Our Dark Duet

by Victoria Schwab

  Slowly, the tinny ringing in his ears subsided, and he could make out a different kind of noise. The steady rush of water.

  His chest tightened in panic but the sound wasn’t getting any closer. The subway—it was built over a river. When he shifted, bits of rubble tumbled down through the gaps in the floor and dropped the long way to the water below.

  August threw all his weight into freeing himself from the debris, but none of it yielded.

  The Corsai in the shadows snickered.

  sunaisunaistucksunai

  August looked around for something, anything, to use as a lever, and as he scanned the tunnel, two burning red dots, like the ends of cigarettes, danced in the dark.

  “Alice.”

  “Hello, August.”

  There was something in her hand. A remote.

  She nudged an object with her foot and it rolled toward him, stopping against a chunk of concrete by his knee. It looked like a lopsided ball, a lumpy package all tied up with tape.

  It took him too long to realize what it was.

  Alice perched on the farthest piece of rubble and turned the detonator between her fingers. “How long can Sunai hold their breath?”

  “August!” Kate’s voice echoed through the tunnel.

  She was above him, crouched at the edge of the hole, tying a cable to a piece of rebar.

  No, thought August. Run.

  But it was too late.

  Alice looked up.

  Her red eyes flared wide, and Kate stared back in shock, and August tried to say something—anything—just as the Malchai hit the remote.

  The blast went off, and the ground gave way, and he was falling again, still tangled up in the concrete and steel and taking half the subway floor down with him.

  And this time, the ground didn’t stop his fall.

  How long can Sunai hold their breath?

  He hit the surface of the water and sank like a stone.

  Kate stared down at the Malchai and for a strange, disorienting instant she didn’t—couldn’t—grasp what she was seeing. It was like a reflection, distorted by smoke and shadow. And then she understood.

  She was staring at a ghost, a shade, a monster made in her own image.

  And it looked up at her and smiled just before the blast.

  The explosion rocked the tunnel, and Kate nearly lost her balance as August crashed into the river.

  “Soro!” she called out, grabbing the cable and leaping into the dark. The cord burned her palms as she descended too fast and hit the ground hard, rolling up with an HUV in one hand and the gun in the other.

  The shadows hissed around her, rebuffed by the beam of light and the metal tracery on her gear.

  A second later Soro landed in a graceful crouch several feet away, no rope, nothing but six feet of long limbs and the inability to break on impact.

  All Kate said was “August,” but Soro was already moving, fastening a cable to their belt as they dove through the jagged hole in the subway floor and into the shadowed water below.

  Kate swung her HUV around, cutting through the clouds of dust and the deeper shadows, but there was no sign of the Malchai. She set the light on the ground and drew the gun’s clip from her belt just as something moved behind her—she heard the shift of rock on her good side, the tumble of rubble through slats, and turned.

  The Malchai stood waiting at the limit of the light, a nightmarish version of Kate herself, the shape right and the details all wrong.

  Red eyes instead of blue.

  White hair instead of blond.

  The monster was thinner than Kate, gaunt in the way all Malchai were, but she looked like her, distorted, an echo, just as Sloan had been an echo of Harker, him and not him, neither and both and something in between.

  Had her father felt the same disgust, looking at Sloan?

  Or had he seen only proof of his own power?

  The monster pursed its lips—her lips—and when she spoke, her voice had an echo of Sloan’s melodic rise, but also an edge of grit. “Hello, Kate.”

  Soro swung a wet arm out of the hole, and the Malchai glanced sideways. Kate didn’t hesitate. She drove the clip into the gun, swung it up, and fired. It felt good, felt right, the shock of the recoil, the satisfying bang-bang-bang as she fired three quick rounds at the Malchai’s chest.

  Kate had always been fast.

  But her shadow was faster, dodging out of the way before the first shot echoed through the tunnel. The Malchai spun with that horrible, monstrous grace and slammed a boot into Kate’s chest. She hit the subway floor, all the wind rushing out of her lungs.

