One moment in linger.
One breath in waiting.
Without the bounds of death,
your thoughts become your battle cry.
And it befits your ever after.
“I know you are there. I can feel you,” I groaned through the crushing darkness.
Silence filled the gloomy room, expanded through the cracks, pushed into thick, gray, stone walls and penetrated beyond the solid blackness outside. I had never felt so alone.
“You are wasting your time.” My words escaped in a mere whisper, my throat so dry it seared.
I felt bruised inside and out, tried very hard to lift my body, which seemed glued by gravity itself. I steadied my eyes on one single spot to stop the world from turning off its axis. A tiny, glowing, white chip of shiny stone radiated from the faint light above. One single miniscule glimmer on a vast wall of dark, rough stone. I wiggled my stinging wrists against what felt like barb-wired restraints laced with a poison that left me dizzy. Laying my head back down, I tried to catch my breath. I needed an inhaler. I was struggling to breathe in the thick atmosphere. I shivered as sweat clung to my entire body, a stifling heat that choked my vision and crushed my thoughts. The throbbing in my head exploded and rippled throughout my entire body. I clenched my teeth trying to brace myself, but the pain was too insane to contain, and I screamed as the aching echoed through my bones leaving a trace of flushing anger. My back lifted and slammed back on the hard surface with an antagonizing ache as I fought the shift. What felt like my last breath, left my lungs while I swallowed against the blood in my throat.
“It gets easier with time.” His words filtered through the nothingness inside of me.
I turned my head toward the voice. A hot tear escaped me.
My emotions trapped in my throat, making it hard to get a solid word out. “He is going to kill you,” is all I managed to get out before my eyes closed, and I fell into the calm of beckoning midnight.
It had been written many times over, been portrayed in so many Earth movies. The flashes that pass through you before you die. But to me, it was not my life I was leaving behind, it was the choices I had made that had brought me to that moment, the moment before the reckoning. Standing on the very edge; waiting on the one I should be, I had one choice only – to become that. There were no signs to show me how. The last shift had caused a rift within me. When it came it tore through flesh, parted blood, and threatened to splinter bone. It had shattered my mind and entrapped my heart with its sweet, seductive smoke, leaving disembodied thoughts in a whirlwind of truths and anger that didn’t make any sense to me at all. I was terrified, because the blood-shift came with vicious intent, moving my thoughts, altering me from the inside. The yearning beast had many ways out and when it was released, there was nothing I could do to stop it. No one was safe when it entrapped me in its cruel claws of foul lust. Crooked, damnable, depraved, destructive, hideous – your kind would call it many things. In my blood, runs the thing our kind call the Shadowing disease. It shadows over and turns everything to its will, and I had the only antidote against the evil that becomes me – his touch alone had the power to release the spurs of a sweet darkness that clung on for dear life. It had one trigger – my fear; and my guilt – its fuel. I needed to take the leap, surrender myself utterly. I was ready with all of me – for all of him. I knew what I had to do, the desperation pulled my mind with the deep determination of a hungry predator. I let it sink in deep and hard, feeling the swell of the looming bout fill me with a bitter sweetness, and with a glorious soothing pain. One exasperating breath at a time, I pulled free from the chains that bound me – us, for far too long. Shattered pieces of my past and present floated away, like ash riding the stormy winds of the forgotten as I pulled free from the images pushing its way into my mind, acting like a trigger to the blood-shift. I knew the only way out of this forever was through him, and I was on fire for it, for all of him. I opened my eyes to shimmering wisps of breath leaving me, like the glow of a gem in times of change, in the times of warning. But by the time the revelation lifted me from the dark dungeon of my mind – it was too late. The memories hit me, the powerful kind that breaks your breath and stops your heart, but not long enough to spare you the pain as it slowly flutters back to the horrid reality of your failures. The weight of it took me to ground. I had been too late. And I had a copy of me running around, threatening everything I stood for. Her memories were hazy at first, but I was her prime and my lust for a better life for all of us separated her from me.
