Except it was coming straight at her.
The steady encroachment of white-orange mist, whose outermost extensions now slithered across the road less than thirty meters away, snapped Wisp from her thoughts. Having lost visual contact with her sphere, she struggled to seize it through the invisible, pulsing thread of power that connected her to it. The thick swaths of Smog dampened the link, giving her an impression of fishing for a key in murky water. It took her a few seconds to feel her way to the end of that link and regain control of her minion.
The Smog parted, releasing the sphere, and it sliced through the wall of vapors with its alternating yellow-orange-red glow, streaking along the road in an attempt rejoin its mistress. Wisp barely noticed the erratic flicker of colors.
She whirled and ran southward as fast as her short legs could carry her.
Wisp couldn’t afford to care that her sphere hadn’t caught up yet. As much as she wished she could swap positions, stopping to redirect her light was just going to get her killed.
As she ran, she inwardly cursed herself for not having taken the time to create a second sphere. Working with only a sliver of moonlight would have been slow and annoying, sure. A second light would sure have come in handy right about now.
She ran to the bridge, boots hitting the paved boardwalk with a frantic staccato. She sensed the sphere was slowly catching up. Unfortunately, so was the Smog.
The pungent scent wafting from behind grew stronger and stronger. Once she reached the bridge, her throat burned and her eyes watered.
Just a little farther…
She set her sights firmly on the highway beyond the dry channel. Smog always expanded in a straight line. It made no turns and didn’t chase after people.
Except this time it did.
A long plume of Smog streamed past her, traversing the riverbed in what felt like an instant. Wisp flinched. Before she fully registered what was going on, her feet slammed to a sudden, reflexive stop. Her hand flew up in an attempt to protect her mouth and nose from the cloud of Smog that was now straight ahead of her. The swirling vapors lurked just beyond the six-lane road she was standing on, maintaining a distance of about ten meters.
They expanded in every direction she could possibly take. Running was no longer an option. When she turned to look behind her, she saw a wide dispersion of Smog that reached several meters high, blocking her view of Charlottenburg Gate and all but the highest buildings behind it. She turned around and around, her jaw dropping as she realized what it had done: it formed a perfect circle around her.
As if it knew exactly how close it could get without hurting me…
Wisp took a step back, rubbing her knuckles against her forehead, but the thought wasn’t so easily dismissed. Strange and inexplicable as it was, the shapeless presence around her did behave like a sentient being. Except it couldn’t communicate. Or maybe … maybe she was wrong about this, too.
Drawing her light – whose color was still alternating between yellow, orange, and red – the rest of the way toward her, Wisp raised her voice toward the wall of vapors.
“Hey you. Can’t say I ever tried talking to Smog before, but there’s a first time for everything, right?”
While she spoke, she pulled on her fist-sized sphere, forcing it to split up and spread its luminescent energy across a multitude of smaller lights that danced around her like fireflies, each just barely big enough for a position swap.
The Smog didn’t respond. Wisp detected a shift in the stirring haze she was facing.
“So, um, I guess we already met this morning when I was hopping around the rooftops. Am I right or am I right?” She gave her troupe of fireflies a gentle push upward. They now circled around her head and over it, a dazzling array of blinking, color-shifting lights.
The haze shuddered, and she could have sworn she saw one of its billowing ridges assume the shape of a humanoid torso. The apparition melted away within seconds, making it impossible to determine whether it had been real.
Wisp shuffled another step backward. “Don’t scare me like that. If you want to tell me something, you could, like, draw words in the air. How about it?”
Wisp directed one of her lights up and up, separating it the others. Her hands began to tremble, so she folded them at her back and assumed a military stance.
It dawned on her why her lights flickered through the three danger colors like this, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
Whoever is behind this hasn’t decided what to do with me.
As if to confirm her suspicions, a protracted extension of Smog broke away from the circular barrier and flowed toward Wisp. It wafted and whirled slowly in midair, forming fuzzy, inconsistent shapes resembling the drifting nebulae of ghosts. They looked disturbingly humanoid.
Fighting against the urge to run, Wisp shuffled two steps backward, then another. She blinked furiously, her eyes now stinging so much she could barely make out the swarm of lights that danced around her head. The one mini-sphere she had separated from the others hung abandoned in the air. She couldn’t see far enough to direct it anywhere, let alone someplace resembling safety. So she used the only remaining option and flung her lights – all except the one that floated far above her head – at the shapeshifting protrusion of Smog.
All of them struck … something. The spheres sliced through the slow-moving haze and stopped after penetrating two meters deep. To her surprise, the humanoid shapes dissolved in an instant and retreated back to the barrier in a formless bulk.
Her spheres flickered once before committing to a steady mustard hue. The sickeningly acidic smell abated at the same time, allowing her to see better and breathe easier. But her tension didn’t let up. She was still trapped, and the Smog barrier reached too high for her to have line of sight to safety. No line of sight, no position swap. Damn it!
In a frantic attempt to protect herself as best as she could, she pulled the spheres she’d used as projectiles back to herself and pushed the high-flying straggler away, directing it toward the upper boundary of the barrier. It had covered more than half the distance when she heard the very last thing she had expected to hear: a voice from the Smog.
