I Become Shadow

by Joe Shine

  Not-Beth looked at the syringe. She sighed and placed the needle back down. She shifted her body slightly and then finally looked directly at me. Her eyes were green, like mine.

  “I’m not trying to kill you,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly strong, considering her seemingly shy demeanor. “None of us are. You’re safe here.”

  Safe? I feel anything but safe.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “That’s not my place to say. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “But …”

  She made the slightest of eye motions toward the corner and whispered, “There’s always someone watching, listening.”

  My panicked eyes flashed over her shoulder, focusing on a small camera pointing right at us. She quietly continued, “I can’t tell you what you want to know. Not now.”

  She picked up the needle again.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “There’s a technical term for it. But we call it fire.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’re about to find that out,” she said.

  I turned my head as she slid the giant needle into my arm. Searing pain surged through me on contact, intensifying the farther into my bloodstream it went. I tried to scream but the torture was too much. I clenched my jaw. Time slowed to a standstill.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll understand soon enough.” Not-Beth left, and outside the door I heard her say, “She’s ready. Take her to her room.”

  Two beefy guards unstrapped me from the chair. I wanted to fight them off and run. But there was only agony. My body began to vibrate and spasm. Whatever she’d injected continued to spread in waves. Each new jolt of pain was more excruciating than the previous. I felt like I was burning alive from the inside out. Fire. The word echoed through my head. Not-Beth had lied to me, I was sure of it. This was how it was going to end.

  When the two guards plopped me into a wheelchair, I let them, though every touch felt like hot coals on my skin.

  I wondered where they were taking me. Was this the plan all along? Inject me with some poison and then take bets on how long I’d live? It couldn’t be long. I kept waiting to black out but never did.

  They pushed me through a maze of hallways and into at least two elevators. Even thinking seemed to hurt now. I could hear the unmistakable sound of others, all around me, crying in pain. It filled my ears. I tried to shut it all out. I closed my eyes. I mentally began to say goodbye to my life. My family, my friends. It was over.

  And then I was being lifted out of the chair by the guards. Their hands were like hot pokers on my skin. I opened my eyes as I was carried into a dark room. I couldn’t make out anything in particular since the lights were off. All I remember is they laid me down on what felt like a bed and left.

  THE DING OF AN alarm woke me up. Whether I’d fallen asleep or passed out, I couldn’t remember. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that there wasn’t hope; it wasn’t all a bad dream. The blanket and pillow didn’t feel right, smell right. I wasn’t home.

  At least I wasn’t dead, which I took as a small victory.

  I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a grey cinder-block wall. All at once I was energized, panicked again. I jumped to my feet and ran across a cold linoleum floor toward the door. I banged on it as hard as I could, screaming for help, fresh tears falling. But the rush of activity made me dizzy and I stumbled back to the bed and sat down on the edge. My whole body was sore but I didn’t feel like I was burning alive anymore. I had scabs on my palms from where my nails had dug in. Lovely.

  I took a look around at my new digs. A single ceiling light illuminated the room, my room. Not-Beth had called it my room, but let’s be honest here. It was ten by ten feet, tops. Cinder-block walls painted asylum grey, a tiny bed, a toilet-sink combo with the sink above the toilet water tank, and a desk. All of this does not a “room” make. I’d seen enough TV to know a prison cell when I saw one. So why was I in prison?

  Folded neatly on the desk was a stack of yellow clothes. Realizing I was still wearing a hospital gown and nothing else, clothes seemed like a good idea. I slowly stood up on sore, wobbly legs and crossed my room to the overly fluorescent yellow pile.

  Strangely, at that moment, all I could think of was how horrible I looked in yellow. I had jet-black hair with orange freckles and I rarely saw the sun. Yellow and I were not pals but bitter fashion enemies. But since I was cold and being practically naked was uncomfortable, I began to get dressed. On the plus side, there was no mirror to be found.

  Yellow underwear. Yellow sports bra. Yellow shorts and tank top. And a nice set of yellow warm-up pants with (you guessed it) a yellow jacket. Even the socks and shoes were yellow. I looked like a giant French’s mustard bottle. Clothed and warm, I felt slightly safer. I brushed my teeth with an unlabeled tube of toothpaste and tried to break through the tangles in my hair with a generic brush, but I lost that battle. With nothing else to do, I sat back down on my bed just trying to keep it together. The down comforter sank around me. I wanted to curl up and shut down again, but something told me not to. Something told me to be aware, to be ready.

  My ears hummed from the silence. I tried to think of a single reason for what had happened to me and how it would end. But I couldn’t. So I stared at the door doing what I do best, zoning out. There I was, Ms. Mustard, a broken human clock ticking toward something truly horrible. What that was, I didn’t know. I just knew I wanted to be ready when it came.

  “Good morning, I hope you slept well.”

  The smooth male voice came from nowhere, from everywhere. I snapped out of the haze and jumped to my feet.

  “Who’s there?!!?” I shouted.

  It was a silly question.

  “I see the clothes fit well. Good.”

  I looked around for the source. My eyes spotted a small speaker in the ceiling above the door, placed next to an even tinier camera, focused right on me. They’d probably watched me change. Violated again.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Please, help me.”

