by E Kathryn
She moved from the stove to the freezer and get out frozen vegetables. “Actually, I did know that. Why the sudden interest? Something come up in your video game?”
Gulping a little, Mark shook his head. “Well… I was thinking, you know how you’re always getting on me for being hotheaded?” He winced at the word.
Giving a small laugh, Marissa nodded. “All your life, but not as much as I fight to keep your head out of the clouds. It’s impossible to make you focus on one thing.”
Mark opened one of the jars of tea and smelled it. Reeling away, he never could understand why his mother kept it. She never drank it—only his father drank tea, and even then, it was a strong black tea he scoured international stores for. “Today… I think… well… I think I might be a Shadow… I…”
Setting down a pan for the vegetables, Marissa paused and stared hard at him for a long few seconds. “You know that’s impossible. They tested you the day you were born.” Turning her face away, her shoulders arched, fidgeting with bag the vegetables. She added, “It was negative. I promise you.”
“It’s not that,” Mark replied a little too hastily. “It’s just… I may have gotten a little too worked up during the raid… I kind of, set my laptop on fire.”
Marissa didn’t move, staring at him with her drawn eyebrows, then glancing at the lumpy backpack sloppily thrown onto his shoulders after ditching his coat. She studied his face, making him overthink his choice of words. Her all-knowing blue eyes scanned his soul, and a whirlwind of speculation turned in his stomach. “Listen, I don’t want you getting too deep into this, your aunt was never the same after she gave birth to a Shadow. It changed her. Shadows, even young ones who can’t control their abilities, are incredibly dangerous.”
Suddenly, Ode to Joy started playing from his mom’s pocket as her cell phone rang. He jumped at the sound.
She answered, and Mark let himself drift off again. He hadn’t believed Gary, but to be honest, he wasn’t sure. What if he could create fire?
Mark stared at his hands while his mother talked on the phone and was distracted in her cooking. The image of flickering tongues of crimson fire expanded in his mind as if he were dreaming. The warmth relaxed him, and he closed his eyes, letting darkness calm his racing thoughts.
The peripheral sound of his mother’s footsteps kept him aware of her presence, but the darkness was broken by a very vivid white cloud of smoke in the shape of a woman. On the phone she paced, pushing around things on the stove which appeared like a box of contained smoke wavering about inside. Every physical object was made of intangible smoke, even the table before him. He could see no color or light but in the dark a vivid red orb, glowed within his heart.
His mother’s ghostly form turned towards him and the burning phone fell to the floor. Blinking several times, Mark’s gaze was flooded with light, but when his eyes adjusted, he saw his mother staring at him, horrified.
“What’s wrong,” Mark said now more scared than ever.
Marissa hastily bent down to gather up the phone, her hands shaking almost too hard to dial a number she knew by heart. She turned away, keeping her voice low to not worry him, but her hushed tones only worsened his fear.
“We’ll be expecting you, thank you,” she said as she hung up and then turned back to Mark. “You just, please… stay right here.” Her request seemed frantic with anxiety though she hadn’t explained anything to him.
Mark was completely unable to stay put for long, wandering over to his younger sister, June, who sat on the floor in the living room playing. “Hey there, what are you doing?” he asked, kneeling with her.
“I was waiting for you to get home,” June answered, giving an exasperated sigh which was comical for a six-year-old. “Can we play CoursesGo now?”
June preferred racing games over the violent strategy games Mark was addicted to, in fact, for her age, she was particularly obsessed with them and played as often as she could get her hands on a controller. However, she still required Mark’s help setting up the system to play.
Mark groaned a bit. “I was going to get online with Gary…”
“Aww…” she whined, “but you’ll be on for hours. Please, just one short game.”
With her convincing argument, he mocked her previous sigh and did so. Setting up a race for the two of them, they started in third and fourth place out of twelve cars, and as he expected, June soon took the lead and was almost over-lapping him.
