Concealed in the Shadows

by Gabrielle Arrowsmith

  “Evvie!” I scream as I run over the bed to quickly climb onto the window ledge. I leap down onto the plush grass. “Evvie!” I cry out again.

  “Go get Merick!” I hear Crewe yell behind me. “Go!” he orders his brother.

  I run without direction, searching frantically for some sign of my sister. When had Cy fallen asleep? How long has it been since she was taken? It could be hours. I have to look for her here anyway. If I wake the whole town up by trying, then good—that’s two hundred and fifty other people who can help search for my sister.

  Crewe dives for my ankles and takes me down the same way he did in the thick, larch forest outside of Miles.

  “Stop!” he demands, this time without covering my mouth to force me to obey.

  “No!” I shriek, trying to fight him off of me. “Let me go!” I protest like a pinned beetle.

  “You’ve got to stop!” he says, shaking me. “They’ll catch or kill us too!”

  My breath fails me and I stop kicking and squirming from beneath Crewe. Did he say that they will kill us too? He did. He just admitted the possibility that my sister may already be dead. I can’t accept that.

  Crewe has my arms pinned to the ground. I act on the only choice I have to free myself of him by smashing my forehead straight into his. I am successfully freed from his grasp, but suffer an excruciating pain that I didn’t anticipate. Sharp stings shoot simultaneously through the place of impact and the back of my skull. I stand unsteadily, trying to regain my footing.

  “Take your families and seek shelter!” Crewe calls. “Men, spread the word. Go!”

  Sprinklings of nervous townspeople move about in a quiet panic. One man runs off his porch in front of me, looking ready to help Crewe contain me. A trickle of warm blood reaches my outer eyelid and clutters my lashes. Apparently, I’ve given myself a sizeable laceration from the head-butt against Crewe’s solid skull.

  I’m not sure whether it’s this blow added to my recent concussion, or my indescribable agony over possibly losing my sister that produces a stream of vomit that overtakes my will to look for her. I bend my knee back to the ground and clench the grass for support.

  Crewe continues to give orders to various townspeople before they can seek shelter with the rest of their family. I recognize the names Jerus, Decklin, Galvesten, Rico, and Alix among the ones for whom he sends. When it seems I’m finished retching, I turn to the overwrought and uncertain Crewe.

  “Come here,” he demands quietly, wrapping my disheveled being into his embrace. Tears were already leaking from my eyes, but they flow steadily now as I sob into his T-shirt pocket. “We will find her. It’s going to be okay,” he tries to convince me. Crewe’s hand holds firmly to my hair and the base of my head as he presses me tightly into him. I barely take notice of a kiss he places on the top of my head.

  “We have to move,” he says, gently loosening his hold, but still supporting me. I give a weak nod and wipe the streaks of tears and blood from my view.

  Crewe takes hold of my hand, leading me in a zigzag across lawns where alarmed townspeople in their pajamas look to him for direction. Crewe instructs various people to go to the hospital or to the school if they don’t have a basement or storm cellar. He looks over his shoulder often as we run through the scattered homes and families on the run. His eyes scan all passersby, but he’s not really seeing the familiar faces of his town. He’s searching for unknown faces, for them.

  Word has already gotten to Jerus, who waits anxiously outside a building on Main Street. Alix, the fierce, female seeksman, reaches the building at the same time that we do.

  “What happened?” Alix asks. She focuses on my hand as Crewe lets go rather than my bleeding head.

  “BOTs took her sister,” he answers. “Evvie’s gone,” he tells Jerus.

  “I know,” he says.

  This still doesn’t feel real to me. Is my sister really gone? I can’t breathe, though not from the near mile we just ran. I can’t imagine how terrified she is, knowing so much more about the secret forces of the county than she did when she made the jump out of Miles on her own. Wherever she is, if she’s conscious, she’s petrified, and for good reason.

  We walk up a flight of stairs to a congested conference room above one of Sheridan’s two restaurants. Jerus tells me to take a seat in one of the disorderly chairs. I ignore him, but Alix takes him up on the offer. My legs have to keep moving. Pacing helps me breathe.

