it was that made them different, that gave them their eyes, must have also supplied Rebecca Anne with enhanced speed. Ellie feared that she was no match for the girl. That it was only a matter of time before she was caught and killed. Or worse, captured and turned into one of them.

  When she made it to the other side of the road, she continued onward at an angle, running straight across the open field. The heavy footsteps of her pursuer were soon silenced on the softer ground. Ellie was no longer sure how far behind her Rebecca Anne was. Before she made it to the far side of the field, she could feel the girl's breath hot on her neck. When she heard a sudden grunt of effort, she pivoted, heading further downfield, hoping to avoid whatever was coming her way. She didn't turn, didn't look to see what had happened. All she knew was that she was still running freely.

  At the end of the field, she turned back onto the sidewalk, heading towards the campus proper. Despite the late hour, it was Friday, and she was hoping that there were still people out, still groups heading to and from the parties that were no doubt still being thrown. She figured the fraternities would be a safe bet, but the only ones she knew of were on the other side of campus. Rebecca Anne was still too close for her to think she'd make it all the way there. Barely five steps down the sidewalk, she started to hear her stalker's steps once more.

  A single car was driving down the road on the other side of the midway. Ellie saw it out of the corner of her eye, though she reacted to it before she really noticed it. As she came out into the road, the car honked loudly at her. But she had jumped ahead, out of the path of the car long before it had gotten to her. Still, the driver slammed on his breaks, coming to a stop right where she would have been had she stopped. Ellie heard it when Rebecca Anne slammed into the car, several bangs as the girl climbed over the hood and kept on coming.