A loud, quick knock on the door made Mark jump and their mom hurried past them through the living room. As Mark whipped his head around, he wrecked his virtual car, losing to his sister.
They were here.
Setting down the oddly shaped controller, which June seemed to treasure like a doll, Mark stood. A short man leading the group of five entered the house and stared directly at him before acknowledging his mother.
The man stuck out his hand to his mother, shaking hers gently. “Thank you for calling us. Have you had any issues?”
Mark realized his mother was trembling even as she shook her head. “He only turned invisible, and he said he had set… his computer on fire.”
The man’s steady eyes accepted this, emotionless, professional, relaxed.
“My sister had a Shadow. Do you think it’s possible it runs in the family?” Marissa fretted.
With an apathetic shake of the head, the man denied, “The Shadow is not hereditary.” His entire posture made Mark nervous. Despite being rather short, the man was robust with thick arms and a militaristic demeanor. The man looked him over, assessing as much as he could before finally, he offered a false smile and a personable manner.
“It’s good to meet you. Why don’t we sit down and figure this out?” The man’s offer was the fakest thing Mark had ever heard. This was a threat. Only silence was given to him as he complied, and the man signaled someone to rush to Mark’s side with a small kit in hand.
“We’re going to test you for a Shadow again,” the man warned. “It’s just a finger prick, you’ll be fine.”
Mark bit his lip as the kit opened. Inside was a stack of square cotton pads, a quarter-thick cylinder, and a thick pen. Before Mark could comprehend what each item was, the complete stranger took his hand, pressed the tip of the pen to his finger, and snapped a button on the side. A tiny lance shot into his finger, startling him, but the person didn’t react, merely drawing out a small daub of blood and holding his hand steady. They retrieved a thin red film from the cylinder and placed it over the drop of blood, collecting it onto the paper.
Setting the film into the kit, the man squeezed Mark’s finger tighter, then pressed a cotton pad onto it. He took the prompt to hold it there himself and wait for the bleeding to stop. By then the short man picked up the film and held it to the light. They waited, every second paralyzing Mark.
“Negative,” the man said finally.
Mark breathed a sigh of relief simultaneously with his mother.
Personably, the short man took a seat beside Mark, placing the film back into the kit as his assistant cleaned up. “Tell me, what did it feel like when you turned invisible, do you think you could remember?” he asked.
Trying to make sense of it all, Mark’s fingernails dug into his knees. “I don’t know, warm, and alone in the darkness. Is that what the Shadow Realm feels like?” He pinched the cotton between his thumb and his pants.
Anxiety spinning in his gut, he reflected on the feeling he had drowned himself in, rage and adrenaline fueling his heart and it happened again. He vanished. It was getting easier now. He stared at those around him, knowing they still knew he was there, but all he could focus on was the expression on his mother’s face.
Finding it now slightly easier to control, he released the feeling and returned to visibility. A little triumphant, he relaxed. Having even the smallest control felt good, but his mother stood with her hands over her mouth, horrified.
“How odd,” the man hummed, very surprised. “Has he shown any signs like
this before?”
Marissa nervously shook her head and in a low voice, as if she didn’t want Mark to hear, she spoke to the man, “Not really,” she whispered, and Mark’s eyes widened, “but last February—he doesn’t remember it well—we found him on the floor with massive tachycardia. I thought I saw him turning invisible, but I couldn’t tell for sure…”
The man sighed. “As much as keeping his powers hidden was unsafe, waiting to confirm was wise…” he said, but Mark’s confusion only soared higher. Powers? Tachycardia? What?
The man sat next to him in a friendly manner then strictly looked him in the eyes. “Mark, listen to me.” Mark gulped. “From what you have displayed to us…” He noted the two men moving closer to him as the shorter man spoke. “You have proven that you are, in fact, a Shadow, and you will be coming with us.”
“What!” Mark burst out, scarcely finding his voice. Many thoughts spiraled in his head, too many questions to be answered. But he wasn’t given a chance to ask, and another strange feeling came to him.
