by Shaye Easton
With a bang, the man’s forehead is blown open. I scream and stumble away. Did I do that? But no, I couldn’t have. My gun lies a few feet away by the dead man’s side, where I dropped it. I lift my eyes.
That’s when I see Caden. He lowers his gun and steps around the man, stopping beside me. I stare at him, horrified, afraid, relieved.
“So you wouldn’t have to,” he says softly.
“He didn’t have to die.” I sob.
Caden nods sombrely. “Yes, he did.”
“What are you doing?!” Elodie screams our way, in the midst of fighting off a pack of underwalkers. “Goddammit, Caden, get her out of here!”
Caden nods once and grabs my arm. “Let’s go.”
We run forward. We’re halfway to the exit, but it feels a hundred miles away. With every bang, I duck, my heart jumping in my chest. I have to be careful not to trip over any of the fleshy obstacles littering the foyer floor. But I try not to think too much about what it is I’m jumping over and around. It’s hard to see them clearly through the tears and for that I’m grateful.
We come up on Kathryn and Rand just as a barrage of bright, sparking gunshots assail us from behind. They miss, but I can feel the force of them around me, displacing the air and blowing it back towards me like a series of smacks.
Kathryn has a hand on her side. She’s managed to keep fighting but now she sags into Rand. A lightning bullet blows straight past them, too close for comfort. Another half catches Rand in the wrist, leaving a burnt, bloodied patch on his forearm. The shots keep coming. It’s only a matter of time before one lands its target.
“Go!’ I’m screaming now, terror gripping my heart with sharpened claws. “Run! You have to run!”
Rand catches sight of the underwalkers behind Caden and me. He wraps Kathryn’s free arm over his shoulders. I tug free of Caden, stopping to aid them, but Rand waves me on. “Don’t wait for us! Go!” When I don’t move, he shoves me forward.
Caden grabs my wrist, eyes pleading and pained. “Melissa, come on.”
“We can’t leave them here to die,” I yell, just as another crackling bullet shoots over my head. Everyone ducks.
“Yes, you can!” Rand says. “You have to.” There’s a reminder in his eyes: your life counts for many, remember?
He means all the deaths I’m meant to avert as the Final Prophet. But I have no powers. And even when I did, I never particularly felt like a saviour. I felt like a failure. The idea that all these people I don’t know are relying on me is too abstract, too unreachable.
But there is one life I know for a fact is tied to mine: the life I came here to save.
Sara’s.
If I don’t make it out of here alive, she dies. Just the thought of it is enough to make me sick with guilt. And it’s this that finally gets me going.
“GO!” Rand shouts again, and I allow Caden to tug me towards the exit. Several underwalkers move into our path, guns raised. In a flash of golden light, they’re all shot down.
Elodie comes up behind us, a couple other overwalkers in tow. “Keep moving,” she shouts. “We’ll cover your backs.”
So we do. By this point, I’m out of breath and my steps are unsure and shaky. I’m stumbling forward, tripping over myself, gasping, pushing onwards. The room is so loud it becomes white noise in my ears. My heartbeat rises above it, a heavy thumping in my chest and brain.
I see the exit up ahead. It’s not the side door we entered through but the main entrance—a large roller door made of painted steel. The grey paint is peeling and the metal beneath is red with rust. It’s closed, but I don’t let myself worry about that yet. First, we have to make it there. As we get closer to it with every step, I feel my hope swell.
But then Davion materialises in front of us, in front of the door, along with Newman. Immediately we come to a halt. My heart sinks.
“Did you really think you’d make it out?” he asks, and somehow his voice is louder than all the chaos in the room. He raises a hand and the shots raining down on us cease.
“Let her go, Davion,” Caden says. “We both know she’s not meant to die here.”
He smiles, lips spread thinly. “Who said anything about letting her die? Melissa can go with you right now, if she wants.” He steps to the side, gesturing to the exit with an arm. Neither of us move. And here comes the catch, delivered with uncharacteristic sincerity and care: “But I wouldn’t be so sure that she does.”