“Let. Me. Go!” I screamed from my stupor, pulling free from the heavy fog within my head, free from the obliterating pain in my chest, from the chaos that pinned me to the cold, metal bed. It had to be a dream. I awoke for him and him only. Yet, instead of finding myself with Troy, I was alone in a dark room, lit by bright, yellow lights hacking at my eyes. I pulled tubes, wires and beaming cables from my body. I stumbled forward, bumping into all kinds of things blurred before me. Silver and black objects swirled like a cage around me. The haze of the medication made it hard for me to focus. Between my legs, the chafing of a white gown stuck to my body with moisture. I stumbled a few more times, waiting for my vision to clear. I smelled her and spun, it was her, the girl from my dreams. I held a deep breath as adrenalin kicked in and lifted the cloud from my vision. Confused, I laughed, I thought I had seen me but when I moved, my supposed reflection did not. I pulled on the corners of my white gown, swallowed on noticing her clothes. She was wearing the exact things in my dream; narrow, piped denims tucked into black boots. I stared at the singed, white shirt and noticed a gaping hole in the material. I touched my stomach. Was I dead? Was I, or was she the ghost? My reaction was instant. I impeded her attempted attack on me. My forearm took the full force of the slim, metal pole. I screamed at the agony. I had taken an impossibly hard hit. Stumbling, I almost fell back, grasping my arm. She just smiled. My shaky hand touched the scar beneath my cheek. It slid easily over the familiar smoothness. I was me. She was not. The pain registered and wouldn’t subside. It was not a dream. She was real. The memory of my dream was a reality!
“I am sorry,” she said unconvincingly.
It was no apology. How haunting it was to hear my own voice tell me it was going to kill me. She grinned, taunting me with the metal pole, the tip covered in my blood. I looked back to my broken arm, bone protruding from flesh. I swallowed what felt like glass as she stepped forward, eyes raking over my quivering body. We circled each other like lions fighting for territory. Holding out my hand, her fingers touched mine. Every memory she held of her short existence rushed into me. How Enoch had tricked her mind into believing she was me; her escape from the dungeon; how badly she wanted to be me; how desperate her state of mind was – she didn’t want to be a clone. She didn’t want to be the lie. But the one thing that threatened to ruin me, were her memories of Troy and how she felt about him, their kisses, his arms around her. I felt the familiar searing pain in my chest, the prickle over my skin before the shift. My memories of Troy pulled me back. I wasn’t her, I could hold my blood-shift. It was the one thing I owed myself.
“You’re here to kill me,” I said, feeling the cold zing as the shift retracted.
“I have to.”
“I can’t allow that.”
“And why would you not allow it?” she spat.
“I have seen your mind,” I said in a shy whisper. Is that what would become of me? My existence as the Shadow would kill us all. It would kill him.
“You saw nothing,” she retaliated. “I am stronger, and you know it.”
“In some ways, yes.” I swallowed. “We can work together, like Troy said, we will figure it out.” I played to her memories.
“I can’t live without him, you of all people know this, but for me it’s way worse. I won’t share him with you. I was created to be with him, not the other way around.”
I snorted. “You were created as a distraction, but you don’t have to exist like that, you ma
ke it so. You have a choice, you know.” Why was I trying to reason with the irrational?
“You sound just like them,” she said.
“Who? Anaya, Kronan? My friends?” I pushed. She didn’t belong in my world. I would not let her take it. She was choosing to be a thief. I held my arm tighter in an attempt to slow down the flow of blood, to stop the pain.
She nodded. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” Her face twisted with sinister bliss. “All I have to do is cause you to shift. The Shadow-shift will consume you, you’re not strong enough to keep it at bay, and you’ve lived it through me. I’m aware that with each shift the rift grows, pulling you in, it’s an addiction. It is your blood. Your destiny. You can’t beat it.”
I extended my arms. “I already have. Take a look.” I tried not to shiver, but she saw my weakened state. I slid between her legs as she came for me, the pole high above her head. I pulled on her ankles so she could meet the floor with a hard fall. The pole clanged and then rolled from her grip. We both reached for it, but she got there first. Her foot came at me and just in time, I managed to roll and stood. The blow from the pole connected with my shoulder as I reached and unsheathed one of her sai’s. With each blow she got in, adrenalin pumped out my meds, lifting me from its sedation. The pain in my broken arm threatened to take me out, but I refused to give in. She tried to strike me again, instead I caught the pole between the forked blades and twisted it out of her grip. Metal clanked and rolled over the hard, stone floor again. I smiled.
