by K. Gorman
There were four others in the small room. Marc and Karin flanked back around Soo-jin and escorted them out. Ethan followed along like an obedient pup, shooting Karin the occasional look. At first, they froze at the sight of the Lost in the dining hall beside them, but then they grabbed cups and crowded around the kitchen’s two sinks.
Eventually, they moved to one of the long tables in the dining hall, carefully skirting around the Lost.
Karin leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh.
The lightness in her head was starting to pass, but most of her hurt. She wasn’t sure if the Shadow had beaten her before it had gone inside, or if she had merely fallen badly, but there was an on-and-off pain that shot up through her knee and hip if she flexed it the wrong way, and a kind of cold, numbing cut somewhere behind her left temple. The area felt tender and a bit sticky.
A presence moved to her side. A second later, Ethan’s shoulder brushed her hip as he joined her against the wall.
“You talking to me again?”
Her voice sounded raw to her ears. She cleared her throat, tasting a trickle of blood.
He looked up at her, caught her gaze for a few beats, then looked back down. “Your eyes really were black.”
“Sorry,” she said. “They’re better now, right?”
“Yeah.” He shifted, rocking slightly. The beam of his flashlight swayed on the floor. After a few rocks, he nodded toward the table. “Aren’t you afraid they’re going to tell on you?”
She tapped a finger against her thigh, her eyes leveling back on the group at the table. “I’m sure Soo-jin will explain things.”
On the other side of the table, Marc caught her gaze. He jerked his head toward the darker part of the room, flashed the roll of tape in his hand, and headed toward the chairs he’d been rearranging before.
“Come on,” she said with a grunt, wincing as she pushed herself off the wall. “Let’s go help.”
But, before she’d taken more than two steps, a low, heavy noise rose outside. She jerked her head up, tracking it through the ceiling as it flew over the sanctuary.
A ship.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bright lights flashed in the hallway, stretching through the front windows as the ship landed outside. The floor vibrated with the thrum of its engines, a baseline rumble hard enough to send a jolt through the soles of her shoes and hum against the soft tissue in her chest. Gasps of alarm came from the table, but Karin had already caught Marc’s worried gaze.
They made for the door.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Military?”
It was big. Either it was military, or someone had brought a small freighter.
Marc grunted. “We certainly didn’t order pizza.”
She hissed as pain shot through her bad knee. Her runners shrieked against the smooth floor as she stumbled, and Marc jerked to help her balance.
Brown eyes flashed to her in concern, then down to her leg. “You okay?”
“Yes. Fine.” She gritted her teeth and craned her neck. “Can you see it yet?”
He stretched up tall to see through the windows at the end of the hall, squinting against the light. “Yes. Definitely military. I recognize the craft.”
“Shit.” She dropped back, breath harsh in her ears. “How many?”
“They haven’t disembarked yet.” He turned his attention back to her, the frown deepening on his expression. “What are you thinking? Rabbit it?”
She frowned up at him, confused. “Pardon?”
What did rabbits have to do with this?
“Run,” he clarified. “Do you want to run?”
The suggestion gave her pause.
Run.
A week ago, that’s exactly what she would have done. It’s what she was good at. She and Nomiki, they had run between two systems together. And, in a way, she had kept going. Even now, faced with the choice, her body screamed to go.
If she hadn’t been so broken and hurt, she would already have been out the door.
But, things had changed.
She didn’t want to run anymore. Whatever was happening—whatever the fuck was going on with the Shadows, and her sister, and their screwed up past—she didn’t want to run anymore.
And her power?
People needed it.
Slowly, eyes staring at the floor as if it could give her an answer, she shook her head. “That would be a shitty thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But you need to survive, too.”
She nodded. Yes. It wouldn’t do any good to be locked away, which is exactly what the military would do in its current state. She had a sister to find first.
“What are the other options?” she asked.