“What are you talking about?” Caden says quickly. My own mouth pops open as thoughts swirl around my brain, frenziedly trying to figure out what he means.
“Ask her.”
Slowly, Caden turns to me, brows knitted together in an expression that’s as worried as it is confused. “What is he saying?”
I shake my head, my thoughts still buzzing. But I don’t need to figure it out, not really. I already know. I just won’t admit it to myself.
“Melissa? Why would he say that?”
Somehow, Davion has picked up on my deepest thoughts and feelings. Now, he unravels them for me.
Softly, he says, “She’s afraid of you.”
“That’s not true,” I retort.
Davion raises his eyebrows, his mouth popping open as if forming an Oh!. “She speaks.” He steps back into our path, blocking our exit once more. “Unfortunately, Melissa, it is true, and you know it.”
I’m shaking my head at him, at the thought of agreeing with him, at the thought of him being right.
“You’ve terrified her,” Davion says loudly to Caden. “She hates the world you’ve shown her. She’s traumatised by the blood. And you can’t even see it.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“Of course, I can. It’s obvious.” He rests his gaze on me once more. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
I’m still shaking my head. But he’s touched on a truth I’ve been holding inside myself for some time. When everything was explained to me, it was made clear that the overwalkers are a force for good and the underwalkers a force for evil. But now I’ve watched Kira strangle her friends. I’ve witnessed Sara, a human raised under spectre influence, ruthlessly massacre a room. Elodie, Kathryn and Rand have all killed in front of me without a second thought. Even Caden, who just now blew in a dying man’s head, a life that could have been spared or saved, extinguished right in front of me without a second thought.
Most horrifying of all is their influence on me. I shot a man in the gut. I nearly murdered him in cold blood.
The truth is they’re both bad. Both underwalkers and overwalkers have been gifted power and both have used those powers to hurt each other and kill needlessly.
“They’re murderers, Melissa,” Davion continues, throwing my own words back at me. “They kill because it’s in their nature. It’s who they are.”
“That’s bullshit,” Caden shouts. “You’re just trying to turn her to your side.”
Davion laughs. “Haven’t you been listening at all? She’s already picked a side, and it sure as hell isn’t mine. I’m just here to ensure she realises it isn’t your side either.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! There are only two sides.”
“Is there? Her choice was never overwalker or underwalker. It was spectre or human. I’m not stupid enough to persuade her to join me, not when she hasn’t yet decided to join us.”
And there it is: the play buried amongst the wise words. I’ll do anything for my friends, and Davion knows that. But he also knows that my goodwill doesn’t extend into the spectre community at large. Somehow, he knows what I think of them, how much I dislike them, how much I fear them. And he’s using that to turn me against everyone, to push me out of the game.
Caden is silent beside me, processing. Davion says, “Any semblance of good is just a mirage, Melissa. At the end of the day, they’ve no consideration for human life. All they care about is their own. There are no overwalkers.” When Davion delivers the line from my nightmares, I feel the blood drain from my bod
y. He couldn’t possibly know that I’d already heard him say it. Somehow, this just makes it all worse. “There are only underwalkers who play nice. But they don’t really care, not like you do.”
I know what he’s doing, but he makes a scary sort of sense, like he’s speaking to my deepest fears. As much as I tell myself that it’s not true, I can’t help the part of me which worries it is.
“That’s such crap, Davion.”
Elodie emerges from the riot behind us, dark hair wet with sweat and blood. Her eyes are fierce and unwavering and sharp like knives.
“Elodie Mora,” Davion says with a smile.
“You slimy bastard. Spurting lies again, I see.”
“Maybe,” he admits. “But we both know lies are most effective when they’re mixed with truth.”
“What truth?”
“Should I tell her or should you?”
Elodie crosses her arms. “Please, go ahead. I’m interested to see what you come up with.”
Davion’s lips curl like she’s led him exactly where he wanted to be. “It’s really quite a fun tale. You see, Melissa, your biological mother Kathryn used to have a husband. His name was Michael and he grew up an underwalker. After meeting my sister, however, he converted around the same time I did—funny how things pan out.”