  Mr. Speakervoice continued, “I am sure you are bursting with questions, my dear, most of which will be answered now.”

  Directly to my left a cinder block slid out from the wall like a dresser drawer and stopped. Inside, resting on velvety black fabric, was what looked like a pair of clear plastic sunglasses.

  “The answers to all of your questions will be found when you put those on. We’ll speak again once you are finished. Hurry along now, there’s no time to waste.”

  Eager for answers, I didn’t think much past getting them. I didn’t wonder if this was a test. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Besides, if they had wanted to kill me they would have done so by now. The injection had proved that. I got up, walked over to the wall, and picked up the glasses. They seemed to have no weight to them whatsoever. I raised them to my face and put them on.

  I CAN’T DO THE experience justice. It was like watching eight different movies all at the same time, and at one hundred times the speed. But strangely, when it was finished, I somehow understood everything I had seen and knew exactly where I was and why. Overwhelmed, I pulled the glasses off and managed to stumble back to my bed before completely losing my balance and eating it onto the mattress. As I fought the nausea, I began processing what I had learned. I took comfort in the knowledge that they really weren’t going to [insert circumstances of my horrible murder here].

  Because the irony? The best bit of info I got from those super specs was that apparently I was dead. Or, I guessed, would have been soon. Had I not been so rudely taken from my bed I would have died shortly thereafter. How did I know this? How did they know this? Because my grave said so, silly.

  IN 1992, A HOTSHOT NASA scientist designed a satellite that was supposed to be able to take super high-resolution photos of whatever part of the Earth it happened to be over at the time. We’re talking read-the-paper-from-space close-ups here. Anyway, the satellite took the photo of what
ever it was pointed at all right, but the pictures were not of the present. The pictures that were taken were of 2042.

  Minds were blown, jaws dropped, large bonus checks were given out, yada, yada, yada. And with the ability to see the world fifty years in the future, they knew who was important, who was not, and, in my case, who was dead. In 2042, my gravestone said I died when I was fourteen. Thus I was volunteered for what was named the Shadow Program.

  As terrifying as my new reality was, all locked up here against my will, I guess it was better than death, right? And I wasn’t alone, which was comforting. The moans and groans I had heard the night before were from hundreds of other fourteen-year-olds who, like me, would have been dead had we not been taken.

  Every year a fresh batch of the not-quite-dead-yet were snatched for training to protect the future leaders of tomorrow: a FIP, as we know them. We would make sure those leaders remained as safe as possible while still living the lives that would define them, that would shape them into whoever they were to become that was so damn important. We would be trained to be their protectors. To shadow their every move and breath. To keep things simple, probably, we were called Shadows.

  Now don’t get me wrong: understanding one’s situation and accepting it is not the same thing. But with the other option being death, even a crappy situation like this is a step up.

  I was now at the official headquarters of the Shadow Program, a facility known as the FATE Center. The acronym stood for Future Affairs Training and Education. It was beyond classified, beyond secret. It was unknown, even among intelligence agencies like the CIA. Only heads-of-state and their most inner circle knew, the kind of people who could shuffle funds around. The entire operation was funded by them, by every major government in the world. All had agreed that the future had to be protected. All were willing to not only pay in cash, but also to allow the periodic kidnapping of soon-to-be-dead teens for the program. The price you pay for the future safety of your best and brightest.

  To make sure no government held sway over the program, a new international agency was created. This agency had no allegiance to any country and answered to no one but its members. Donor governments had collapsed since its founding, but the agency remained. It was unique in world history, its own entity. An extremely powerful one at that.

  With nothing else to do, I lay there in my bed, working through the information dump. Man, I wish I’d known my old life would end. My texting record seemed a rather colossal waste of time now. I should have gone for 1000. I also didn’t like that my life was suddenly not my own. But the worst part about it was that there was no escape, except maybe dying (again). There wasn’t even a whiff of hope, the dream that some super-secret group could find me and free me. This was the super-secret group. It was the end of the line.

  “Feeling better?” asked my old friend Mr. Speakervoice. “Now please sit up and listen carefully to what I am about to say.”

  I shot the camera a go-f***-yourself glance before I sat up. I knew they weren’t going to kill me, so maybe that was why I suddenly felt braver than I should have.

  He continued, “Precisely thirty seconds after I am finished speaking, the door to your room will open. Please exit and follow the markers toward the Echo room. The correct path will be obvious. Do not stray off course or attempt to escape. Any deviation from the path will result in severe punishment. Chin up, back straight. You have nothing to fear if you behave.”

  The door slid open.

  I knew I should stand. But my body was unwilling or unable to move. Then I saw something. Someone. A boy.

  He was much taller than me but dressed in the same lovely, stylish yellow. It didn’t look too terrible against his tan skin and blond hair. He moved down the hallway, too afraid or too focused, so he didn’t give me a second glance. He was followed by another boy, and then another. A girl, petite and gerbil-like, soon followed them. She looked scared out of her mind, like me. Her eyes connected with mine for a half-second, but she scampered on. I wanted to will myself to stand but my body was not cooperating. What would happen if I never got up? Could I just go home? As if reading my mind, a hulking figure in black police riot gear stepped in front of my door. In his right hand he held a baton. That was all it took. Finally on my feet, I urged myself to walk. I approached the door one small step at a time.

