Black Dawn

by Gorman, K.

She wasn’t an expert on sight lines, but she didn’t think they were very far from the building’s front. Any light activity she did would be seen.

  “You think we could play it off as flashlights?”

  Soo-jin snorted. “Fuck no. Have you seen yourself? You go off like a flashbang.” She glanced upward. “Maybe the lights. How about I break a couple and we blame it on a power surge?”

  Karin arched a brow. “You think that would work?”

  “Well, they looked pretty tired. And that guy didn’t exactly press the whole ‘they fell unconscious because we taped them to a chair’ thing.” Soo-jin shrugged. “Maybe it’ll fly?”

  Somehow, she suspected they’d pay a bit more attention to the wake of unconscious bodies they’d just left in the other rooms. They hadn’t even bothered with tape for those ones, just left them on the floor in a semblance of a recovery position Soo-jin had read about once in the ship’s Med manual.

  And, once the former Lost started waking up…

  It didn’t matter how close the sanctuary kept her secret. It would not take the military very long to put the pieces together, and she and Soo-jin were the only ones who’d been around.

  She grimaced at the thought, then straightened her back.

  “Let’s just do this, then get out.” She wasn’t sure how they were going to do the latter, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She was already committed, and there were twenty soon-to-be-waking people about to condemn her.

  She reached for the first of the Lost, a man in his early forties, with thinning brown hair and a rumpled suit—by the looks of him, he hadn’t been surprised in his sleep—and turned him around to face Soo-jin. “Ready?”

  Soo-jin’s flashlight clunked as she set it down on the table. She brought up her knife and assumed a fighting post. “Ready.”

  Light flashed. The man went rigid, kicked out—but Karin jerked him off-balance, slamming her light straight into his chest. They’d gotten the hang of it over the past ten people. Most Lost seemed almost surprised when she attacked, and their struggles were easily offset. She’d only been hit twice since she’d started positioning herself behind them.

  The Shadows, on the other hand, were a different problem.

  Cornered by the light from her hands and her presence behind their former host, they burst out erratically.

  But Soo-jin was quick, and she had a keen blade. All of them fell.

  This one was no different.

  The Shadow burst from the man’s right shoulder. Karin shoved both herself and the man to the left. Her bad knee screamed as they slammed into the table, making its legs jump and groan against the floor.

  Soo-jin lunged forward, slashing.

  A second later, the Shadow lay in tatters.

  Then they each froze, cocking their ear to the hallway door, listening.

  After a few seconds of quiet, she lowered the man down to the floor.

  Then she limped back, favoring her good knee.

  “Tape,” Soo-jin said as Karin leaned against a back table. “We should have brought tape.”

  “Yeah.” They’d tried to hold them down before, but it had just proven harder for Soo-jin to kill the Shadow. Karin’s hold-from-the-back method was, unfortunately for her knee and all the other bruised and strained bits of her body, the best method.

  As Soo-jin shifted the man into a recovery position, she guided the next Lost in.

  But, just as she was getting into position, Soo-jin’s netlink beeped.

  She glanced at it, then brought it up. “Marc?”

  “We’re seeing weird lights coming out of the building. You guys all right?”

  Voices murmured in the background behind him. Karin thought she could make out some creative swearing. Even if he hadn’t been using his words carefully—not calling out Karin’s power openly—it was clear he was still with the military.

  “Yeah, we’re just trying to figure the weird power thing out,” Soo-jin said. “I think I broke a couple bulbs.”

  “All right. We’re almost done here. Be back soon.”

  The connection closed. Karin raised an eyebrow at Soo-jin. “You think they’re going to buy the light excuse?”

  “Not if they find a pulled battery or something in the back.” Soo-jin rolled her eyes. “Wish I knew what was keeping the lights out.” She gestured to the Lost Karin had pulled over—a small girl with wavy brown hair and dirt smudged on her nightgown, no older than six. “Is she next?”