At first, he thought it was like the feeling he had just experienced when he turned invisible, only this one almost hurt. In a second, Mark realized what it was, his eyes widened in fear. One of the two men with the short man had revealed a small syringe and without warning injected the light blue serum into his shoulder.
In all his fear and confusion, he found a new sensation: he couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t even force his own breathing. There was only blackness. His entire consciousness faded as he felt the second man taking hold of him securely but gently as he collapsed from where he sat on the edge of the couch.
II
ASH AND FIRE
October 26, 2030
The first semblance of consciousness returned as doors closed around him. Standing by himself, Mark stared at the cold metal, a space only six-feet by four-feet. He felt drugged and dazed but was regaining control over his senses. He became acutely aware he was in a holding cell.
The room rattled and shook like an earthquake, and Mark stumbled, clinging to the corner, and sinking to the floor. He was wrong. He was in an elevator.
A thousand fears took root in his mind with no idea where he was and nothing to him but the clothes on his back. They weren’t even his clothes. He looked over his attire to find he had been dressed in lightweight clothes, just warm enough for October. Dark slacks, a plain white T-shirt, and a black jacket accented with red. It was neither warm nor comfortable, and Mark felt the material was eerily like a uniform.
Shuddering on the floor, Mark stared into his hands. Pushing down fear as his heart raced, his body prepared itself for anything, and adrenaline coursed through his veins.
Scared out of his wits, Mark’s hands started to smolder and smoke, and in the tiny room, he feared he’d suffocate as the smell of smell filled his lungs. The fire followed, blisteringly hot and overpowering, but it didn’t shock him. He stared at the steel door, feeling the elevator jarring as it rattled in whatever direction it traveled.
His hands trembled, and the fire wavered, absorbing the heat, and burning his skin. The fire didn’t scare him. He didn’t care if he was burned. The elevator reeled to a halt and Mark curled up tighter against the floor covering his head with his arms even though the flames tangled with his hair and the fire spread.
The two thick elevator doors opened and Mark froze, fixated on the sight as the warmth from his flames traveled out ahead of him.
Fifteen young teenagers clamored together, some bickering and entertaining themselves, others lounging on beds, which lined the far side of the room. A young boy fell to the floor with a yelp and Mark’s attention locked on the sight. Tendrils of light scattered out as the boy’s hands impacted the white floor. Like a solar flare, bright bands of light dissipated, and the boy hoisted himself to his knees, panting.
A girl stood over him, laughing uncontrollably. “You’re not a sun, Kip. Flight is just not in your blood.”
The boy jerked up, his hands consumed in light brighter than the sun. “Yeah, but fusion is!” he shouted, then slipped and fell again. Wild strawberry-red curls fell over his eyes, and Mark knew what Kip was. A Shadow.
Kip glared up at the girl, bright coals in his eyes as water flowed clearly from the girl’s hands. This water extinguished the light he had created, and he sat in the puddle, now soaked.
Scanning the others in the room, Mark got lost in how each of the fifteen teenagers possessed their own unique ability, each with a strange countenance, some appearing inhuman, and others seeming completely normal. Kip was a bit smaller than the rest, and though he seemed incredibly powerful, he looked like he got picked on a lot.
Suddenly, Kip tensed and fought to get away from the water beneath him. Slick white frost raced under his feet, growing and spreading to fuse Kip’s shoes to the floor.
Another girl near the argument gasped and whirled about at the culprit, “Silverstonarellena, let it off!” she shouted. She appeared like she could be the oldest in the room by the way her shoulders were a little broader than the rest, and her chest expanded with a bossy roar. Furious, she stormed over to one of the beds by the wall and glared down at a boy with white hair.
Mark saw the hair first, still going unnoticed as he stared from the elevator. Wild and silvery, it had numerous tangles and braids that made the boy’s long hair look like a sharpened crown. His golden eyes spoke worlds of fear as he leered forward into the girl’s soul. He shot a nasty glance past her at Kip and twirled a braid around his finger. “Just what can you do about it?” he threatened.
