City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (34 page)

Or so I thought. Instead, what I did was run directly into an ambush.

I’d seen the security shooting into the lab, keeping my friends cornered. I hadn’t thought to scan the hallways outside, to get the lay of the land before I rushed down here. Too many things going on at once. I’d been picturing the Jansynian teams all crowded up by the doors, their backs to the hall, an easy target to approach. I hadn’t thought it through.

I came round a corner, still two hallway intersections from the lab, when one of the guards grabbed me by the wrist and twisted. Both startling and painful, and I dropped my gun. She shoved me against the wall and held me there. “Drake is neutralized.”

I was close enough to her earpiece I could hear the command that came back. “Bring him forward. He’s useful as a hostage.”

Shit shit shit. I tried to pull away, but she twisted my arm up until all I could think about was the pain. After that, I went quietly. I’d have to think my way out of this one. And quickly.

Except it got worse. The third shadow, Terrel, waited in the hall with the rest of the team. His eyes narrowed as he saw me. Of course he’d be able to see I was still me, and his next question would be—

“Seana?” he asked softly. Not to me. He listened, his head tilted towards his earpiece. “Director Seana, please respond.

“What did you do?” That question, full of venom, was definitely directed at me. He grabbed me by my shirt and threw me into the wall. “Little human pissant, what did you do?”

I was tired of being pushed around, of being afraid. I rippled the magic through me, felt its hot pulse. “Would you like me to show you?”

He grabbed me again, shook me hard enough to break my concentration. He was strong, much stronger than me. I didn’t know if that was his Jansynian body or the shadow giving it life. I just knew I couldn’t break away. “This ends now,” he said.

Holding me in front, he pushed his way through the guards in position around the door. From inside, I heard Vogg yell, “Hold fire!”

“No!” What mattered was Spark, that they not get to her.
 

But it was too late. My friends weren’t going to shoot me. That gave the Jansynians the cover they needed to push through the door.
 

Terrel and I breached the doorway first, with the security team streaming in behind. Vogg had fallen back. I could just see the top of his head over the divider wall. I placed him in the doorway of the office Spark had been hiding in. I didn’t see Syed.
 

Iris launched herself from the office on my left, gaining weight and size as she moved. Even Jansynian discipline faltered at the sight of a bear inside their space. In the moment before they could get their bearings and shoot at her, she drove her claws deep into Terrel’s back. He let me go, stumbling. But his shadow-driven body didn’t fall.

The lights went out.

No, it was more than that. I’d seen this office with the lights out. Blinking panels on the walls, dim glows around the light switches, and soft emergency lighting meant it was never pitch-dark. Except now it was. One of the shadows, or Syed? Did this work for us or against us?

A door slammed. Vogg. The darkness was against us if it meant they could get to Spark. How long would one office door keep the shadows out?

The shooting had stopped, the Jansynians as thrown by the darkness as the rest of us. I crept forward, trying to find a wall to put at my back. My eyes watered, straining to adjust, but no matter how much I blinked I couldn’t make anything out in the unnatural blackness.
 

A roar, and gunfire erupted. Iris taking advantage. Bright pain seared through my thigh. One of the shots meant for her. I scrambled forward on a leg that wanted to collapse. “Iris!”

A hand grabbed my shoulder, dragged me back against a woman’s body. A familiar voice whispered in my ear. “You don’t need her. I want some time together, just you and me.”

Amelia. Her cold fingers wrapped around my neck. I tried to shout again, but she squeezed, cutting off my breath. “Quiet, now. We have unfinished business.”

I’d fought this one off in the warehouse, when it had been Micah. And now it was in Amelia. I didn’t know her as well as Seana, but still well enough to use the magic, to drive out the assaulting shadow.
 

If only I could breathe.
 

“What, no clever remark? No arrogant taunts?” Her fingers were like ice, the shadow pressing against my skin, but it wasn’t trying to get in. Not yet. It had learned. As an invader, it was at a disadvantage. Like this…

Another gunshot, close and deafening.
 

The lights came back up. Dimmer than before. Or maybe that was my own vision failing. I could see enough. Terrel at the door that led to Spark, his midsection a bloody mess. Syed, ten feet away, holding one of the Jansynian guns.
 

