The Light of Redemption

by Natalie Damschroder

  “It felt like forever. We thought you were dead.” Simon patted me down with gloved hands. “Are you okay?”

  “Except for the pillow you’re talking through.” I explained what it had been like from my side.

  “Your shield was like iron. I couldn’t budge it with anything. I knew you were okay or it would be gone.” But he said that with fake nonchalance, and Julie smacked his shoulder.

  “You did not think that. You were yelling her name louder than I was, and your voice cracked.” A tear fell out of her eye. “I’m so sorry, Harmony, I didn’t think it would happen like that.”

  I did, but I didn’t blame either of them. She was right. We needed to know, and I’d rather find out how this worked here, when I didn’t also have bad guys watching and maybe attacking me while I was occupied.

  “What did you see?” I looked around. The only damage appeared to be to the mirror. “Yikes. Sorry about that.” Shards littered the floor, most in very tiny pieces.

  “My fault. I didn’t adequately theorize the consequences.”

  That was not how Julie usually spoke, and it was missing her verve. I went over and hugged her again. “Aw, hon, don’t. I’m fine. Even my ears are clearing up.”

  “But you could have been killed.”

  “No. But someone is gunning for me, for sure. You guys are really okay? The concussion acted normally, even though the flames didn’t.”

  “Yeah, we felt it, but it wasn’t that strong. We’re fine.” Simon took a deep breath and laced his hands behind his head. “Maybe we need a break before we try another one.”

  “We’re not trying any more!” Julie wiped her eyes.

  “Oh, yes, we are.” My shoes crunched over glass as I carefully crossed the shatter field to the baler. “Help me get the loose parts. Since I can’t use the mirror to see, we’ll go with Simon’s plan.” I felt much better knowing that the blast and flames wouldn’t get them as long as it was coming for me.

  “I don’t like this.” But he helped me remove broken pieces of metal and drag out small debris that had collected under the machine while Julie swept up the glass. She had a bag—of course—to haul it away in, and we put it all in the office. Simon helped her break down her portable lab before my second test, too, because I was afraid of breaking the rest of her “toys.”

  Finally, we were ready. Instead of hiding by the wall, they went to the far end of the building. Simon insisted his camera was good enough to catch the action even on zoom, though that was the least of my concerns.

  The first splotch I’d aimed at was completely gone. Apparently, my light ball had been big enough to activate the whole spot. Julie had me swab it while they packed up, and confirmed the lack of residue. She even chipped off some paint and put that under the microscope. “Nothing,” she declared. “Normal paint composition.”

  I suspected this was all pointing toward some kind of super person, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around how, so I kept it to myself.

  “Okay,” Simon called. “We’re ready!”

  After positioning myself behind the baler, I made the light as small as I could, sent it at the next splotch on the wall, and ducked behind my shield. Blast, concussion, flames licking around my shield, but this time I paid more attention. They snapped out of existence when they came in contact with the light. At least, that was how it seemed, and watching the video confirmed it.

  “So it’s both activator and de-activator?” Julie asked.

  “Maybe.” I shooed them away and tried again, only this time I made a small ball of light and a larger one at the same time. As soon as the first one brushed splotch number three, I sent the larger ball into the blast. It ended two feet from the wall.

  “Whoa!” They started to run over, but I motioned them back. I didn’t have much light left and wanted this over. Splotches four through six had diminishing returns. The last one didn’t react at all.

  Julie studied the spots. “All are gone except these two.” She touched the second one down. “This seems to be the same. I can test it, but I think it was the initial formula, and not perfected. This one.” She squinted at it. “This is different. Let me get samples.”

  While she got to scraping, I turned to Simon. “I don’t get it. How did they know?”

  “Know what?”

  “If it worked or not. If the results weren’t what they were aiming for, how did they know? They didn’t have my light to test it with.”

  “Are you sure? Could they have caught some somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It doesn’t last without me holding it together. It goes back where it came from or dissipates like you saw me do before. And if they’d tested it that way, the splotches would be gone.”

  “She’s right.” Julie came over, her expression tighter than I’d ever seen it. “Give me your finger.”

  “Why?” I held out my hand.

  “There was something different about those two splotches. Different from the stuff at the jewelry store.”

  “Different in what way? How do you know?” I understood when she pricked my finger with a lancet, soaked up the blood on a colored strip, and stuck that into a device attached to her tablet. “You can run the compounds without all the fancy stuff over there?” I waved to what they’d already packed up.

  “Yeah, the reader takes different input. But look.” She rotated the tablet, showing us stuff on the screen that I had no hope of deciphering.

  “I can’t read that,” Simon told her. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, they knew if it would work or not because they used her blood.”

  “How the hell would that tell them anything?” I asked.

  “Where the hell would they have gotten her blood?” Simon demanded.

  “The reaction of the compound to introduction of the blood would be predictable for real-time responses,” Julie explained.

  “I got shot,” I said.

  “I don’t get it.” Simon glared at me. “Wait, what? You got shot?”

