Arclight. Josin L McQuein
must have heard us move, and I think surely the thing outside did, too.
Any hope that the Fade believes our room is empty dies when the creature slams against the window again, and again, until I realize it isn’t just one of them out there. There are at least a dozen, each with its own tone and pitch when it strikes.
The room goes still, folded into another held breath until a new nightmare emerges with the sound of cracking glass that says they’re breaking through.
The Arclight’s falling.
“Stay with me, guys,” Mr. Pace pleads over a surge of muffled whimpers. “Just a little longer.”
As we wait for the signal that will release our door, I feel suddenly lighter, and this time it isn’t the inhaler putting a fog in my brain. Half my weight rises off my feet, so I barely feel the muscles burning in my leg.
“Just step with me,” Tobin says. “I’ve got you.”
And I have no idea what to say to that. Normally, when Tobin speaks, it’s a grunted one-syllable “yes” or “no.” But he hardly ever speaks, and never to me. For me, it’s a glare like ice dropped down my back. His father led the rescue party into the Grey. His father made the choice to save me over the others. His father didn’t return. Why should Tobin be kind?
There’s a knock from the hall, a set of very human knuckles rapping out a prearranged rhythm before Mr. Pace unlatches the door with his bracelet.
“Go,” he orders, touching each shoulder to count us as we pass.
“If we have to run, go limp,” Tobin says. “I can carry you faster than you can move on your own.”
Before I can protest that I don’t need to be carried, Tobin gasps, lurching forward as though someone’s shoved him. The force cascades through our chain of hands. Elbows and knees hit hard on the ground, and the yelps that come after are followed by frantic shushing.
“They’re through!” Mr. Pace shouts behind us.
At first I think he’s saying everyone’s out of the room, but when he empties a cartridge into thin air, I realize he isn’t speaking to us at all. The Fade have broken in.
We’re dead.
“Move! Move! Move!” Lt. Sykes’s high and nasal voice shouts somewhere in the blackout.
Everything goes to pieces. We’ve only ever marched in silence with no real sense of urgency or danger. Now we’re a hive mind with a massive case of brain freeze. All our drills mean nothing, especially for the youngest children who spill out of the rooms on either side of ours, calling for their parents and crying “Fade!” when they run into us because they can’t see to know we aren’t the enemy.
Their voices are swallowed up by louder sounds as the corridor erupts with gunfire and something that is in no way human. I ball up on the floor with my hands over my ears.
“That’s not what I meant by limp, Marina!”
Tobin pulls me up by one arm, and then he’s racing toward the shelter beyond the maze of hallways, dragging me along the glowing line that’s been painted on the floor to guide us there. I try to keep up, but my leg can’t take it.
Good to his promise, Tobin lifts me off my feet, and over his shoulder I watch Mr. Pace and Lt. Sykes appear and disappear with every ammunition flash. Three others I can’t name shoot at shadows in the dark, their bodies twisting from the impact of the rifles against their shoulders.
“Don’t hold so tight, you’ll pull us down,” Tobin gasps. At some point I clenched my arms around his neck and didn’t even notice.
“Sorry.”
“I won’t drop you,” he promises, tightening his grip as I loosen mine.
Pairs of our elders line the hallway, guarding our retreat as they spur us forward. A flare illuminates the face of Honoria Whit with the odd bald V scarred into her hairline.
Easily the oldest surviving citizen of the Arclight, Honoria grew up defending her home, and she’s not going to stop now. While the rest of us scatter, she stands sentry, repelling the enemy with the force of her determination, shouting orders I can’t hear over the gunfire.
Behind Honoria, through the door of our classroom, I finally match an image to the idea of the monsters from my past as the Fade appear. They’re ghosts made of shadows, with their faces covered in decaying grey cloth. Silvered eyes glitter under monochrome hoods, visible only in the barrel flashes from our elders’ weapons. A haze of dark robes flies in all directions, making it impossible to see where one ends and his brother begins. Bullets cut through cloth and air, emerging on the other side to embed in our own walls.
This is pointless—bullets won’t stop the Fade. How do you kill pure evil?
“Bring it down,” Honoria orders, closer now, as she and the others join our retreat. “Collapse the corridor!”
Chunks of ceiling break loose and crash to the ground, creating a new obstacle for the Fade to cross.
“Get away from the walls!”
“It’s coming,” I say, and straighten Tobin’s shades, unsure if he’s paying as much attention to Honoria as he is to the destruction. He pushes off the wall, prepared for another sprint.
The passageway begins to vibrate, growing hotter as the redirected power collecting behind the walls reaches capacity. Generators snap on with a hum, flooding the complex with lights as intense as a second sun. In their wake come the screams and howls missing from the battle, and I know we’ve finally hurt them.
Panels that blinked red only minutes earlier burn hot enough to turn my alarm into a branding iron when it knocks against the wall as we flee.
Our shades protect us, but the Fade recoil, burned by light their pale eyes can’t handle. Some crumple like they’ve hit a solid barrier, but Honoria stays put, ready for the next wave.
The people who are close enough pick up the smallest children and run with them. I focus on the sound of boots and voices because it’s easier to make out than the obscure outlines my shades provide, but the noise leaves me dizzy, disoriented by fractured memories dredged up with the sounds of screaming Fade. I tuck my head into Tobin’s shoulder as he sprints to the only refuge we have left. I don’t even realize we’ve reached the bunker until the door slams behind us. My feet find their way back to the floor as I slip my shades back into their pocket.
I turn to say thank you, but Tobin wanders off to a corner by himself.
He’s the ghost again, and it’s with a pang I’m reminded he has more reason to hate me than most. So why is he the one who saved me?
I’ve lived a short life, most of which I can’t remember, and it doesn’t take long for the rest to flash through my mind while I wonder if it’s already over.
The wait reminds me of stories we’ve read in class. Our teachers claim things like art and literature are as important to survival as food and water, and they’ve preserved all they could of things written in the world before the Fade, including those of a place called Purgatory. There’s no sense of time, and no beginning or end, only the torment of an uncertain outcome over which you have no control. I didn’t believe it was real, but now I know we’re there.
I try counting off seconds in my head, but lose track around six thousand, at the point people thaw out enough to risk talking. Most everyone’s in motion; nerves make settling down impossible.
“We should just give her to them.”
Hearing Jove make the suggestion isn’t as surprising as having him wait nearly two hours to do it.
“Shh!”