  Karin pushed her forward. “Thought it’d be easier on the struggle.”

  “Then clearly, you’ve never tried to put one to bed.” She paused, then lifted her finger. “You know what? Let’s not tell Marc I said that.”

  It took Karin a few seconds to see the potential innuendo, but she just shrugged. She looped her arm around the girl’s neck and snugged her other arm into place on her chest, kneeling to get level. “Ready when you are.”

  Soo-jin rocked back, knife at the ready. “Go for it.”

  Light flashed. Karin caught a foot to the inside of her shin. Shadow flooded upwards. Soo-jin lunged with a grunt.

  The girl went rigid, then limp.

  Her mind buzzing with energy, Karin lowered her slowly to the floor, positioning her arms and legs as she’d seen Soo-jin do it.

  But, as she reached over to pull the girl’s other leg into place, movement by the wall caught her eye.

  The door to the room had opened.

  Chapter 29

  A knife of ice drove straight into her chest. The light from the military ship backlit the doorway, casting the soldier’s figure in a multitude of harsh, many-faceted shadows.

  It was the same officer who had come upon them in the dining hall. By the look of his raised blaster and the way his mouth had downturned into a grim, unhappy line, she suspected his suspension of disbelief had reached its quota with them.

  Panic spiked her heart. What if he’d realized?

  Should have run when we’d had the chance. Should have never come here to begin with.

  But that was a coward’s thought. If she had, then all the lives at the sanctuary would have been forfeited. And she would have lost any sense of worth she’d thought she’d had.

  What was the point of having this power if she wasn’t going to use it?

  “No Shadows in here.” Soo-jin nodded toward the soldier’s blaster. “We double-cleared the place.”

  He didn’t immediately respond, but Karin thought Soo-jin’s words had shifted something in his expression.

  Unfortunately, it hadn’t shifted happier.

  “You weren’t in the back,” he said slowly.

  His gaze switched between them, sizing them up, taking in the parts of the room, flicking between the remaining Lost in the room. He studied the unconscious body of the man Karin had just cleared, half-hidden under the table as it was. Then his gaze moved back inward, to the body of the child in her arms.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “We’re gathering the Lost,” Soo-jin cut in. “Like I said, we—”

  “Gathering them by knocking them out?”

  Although the man spoke quietly, evenly, there was a tempered edge beneath his tone that belied its face. Like a core of hot, churning magma beneath a quickly heating crust. He fixed one of those long, studying, fast-angering stares on Soo-jin and didn’t speak for long enough that Karin thought he might have counted to ten in his head.

  “I’ll ask again,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  Maybe it had something to do with the incense, or the light, or maybe even an adrenal effect from her injuries, but the room’s quiet seemed to close in on her. Everything became sharper. She became aware of her slow, shallow, held-in breath as it perched at the back of her throat. Outside, she could hear the sounds of the others coming back. Men shouting, the beams of high-powered flashlights snapping across the tops of the trees, casting the building’s outline against their dark boughs in a dancing line of shadow. A door closed in th
e back of the building. Closer, one of the Lost shuffled a few steps along one of the room’s side tables.

  When she turned her head, it felt stiff and heavy. Over-powered by gravity. As if the synovial fluid in her vertebrae at the base of her neck had rusted.

  So this is how it feels, she thought, exchanging a long look with Soo-jin. This is how it feels as it all unravels.

  This is how it feels to be so finally, utterly caught.

  She’d known this would happen someday. After all the running—after all the careful hiding, all the avoiding-the-spotlight—she’d always known it would come to an end.

  “I’ve checked the others,” he said when they didn’t speak. “The only reason I haven’t shot either of you yet is that, as far as I can tell, they’re all still alive and healthy, apart from being unconscious.” A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  “Did you check their eyes?” Karin fought the tremor in her voice as she spoke. For all her heart had stopped before, it was making up for its previous lack now. Blood roared in her ears.

  Soo-jin’s stare burned a hole into the side of her head as she straightened.