  When Decklin arrives, Jerus tries to push the latest information on him. Decklin says nothing and waves him off. He remains next to the open doorway to the room at the top of the stairs, acting as guard.

  I begin to feel queasy again, and decide I need to sit. I intentionally pull a chair away from the table to make it known that I wish to remain aloof from the others.

  Cy rushes in a minute after Decklin. “Were you attacked?” he asks his brother with panic as he approaches me. Cy lifts the end of his T-shirt to his mouth and cuts through it with his teeth.

  “No,” Crewe answers him.

  Cy bites into his shirt again and tears off a section. He distractedly reaches to wipe my still stinging forehead with the cloth while he turns back to question his brother. I raise my forearm and block him. He twists back at me with surprise.

  “How could you let this happen? You were supposed to be protecting her! You never should have left her side,” I sourly rattle off at him, misplacing my pain.

  Cy is done arguing with me today. He takes in every word that I say, and doesn’t fight me on it. He places the cloth in my hand. “You should put pressure on that,” he says emptily as he turns away. He pulls up a chair and plops himself at the table, starring absently at the wall.

  “If a BOT wants to be inaudible they will be, even to someone waiting and listening for them,” Crewe defends his brother. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he tells him. He means no offense to me in backing his brother, and I take none. Cy can’t be blamed for not being as precautionary as I would have been. The truth is, if he had been in that room with Evvie, he wouldn’t be here right now. Crewe would have kicked in the door and raced to the bedroom to find Evvie missing, and his sweet, young brother martyred.

  Two more seeksmen arrive. I recognize them from the exploit to bring Evvie and me back to Sheridan safely. I assume these two to be partners. I’ve never seen them separate from each other. They like to keep to themselves, but a duty to protect Sheridan ties them here with the others.

  Finally, Merick arrives. “Sit down,” he orders hoarsely before he ascends the final few steps. Chairs painfully screech as they slide across the linoleum flooring of this breathless room.

  “Many of you know this story, but Sydney doesn’t, and today she needs to.

  “Merick,” Crewe interrupts. “We don’t have time for stories. I told her that we would get her sister back and I have every intention of keeping that promise.”

  “We’re not going anywhere right now,” Merick scowls, “and you know damn well why. So sit down and shut up,” he demands. Crewe doesn’t protest further, but he doesn’t sit down either. The others eye him carefully.

  I wonder if this story will be linked to my last name. I wonder if at last light will be shed on why my sister and I are significant to Miles County. Once I know the reason, I’ll know better whether they’ve taken her dead or alive.

  “There is another town like ours called Braves. There is a man there, their leader in fact, by that same name. He used to have two little girls, twins.” Some members of the battalion are still fixated on Merick’s story, but others sigh and drop their heads. Braves used to have daughters, Merick said. The ones who have dropped their heads already know how the story ends, how the little girls’ lives were taken. I can tell from their reactions that whatever happened to these little girls still bothers them deeply.

  My mind travels on a tangent about how precious the girls must have been simply for the fact that they were twins. Back in May, I presented a research project
through EduWeb to round off my science credit hours. I was utterly obsessed with the social science behind twins. The current birthrate of twins throughout the counties of the nation is one-one thousandth of what it was before the population bill of 2015.

  Back then, fertility treatments were legal and heavily impacted the birthrate of twins, triplets, and higher multiples. In addition to treatments being illegal now, any natural conception of a multiple when one child has already been born to the mother or the father is terminated. Furthermore, all identical twins that are conceived as a mother and father’s first children are also aborted because their identical DNA poses potential problems. Finally, counties close females’ childbearing timeframe prior to the late ages when having twins or multiples was once more common.

  “While Braves was still living inside Bozeman County, he discovered a satellite image of a cluster of free people outside his county. He was a man filled with unrest by the injustices occurring in all the nation’s counties. Rather than taking his family and quietly escaping, Braves decided to plant a technological virus that proclaimed his find and conspiracy theories about the authorities to the citizens of Bozeman.”