  His muffled voice said, “Good choice.” He then strode off down the hall.

  Flashing rows of soft green lights were telling me to go left and follow the others. But every fiber in my being was telling me to go right. Following the lights meant admitting that I was supposed to be here. Heading against the lights represented the chance of going home. They’re wrong, I told myself. You aren’t supposed to be here. I had to try, didn’t I?

  A yellow blur sprinted past me, heading in the opposite direction. A fairly large boy in total panic mode. He ran like a child, reckless and awkward. I wanted to join him, and others were pausing to watch him go. You could tell they had the same thought.

  WHAM!

  From behind a doorway a metal baton slammed into his chest, hitting him so hard he did a complete backflip. Unseen hands dragged his limp body from the hall and the door hissed shut.

  Needless to say, the thoughts of fleeing vanished. Maybe that was the point of such a brutal display. Maybe it had been planned; maybe the boy had been planted here to do it. Either way, it worked. The door to my room slid shut behind me.

  No one spoke as we walked. I wondered what they were feeling. My legs shook with every step. It took most of my concentration not to fall over, but I managed to keep upright and moving. I guessed there were at least twenty kids in front of me and another twenty behind me. But who knew how many more there were, in how many other hallways, on how many levels?

  But there was no point in wondering anything. I followed the flashing lights toward wherever and whatever this Echo room was.

  CHAPTER 5

  WELCOME TO YOUR NEW LIFE

  The long walk helped calm my mind down. They weren’t going to kill me if I obeyed. I was going to be okay. The realization didn’t quite rid me of all my fear, but it did help me relax a little.

  A pair of massive double doors hissed open on a cavernous room, bigger and more intimidating than anything I’d expected. Wall to wall it was probably 500 feet across. Giant, and I mean giant, LCD screens adorned the walls like wallpaper. Satellite images, news displays, and an array of global camera feeds flooded the monitors. The entire place was pitch black, save for the screens and what looked like hundreds of little half-bubbles hovering about eight feet off the ground. Each bubble shot a perfect three-foot circle of blinding white light on the floor. Within each circle was a name. Our names. Or so I presumed when I saw mine.

  I noticed that the first boy, the blond I’d spotted in line, was cautiously tiptoeing his way under one of the strange bubbles to my right. The name read Junie Miller. I think a lot of people were watching his progress with interest. This Junie kid was a lot braver than any of the rest of us, for sure.

  I don’t know what we expected to happen to him. I know I was half expecting blow darts to come screaming down from some exotic booby trap above like in a treasure-hunting movie. But without incident Junie stepped right into his circle of light. As if confirming his identity, the light changed from blinding white to a mellow blue.

  I looked around as the rest of the mustard army followed his lead and began to find their places. Our names were arranged alphabetically by surname—at least those in the alphabet I recognized. Every language in the world seemed to be represented. It was easy to lose your place.

  Rennes Sharpe.

  I closed my eyes and stepped in.

  “Well done, Ren,” said Mr. Speakervoice.

  How he knew my nickname was a bit unnerving, but then again, should I have been surprised given the circumstances? Not really. I opened my eyes. The soft blue light had turned my drab yellow outfit a nice green. Go primary color wheel. Wait, is the internal joke I j
ust made a telltale sign I am coming to grips with it all?

  “I told you there was nothing to fear.” His familiar voice was almost comforting.

  I looked up into the bubble. I had seen the poor man’s version of this at a local electronics store. I glanced around to see the other kids looking up and quickly realized that Mr. Speakervoice was cheating on me. He was speaking with the others, too. It was pathetic, I know, but I felt a little pang. I really was just another calf for the slaughter and not unique at all. My guardian angel, looking out for me and guiding me, was a glorified Speak & Spell.

  “Please wait patiently while the others find their places. You’re doing very well.”

  My legs were still shaking from nerves. I tried to keep still but suddenly I lost my balance and took a big step to my left to keep from falling. Half of me was suddenly outside the bubble. There was nothing but silence outside of it, but almost instantaneously my cool blue light turned red—

  Pain.

  Electricity shot up into my feet and through my body, riveting me to the floor. I tried to jump back but I was frozen like a statue. Five seconds passed, maybe ten (though it seemed a heck of a lot longer), and it stopped. I immediately stepped back under my bubble, and the light returned to blue.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whispered to anyone and no one.

  I looked around, expecting that hulking guard to come pummel me with his baton, or worse yet, for them to crank up the power on whatever shocked me. But it didn’t happen.

  Mr. Speakervoice said, “Please do not leave your assigned spot, Ms. Sharpe. The consequences won’t be so pleasant next time.”

  And then I saw it. We all did.

  In walked that boy who had tried to run. My stomach bottomed out at the sight of him. Streaks of blood came out of his right ear, both nostrils, and his bottom lip. His left eye was swollen completely shut. He walked gingerly, not necessarily with a pronounced limp, but as if his whole body hurt and every step was agony.