Arclight (10 page)

C
ATCHING
up with Tobin isn’t hard.

There are only two ways you can go from the Common Hall. Turn left and you’ll end up in the rec rooms; turn right and you’ll be in the domiciles. And I’m sure he isn’t in the mood to play games with the rest of the refugees.

“Tobin!”

As soon as he sees me, he disappears around the corner.

It would be easy to spin on my heel and leave Tobin to whatever quest he’s outlined for himself, to say he can choose to find me if that’s what he wants, but making him follow me would bare an open wound as much as if I’d betrayed him at the Arc.

Stupid conscience.

“I blame you for this,” I tell my inhaler, but it’s not the chemicals causing me trouble—it’s me and my newly discovered talent for being in the right place at the wrong time, and listening in on things I’m not supposed to hear.

This is worse than eavesdropping in the hospital. This is mind-dropping or mind-snooping or whatever the word is for me knowing what he’s thinking when I have no right to. If I hadn’t heard his argument with Mr. Pace, I wouldn’t know what those four words on his tray meant.

I don’t want to be Tobin’s burden, or compulsion in his father’s name, and I
don’t
need another martyr, so I follow him, wishing the hallway were longer. At the junction, he’s still not moving fast enough to make me believe he’s trying to outpace me, not knowing how fast he ran during the Red-Wall.

“Tobin!” He’s stopped at his door, hand raised toward the scanner that will let him inside. “Please, we both know you were waiting anyway.”

The struggle’s there in the way his shoulders tense, then droop. He tightens his grip on the door handle, leaning into it.

“Leave me alone,” he says.

“I can’t.”

“Yes you can. You can walk past here, go to your room, and get inside where it’s safe.”

“I can’t let you do this,” I correct him. “You don’t have to be your father.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know that if it wasn’t for me, he’d be here. I wish—I wish I was as brave or selfless or good as the people you lost for my sake, but I’m not—I’m scared.”

The words come out in a rush, without a pause for him to break in.

“And I don’t want you to think you have to throw yourself into the fire for me because it’s what your father did, but I’m also too big of a coward to tell you not to. You were the only one in that room last night who was worried
about
me instead of what would happen
because of
me.”

How does Anne-Marie do this without passing out? I’m so light-headed, I have to rest my shoulder against the wall before gravity can take me to the floor.

“Marina?” Tobin asks, concerned.

“I think I took too much off my inhaler.”

“Do you need Doctor Wolff?”

“No.” Shaking my head’s a mistake. The entire hall wobbles; Tobin splits in half, so there are two of him with four eyes fixed on me. “I’m finishing what I came to say. If I pass out when I’m done, then one of you can go. I know you blame me for your dad not coming home, and I know—”

Whatever I knew is gone. Thoughts don’t matter anymore. Neither do headaches, double vision, or the light show going off inside my brain.

The wall beside Tobin’s head shimmers, moving with a grace and precision only possible for a living thing. It’s crawling toward the floor with an all-too-familiar
click-clack
I wish I could blame on my meds.

I take one shaky step, and like before, my movement makes the Fade move. A fraction of a turn, the smallest shift in the way it distributes its weight, and it’s out of sight.

Click-clack. Click-clack
.

It’s happening again, only I’m not asleep this time, and I’m not alone.

“Look, I’m not in the mood for . . . whatever this is.” Tobin presses the door handle, disengaging the lock.

“Can’t you hear it?” I ask, though it barely comes out as a squeak.

Click-clack. Click-clack
.

I risk my fingers, wrapping my hand around the side of the door, and hold tight with strength enough to surprise us both.

“We have to stay still.”

The Fade shredded our outer walls; a door will hold one back about as well as tin foil on a hinge. Our only option is to let it pass, then we can alert someone.

“That’s it, I’m getting Doctor Wolff,” Tobin says.

“No!”

The vents kick on overhead, and the sudden burst catches the Fade’s robe, pulling the edge into sight. It’s closer. Close enough that it could reach out with one of its poison hands and slice through Tobin. Another burst, and the robes billow out as extensions of the wall itself. The Fade’s backing away from us, toward the ceiling.

“You can’t feel it?” I ask.

“Feel what?”