“Does this monologue have a point?” Elodie interrupts impatiently. And I understand why. Even Davion’s story can’t keep my attention off the roars of the fight behind us. Every now and then, someone screams, and it makes my blood run cold.
“The point is Michael’s dead.” His eyes are on me now, dark and uncomfortably sympathetic. “Your real father is dead, Melissa. And guess who killed him?”
“Okay,” Elodie snaps curtly, “that’s enough.”
“Oh,” he says, amused, “so now you don’t want to hear what I have to say?”
“I already know what you’re going to say. And it’s not the truth.”
Davion looks at me. “They killed him, Melissa. These people you consider your allies, your friends. They’re murderers. If it’s that easy for them to turn on their own, imagine what they’d do to your human friends. Imagine what they’d do to y—”
There’s a burst of light, like a giant match swiping over the face of the building and igniting. It sets the walls aglow, filling in the shadows with bright gold. Elodie stands at the source, her features washed out and brilliant, her arms extended, palms out. The light shoots across the room, sending shadows dancing over the walls. In the instant before it hits its target, several things happen: Davion’s face drains of colour; Newman launches forward, slapping a hand onto Davion’s shoulder; the surrounding underwalkers run, or freeze, the light reflecting in their eyes, a sea of nocturnal animals caught in the snare of headlights, staring down their death; and both Davion and Newman wink out of existence, as if they’d never been there.
Then the energy slams into the wall with a gigantic boom and the effect is similar to that of a detonated bomb. The windows burst outwards, shatter into thousands of diamond-like pieces. The ground shakes, rumbling underfoot, a vibration that carries up into my body, jolting my bones. The very wall ripples, a wave of plaster and brick rolling out from the source; and at the centre, the energy explodes. Fire, brick and dust hurtling outwards, creating a deadly wave of matter and heat. The force crashes into my body and I shoot backwards, arms flung to the sides, legs tumbling overhead. The world spins and I see flashes of brick, of arms and legs, of metal, glass and fire.
My back smashes into something hard, my head hits brick, and then the world around me crumbles. Chunks of the ceiling and walls topple down. The long boxlike light fixtures hit the floor in explosions of glass and fire. Something lands on my arm and I cry out in horror as I feel something or several somethings snap under the pressure. Fire strokes my legs, licks up my shins with an angry tongue. Smoke and dust permeate the air, making it near impossible to breathe. I choke and gag as the building continues to collapse around me, and then a shadow passes over my eyes, like the hand of death, come to take me at last. I have one last second of sight in which I see nothing but smoke. Then I tumble head-first into oblivion.
Chapter Forty
Choking.
I’m choking.
The smoke gushes into my lungs, filling them up like charcoal paste, triggering a violent bout of coughing and spluttering as I awake to a new world. One made of dust, fire and rubble. I try to sit up but my arm tugs me back down roughly. The room spins. I glance sideways to see that a chunk of concrete has landed on my forearm. My other arm is brightly scarlet, a deep gash extending from my elbow to just before my armpit. As I use it to shove away the rubble, it bleeds even more, dark, thick blood gurgling from the hole and soaking through my torn clothes.
I flop back down onto my back after I’ve freed my arm, taking in huge, gasping breaths. Even still, I can’t get enough oxygen. It’s just smoke. My whole body feels like it’s been hit with a giant meat tenderiser and I grit my teeth to stop from audibly sobbing. Tears well in my eyes as my situation crashes down over me—as I remember that I possess no regeneration, no miraculous healing—but I force them back. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself; I have to get out of here.
I edge up using my right arm, first onto my elbow, then using my hand I heave myself into a sitting position. My left arm feels broken and I hug it to my chest as I try to stand. The lower half of my legs look burnt and blistered through the ragged and singed holes of my pants. Dizziness washes over me as I adjust to standing. If my head was throbbing like banging it on the wall earlier, then now it’s hammering.