He took a hard glance back at the windows. The light lit him up from in front, flashing hard across his face. People were moving outside now, the ship close enough that, if she stood taller and squinted, she could have seen them disembark.
“Let’s meet them. See what their protocol is. Actually—” He backtracked, amending himself. “I’ll meet them. Soo-jin mentioned a couple dorm buildings out back. Maybe I could take them there for distraction while you…”
“Good. Yeah. Let’s do that.” She backed up on unsteady feet, retreating toward the dining hall. “I’ll go make sure everything’s good.”
“Yeah, go.” He turned back up the hall, jogging along the way.
As she limped back to the dining hall, her light pushed at the underside of her skin.
Time to make sure that the people of Songbird could keep a secret.
“What do you mean, there’s no cure?” The older man—Elder Chris—looked up sharply, his forehead crinkling as he gave her a quick, thorough study. “Soo-jin said—”
“There is a cure, but we’re the only ones who have it.” Soo-jin stood from her seat and leaned forward, bracing her arms against the table. Her sharp eyes caught Karin’s, and she tilted her head to the door where they could still see the lights from the ship outside. “Military?”
“Marc’s buying us some time. He’ll try and take them around the dorms. But we need to be careful.”
Her jaw tensed as she surveyed the members of the table. Five sets of eyes looked back at her, worried, apprehensive, and more than a bit scared.
She caught Soo-jin’s eyes and held them, putting a heavy emphasis into her tone. “We need to be quiet.”
Soo-jin nodded once. Then she frowned. “It’ll be better if you show them.”
“I can do that,” she said. “I don’t care how much they see so long as they don’t talk.”
“They won’t.” Soo-jin shifted her gaze to the woman sitting next to Elder Chris, her expression hard. “They know what it is to keep a secret here.”
The woman—Leina—and Soo-jin clearly had a history. Though her features also shared the dark hair and eyes of Soo-jin’s Korean ancestry, she had a much rounder face. A faded tattoo darkened the edge of her neckline, most of it below her collar.
After a few moments, she gave a curt nod, then glanced to the rest.
“We will keep your secret.”
Karin wasn’t sure precisely what had just happened, but it had an air of formality to it—as if the woman was a matriarch.
“Good,” she said, nodding. “Thank you.”
“Right, let’s get to work, then. Ethan, go play look out.” Soo-jin stood, then leaned forward, bracing herself against the table. She looked to the five others, catching each of their eyes and holding them for a few seconds. “Here’s the deal. Karin’s going to show you something in a minute, and you are not going to tell anyone about it. If we play this right, we can heal our people…”
Three minutes later, the heavy tramp of boots came down the hall. Karin leaned against the wall closest to the table, watching the jerk and sway of the soldiers’ shadows and flashlights play out on the hallway floor.
The room fell dead quiet. No one moved.
After a few seconds, Marc’s voice
jumped ahead of the noise.
“—just up here. … some Lost, too, so don’t shoot.”
“We don’t shoot the Lost,” another voice said, disgust lacing through his tone. “What the hell kind of people do you think we are?”
Marc appeared, hands raised defensively. “Hey, hey—sorry! I only just got good feeds yesterday. No idea what’s gone down.”
“Yeah, yeah, you mentioned it. Ah—here we are.” The lead soldier paused as he saw them, standing in the center of the door and giving the room’s occupants a thorough study. With the helmet, padded armor, and riot shield, he almost entirely blocked the door.
“Everything all right in here? Anyone injured?” He quickly backtracked, amending himself with a gesture at the ten Lost who sat and stood around the other tables. “Other than them, of course.”
“No, no, we’re fine.” Elder Chris half-rose, his expression crinkling in worry. “But they—do you know what’s happened with them? Is there a cure being—”
The soldier waved a hand to cut him off. “Central’s working on it.” Then he half-turned to address his men, taking a step back out of the room. “All right, it’s just as he said. Let’s take a quick sweep, hit the back, then call pick-up.”