“So you have teeth after all.” The words were in accented English instead of German, a modulated baritone and distinctly human.
Wisp stiffened then spun around, a blank space in her mind where her school English should have been and strained to locate the source of the voice within the drifting haze. She must have looked as helpless and foolish as she felt because the invisible man emitted a throaty chuckle, the air stirred by the laughter.
Sensing a ripple that wasn’t created by the wind, Wisp looked up to see a man-sized shape extract itself from the velvety black night sky. She could only make out the outlines at first, but the aerial appearance soon gained texture and color by drawing them from its surroundings. The sky’s blackness faded away while the silhouette took on a darker tint. Within seconds, it assumed a human likeness with wafting black hair and a male body, clad in smoke and shadows. His face appeared otherworldly and almost ethereal, and his skin had the unnaturally white hue of Smog untouched by moonlight. His eyes were orbs of pure darkness.
A Transmuter? Wisp stared at the man in a daze, her mind scrambling to interpret what she was seeing. Evolved with air control powers were most often assigned to the Evoker category. This guy, however, seemed to manifest a semi-physical shape from nothing. Which would mean he changed the composition of physical materials like air molecules. A combination of invisibility and illusions would most likely create the same effect, but as far as she knew, there was only a single Evolved in the world with both of those abilities.
“Well,” the man said while drifting down to the ground facing Wisp, “you don’t look all that different up close. Still a shrimp in combat boots. The light show would be more impressive if I didn’t know you can’t do shit with it.”
While Wisp’s English wasn’t great, she understood it well enough to
get the gist of what he was saying. She didn’t mind the insult so much. Words were one thing, the potential to end her life on a whim was another. This guy and everything she didn’t know about him gave her the chills. He commanded Smog, for Chrissakes. Every breath she took reminded her of how freakishly lethal the stuff was.
“How about an introduction for starters? We didn’t get to talk this morning,” she tried to say in English, though she wasn’t sure if all the words came out right, or in the correct order. Her tongue felt as if it stuck to the roof of her mouth.
He stared straight at her, tapping slender fingers against his moonlit chin. “Fair enough. Call me Smoker.”
The intensity of his gaze didn’t waver.
After another moment of strained stillness, Wisp gave herself a push and dug out more of her rusty English. “Wisp. It’s not my real name, and I’m not famous or anything like that.”
“I’m not famous or anything, either. Your ignorance proves as much.” Smoker floated slowly in place, showing off the drifts of Smog and shadow that made up his villain ‘costume.’ “Now, then. I guess I should ask what you were doing in Constantine’s territory this late at night.” He sounded bored as if asking a question he already knew the answer to.
Of course he did. Considering how the Smog had poured out from the warehouse while she was snooping around, the answer was obvious. The real question was … would he tell anyone, and what were the consequences? Wisp’s thoughts and worries turned back to Hannah.
“I was looking for my friend,” she said. “She went north yesterday and never came back. You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” While speaking, she directed her uppermost light the rest of the way to the Smog barrier and left it there, an arm’s length above the toxic vapors.
“I’m not sure.” He snapped his fingers without making a sound. “Now that you mention it … I did see someone. She a friend of yours? Well, I can see why the two of you could be friends anyway. Naughty minds think alike.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” He cocked his head to the side, the shadowy pits of his eyes stirring menacingly. “What you should be asking yourself is how I’m going to kill you, and when.”
Snot. Wisp clenched and unclenched her hands. Keep him talking. Buy time.
“Are you really content to be Constantine’s watchdog?” Wisp blurted, taking a shot in the dark based on the conversation she’d had with the Shadows leader. “He’s not even a big shot gangster, and he doesn’t have powers. You’re not from Germany. Why would you come all the way here for a boring guard job?”
“Do I look like a watchdog to you?” he said, sweeping his nebular hands to indicate himself.
Before she could think of a response, the Smog reared up and surged one or two meters forward, closing in around her like a tightening fist. A harsh cough racked through Wisp, and a headache nibbled at her temples. She slid her hand back over her mouth, wishing she’d brought a bandana to protect her airways.
“No.” She moaned when the cough died down. “Which is why I asked–”
“It’s simple,” he said with visible satisfaction. “Buildings filled with Smog don’t need to be guarded. Common sense.”
Keeping her mouth tightly shut, Wisp managed a nod. Inwardly, she wasn’t convinced at all. More questions popped into her head. If Smoker wasn’t on active guard duty, why had the Smog reacted to the light sphere when it passed through the warehouse window? Why had it chased and surrounded her, and how come he’d found her so soon after the fact?
“I still don’t understand,” she said. “Smog can’t rise at night, and it doesn’t chase people.”
“It can now,” he replied. “And it does. That’s all you need to know.”
Wisp squeezed her burning eyes shut, annoyed by the tear she felt slithering across her cheek. She didn’t want to cry in front of this guy, not even if the acrid fumes were to blame for the tears. Her vision was a watery blur. Lacking the breath and energy to keep prodding for answers she wasn’t going to get, she returned to concern number one.
“If Big C wants our turf, he can have it.” Wisp ground the words through her teeth and opened her eyes. “Tell me where my friend is, then all of us will leave the city.”