  “Up there.” I pointed to the platform where the bullet had grazed my calf. “It might have been bad enough to leave some behind. I didn’t really pay attention until I got home.”

  “They’d only need a few drops,” Julie confirmed. “But listen. You don’t need to get it,” she told Simon. “I get it. And I’m telling you, her blood was enough for them to get the formula to what they wanted. The problem is that other spot. The compound is different. And it doesn’t have her blood.”

  My whole body went cold. “Does it have other blood?”

  She nodded. Simon gripped my shoulder, obviously thinking the same thing I was. So much for believing I was the only target.

  “You know whose blood it is?” she asked.

  Simon and I answered together. “Connor Parsons.”

  Well, fuck.

  Chapter 13

  “I have to find him.” I headed for the door.

  “Wait, Harmony.” Simon came after me for a few steps, but they stopped, and Julie said something I couldn’t hear.

  “I’ll call you!” I hit the door and yanked hard on the handle. I had no idea where to go. I’d start at his house even though he probably wasn’t there. I’d call him on the way. Maybe the police would trace his phone for me.

  I was being ridiculous, but all that mattered was that I’d thought Conn was safe if he wasn’t near me, and the opposite was probably true. Whatever that other compound did, it hadn’t been used yet. That you know of. I didn’t have my Eclipse phone, with the police alerts and special notices. I didn’t have my own phone turned on, where people who knew me could have texted OMG did you hear about . . . ? messages. Anything could have happened this afternoon.

  The door groaned loudly
when I got it open, and talk about OMG, when had it gotten so dark? My illumination in the warehouse had kept me from noticing. It was well past dinner rush, so where the hell was Angie? I stumbled out onto the gravel, my sandals flopping, skirt tangling around my legs, getting more annoyed with myself by the second. This wasn’t me. Panic and flustered chaos. I needed to pull myself together.

  I stood and pushed my hair off my face. Julie reached me, breathless. “Harmony, hold on. You don’t have a car.”

  Crap. Of course I didn’t. What was I going to do, run back to town? Not even when I wasn’t injured. “I forgot.”

  “Let us get the stuff packed up. You can’t run off willy-nilly.” She panted, trying to catch her breath. “Simon said that, not me. I’m often willy-nillying.”

  I couldn’t laugh. “No, this is bad.” I took my phone out of my pocket. My phone, not the burner. “You guys have to go without me. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this. It’s so big.” So much bigger than anything I’d ever dealt with, as Harmony or Eclipse. “Come on, come on,” I muttered, mashing the power button down hard enough to get it stuck inside the phone. Finally, the screen flashed on. But I still had to wait for it to boot.

  “We’re not leaving you here,” Julie scoffed.

  Simon stumbled out of the warehouse, falling against the door before staggering to his car with the giant tote. Julie went to help him lift it into the hatch of his car, and I stood shaking my phone, staring at the branded images flashing across the screen, trying to remember how many there were to go before I could use it. The home screen came on. I was just about to thumb the recent calls list when it blew up.

  Not literally. It chimed and vibrated and kept going, startling me enough to jump. It flipped out of my hand and landed screen-down in the mud. The very wet, very soggy mud. I snatched it up, but there was no five-second rule for technology. As fast as I wiped it off with my skirt, water still got inside, and it began to glitch immediately. I tried to access the messages, and it just kept going back to the home screen. I caught glimpses of who the messages were from—Angie, Sark, and people at work—but not the things they’d said.

  “Harmony,” Julie called from the side of the car. “We’re ready!”

  I got in, barely hearing anything they said as I struggled to make the phone work. I hadn’t gotten anywhere when Simon parked in front of my house.

  “Why are we here?” This was the last place I needed to be. Conn wouldn’t be hiding anywhere, but definitely not at my house.

  Simon frowned over his shoulder. “Clothes? Eclipse stuff? Car?”

  My face heated. Of course, he was right. I couldn’t run around town in a skirt that tangled my legs. If I was going to be Eclipse, I needed to not be Harmony. And if they were going to be safe, they couldn’t be chauffeuring me around. But I was surprised they were willing to leave me.

  “I’m going to dig harder into Hameldon and Wiggins and the developer,” Simon told me. “Julie’s going to do more analysis on that other chunk of wall, see if she can figure out how it works. Since The Bru— Uh”—he faltered when he caught my glare—“Conn’s powers are all physical and there’s no energy source to trigger the compound.”

  “Okay, great.” Some of the tension eased out of my back, knowing we were hitting this on three sides. My job would be a lot easier because of them. I paused before opening my door. “Thank you, guys. For everything. I never—”

  “Later. Go!” Simon shooed me out of the car, making me roll my eyes. Men and their dislike of chick-flick moments.

  I cleaned off my phone with a towel and stuck it in a bowl of rice before going to change clothes. If the rice was going to help, it wouldn’t be immediately. I didn’t have much hope, anyway. I’d have to do without.

  But I still had a landline, and kept my contacts backed up on the cloud, so I booted up my laptop while I changed into Eclipse clothes with Harmony clothes on top, and as soon as I found the contacts list, I started making calls.

