World Shift

by K. Gorman

  To her right, someone shouted. Then screamed.

  Her eyes shot open. Was something wrong? Had her light done something? Overloaded it somehow? She took a step back, holding the light steady, aware of people running in the backdrop, and more shouts.

  A second wave of dizziness slammed into her. This time, when her skin tingled, nausea coursed through her system. She doubled over with a hiss. Hands caught her as she staggered. Her skin crawled, as if there were a layer between it and her that was threatening to separate. The same sensation hit her inside, then crawled up her spine and shoulders to slide into her brain. The tell-tale sound of distant rain came to her.

  Her eyes widened. It’s starting.

  As the rain rushed toward her, she ripped her goggles down and forced herself to look up. The sky had darkened, the disc of an eclipse blotting out the sun. Two bands threaded into existence across the sky, curving with the atmosphere. The tingling intensified as the black screamed across the sky like blots and swirls of ink, creating itself. The stars twinkled beyond. For a second, she watched them, caught between one moment and the next, unable to breathe.

  Then the world blinked out in a rush of static.

  She yelled, fighting against the sensation, struggling to find herself as she seemed to fall—then it was gone, and the world was back.

  Screams and shouts rang around her, along with the sound of pounding feet. Blasters cracked, accompanied by the strobe-flash of their shots. The device was dead, dark, the only light left being smeared remains of her power floating in the air like strange, disoriented streaks.

  Someone was hauling her backward, their wrists under her arms, her legs limp and dragging on the concrete, leaving the device behind. As she realized this, she panicked and kicked out, lashing out against whoever held her, then realized it was David who’d grabbed her. As the shouts and blasterfire continued, he helped her to her feet, steadying her when she staggered, and pulled her toward the rooftop door.

  There was a loud scrape. She jerked her head around just in time to catch movement through the beacon’s unlit glass before something smashed into it from behind. A shrieking growl rose up, keening into the air, coinciding with and drowning out another shout. She spotted Baik sprinting around the side of the device, his blaster raised, and a shot streaked forward, vanished behind the mirrors of the beacon, and reappeared in a shower of sparks that cut off the thing’s shriek. As the monster’s head appeared, lurching forward from where it had slammed into the device, its scythe-like protrusion becoming visible at its side, she recognized it as the same type as last night.

  Her stomach gave a churn as its head turned to Dr. Lang, looking vulnerable and alone from where he stood in the middle of the roof among the chairs of bound Lost, staring at the beast.

  No.

  “Run!” she screamed, watching in horror as the creature gathered itself, all but ignoring the blaster rounds that seemed to skip off its thick, undulating skin—had it grown stronger? Adapted itself? “Get away!”

  The low gurgle of its keen overtook her voice. As it shot forward, she raised her hand, light brimming at a thought. A new wave of dizziness staggered through her, but she forced herself to shoot it off.

  It smacked across the creature’s face in a glob. Its scream changed, hyping into a wispy, huffing whine that rang at her ears. It bowled into three chairs of Lost, knocking them down and trampling over them, one foreleg going up to scratch at the light on its face like a dog with a load of porcupine quills in its snout.

  Dr. Lang stumbled sideways, finally moving. Relieved, Karin reeled, gasping her breath back into her throat.

  But, as she turned to face the door again, pulled along by David who was shouting something into her ear, another series of screams—not the monster behind her—rose into the night.

  At the edge of her vision, more Shadows molded up and over the edge of the rooftop, joining the others. Three came up on the side of the roof closest to her. Even without seeing their heads, she could feel their attention turn to her with a hungry, aggressive hiss. Sentinels sent to take her down.

  They hit the ground and sprinted, lightning-fast.

  Sol’s fucking child. She took a breath as she faced their rush. Time seemed to pause as her light reappeared in fragments, slipping and darting around her like fish or tadpoles, liquid-like drops of it blurring into fuzzy glows. She stepped forward and slashed her hand through the air like a horizontal sword strike.