  The man appeared to frown. “Yes. Of course. That’s standard response measurement. I—”

  Karin knew the exact moment he realized what he’d missed. His eyes didn’t go wide, nor did his expression change dramatically. It was more of a falter, a momentary questioning, confusion and disbelief. The muzzle of his gun wavered.

  For a second, he leaned away, an almost instinctual reaction—as if he wanted to run back and check.

  But he schooled his features and shut down. “What about them?”

  Soo-jin gave an exasperated sigh. “Does she need to spell it out for you? They’re not Lost anymore.”

  “Bullshit. You can’t cure the Lost. We’ve tried.” He shook his head as if to push the thought away, but she saw the doubt cross his face immediately after. He shifted again, gaze following one of the Lost that had tracked toward him, their footsteps shuffling quietly on the floor. “How could you have?”

  Karin opened her mouth, but Soo-jin cut her off.

  “Would you believe in faith healing?”

  “What?” His gaze snapped up. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, faith-based healing.” Soo-jin made a gesture to the three Lost who still sat in front of the room’s altar. “This is a religious community.”

  The soldier’s face twisted as he realized what she meant, and he cast a look of mixed disgust and disdain toward the altar.

  But, before he could speak, a clamor came from the hallway.

  “Hey—hey, mister! Come quick! They’re—they’re waking up!”

  Ethan, Karin thought with a pang. His voice sounded so young and vulnerable.

  The soldier took a half-step back, then froze. His eyes darted between them, hesitating, and Karin could see the dilemma play out in his expression.

  His conscience won.

  “Stay here,” he said, then ran out the door.

  His footsteps thumped down the hall as he ran back to the dining hall.

  After a few seconds, the two of them exchanged a long look.

  Then Soo-jin rose to her feet.

  “Oh, we aren’t staying.”

  Chapter 30

  “Faith healing?” Karin whispered, pushing around another low-hanging tree bough. “Really?”

  Ahead of her, only visible by the flash of her skin and a bright streak through a few of her dreads, Soo-jin gave a quiet snort. “What? You were going to blab the whole thing. I had to stop you.”

  “I—but—”

  “No buts. Are you really that dumb? What happened to I’ve got to keep this secret or they’ll lock me in a scary lab and experiment on me? ’Cause I can guarantee you they will lock you up.”

  “I know, I know. I just…” They hadn’t discussed it directly, but it wasn’t that hard to imagine. Given the current state of the planet, and the current military control it appeared to be under, if they knew what she could do…

  Yeah, they would definitely lock her up. And then not let her out until every last person had been healed and every last Shadow destroyed.

  “Well, I just I didn’t think there was another choice,” she said finally.

  Hell, it still felt surreal to her, looking back at the building they’d just escaped. A numb kind of shock had taken over her mind—as if her body wasn’t sure if she should be panicking or not. Half of her was dissociated, piled into a helium balloon of pressurized, leaden dissonance. A tinny, ringing pressure pushed into her ears from that side.

  But the other half was strangely calm, as if she were coming down from the panic. As she pushed through another layer of vegetation, branches and undergrowth pressing against her pants and crackling underfoot, her heart slowed down to its normal rhythm.

  There was a different kind of quiet here. Where the room had been dead and still—enclosed—the woods were open. The silence here was alive, moving.

  “There’s always another choice. To be fair, I’m pretty sure my ‘faith healing’ thing would have also landed us in a holding cell. I mean—suns, watch this branch—you did heal them.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t beat yourself up over that. You took a big risk.” Karin almost ran into her as she paused and turned back. “I’m not sure you know how much I appreciate that.”

  Karin leaned back at her sudden closeness. Her hand scraped the bark of a smaller tree as she steadied her balance.

  “I’m sure if anyone else had my power, they would have—”

  “No, they wouldn’t have. You’re good people. I hope you stick around.”

  She shrugged. “Where else is there to go?”