All around me, thick, pungent smoke clouds the air, limiting my sight to only a few metres. I stumble through the haze, stepping over and around huge chunks of plaster and brick, exposed pipe and sparking wire. There’s no sound— nothing except the ringing in my ears, high-pitched and monotonous.
I move ever slowly forward. A light breeze presses up against my side and I turn towards it, following it up to where soft grey light seeps through the haze. I have to climb over several large chunks of concrete to get there. My movements are still wobbly and uncertain, and I scrape my calf against the rough edge of a rock while trying to step up. But the closer I get, the more the smoke and dust seems to clear, blown back by an incoming draft. Several steps later and I can finally see. My eyes grow wide.
Before me lies the front-facing wall of the building, not that you can call it a wall anymore. Elodie’s little golden bomb ripped a giant hole straight through the middle. The hole towers almost three stories high and extends far to each side. Its base is littered with massive chunks of concrete and brick, along with shards of razor-sharp glass and singed metal. The edges of the hole are crumbling and rough with severed pipes and wires, protruding outwards like deformed and craggy hands. There are even chunks of concrete dangling from electrical wires, eternally a few moments or one strong breeze away from snapping and crunching whichever unfortunate soul happened to be below. I look up and see that the damage has extended to the ceiling, and that the front half of the next level has collapsed.
For a moment I just stand there, taking it all in. The ringing in my ears has softened, enough for me to able to hear above it. The siren has at last fallen silent, and despite the sounds of gushing water and shifting rubble, the ruins are quiet. A horrible thought materialises in my mind: What if I’m the only one who survived? I look down and spot a dusty arm poking out from beneath the rubble and the thought sinks its hooks in deeper. Suddenly, all I can see is blood. I see it splashed against the rocks. I see limbs poking out from the ruins. I wasn’t looking for it before, but now I find it everywhere: the mark of death.
I stumble down and away, my stomach revolting against whatever food it still contains, praying to god that the limbs don’t belong to anyone I know. But still, I’m panicking. Caden was right beside me. What if I just got lucky? What if he’s—
“Caden,” I croak, coughing as I inhale a large amount of smoke. I fin
d my voice. “Caden!”
I may very well be signalling my location to ever breathing underwalker in the vicinity, but I don’t care. I’m bleeding, broken and powerless. If they want me they can have me, but I have to find Caden first. I need to make sure he’s okay.
“Caden, where are you?” I splutter, choking on the words as they leave my throat. “Caden?! Ca—”A hand wraps around my mouth from behind. My eyes bulge as my back hits the fleshy wall of someone else’s body. But instead of strangling or stabbing me as I’m expecting, she spin me around. It’s Kathryn, looking dishevelled and dirty, a thick coating of ash and dust over her face. It’s in her hair as well, colouring the dark blonde strands a white-grey.
Once I’ve calmed down, she releases her grip on my mouth, moving the hand to my shoulder. “Caden’s not here,” she whispers harshly. “He’s already gone outside.”
This doesn’t make any sense to my fuzzy brain. “How—”
“You need to do the same,” she says, cutting me off again. “Get out of here. Be quiet. There are underwalkers everywhere.”
She pushes me forward, towards the light. I look back at her. “What about you?”
“I have to help my people.”
Then she disappears into the smoke, and I’m left feeling like I just had an encounter with a ghost.
In the end, I’m too out-of-sorts to do anything but what she says. I certainly don’t disagree with her. I hate it here. The air is two-parts smoke and only one-part oxygen, and my lungs are paying for it. I’m certain that at any moment I’m going to start coughing up blood.
Now I’m also afraid; paranoid, you might say. I spin around, eyes wide and stinging from the smoke, scanning the fog for danger. Her warning circles in my mind: There are underwalkers everywhere. I haven’t seen any, but now that I’ve been alerted, the hairs stand up on my arms, goose bumps riddling my body, the back of my neck burning with eyes I can’t see. I can feel them around me though, moving through the smoke and dust. It’s like a sixth sense.