As he backed up, Marc looked over his head and caught Karin’s stare.
He gave her a sharp nod.
Then the soldiers were on the move and away.
Everyone was quiet. They listened to the soldier’s boots tramp down the hall, then split. Doors creaked open, followed fast by the quick-step of soldiers going in, checking the room, and then clearing it.
After a few seconds, Soo-jin rose from her seat.
“All right, let’s go. Quiet, everyone. Get our friends taped down in a line. We’ll go for the rest once they’re out.”
Karin bent over an older man, positioned her hands on either side of his temples, and tried to ignore the pained stiffness on the side of her throat. Most of her was stiff, actually, joining the sharp pains she still felt from her knee and the healthy accompaniment of bruises that had started to make their presence known. When she licked her lips, she could still taste blood from a cut on the side.
After a second, she glanced up at Soo-jin. She gave a nod.
Soo-jin splayed a hand, then shifted to angle herself to one of the doors. “Wait.”
Most of the soldiers had gone out back, where two outbuildings housed the dormitories and staff quarters, but a couple had stayed behind to do a more thorough check of the place. By the sounds of their footsteps, heading back toward the rear of the building, they were almost done.
So was she.
Eight other Lost—former Lost now—sat unconscious in the chairs to her left, heads limp and rocked forward. She had pushed the Shadows from them, and Soo-jin had knifed them in the heads as they’d come out. They’d tried to fight, but the tape holding the Lost’s arms down had prevented anything more meaningful than a snarl and a gentle rock.
The light moved in the room. Footsteps sounded outside, echo-y but growing more distinct as they came back down the hallway. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, chilling in the cold room. She watched Soo-jin’s hand, waiting.
“Okay, go.”
Light pulsed. Beneath her hands, the man went rigid. Then he thrashed.
She kept her grip as he struggled, rocking the chair. She was getting the hang of it now.
Her light didn’t so much pour into him as slam.
Suddenly, everything in front of her went black. The Shadow jerked up and out of his body, stretching high toward the room’s dead light fixtures.
For a moment, it towered over her.
Then Soo-jin’s knife flashed. The Shadow froze.
The air hung heavy for a second, then it began to unravel. It kept its shape—two shapes, technically—long enough for Soo-jin to second-guess herself and leap again with the knife, and then dissipated.
The man went limp.
Karin stumbled back, suddenly dizzy. Her left hand groped for the table behind her.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just give me a minute.” She took a few breaths, tried to reground herself. It was more than just her brain, though. A hand went to the cut on her temple. Was it trauma? Had she gotten a concussion at some point? Or did it have something to do with the vibrant flow of energy making her skin tingly?
She leaned back, sucked in a breath, then pushed herself off the edge of the table and toward the last person they had tied down.
Mara.
Two of the sanctuary workers, Jaxx and Verina, had carried her chair from across the hallway, opening a previously locked door to the kitchen to get her in past the soldiers.
She gave another sharp nod to Soo-jin, then braced herself in front of Mara, almost straddling her knee. The tips of her fingers brushed her hair as she rested them on either side of her temples. Her eyes, black as a pool of ink shining wetly in the light of one of the flashlights on the table, stared up at Karin.
A trill of unease wiggled through somewhere in her gut as she met Mara’s gaze.
Those black eyes were something she would not be able to get used to.
“I think they’re gone now.” The knife in Soo-jin’s hand—a simple, slim blade—was nearly invisible as she tilted her head to track the soldiers in the hallway. She glanced to the two doors. “Jaxx, Verina?”
“Hold a second.” Jaxx, by the right-hand door, held up an arm, one finger pointing. One of those they’d found in the pantry, he seemed to have recovered the easiest from his forced incarceration—and he seemed to be taking the sudden discovery of her secret magic powers well.
In fact, he’d been the only one at the table whose first response had been excitement rather than fear.