“I don’t know,” Smoker said, “and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
“Can you at least let me…” Another cough tore through her.
“Oh.” He lifted his chin toward the swirling barrier that enclosed them both. “I guess I could pull back a little. It’s hard to understand you if you’re coughing your guts out. Even more so if you collapse.”
He’s enjoying this. And he isn’t just going to let me go.
Her instincts told her that this guy was most likely a newbie villain, using the opportunity to prove himself as a ‘real’ bad guy. Most villains were wannabes and acted like petty schoolyard bullies to avoid getting slapped with an execution order by the UNEOA and the Covenant. Dead City, though, had stopped trying to maintain law and order long ago. As long as Smoker limited his villain activity to the forsaken side of the wall, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.
If he kills me, Wisp thought with grim despair, no one but my friends will care.
The Smog shivered and retreated, allowing her to breathe a little easier. The exposed skin of her head and arms itched, already reddened by the proximity to the Smog. She blinked and wiped her face with both hands. Smoker came back into focus, still drifting with idle arrogance, streaks of rippling darkness fanning out behind him to form the likeness of a cape. “So how about letting me go?” she said in a squeaky child’s voice.
“What? Do you have places to be? I thought you’d be more excited to meet another of your kind.”
“Yes,” Wisp replied, feeling too sick to come up with a more elaborate response. She couldn’t even work up the anger or motivation to shift into her make-believe badass mode. Maybe he would have respected her more if she did.
“Are any more of your friends up to naughty deeds tonight? If so, perhaps you should stop them before they go missing.”
“No.” Her brain had already switched to autopilot before he finished his villain speech. Right that moment, all she wanted was to escape before the Smog robbed her of her consciousness and any chance of seeing her friends again. Answers could wait. Besides, the villain would most likely lie to her about anything she asked anyway.
“Oh, you’re such a bore.” He heaved a sigh. “Fine. If you can escape without begging for mercy, I’ll let you go, and I’ll even refrain from killing you afterward.” His dismissive tone made it clear he didn’t believe she’d rise to the challenge.
In all honesty, neither did Wisp. She glanced at her microcosm of circulating spheres to check on their color: red. Her heart sank another inch. He meant what he’d said. If she failed to come up with an escape plan before his interest ran out, then that would be it. There was no way she’d survive a one-on-one battle with this guy. He could fly, commanded one of the deadliest substances on Earth, and was apparently immune to its effects.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Wisp looked around to assess the situation. While the barrier reached too high to see the streets beyond it, it didn’t obscure the upper levels of taller buildings. Her night vision revealed no nearby ledges or balconies with enough space to stand on, and there was no way she’d survive a ten-meter drop. Not even with superpowers.
“Well?” Smoker asked in a mocking tone. “How long do I have to wait?”
Wisp thought back to how the Smog had reacted to her luminescent projectiles. It shied away from them as if afraid to be touched by the light. Which was strange, because as far as she and her gang knew, warmth and possibly sunlight stirred the Smog to emerge in the first place. Maybe this nocturnal version of it was different somehow?
It had to be. She stared at the swirling mass with a growing queasiness in her stomach. The way it had reacted to her before Smoker arrived … it almost seemed like a s
entient being. Unless, the villain had lurked nearby from the start, invisible but aware of her presence, and conducted the little freak show of ghostly apparitions to throw her off guard. “Your time is running out.” Smoker pretended to consult an imaginary wristwatch.
“You didn’t set a time limit,” she said, gathering the swarm of fireflies around her right hand. They now glowed a deep marigold.
Because Wisp had an idea.
“I did not, but I don’t have all night,” he replied. “You’d better get a move on.”
Wisp released the firefly swarm from her hand and commanded it to shoot forward. It zipped straight past Smoker and flew onward to slice into the wall of Smog ahead of her. It bit deep.
The vapors stirred and twisted, shying away from the points of impact. A small gap opened up at an altitude of one and a half meters. Wisp could see through it, gaining line of sight to the highway extending beyond. A small section of it, but it was enough.
She commanded the swarm to rotate around the gap, keeping it open long enough for her final sphere – the one she’d kept in reserve – to dive down, dart through the gap, and fill her field of vision on the other side. It wasn’t at ground level, but she didn’t care. She swapped herself with it.
Her field of vision warped in an instant, adjusting to the new position. A window-lined gray tenement replaced the towering Smog barrier. Feeling herself fall, Wisp pulled her feet and knees together, bracing for impact on the paved highway beneath her. A fraction of a second later, her boots hit the ground with a loud thud and sent a jolt of pain through her ankles. She resisted the urge to cry out and held her breath, pulling all of her spheres to her. Then she ran.
Though she wasn’t sure what direction she was facing, anywhere without Smog looked like a good place to be. She raced down the six-lane highway like a girl on fire, savoring the untainted night air with every panting breath. She never looked back to check for pursuers. As long as her firefly swarm didn’t change back to red, she was happy to just keep going. Put more distance between herself and a threat she couldn’t possibly hope to defeat.
Gift of Light_A Powered Destinies stand-alone novel Page 9