“I am stronger,” she tried to convince us.
I saw her shift intensify, smoldering, dark smoke clinging to her wrists. “I hate being you!” she screamed, and lunged at me like a clawed animal.
My head spun and I felt the Shadow pulling, tugging, twisting, crawling beneath my skin, trying to seduce me into its power as before. Fortunately for me, I had lived it through her memories and knew how to stop it. I thought of Troy and it moved me, his heartbeat, the ecstasy of it all called to me, it lifted me out from under the Shadowing disease. Holding my own against a crazed clone trying her best to end me, my arms, fists and legs, came away bloody as she got a few more hits in. The strength that left my body, remembered through her memories how to release a pure bolt of energy that could stop hearts. So, I struck, leaving her dazed, fleeing down narrow, dingy, dark stairs, panicked and scared. I had to get to Troy before she did. I ran into a wall, had no idea where I was, turned and headed down a dark corridor, my breath pounding in my ears, matching the pace of my naked feet to the cold, stone floor. Panic brought on chaos, leading to weak spots in my mind where the disease could simply just walk in and take over. I pushed it back, wouldn’t play to its tricks. I was shivering from pain because unlike the body of a clone, mine was struggling to heal from the energy that had been torn from my core moments ago. I swear I smelled singed hair and crisped meat all over me. The fire on my skin drowned out the searing inferno of my broken arm, giving me the ability to push through the pain. The pain was my only guide to the real, because I felt Enoch push my mind, his pungent witchcraft scent was unmistakable. I could hear his blood calling to me, singing loudly in my ears. The pounding of his heartbeat penetrated mine. I kept my feet steady, one after the other, willing them not to fail me. Bare toes hit cool, stone floor. Bloody hands found the walls, keeping me from tumbling down slanted tunnels. Troy was close, and it carried my weakened body through a maze of tunnels and glowing pods. The faces inside those pods struck me cold, nailed to the spot, my feet wouldn’t carry me any further. I spun, shuddering as I looked upon an ocean of faces that belonged to me. This was the Shadow army. The other droids a distraction. Me – I was the dark army! I dropped my gaze. Getting to Troy was all that mattered. I turned but faltered when I saw the entire floor stacked with pods of other beings. My clone’s memories of her escape, the unmistakable bond between our blood and theirs left my stomach turning. I pulled the sai close to my side, wiping blood and sweat from my face. My entire body quivered with anger, I slipped down to the floor, my back against the smooth, cold surface of tainted glass. My skin prickled and rippled through my entire body, my pulse quickened, signs I was on the edge of shifting. I couldn’t shift. I wouldn’t. I stood slowly, pulling my hand away from the cold, blue glass, staring into the empty, lonely face of… me. I was the key to the Shadow army. I screamed as the rage consumed me. How could they do this to me? Like a hurricane, it ripped everything from me, it came with its venomous ways, moving my mind, altering me with a cutting effect from the inside, bleeding out in hateful ways. It changed me into something I never thought possible, the mind-shift I now call instinct acted as a trigger to the blood-shift. The blood-shift is something I cannot contain – it is in my DNA – and grows darker with each change and step I take deeper into its black realm. Both shifts have one thing in common – survive at any and all cost. It was costing me my sanity. It wanted to kill, it would betray me, and threaten everything I stood for. I could not master it. Thoughts were not my own, my body – not my own. But my soul remained, and it would fight back even if it killed me. What a joke. Death had not been my salvation, it had been the very cause of a change that would forever be my struggle, and the reason for my death was of my own selfish reasons. I had to live with being that for all eternity. Torn between the Devine light, and the oppressing Shadow. I was both dark and light in one – I was not meant to exist that way. But knowing that no matter how dark, lonely and scary a reality it had become for us all, love was always the answer, and love of one’s self was, and is, the best ability and gift that’s ever existed. For love makes the impossible possible, without it nothing would survive. Love moves through an eternity of space and changes all time, and that should be the very thing that drives us. Not me, though, I find it hard to love purely and with everything I have, because love of one’s self is hard to obtain. Especially if what I was, was meant to destroy. Failure to love, leads to tragedy. I was new to the thing called emotions. I had been created to shun it, been told it was weak. Brainwashed and medically controlled by the Council to prevent it from motivating me. The day I met Troy, it all changed. That was the first time I had explored emotions, and the Council knew – they know and that is why they came after me, and would do everything in their power to keep us apart. I was horrified to admit that I thought they might have already succeeded. I had defied every experiment they put before me. I was not to feel, or to challenge. Emotions made us weak. Ironically, the only thing that kept the shift from destroying me– was my emotion. The shift is a deadly disease, it comes from a dark place, a place that hates fear, and seeks redemption in all the wrong places. At times, the shift had all of me, but he is my antidote, our salvation. And therefore, in his hands and in my heart, he has all of me. However, as I’ve said before, the knowledge came a little too late. She was right, the blood-shift pushed the rift inside of me too deep and too wide, and sometimes when in its shadow, the other side is swallowed by oblivion.