  The scene flashed white, like sheet-lightning on steroids. Her breath caught. For a moment, she heard the turn of her heartbeat.

  Then a series of howls and metallic shrieks split the air. A band of burning light popped up against the creatures’ chests, holding them in line like an impassable, burning race ribbon, popping where her light made contact with her dark.

  Time returned to normal. Her breath continued, shaky. The dull roar in her head ebbed into something quieter. Her heart beat on. Soldiers moved in her peripheries. With the power cut, her light made for the only source of illumination for the whole rooftop, leaving large parts of it in dim shadow.

  She held out her hand, plying her light. The ends of it grew, adding on as she focused, and she turned them onto themselves, threading in toward the back of the creatures—if she could surround them, maybe she could kill them, like she’d done to the one earlier, except they were more spread out than she liked, having come from different directions. And, as shouts started up again in the dark beyond the creatures, she realized that, whatever else she might try, they were fast losing the battle against these things.

  Baik also seemed to be realizing that. As Dr. Lang ducked by her, jostling her on his way to the door behind her, Baik strode around the edge of her light construct, taking another few shots into the dark part of the rooftop before turning and making a wild, waving gesture to David. “Get her inside! Now!”

  “What? No—I can help! I’m helping!” She put another surge into her power, holding the creatures off.

  But, just as he jogged by, a fourth creature snarled from the back and slammed into her barrier. Remnants of the glob she’d hurled at it earlier stuck like glowing, hissing flecks across its face, and part of its skin seemed to have burned off, revealing a sickly wet structure of black and red flesh beneath. It screamed, a noise that turned into a half-psychic howl that rang across her brain and shoved against her light which bubbled against its chest in a hot burn. Its scythe-limbs flared wide as it dug in, claws scratching audibly at the ground. She felt her light bend.

  A blaster bolt to its eye distracted it. As it recoiled, Baik fired again, then sprinted for her. David pulled on her elbow, hauling her back. A scent of burned flesh rose into the air.

  That’s when she noticed how quiet things had gotten. The shouts from the rest of the rooftop had ceased. As David pulled her back, she caught glimpses of movement in the dark, coming toward her. Baik and another soldier joined them, and another set of hands hauled her back. Her feet tripped over the lip of the door, and she blinked as the anemic tube-lighting of the stairwell washed over her like a breath of stillness. Footsteps rang out against metal.

  Before the door shut, she caught a glimpse of one of the Lost, sitting nearest to the entryway, still bound in his chair. His head and shoulders were turned around, black eyes staring at her, unblinking.

  Chapter 19

  The stairwell passed in a blur of racing concrete walls and pounding boots. She tripped more than once, felt hands yank her upright, urge her on. Baik was by her side, along with David and two soldiers who had been coming up the stairs when the attack happened. She sucked in breaths and kept moving, grabbing at everything she could to balance herself as her head reeled.

  Sharp pain stabbed through her ankle when she rolled it on the next stair, stumbling again. Light flickered on the backs of her hands as she struggled to haul herself back up. Hands grabbed her once more, harder this time, more urgent. She rebounded off the next wall and, ignoring the second flash of pain, lunged for
the next flight.

  Behind and above, the creatures slammed into the metal door with a series of loud bangs. It rattled, part of its metal making a loud shriek.

  Remembering how those things had cut through the metal of the beacon, she urged herself faster. She jumped the last three stairs, landed hard, and sprinted for the hall. The pain dissipated as her shoes pounded against the hallway’s resin surface. She rocketed forward, keeping pace with Baik, her breath coming loud and fast to her ears.

  A loud crash came from behind them. Metal screamed, shrieked, ground against something—and then fell silent. Rapid clicks and scrapes from the creatures’ claws followed, racing down the stairs and accompanied by a low, rising growl.

  “Seras, Laika, hold them,” Baik ordered. “Keep the rear.”