The oppressive choke of being watched. Death waiting for the perfect moment to drop out of the sky.

“It’s—”

A very human squeal stops my warning. Loud and just around the corner, it’s followed by laughter and chatter, announcing that we’re no longer the only ones I have to worry about. Silver didn’t go to the rec rooms after all. Her walk has brought her all this way, and Anne-Marie and Dante are with her.

“Hey!” Anne-Marie chirps. The lights in the dormitories are bright and strong; our bracelets have turned green. She thinks the danger’s passed. “Is this why you didn’t want to come with me? If it is, I’ll back us right out of here and leave you—”

“Annie, what’s on the wall?” Tobin asks. He’s finally caught on that I’m staring behind him, not at him.

“Paint?” she guesses, coming closer.

“Someone hit the alarm,” I say, forcing the words through my teeth. “It’s watching me. If I move, it will, too.” I can’t make the word
Fade
come out of my mouth.

Tobin cuts his eyes sideways, toward the wall.

“Farther up,” I whisper. “Near the signs.”

I see the exact second he realizes he’s close enough to death to touch it. His body takes on that same surreal calm he had during the Red-Wall.

“You see it?” I ask.

He nods.

Anne-Marie crosses her arms. “Would somebody please—”

Tobin grabs her arm and wrenches her sideways, putting the light at the right angle to show what can’t be seen head-on. She gasps, covering her mouth with her hands.

“What?” Silver demands.

“I don’t get it either.” Dante frowns. “What’s the joke?”

Anne-Marie slaps the alarm on her wrist at the same time Tobin activates his own, and she launches herself at the emergency station down the hall hard enough that I hear it when she hits.

In the instant the corridor goes Red-Wall, Silver and Dante shift into reverse, running backward until they’re on the wall with Anne-Marie, who still hasn’t taken her weight off the emergency call. Tobin twists, grabbing the now-visible Fade by its robes. Dislodged and confused, it crumples, leaving it as a Fade-shaped piece of wall on the floor. It howls through the blue-and-white
DOMICILE 27
sign where its mouth should be as Tobin pins it down.

Tobin’s eyes go feral with his first strike, but never unfocused like they were when it was Jove on the other end of his fist. This time, he knows exactly who and what he’s hitting, and that makes him all the more vicious.

The Fade flails its arms and legs, thrashes its entire body with enough force to bring them both off the floor, but Tobin locks his knees and never falls off.

No two noises from its mouth are the same. One comes out birdlike, the next as the hiss of some great cat, then odd guttural sounds with a rhythm like spoken words. The planes of the Fade’s face shift beneath its wrappings as though its bone structure is in flux. A brutal jab connects to an angular cheekbone that crumbles away and re-forms in a new configuration, so no matter how many times Tobin actually succeeds, he never hits the same target twice. Its limbs lengthen and shorten, and its girth flexes from wide to wiry and back again.

Eventually, the Fade finds its center, settling into one form. The pebbled off-white appearance it stole from our wall dissolves into wrapped hands and a face under some kind of long shroud or robe that covers everything but a pair of furious silver eyes ringed dark blue around the irises. Instead of using the leverage of its superior strength, the Fade stops struggling. Those horrible eyes close under lids that are bone white.

Something’s coming. I can feel it, smell it, even taste it. The air crackles.

“Tobin, stop.” My voice croaks, dry and harsh. “Something’s not right.”

The Fade takes each blow without a flinch. Not a whimper, no more strange sounds, but it’s not as still as it appears. Between the blows, where a person would take a breath, there’s a rustle.

“Get back!” I shout.

Tobin has no time to heed my warning. The Fade comes alive, shrieking, and the invisible force that’s been holding me still breaks. I drop to the floor, wondering if my ears have ruptured from the sound. To the side, I catch a glimpse of Anne-Marie and her friends with their hands over their ears, cringing together against the wall.

The Fade wedges a foot between itself and Tobin’s chest and sends him flying into the far wall; he lands in a heap, at least dazed, most likely unconscious.

The Fade collects itself, pouring up against gravity, until it’s balanced on whatever it has for feet. The wrappings that protected it from the light now hang limp from the struggle, an odd sort of decay—second skin falling off a body.