I sat in the crossfire, both my shifts fighting each other for a place in my heart. I choked back tears of fear as the bitter taste of hate for what I was clung to my insides. This is how the disease works. It turns you against yourself, so you can give in to it, to its promising power to take all humanity away from you – to forget. How could he love a monster? I could not contain it any longer. It was who I had to become. I saw my transformed reflection in the pod. I was a hideous beast. I ran from one side of the room, stricken with fury and a blazed sai glued to my palm, and tore through the glass of each bluish, domed pod before me. Vengeance was all that existed as shards showered down on me. I was deep within my guilt and self-loathing. Blood, oil, and ichor splattered the walls around me as I kept running; it all stained my skin with their strange blood – my blood! It was I who had been responsible for their existence. I let Enoch do this to me, to them. My mind was reeling like a speeding craft through all existence, beyond and back. My pulse beat a solid shame inside the dark fabric of my mind, spreading like a wild fire through
my veins, infecting my body with its venom. This was what a weapon did – abolish all, leaving nothing in its wake. The next hall of tubes were merely shapeless bodies, no faces, no hair, but the blood leaking through paper-thin skins taunted me. I drew both sais higher, and ran through the rows once more, cutting, piercing and shattering glass. My rage showered me with sharp, clear, glass slivers, reflecting the blue liquid from other pods. I was drowning in a sea of monsters. With each slice of glass on my skin, the sweet pain attempted to work its magic in killing my suffering heart. I spun and sliced through a golden tube running up and out from the floor, and into a row of pods. A huge alarm pierced the air, a siren designed to bring the intruder down with such a high frequency it shook the stone walls, threatening to bring the entire structure down, too. I grinned, watching the unmarked clones drain of the little life they had. There will never be another disaster like me! My instinct took over and I was deaf, not able to hear a single shard of glass crashing to the floor, or the shrill that sent waves of paralyzing noise throughout the fortress. I took to a flight of stairs, the yellow beat of lights flickered, illuminating only patches of the narrowing tunnel. I reached yet another tapered line of tubes and shapeless bodies. I flicked my sai out again, hardly feeling the burn of untrained muscles, the strain of weak wrists, and my ruined arm. I screamed, sprinting through the wall of tubes, slicing every single pod right to the end of the room. I am the destroyer, and destroy the dark army I must. But, as their life force drained, I felt their fear, their panic and anger. In a weakened frame of mind, I had not noticed that they had been activated. They had started to breathe, and as the panic took hold, I shut it down from all reason and logic. Those beings were not meant to be. I had to walk away, pull up a wall of ice around myself. It had to be that way. I was the one. This was my destiny. Then I felt something else pushing its way up my throat, and I knew exactly in that moment what Enoch had meant when he had said we were the same. Indeed, there was something inside of me that ran through him, the same rottenness that caused us to become killers. I didn’t want to be a killer. I wanted my shift to leave me!
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