  The armor absorbed the worst of the blow, but it still left her breathless and wincing as she staggered to her feet.

  The Malchai was already gone, swallowed up by the tunnel’s impenetrable dark, nothing but a trail of laughter in her wake. Everything in Kate said run—not away, but after. She made it one stride, two, before Soro dragged themself out of the pit, hauling August onto the subway floor.

  He coughed and retched, chest heaving.

  Kate crossed to his side. “August—”

  “He’ll be all right,” said Soro, slicking back their hair.

  “Easy for you—to say—” he gasped, spitting brackish water onto the ground.

  But as Kate knelt beside him, as she helped him to his feet, as they climbed back out of the tunnel, her gaze drifted again and again and again to the dark that had swallowed her shadow, wishing she had gone after it.

  August sat on the hall floor, his ears still ringing from the blast.

  He had gone straight to the Compound’s infirmary, expecting to find Henry on one of the cots. Instead he’d found the head of the FTF on his feet, seeing to the wounded as if he himself hadn’t just collapsed.

  “He’s stronger than he looks,” Em had said, but August could hear the static in his father’s chest, the tick of time slipping, its unsteady rhythm like a faulty clock.

  But Henry wouldn’t look at him, and his hands were covered in a soldier’s blood, so August left, leaned back against the wall outside, and let himself slide down until he was sitting on the floor.

  Water dripped from his hair, and every time he breathed, he felt the remains of the river in his lungs.

  How long can Sunai hold their breath?

  There had been a moment under the surface, before Soro reached him, when Leo’s voice had surged to the front of his mind, and told him to fall, to unleash that dark self, the one that slept within his skin.

  And he hadn’t.

  The August I knew would rather die.

  You make it worth the pain.

  You don’t let go.

  His body had screamed, the pressure turning to pain in his lungs. He’d heard that drowning wasn’t a bad way to die, that at some point it even became peaceful, but it hadn’t been peaceful for him.

  Would he have given in, if Soro hadn’t come?

  The lights came back up, the emergency blue replaced by steady white, and August heard a nervous cheer go through the building.

  The technicians had contained the damage at the power station and rerouted what power they could back into the Compound, but to do so they’d had to cut the supply from most of the FTF structures. Beyond the front doors, the light strip glowed at half strength. Beyond that, the night was dangerously dark.

  Too dark to assess the damage.

  Too dark to collect the dead.

  They’d have to wait until dawn and hope there were bodies left to burn. Meanwhile, people kept streaming into the Compound, the population of several blocks crammed into a handful of buildings. The lobby was packed, as was the training hall, and every apartment—even the Flynn’s home—was being divvied up between Soro’s and August’s squads, so he stayed there, on the floor outside the infirmary and slicked damp hair off his face as a familiar set of steps came toward him down the hall.

  Everyone was made of sounds, and August had learned hers the first day they met.

  Kate slum
ped against the opposite wall.

  She hadn’t said anything since they’d left the tunnel. Dust and debris streaked her fatigues, she didn’t look well—her skin was beaded with sweat, and the silver was threading out across both eyes.

  “I keep waiting for someone to arrest me again,” she said. “Everyone seems to be busy.”

  There was no humor in the words. Her tone was cool, her gaze flat, and August guessed why.

  Alice.

  August rose to his feet. “Come with me,” he said, reaching for her hand.

  She let him lead her, but her shoulders were tense, her body coiled. “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere private.”

  She raised an eyebrow, as if such a place didn’t exist anymore. There was a line for the elevators, so they took the stairs, climbing floor after floor in silence. Not a comfortable silence, but the kind that grew stiffer with every step. August didn’t know what to say and if Kate did, she didn’t plan on saying it, not yet.

  When they reached the top, he led her not to the apartment, but up the hidden stairs to the flat stretch of the Compound’s roof.