That excitement had only elevated when she’d told him she’d been raised in an illegal lab beyond the gate.
Her secret would probably be safe with him.
The one manning the other door, she worried about. Verina hadn’t seemed quite as eager to embrace the secret-keeping mission. Thin and willowy, the stay in the pantry probably turning her even more so, she hadn’t said a word the entire time Karin had seen her.
Even now, by the door, she signaled her post in nods and hand signals, with only the occasional hiss of teeth to catch Soo-jin’s attention.
“Okay, I think they left. A door closed, anyway.”
“Good. Still, keep an eye out.” Soo-jin took a step back, readied her knife, and nodded to Karin. “Ready when you are.”
Karin took a deep breath and slowly let it out. With it, the energy of her power moved through her arm like a ray of sun on a cool day. She tensed her fingers, tilted Mara’s head back, and called on the energy.
Light sparked. Mara let out a gasp. Muscles and tendons tensed in her neck as she fought her restraints. The Shadow jumped.
This time, though, it jumped at Karin.
She didn’t even have time to flinch. Pain knocked into her ribs. All the air in her lungs left her with a breathless whoof. Her feet lifted off the ground. The ceiling spun above her in a brief, dizzying glimpse.
She slammed into the table behind her.
She hit it so hard that it jumped back a few inches, its legs groaning and scraping against the floor. A spike of pain flooded her back. It felt like one of her vertebrae had cracked from impact. Prickles of mixed numbness and feeling moved through other parts of her body. As she tried to stand up, to scramble away, her injured knee gave out from under her.
The Shadow loomed over her, so tall its head nearly brushed the ceiling. Shouts crashed around her. Someone was screaming. It reached toward her, lightning-fast.
She jerked away with a yell, stumbling over a chair. She fought to piece her thoughts back together, to call her power. Light shivered onto her hand like a run-off of thin milk.
She turned, shoved the chair back at the Shadow, then lifted her hand to throw it.
A blaster round caught the Shadow in the chest.
; For a moment, the Shadow froze in place. Its head seemed to bow, to look down at the spot the round had hit.
Then its attention shifted back. Karin felt it rake over her skin like a beam of static. She shivered as its invisible gaze locked with hers.
As if it were staring straight into her.
A hard moment ticked by. Nomiki’s voice, closer now than it had been before, spoke into her mind.
You didn’t forget, did you?
She opened her mouth, took a breath.
Then another two rounds slammed into the Shadow.
It staggered, faltered. Then it fell.
By the time it hit the floor, its body had shredded into pieces. Ragged, torn threads of blackness lifted into the air and then vanished like a bad dream.
Karin, eyes wide and staring, shivered. Hands shaking, she lifted her gaze to Soo-jin, who stood by the wall equally wide-eyed. She still had her knife in her hand, but the way she held it suggested she’d been hurt.
Then, as one, they looked to the door.
A single soldier stood in its frame, back-lit by the lights of his ship through the windows. A small trickle of smoke rose from the end of his blaster.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
For a long moment, nobody moved. Everyone stared at each other, frozen. The soldier still had his gun up. The kids had both backed to the inside of their respective walls, instinctively hiding out of range of the blaster, making no move to get his attention. Karin’s heart stuttered in her chest.
Gods, this was bad.
Then Soo-jin collapsed against the wall, one hand over her heart. “Oh, thank the gods you’re here.” She gave a big, shuddering sigh and tilted her head back, closing her eyes. “That thing—it just came out of nowhere!”
The tension broke. It wasn’t quite a distressed damsel act, but definitely on line for it, and it gave the rest of them an idea of how to behave. Shaking, Karin lowered herself gingerly down into her seat. Her right hand had gone partially numb again, parts of it prickling with odd feeling, as if it had gone to sleep. Blood tacked to her middle finger, coinciding with a bruising pain she felt off and on. The other hand, she hid on her lap, turning it inwards to hide the light that still glimmered on her skin.