“Come on, Sil! What did Kip do to deserve that?” the girl snapped.
Sil brushed the strand back into the fray as he stood up gracefully. He retracted the ice from Kip’s form by only looking at what he had created. His movements were slow but deliberate, bearing a heap of animosity over Kip.
He traveled past Kip ethereally, with a dirty look in his sharp eyes, but the boy dolefully endured it. Staring down at the dissipating puddle, Kip wiped the dripping droplets off his face, disguising his tears, then got up to scurry away.
Sil, however, took three long strides into the expanse of the room, closer to Mark. Glaring at the girls, Sil followed them with his gaze, only briefly taunting before gazing toward the only exit from their room.
Mark’s face drained of blood the instant Sil spotted him, kneeling in the corner of the landing room, petrified.
Sil didn’t move, assessing Mark like a predator. The stubborn fire on his hands rose. Sil’s golden eyes flared brightly, shaking Mark to his core. Scrambling back, he pressed himself to the far wall of the elevator, panicking as Sil took one step forward.
“What do we have here?” Sil whispered over him, his voice scarcely resonating as he took another step closer, then another, and with each step, Mark’s heart raced faster, causing the fire to burn hotter.
Crying out, Mark’s hands crumpled in pain as his skin cooked. “Get me out of here!” he shrieked at the ceiling, certain no one could hear him, no one would listen, and there was no way to make the doors of this elevator close.
In an instant, the fifteen teenagers drew near, curious of the new voice, but the crowd did nothing to lower Mark’s panicked heart rate. With his hands before him, the fire raged even more, attaching itself to his clothes.
Sil’s cold gaze locked onto the flames growing higher around Mark, and as the others rushed past him, he smirked. “Fantastic! As if one Shadow of fire wasn’t enough!” Whirling about, he glared at Kip, who rushed from the back to see what everyone was looking at.
Kip hesitated long and hard before passing Sil, his hands forming into fists before he, like everyone else, crowded the elevator. Mark only saw this silent exchange before a third girl got into his face, getting far closer than anyone else in spite of the flames overtaking his form. “Are you all right?” she asked, forcing Mark to look into her Irish, emerald eyes.
The light in her eyes blocked out everything for a
second, but Mark still shuddered, staring blankly at the girl’s pale skin and thin red hair. All their eyes were unnatural, attempting to draw him in, and for a second, Mark was able to make out thirty inhuman eyes all staring at him. “G-get away!”
Thrusting his hands out, he tried to push them, but seeing the fire he clasped his hands against his chest, struggling to contain the flames and not hurt them. “You’re Shadows?” he breathed, unable to summon his voice. Shadows were horrifying monsters, creatures with endless powers they could never control. These were kids his age.
Suddenly, in a flash of green mist, a Shadow appeared next to the green-eyed girl with another ginger who could have been her sister. “A human?” she wondered aloud with a foreign accent in her voice. “What’s he doing here, Elise?”
“No, not human,” Elise said, then gestured at him. “See his eyes?”
He briefly looked up, but cowered when he saw them all staring, trying to catch a glance at his eyes. What was wrong with his eyes?
He couldn’t face them. Drawing his knees closer to his chest and trying to convince himself he wasn’t surrounded by Shadows.
One of the girls neared him, pushing past the others with a gentle fluid motion. Her thick brunette hair flowed in waves around her face, her oceanic-blue eyes mesmerizing Mark for they were far less inhuman other than the fact they seemed huge.
He sank into those eyes like deep water, oblivious to her smile and her kind gestures as she murmured, “What’s your name?” A sweet touch spread cool water over his hands, the orbs of water enveloped the fire, enclosing it before putting it out.
He still shuddered as he struggled to take his gaze from hers. His mouth dry, he found he was able to speak only in a hoarse breath. “Mark Halo…but I’m not sure anymore.” He attempted to wipe away a few tears, but they kept coming and he lost interest in trying to stop them.