  Conn’s number went straight to voicemail this time, no rings, so it was either off or set not to ring. I didn’t know how to interpret that, so I moved on. Angie didn’t answer her cell, and I didn’t bother leaving a message. No one picked up at the diner, though, and that was odd. They couldn’t be that busy on a Tuesday night after a holiday weekend. I called the library, not expecting it to lead to anything, but there was no one else to call. I didn’t know where to start looking.

  “Oh, Harmony, thank goodness!” Gladys gushed as soon as she heard my voice. “I didn’t know what to do for the best! I didn’t want to call when you’re sick, Simon said you shouldn’t be disturbed, but it’s just got me all kerfuffled.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything. I just don’t know.”

  “Gladys. Take a deep breath and start from the beginning.”

  She sucked in air so loudly I had to pull the phone away from my ear. Then she blew it out in a gush. “I came in a little early this morning, since Simon had called me at home and told me you wouldn’t be in, and I knew that meant I had to do what you usually do, which would take more time, so—”

  I cut her off. “I meant, start at the beginning of the problems.”

  “Oh.” She tittered, still sounding on the edge of hysteria. “Of course. All right. Well.” She stopped, as if trying to figure out where the beginning was. “About an hour ago, the back door alarm went off. I thought it was those kids, you know, the ones who keep trying to sneak out back to smoke? But there was no one there, inside or out. That was unsettling, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

  She rambled a little about how flustered she’d been while trying to check people out after that. She wasn’t wrong about the kids, though typically we caught them freaking out and trying to rush back inside and hide. A couple of the tougher ones had been standing with the door propped open while they puffed, but after I got through with them, they never tried again. But the area behind the library was a big parking lot bordered by a soybean field. The door was in the center of the long building, so there was nowhere to hide, and unlikely that someone would get around the corner before Gladys went out and spotted them. An hour ago, it wouldn’t have been completely dark.

  “What else happened?” I prodded when she didn’t get back on track.

  “Oh. Right. Well, the computers went down, oh, about twenty minutes ago? I got blue screens on everything, and network errors, and the patrons were complaining because they couldn’t get online or use the catalog, and I tried to reboot and they just got stuck in the startup!”

  Okay, that sounded like a nightmare. “Did you call the IT department?” The county had support staff for situations like this. Not that anything this disruptive had happened since I started working for the library. I felt bad for Gladys.

  “I tried, but the phone died mid-ring! And you know I don’t have a cell phone right now.”

  It had been the victim of a toilet drop, and she was waiting for her upgrade to replace it. But . . . “We’re on the phone right now.”

  Silence. “I’m on the emergency line in the back office. I didn’t even think about using this one to call out.”

  It was a standalone landline for emergencies, since the fancy system phone needed power to operate. That meant the phone line itself hadn’t been cut, and whoever had taken out the phone system had probably done it the same way they’d taken down the computers.

  I needed to get Gladys out of there. “Okay. Is anyone still there?”

  “No, they left when the power went out. Deidre was maaaaad that she couldn’t check out, so I wrote down all her barcodes and let her take the books. But Joe and Phyllis left their books to come back and get tomorrow, and the rest of the people were here to work, and there was no point with no light.”

  “The power went out after the computers went down? Like, two separ
ate events?”

  “Yes! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! So I’m sitting here in the dark, with just those creepy security lights, trying to figure out what to do!”

  I wasn’t sure what to tell her. I didn’t want to scare her even more than she was, but I wasn’t sure that having her leave was going to be safer than making her stay. Calling the police was the smart move, but I was nervous about that now, with the discrepancies in what Sark and Simon had each told me about Emeraud.

  Still, Gladys wouldn’t be the target. It was still the best option. “Call the police,” I told her, “and tell them what’s going on and that you want an escort to your car.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “I’m sure it’s overkill, but your safety is the most important thing. Please, Gladys. Get ready to lock up and leave as soon as they get there, okay?”

  “Okay.” Now that she had a plan, she calmed. “The parking lot lights are still on, so I’m sure everything would be fine, but I will feel better if someone else is there with me.”

  “Right. So do that, and then let me know when you get home safely, okay? If I don’t answer, just leave a message.” I’d be gone by then, but she wouldn’t be able to text me.

  “Okay. Thank you, Harmony.”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I checked the charge on the burner phone Evan had given me. Almost dead. I connected it to a portable charging unit I could slip into my belt, with the phone clipped beside it, and grabbed my keys. The library was only a five-minute drive for me, but the parking lot was deserted when I got there, Gladys’s car gone and the building dark except for the faint spot of light where the security lamp was visible through the front doors. Everything was still and silent when I got out of my car, but I didn’t trust that. I studied the windows, the shrubbery along the front wall, and the couple of trees along the edge of the lot, though they were too young and narrow to hide anyone. The roof was equally clear, at least on this side, and probably too much of a slope to be of any benefit to anyone. Which meant they were inside.