Terrel slid down and the shadow seeped free of his body. Towards the door.
 

Vogg wouldn’t be able to see it.

Amelia, too, had turned towards the shot. Which meant she saw Syed’s gun turn on her. She threw me at him.

I choked, dragging air through a throat that felt full of glass. I couldn’t keep my feet under me. I fell towards Syed.

He jumped to the side, but the momentary distraction was enough for shadow-Amelia to draw a gun of her own. And shoot.

Bloody red holes blossomed in Syed’s chest, his stomach, his throat. His eyes went wide. The gun fell from his hand.

I had no time. I had to get to Spark.

I had to block out the sound of Amelia’s laughter, of Iris’s pained roars, of Syed’s gurgling breath as he staggered back. I had to ignore my bruised windpipe, my torn thigh, my reeling head. Shadow number three was seeping through the door that led to Vogg and Spark. I was the only one left who could stop it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Out of Time

I knew how to fight off a shadow trying to invade me. I knew how to fight off a shadow that was already inside someone with whom I was close. What I didn’t know was how to fight one that was floating free, how to stop it from getting to Vogg, to Spark. How to kill it before it took another life.

Magic. That was their enemy. I’d been told—what felt like years ago—that was the key. Kill the body. Magic away the shadow. But what did that even mean? What was the pattern? What was the technique? I couldn’t just throw raw energy, raw change at it.

No, that wasn’t true. I could. It was simply everything I’d been taught not to do. It would be dangerous. Maybe suicidal.
 

I’d run out of time. I’d run out of options.

“Vogg! Cover!” I yelled. Hoping it was still Vogg in there. Hoping I wasn’t too late.

I closed my eyes and summoned power. I didn’t try to define it. Didn’t try to control it. I anchored the energy in myself and sent it radiating out. Power. Energy. Change. Light against the darkness. Chaos against the stasis.
 

Burning agony as the power twisted and seared my flesh. I struggled to hold myself against the tidal forces threatening to rip me apart. The magic pushed back. Pressing out as I pulled in.

The world exploded in a burst of fire around me.
 

Then nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Body Made of Pain

Hands on my shoulders, dragging me back into aching awareness. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift my head. Couldn’t catch my breath.

“Hold still.” Iris’s voice.
 

I tried to tell her I had no choice, but I’d lost the sense of how to make words. How to open my mouth.
 

Eyes. I could open my eyes. Except that didn’t help. Everything was still dark. My lungs convulsed and kicked back into life, but the air they pulled in was thick with dust and I choked.

“Ready?” Vogg’s voice. I didn’t know how to answer.

Iris spoke. “Do it.”

The weight lifted and light flooded over my face as Vogg and Iris pulled off the section of wall that had collapsed on top of me.
 

I blinked, coughed, tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Iris was herself again. She and Vogg were both covered with blood and dust and fragments of the ceiling and walls. I couldn’t tell how bad either of them was hurt.

I couldn’t tell how bad I was hurt. My entire body was made of pain, down to the last cell. “Help me up,” I choked out.

The lab was a mess. Everything not nailed down had been blown against the walls. Around me, a circle of the ceiling and floor had been stripped to a bare, black slab. The glass in the office windows was blown, and the remaining patches of carpet smoldered and smoked.

I saw no shadows.

Vogg gave me a hand up, then kept his arm under mine when my legs tried to collapse again. I pointed to the far corner of the room. To the desk and fragment of divider leaning against the wall and the bodies beneath it.

Syed, on the bottom, was a bloody mess. Unmoving. On top of him, trapped beneath the desk drawers, lay Amelia. Her head was scraped, her arm pinned beneath her in a way that had to mean it was broken, but her chest was still moving. Still breathing.

Iris handed me the gun I hadn’t noticed her carrying. Then turned away.

Vogg helped me to move closer. Until I was standing over her. I pointed the gun at her head.
 

Her eyes flickered open. She looked up at me. Her lips moved in a bare whisper. “Joshua Drake.”

I looked into her eyes. At the shadow swimming there.