  The two soldiers, both female, dropped from her side and turned around, blasters rising as they turned from a sprint into a much-slower backwards walk. Karin stared in disbelief as Baik put on a burst of speed, sprinting past her up the hall—was he leaving them behind?—but then saw his point. He went straight past the stairwell on their right and shot for the elevator, turning his last five steps into a lunge for its button.

  A bell dinged, and the light indicator on top flashed white. As the doors opened, slow enough to make her swear if she hadn’t been struggling to breathe at the same time, Seras and Laika opened fire. Snarls erupted from down the hall, presumably as some of their shots hit.

  Like that’s going to do any good. The creatures had all but ignored the blasters on the roof.

  David urged her faster. Baik caught her as she sprinted across the threshold and spun her to the side. David hit the back wall a split-second after her. A moment went by as Baik lifted his head and located the two soldiers down the hall, walking backwards and firing at the creatures as much as they could. They were still more than two meters away, and the creatures were closing in fast.

  “Seras! Laika! Don’t be idiots,” he barked.

  The one of the right—Laika?—shouted something, and they both fell back. The elevator lurched as they jumped in. Baik smashed the panel with his hand.

  With aching slowness, the doors began to close.

  Up the hall, the creatures had recovered from Seras’ and Laika’s gunfire. Their scuttle turned into a low, flying lope, and the lead one gave a throaty snarl.

  Eyes wide, Karin threw her arm out, her light flaring again—but Baik grabbed it and pulled it down.

  “Wait,” he hissed. “Don’t trigger the door sensor.”

  Two blaster shots cracked in unison, both catching the lead creature in the head. It growled and skipped to the side, bowling into its friend for a brief moment. Their scythe-blades met in a screech of metal. Laika fired another shot, her brow furrowed in concentration, and clipped the third on its foot. Seras got one last shot off, pushing and jostling against the awkward angle in the small elevator, just as the door closed.

  A few seconds later, a series of thumps sounded against the other side of the metal.

  Karin held her breath, fists gripped into tight balls at her side.

  The elevator went down.

  She blew out a low, shaky breath and immediately turned to Baik. Her mind whirred with panic. “We have to get to Marc. Oh my god, we have to get to Marc.”

  Baik lifted a hand. “Shut up.” He lifted his wrist to his mouth and turned away, speaking into the comms unit. “Jan, are you there?”

  “Fuck you,” she snarled.

  She was shaking again. It took all her discipline not to lay into him right there, to show him just how much her sister had taught her how to punch and kick and break things. Her breaths came quick and shallow, the panic racing through her mind—Gods, all those people up there, slaughtered. She hadn’t seen the blood, but the silence was enough to tell her that no one else had made it off that roof alive. And Marc was all alone in his room, with only a guard for defense, and she knew how well those guards held up against these creatures.

  Hells, she seemed to be the only one able to do any real damage to them.

  Caged in, unwilling to look at any of the others, she watched the numbers count down on the elevator display. They’d been on the twelfth floor, and he’d hit the fifth’s button.

  If those creatures figured it out and took the stairs…

  Fucking hell, we should have escaped while we had the chance.

  Except, of course, that they’d tried that and had failed.

  In the corner next to the panel, Baik cycled through a bunch of military lingo that she didn’t understand. After the sixth floor passed, he looked up and caught her gaze.

  “Colahary, the man who was guarding your door, has taken Marc out. They’re going to meet us on the ground floor, and then we’re going to put you in this compound’s war bunker, where there is food and water and where you will stay until the fight is over. David will stay with you,” he said, nodding to the man. “You will all be safe.”

  Relief flushed through her. Her bottom jaw shook as she tried and failed to prevent the panic-tears that wet the sides of her eyes. “Thank you. And sorry.”