  “Yeah, no kidding, huh? If the whole system’s like this…” She sighed. “Maybe Marc wasn’t wrong about the whole ‘settle on a far-distant, sunlit moon’ thing.” She shook her head. “Sol, I never thought I’d become a colonizer.”

  “I did, at one point,” Karin said. “Me and Nomiki.”

  Soo-jin looked at her. In the dark, Karin wasn’t sure exactly what she could see, but the weight of the other woman’s stare bored into her.

  “One of these days, I’m going to have to get that story out of you,” she said. “Because it sounds amazing.”

  “Let’s see if we can get back on our ship first,” Karin said. “I’m sure someone will come looking for us soon.”

  “Yeah, I see that. Path’s just ahead.” Soo-jin’s hand caught her wrist gently and guided her through. “Also, I basically grew up in these woods. Outsmarting the military on your home turf? This is like a kid’s wet dream. I got this.”

  A few minutes later, they sat in the trees adjacent to the gravel lot, studying the two ships and the front of the building. Soo-jin’s path—little more than a game or, as Karin suspected, a kid, trail—had taken them relatively parallel to the lot, and they’d broken from it to creep forward.

  No sirens, shouts, or floodlights had sprung up in the last few minutes, so Karin guessed that the soldiers weren’t looking for them yet.

  Now might be a good time to make for the ship.

  As she’d thought by the angle of its lights, the Alliance ship stood more than double the size of the Nemina. It had a bulbous design, with smooth curves and rounded edges that put it at least twenty years younger. Several layers of dust and grime coated its shiny, jet-black exterior, reminding her that it and its men, like the Alliance carrier in orbit, had probably not seen a lot of rest lately.

  Though the two ships were both military, the Alliance vessel looked much more capable than the Nemina.

  In fact, with its twig-thin landing gear, angular nose, and tipped-back wings, the Nemina looked little more than an insect.

  “There’s a joke about penis size in here somewhere,” Soo-jin said beside her. “But I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to make it since I’m friends with Marc.”

  Karin felt her eyebrow give a slight twitch. “I think, sin
ce you wouldn’t be insulting his penis, it’d be appropriate in that respect. I’m less sure if the situation is appropriate for it.”

  “Every situation is appropriate for a penis joke,” Soo-jin replied. “You just need to be determined enough.”

  “Not to change the topic or anything, but we should probably think this through.” She gave her companion a sidelong glance. “Outsmarting the military on home turf aside, we eventually need to get back on the ship.”

  “Clearly, you should have parked it closer.” Soo-jin jabbed a finger forward. “Their outboard cameras are going to laugh at us if we make a run for it.”

  “I could actually block them,” she said. “You know, with my light.”

  “Yeah? Like, fuck with their sensors?” Soo-jin tilted her head, considering it. “You’d have to do all-around, then. Make it so it’s not obviously blocking. And then there’s the small matter of avoiding detection if they decide to search the ship.” In the light, Karin saw her chew her bottom lip. “Can’t you, I dunno, remote-pilot it over or something?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Even if she did have that capability, don’t you think they’d notice?”

  “Touché. Are her engines still warm?” Soo-jin cast a glance toward the building. “I mean, we weren’t in there very long.”

  “They probably are, actually. Taking off won’t be the problem. I—”

  “Shh.” Soo-jin grabbed her arm. “Something’s happening.”

  They sank down into the underbrush as the door to the sanctuary burst open. Three soldiers spilled out, fanning across the lot with their guns aloft, the lights on their scopes like dots of white as they mingled with the lights of their ship. Their shadows bent and jumped on the white sanctuary walls as they diverted away from their ship.

  One of the soldiers swung his light toward them, and Karin instinctively ducked.

  Maybe it was just her fear-fueled imagination, but the twenty-feet of forest directly in front of them didn’t actually look that thick. It was winter, after all, even if this area did have a sub-tropical classification. From her perspective, it felt like her pale skin practically glowed against the shadowy undergrowth.