  For months, he’d imagined showing her this view. In his mind, Kate sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder on the sun-warmed stone, and they looked out at the city. In his mind, the war was over, and there was no North and South, no monster and human, only Verity, and a blanket of stars shining through the dark.

  In his mind, it didn’t go like this.

  The moment they were alone, the levy broke.

  Kate turned on him. “Did you know?”

  He could have deflected the question. After all, it hadn’t been explicit, but he knew exactly what she was asking about.

  “Did you know?”

  August let the truth rise up. “Yes. About a week after Sloan took control. We were on a rescue mission . . .”

  “All this time,” she whispered, “you knew she was here and you didn’t tell me.”

  His eyes flicked to Kate’s shadow, the thin shape twitching like a tail behind her. “All actions have costs. On some level, you had to know.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I knew what would happen, but I thought—I hoped—whatever it was—it was somewhere out there, haunting the Waste. It wasn’t supposed to be here.”

  “Well, it is,” said August. “It came back. With Sloan.”

  Kate wrapped her arms around her ribs. “It—it looks like me, August. That thing—”

  “Alice is nothing like you.”

  Kate’s head shot up. “Alice?”

  “That’s what she calls herself.”

  Something gave way inside Kate. He could feel it. “Of course.” She looked up at the sky in a way that said she simply couldn’t look at him. “My father told me that Malchai take their names from our shadows. Our ghosts. Whatever haunts us most. Sloan was his right-hand man—not his first kill, but the first one to leave a mark.”

  “And Alice?”

  Kate closed her eyes. “Alice was my mother. I pulled the trigger in that house, I shot that stranger, but Alice Harker was my first murder. I’m the reason we ran away. I’m the reason Callum sent his monster after us. I’m the reason she’s dead.”

  Two tears escaped down Kate’s face, but before August could reach out, she was scrubbing them away. “I’m the reason that monster is here.”

  August swallowed. He couldn’t lie, but the truth was cruel. He took a careful step toward Kate, and when she didn’t pull away, he wrapped his arms around her. She didn’t soften against him but held on tight.

  “We’ll stop her,” said August.

  “She’s my shadow,” said Kate, pressing her face into his collar.

  And when she spoke again, the words were so quiet, a human would never have heard them.

  “I’ll stop her myself.”

  Sloan peeled off the gloves and examined his hands, the blistered, oozing surface of his palms.

  “Sacrifice,” he mused to the shrouded cage. “Callum used to say that sacrifice is a cornerstone of success. Of course, Callum preferred sacrificing others. . . .”

  He trailed off when he heard Alice coming.

  That in and of itself was odd—she usually had an uncanny ability to appear and disappear without warning, but tonight her steps echoed through the basement. They came not from the stairs but from the subway tunnel on the other side. During Harker’s reign, the Malchai had been forced to come and go that way, so as not to frighten the building’s human tenants.

  In the months since Sloan’s ascent, and until his newest project, the tunnel had become the realm of the Corsai, and the Corsai alone. But here she was, dusted with ash.

  “How was our little diversion?” he asked. “I heard the blasts from—”

  “She’s here,” cut in Alice.

  “Who?”

  “Kate Harker,” she said, eyes burning bright. “She’s here.”

  The words sent a perfect shiver down Sloan’s spine. Not fear, oh no, but something sweet. The taste of fresh blood spilling over his tongue, the tang of hate, and the thought of life going out of those blue eyes. Callum’s eyes set into his daughter’s face. Eyes that no stand-in, no surrogate, no sacrifice could replace.

  “You saw her?”

  “She looks like me, but wrong, all squishy and human, and she’s with the Sunai. When did she get here? Did you know?” Alice couldn’t contain her excitement. She began to pace. “I wanted to tear her throat out right then and there, but there would have been nothing to savor, and I was caught off guard, but next time—”

  “You will not kill her,” said Sloan.

  Alice’s red eyes widened. “But she’s mine.”

  “She was mine first.”

  “You can have whoever you want—”

  “I know.”