Staring up, I realize that the Fade is on its feet and I’m not. Anne-Marie and Silver are on the floor. Dante’s down. Even Tobin, with all that unstoppable rage—useless. It knocked us all out of the fight with barely an effort.

It turns its attention down, meeting my eyes with its silver ones. A connection sparks, raising bile in my throat.

This is familiar.

I’ve felt this . . . thought this . . . before.

Somewhere
.

The headache I’ve been trying to suppress pokes at the back of my brain. The air charges again, and the Fade drops to a squat in front of me, with its hands rested on its knees, weight forward on its toes.

Blue into silver, then back into blue, the Fade’s eyes cycle as they sweep my face. I want to run, but there’s nowhere to go, and I can’t leave the others. I pray the moan from down the hall means Tobin is conscious again.

“Stay away,” I warn, hoping I sound braver than I am as I inch backward, into the opening of Tobin’s apartment, and reach for the only weapon I have. I cup my hand around the bottom corner of the door, swinging hard, and hitting the Fade square in the face.

Surprising tears flood those inhuman eyes as it howls again. The Fade’s chest heaves, struggling to find the air I knocked out of it. Fade aren’t supposed to breathe—there’s one of our assumptions blown.

This time, when it finds its feet, the filthy thing lunges. Wicked claws pop through shredded bandages to rip my shield out of my hands. The door hinges groan, but keep their settings.

“Get away from her!” Tobin, back on his feet, leaps at the creature, using his momentum to bring it down.

The others are standing now, made bolder by the knowledge that the Fade can feel pain. Dante tries to help, but Tobin and the Fade move too fast. The Fade’s whirling robes make it impossible to keep track of who’s where until one or the other of them lands a solid strike, knocking the other one clear.

And suddenly, Anne-Marie’s the hero of the night.

Out of nowhere, a shower of freezing water pours into the middle of the hall. She’s climbed up on Silver’s shoulders, banging away at a metal sprinkler with her shoe. Sprayers pop on in sequence down the full length of the corridor. Enraged, the Fade tries to find the source of the water as its coverings soak down heavy against its body, impeding its movements.

Tobin and Dante are waiting when their chance comes and knock the Fade off its feet. Anne-Marie grabs an arm; Silver takes one of its legs; I plant myself on its chest, pressing against its shoulders.

There are five of us holding on to this thing and it’s still moving. One of them, stronger than five of us—that’s one assumption proven.

I dig a knee harder into its side, and the Fade jerks. Our eyes connect again, causing a sensation like static. Not quite tickling, not quite pain. The Fade’s eyes widen, forcing the blue to recede to the far edges of its silver irises. Shock, if I had to guess.

Recognition
.

It appears as a word, an impression, and a picture all at once in my thoughts. The cool weight of still water washes over my arms and legs, so real I have to glance down to make sure I’m still here. If I close my eyes, I’m outside the Arclight, floating in water that has nothing to do with the sprinklers.

Whispers speak with voices I don’t recognize. Flashes of shrouded trees, covered in black vines and moss.
I’m in the Dark
.

Figures appear from nowhere, ghostly white against the ground and nonexistent sky. Blank faces blur together, and all the voices become one.

“Do you know me?” I ask.

Then I’m running. I’m still holding the Fade to the Arclight’s floor, but I can feel my legs pumping. Trees and bushes fly by, trampled in my frantic need to get somewhere.

A pinpoint of light appears beyond the darkness. Light means escape. It means safety. It means the monsters can’t follow. My leg aches, but I keep running, and the light gets brighter. I’m almost there, and then . . .

Nothing
.

White light explodes as though my eyes have burst, and the images retreat to make room for the pain. I can’t use my inhaler and hold the Fade at the same time, so I make it suffer for my misery. Legs clenched tighter into its sides, fingers digging as deep as I dare on its throat. Let it feel the torture it’s caused for once.

Remorse
.

The word echoes softly, like the first moment after waking. It chases the ache with a cooling breeze, and phantom fingers brush the pain away.

Do not injure
.

“Wh-what was that?”

The Fade shuts down, and the static dies to silence.

“What did you do?” A minute ago I was sure this creature wanted to kill me, and could without much effort. Now I’m screaming in its face.