I lowered my gun. “Where’s Spark?”

Iris spun around. “What are you doing?”
 

“It’s Syed, Iris. Just Syed.” I transferred my weight from Vogg to the wall. “Are they all dead? All three?”

Syed-Amelia nodded. “I was struggling with Amelia when your—whatever you did. She took the worst of it. I felt her die, along with the other.”

To Vogg, I said, “Help him up, and tell me where Spark is.”

“I’m here.” Spark’s head popped up in the now open window of the office she’d been hiding in all this time. “And almost done. But if you guys have a minute, I could use some help.”

#

The Jansynians were dead or fled. I had no idea how long that would last, if any of them had escaped to run for reinforcements.
 

I didn’t have to tell anyone else to hurry. We all knew. As Vogg and Iris dug through the wreckage to find the intact computer Spark needed, as Syed-Amelia and I pushed our protesting bodies to rebuild the barricades on the doors. The shadows were gone, but this wasn’t anywhere near over.

“I still don’t hear any alarms.” I risked looking out the door, at the still-empty hall. “Do you think they haven’t noticed us?”

“I think they know the value of silence.” Amelia’s voice, but Syed’s words, Syed’s cadence. “They don’t want to give us warning, but they’re coming.”

“Try this,” Vogg said behind me. He’d righted a desk on the far wall, found a screen that was cracked, but functional and an outlet that still had power.
 

Spark came out from the office. “Ash, I need help.”

I traded places with Vogg as Spark punched codes into the screen. It flickered, went black, then switched to a screen full of numbers and moving graphs. “What’s that?”

Spark flashed me a wide, cheery grin. “That’s the satellite. I’m connected to it. We’re in.” She continued to type, her fingers a blur against the screen. “Go in the office. I’ll need you to work my NetPad while I do this.”

Spark really had been busy while we’d been fighting off the Jansynians and the shadows. A panel of the wall was cut away and Spark’s NetPad was spliced into the nest of wires she’d pulled out. I brushed a clear spot amid splintered wood and glass shards and sat down, glad to have an excuse to be off my feet.
 

Which meant I didn’t see the explosion. But I heard it. Heard Spark’s scream. Heard the hiss of gas moving through the room. Heard a new voice, muffled behind a gas mask say, “Everyone freeze.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The Director

“Weapons down,” the new voice commanded. Footsteps—too many footsteps. What was happening out there?

“You, Fyean, step away from that terminal.”

“Just one more minute,” Spark murmured. “One more—”

“Step away or we will shoot.”

“Spark.” Vogg’s sharp voice. Protecting her to the last.

A gunshot. The sound of shattering glass, and Spark’s cry. A second shot and Vogg growled. I pushed up to my knees, moving quietly as I could, keeping my head down. I still had a gun. If I could get off a couple shots before they saw me…

Spark’s NetPad flashed. A blinking green square in the center of the screen that said
EXECUTE
.
 

I pressed it.
 

Three Jansynians appeared at the door. All wearing masks. All with guns pointed directly at me.
 

I knew when I was beat. I put my hands up. Let them drag me out.

The gas that filled the lab tore at my throat. I started coughing again and couldn’t stop. My eyes stung. I couldn’t see what was happening. They dragged me out of the lab. When I’d blinked away the tears, got my breathing back under control, I was alone, surrounded by Jansynians. They were leading me to gods-knew-where and my friends were nowhere to be seen.

#

They threw me in a holding cell. It was empty and far too bright for my tortured eyes, with an electric buzz coming from the door holding me in. I lay on the floor where they’d dropped me, arm across my face, body screaming with pain and exhaustion.
 

I lost all track of time. Minutes, hours, I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure I stayed conscious. The lights, the buzz digging into my brain, they dug into my sleep-deprived brain and made the room seem to float around me. I was here. I wasn’t here. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know who anyone was. The shadows were here, all around, just beyond the lights. If I listened, I could hear them humming.
 

The buzz disappeared and its sudden lack snapped me awake. The door opened. A woman—not armed, not dressed as security, gazed down at me with perfect Jansynian neutrality. “Mr. Drake, please follow me.”