  Alice let out a low snarl before his fingers wrapped around her narrow throat. Pain flared across his ruined palms, and Alice bared her teeth and drove her nails into his arm, but he didn’t let go.

  Alice had obviously forgotten. Forgotten what she was, what he was, forgotten that she was not predator to him, but prey.

  Drops of black blood slid down her neck where his fingers cut in. He lifted her thin body off the ground.

  “Listen to me,” he said smoothly, “and listen well. We are not equals, you and I. We are not family. We are not blood. You are a whelp. A shadow. Your strength is the barest echo of my strength. You continue to exist because I let you. But the scales of my favor are delicate, and if you tip them any more, I will rip your fangs out with my bare hands one by one, and leave you to starve. Do you understand?”

  Alice let out a low feral sound before answering.

  “Yes—”

  He saw her start to form the word Father and tightened his grip.

  And then he let go, and Alice slumped to her knees, breathing heavily. When she brought her hand to her throat, Sloan was pleased to see her fingers tremble.

  He knelt before her. “Now, now,” he cooed, drawing his gloves back on. “Katherine belongs to me, but if you’re useful, I will share.”

  Slowly Alice looked up, her red eyes blazing and her voice hoarse.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “How are you feeling?”

  Kate peeled her head up from August’s shoulder. She knew from his tone—so cautious, so careful—that he wasn’t talking about Alice anymore.

  “I’m still me,” she said, because that was as close to the truth as she could get.

  “If Sloan has the Chaos Eater—”

  “He does.”

  “Then we know where to find it. We’ll get a team together and—”

  August’s comm went off in a short shower of static. Kate pulled away as Henry’s voice came over the line.

  “I could use some steady hands down here.”

  She took a step toward the edge of the roof. Months ago, the city had blazed with light. Now it sprawled in varying degrees of shadow, dotted by patches of solid black.

&
nbsp; “I’m on my way,” August said into the comm, starting toward the rooftop door.

  “I thought you hated blood,” said Kate.

  “I do,” said August. “But life can’t always be pleasant.” He hesitated by the door, obviously waiting for her to follow, but Kate couldn’t bear the claustrophobic Compound. Not yet.

  “If it’s all right, I’ll stay up here a little longer.”

  August looked uncertain, but she waved her hand at the vast expanse of nothing. “Where am I going to go?” she teased. “Besides”—she cracked a tired smile—“Soro’s less likely to find me up here.”

  And I’m less likely to hurt someone.

  August relented. “Okay,” he said. “Just—don’t get too close to the edge.”

  The door swung shut, and Kate was alone. She didn’t realize she was fraying until she began to unravel.

  She sank into a crouch on the rooftop and wrapped her arms around her knees, the image of the monster—of Alice—ghosted behind her eyes. The casualty report, its gruesome murders all marked with an A.

  What had she done?

  She’d spent the last six months trying to save another city while hers burned, six months hunting monsters while her own hunted here.

  Something chimed in the pocket of her gear.

  Kate dragged her head up. She’d grabbed the vest off the sublevel wall, and never had a chance to check the pockets. Rooting around, she came up with a palm-sized tablet, standard issue for all the FTFs. Someone must have left theirs in the gear and—

  Kate’s thoughts broke apart when she saw the message on the screen.

  It was titled KOH, the kind of acronym you wouldn’t know, unless it belonged to you.

  Katherine Olivia Harker.

  And when she tapped the screen, she saw that the message hadn’t been sent to this one tablet. It had been sent to all of them. A blanket broadcast across the FTF feed.

  The message was only one line.

  Are you afraid of your own shadow?

  A.

  Kate forgot to breathe.

  She was back in the tunnel, watching her shadow escape into the dark and wanting to follow, and this time there was no Soro, no August, nothing to distract her, and she was already on her feet, heading for the door, the stairs, the way down, out. The need burned through her veins like fever, and even without the voiceless presence in her skull pushing her on, she knew that Alice was her making, her monster.