  “Naturally, the government was infuriated by his treachery, but couldn’t kill him outright due to the popularity of the virus. His immediate death would be too circumstantial, confirming citizens’ speculation of Braves’ published theories and the existence of an alternative way to live.”

  “Instead, Sydney,” Merick zeroes in on me, “they traced his global positioning, invaded his home, and restrained his family. No hand was ever laid on Braves, but he was tortured into publicly retracting his testimony.”

  “You mean they hurt his family?” I demand to know. Merick says nothing. The rest of the room remains silent. “Then why are we sitting here? Why aren’t we doing something about the fact that they’ve taken my sister?”

  “Because they’re dead now, Sydney,” Crewe says quietly from the wall he had blended into. “For weeks, Braves was controlled through the need to keep his family safe. In the end, after he had given them everything they wanted, his wife and the twins died tragically of carbon monoxide poisoning in their home. Merick’s point is that we have to be extremely careful. You can’t cross them, Sydney.”

  “The captain should be here in a few hours,” Merick says. “Last time I spoke with him, he was going to drive through the night. This will be his decision.” Merick looks deliberately at Crewe, who nods. “Galv and Rico are at the hospital, probably having to answer to folks rather than getting their job done. Cy, you’re to head there and get our system back. Jerus and Crewe, you’re staying with me. We need to have some rough options before the captain arrives. The rest of you, go home. Rest is going to be important for whatever we decide to do. Sydney, Galv is waiting at the hospital to give you a stitch before you’re off.”

  “Off to where?” I question.

  “You need your rest,” he bears in on me.

  “Like that’s possible,” I object bitterly. I’d sleep better on the edge of a cliff.

  “Talk to Galvesten about that, not me,” he returns. “I do want you close, so come back here to sleep. We’ll have you set up,” he says more to Crewe than to me. “Alright, go,” he sighs, exasperated. “Everyone go.”

  Everyone but Merick, Jerus, Cy, and I thunders down the narrow stairwell.

  I need to make Merick aware of something before any plans are drawn up. “Something you need to understand,” I tell him, “is that I won’t live without my sister. So don’t consider my safety in this unless it’s going to also increase her chance of living.”

  “Sydney,” Merick returns, “many county eyes watched you and your sister carefully during the day today. They lost one of you in the shuffle. Knowing what I know now, I would bet my family’s lives that they wanted it to be you when they removed that window. I’m going to level with you—trading which life we put at risk is a very viable option for us, so you better be sure you’re ready for that, and you better be patient and let us handle how it’s done.”

  I’m thankful that Merick understands and respects my wish, but I don’t feel a ‘yes sir’ is in order. I nod and head for the stairs, feeling Cy’s presence behind me.

  “Can I walk you?” he asks sheepishly. I don’t answer him and he follows me down the stairs.

  “I didn’t mean it when I said it was your fault,” I say without looking behind me. Cy draws to my side when we’re on the main level of the restaurant.

  “She is alive now, Sydney. That I know,” he says. “And what you said to Merick… I’m with you in that too.”

  Cy Davids will die for Evvie? He’s not that righteous. It’s better said that, just as Crewe did, he’s willing to risk his life to protect me from the danger I’ll face in trying to save her.

  “I don’t want you to, Cy,” I stop and turn to tell him, tears welling in front of him for the first time. And I can’t contain them. They streak my cheeks with the calamity that plagues me. “I don’t want anyone to die,” I render with a burning throat.

  Neither of us holds pride from our earlier confrontations today. We succumb to our present vulnerability, our fear, and hold each other for strength. We’re stuck this way for the longest time, not wanting to let go and face the crisis ahead of us.

  When I open my eyes, I see Crewe turn to head back into the restaurant with a pillow and blanket in hand. I know that he’s afraid too, so much that he can’t stand by and watch us try to endure it.

  Why has all of this happened to me? Why has my lot in life had to be so unfortunate? What did I do wrong? Why is God subjecting my innocent little sister to the same misery that he allowed to befall those poor twins? Most regretfully, why does Merick have to be right? Why can’t I reject my fear and summon the will to die for my sister?