  To her surprise, he reached over and gave her forearm a squeeze. “You’re scared. No need to apologize. It happens to all of us.” His teeth bared in a sudden grin. “Well, most of us.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, likely referring to himself as being immune, either due to his quicksave or his ego, but her first thought was of Nomiki who was immune. And who would probably be showing up in a week.

  Maybe I’ll ask her not to kill them when she comes to get me. They aren’t total assholes. In fact, despite his caustic words to her this morning, the opposite had shown true today.

  The elevator slowed to a stop, and her nerves returned. She turned her stare to the door.

  Just how smart were these creatures? She wouldn’t expect a normal animal to understand exactly what an elevator did, but these things had already displayed heightened intelligence.

  As the doors opened, Laika and Seras lifted their blasters, covering either side and giving the hall a quick look. After a moment, they stepped out, their steps wary and cautious. The hall was dark, every single tube and bulb as dead as dust and only the high, narrow windows on the left-hand wall and two emergency exit signs providing a dusky, inadequate illumination. She guessed that either the outage had only affected certain parts of the building since the upstairs lights had been on, or there was either some kind of backup generator that had switched over to work the elevator.

  Baik confirmed the latter theory as he fell in step behind her.

  “Emergency grid,” he murmured. “Seras, you take left, Laika right. Watch those windows, and don’t trust anything.”

  The two soldiers nodded and moved forward, weapons sweeping to different parts of the hall as they scouted ahead, their steps fluid and smooth.

  At a touch on her shoulder—David’s—Karin followed them, her attention darting from the dead lights to the windows then to the many doors that lined the hallway. No labels on any of them, but some of them had inset panes. Beyond the dark glass, she caught sight of the first two rows of countertops, one with a microscope and a slide holder and the other holding a black, circular device with a similar appearance to the centrifuge Dr. Ma had been using earlier that day.

  In the next window, she stiffened as a dark silhouette loomed—only to realize that it was a life-size cardboard cutout of a character from Moon Sailor, with a lab coat placed around his shoulders and an ID pass hung around his neck.

  She wondered where Dr. Lang had gone. He’d run through the door before her and the soldiers, but the elevator had been waiting for them. Had he taken the stairs?

  Her jaw tightened at the thought. If he had, he may not have gotten far.

  As they turned up at a junction in the next hall, they lost the benefit of the windows. Only a pair of exit signs provided illumination, shining down from the far end and catching the pre-fab floor in a warbled shine.

  “Shall I provide
light for us?” she asked.

  “No,” Baik said. “If they’re connected to the Lost, they may be attracted to it.”

  She repressed a shudder—the Lost hadn’t had any trouble honing in on her, even before she’d used their powers. “Do you think they’re after me?”

  “I think they were after the beacon, and you just happened to be there. But I’m not going to take any risks. You’ll be going into lockdown in the bunker.”

  Well, that definitely affected any escape plans she’d been fantasizing about. She’d never seen a Border Wars bunker, but a few netdramas had showcased them in episodes. With their thick, reinforced walls and concrete aesthetic, they looked like something straight out of the last century.

  But she’d rather sit in an inescapable bunker than get Marc and herself slaughtered by whatever monsters Dr. Sasha had cooked up.

  That was, of course, assuming that she couldn’t simply make an interdimensional rift in the bunker and let one through. That seemed like something she was capable of.

  Ahead, Laika had paused at one of the doors, Seras standing guard behind her shoulder. Unlike the other doors, this one’s interface lit up at her touch. She flashed it a security badge and pressed her thumbprint to its sensor. When it beeped and opened, rolling back with a lethargic rumble similar to the door of Karin’s cell, she raised her flashlight-mounted gun, did a quick check, and stepped inside.

  Karin shivered as she followed, glancing back the way they’d come. The hall had an empty, tense feel to it. Close to the end, the door to the stairwell was ever so slightly ajar.

  We’d probably hear them coming. The creatures weren’t exactly silent. But then, how had one so swiftly killed her guard last night?