Siege of Shadows

by Sarah Raughley

  “Rachel!” Lock screamed in anguish as his hand dove into his holster.

  Their murderer hopped down from the roof of Unit 6 onto the hood, crushing it a little. He had to be at least a foot taller than the woman and a hundred pounds heavier. Maybe more. He was huge, a bodybuilder on steroids. The man was armored from limb to limb, his head covered with the same sleek, robotic white helmet. But Big Guy’s movements were strange, almost alien. His body seemed to convulse with each clunky step. It didn’t stop him from raising his gun at us.

  Lock charged past us, gun in hand.

  “Wait!” Eveline cried, but Lock’s sleeve slipped out of her grip. She ran after him.

  Lock shot a hail of bullets, and every one of them found Big Guy’s chest only to bounce off his armor with a loud clink. But did this thing even need armor? One of Lock’s bullets shot through Big Guy’s gloved hand as he raised it. He didn’t even flinch. No blood oozed out of the hole.

  One of the agent’s bullets from the railings caught Lock’s arm, and he cried out in pain. That distracted him long enough for the mysterious enemy to lurch forward and grab his neck. Eveline wasn’t fast enough to reach him before the snap. Her hands weren’t nimble enough to take her gun before Lock’s murderer pointed his at her head. But Belle launched forward, wincing in pain, and with a swing of her hand, froze the gun in his hands before his bullet could leave the barrel. But something told me this guy didn’t need a gun.

  First, I had to get rid of the treacherous Sect agents. There was no other way. With a yell, I stretched my arm forward and a wall of a fire exploded from below the walkway, sending the agents into the air, shards of railing with it.

  “Get back!” I told Rhys, and I tried the trick again, this time blowing our delivery van toward the wall and hopefully that woman with it. Better no ring than the ring being stolen by a couple of murderous cyborgs.

  I was too late. While the van was sailing in the air, the woman jumped out through the busted back doors just as the van hit the wall. I had barely registered the crash when she rushed at me. Belle’s sword was out before I could react, but the woman expertly dodged her swings.

  Rhys grabbed his knife.

  “Wait!” I said, clutching his shirt instinctively. “Are you okay? You’re still injured.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he told me, though he couldn’t hide his sudden wince. A fresh wave of fear shot through me as I watched him.

  “But—”

  With a gentle hand, Rhys wiped the blood staining my cheek. I fell silent at his touch. “Help Eveline,” Rhys told me before tightening his grip on his knife and joining Belle’s fight.

  He was right. With great effort, I tore my eyes from him and followed the order. The other enemy was built like a fridge and moved like one. He didn’t bother to dodge Eveline’s gunshots, even when one bullet cracked his helmet. But that was good. It made him an easier target for me.

  You can do this, Maia, I told myself. Well, it was either I did it or I died.

  “Move back,” I told Eveline, and, biting my lip, I forced my breath to calm. Fire erupted at my feet, the smooth pole forming in my hands. With the familiar weight balanced across my palms, I ran forward, flipping it around like I’d done so many times in training, bringing my blade down on him.

  He didn’t dodge. He didn’t even try. I buried the sickled edge into the crook of his neck.

  And yet he was still coming for me. Fear seized me. I let go of the handle and stepped back as he lumbered forward, undisturbed by the blade still in his muscle. With my mouth gaping, I did the only thing I could think of. A wall of fire, tall enough to keep him in place. Eveline jumped back from the flickering flames as it circled him.

  “Is this thing human?” Eveline screamed, reaching into her pocket for new rounds, reloading her gun.

  It couldn’t have been. But his partner was. I could hear her laughing—a high-pitched voice, joyful and murderous as she dodged Rhys’s and Belle’s attacks. Still struggling against the aftereffects of the attack, neither fought at their full potential, but this girl’s speed and agility would have been hard to guard against regardless. Blocking the swing of Belle’s sword with her armored biceps, she ran for Rhys, dipping to the side to dodge his gunshot.

  “What’s wrong, Aidan? Nah, that’s no good. You used to be a better shot, sweetie.”

  Rhys froze to the spot at the sound of her Australian voice, and in that one second, she was behind him, grabbing his hand, pointing his gun at Belle.

  “Let me help you!”

  The shot tore through Belle’s leg, but it was Rhys I ran for, trying to make it before the woman, using Rhys’s own hand to point his gun at his head, could fire the shot. Rhys overcame her himself, stretching his arm up just as the shot rang out into the air. She quickly snapped his wrist before maneuvering out of the way. Rhys doubled backward in pain.

  “Rhys!” I said as he tripped on a spare wheel. I caught him before he could fall. “Rhys.”

  “Jessie . . . ,” he whispered, his face pale. He couldn’t see her face. But her voice was enough. “It’s Jessie.”

  The woman he’d called Jessie was fast. Too fast. She dodged Eveline’s shots until the agent’s gun clicked empty, but she was already on Belle, whose sluggish ice attack couldn’t land its target. As the ice spread across the ground a few feet away from us, Jessie grabbed Belle’s wrist with one gloved hand and slammed her other hand into her neck. I didn’t understand what had happened until I saw the frost forming at Belle’s fingertips fizzle and die.

  There must have been some device inside Jessie’s glove. I could see a red spot of blood where Belle’s neck had been pricked. And her powers . . . her powers were gone.

  Jessie took advantage of Belle’s shock to knock her out with a well-placed elbow to the temple. Next she came for me. Fast. Smoke sputtered from my hand erratically as I tried to control my equally erratic heartbeat. Calm down. I had to calm down. Jessie had already caught my wrist. A small circular metal device in the palm of her glove seized my attention, the tiny needle in the center of it glinting as she reached for my neck.

  We heard the soft clink at the same time. My neck-band. I could almost picture Jessie’s surprised expression behind her helmet as she paused, looking from her glove to my neck.

  Taking advantage of her confusion, I kicked her away and summoned my weapon once more, but heavy footsteps behind me forced me around. It was the Big Guy. His armor was still smoking from the fire he’d just charged through.

  With clumsy steps, he ran at me. From wild instinct alone, I swung my scythe at him, hoping that this time the blade would slice clean through his neck. But he dodged, catching the handle just underneath the sickle and lifting me off my feet. I swung my feet in the air, too shocked to react when the beast-like man rammed his other hand into Eveline’s face as she made for him, swatting her away like a fly. Rhys was busy avoiding Jessie’s hand-to-hand attacks. As Eveline hit the ground, unconscious, I knew I had to finish this guy off myself.

  I grabbed his head and set it on fire, the force of the explosion pushing us back. I ripped his helmet off as I fell, and that’s when I got my first look at him.

  Oh, god.

  The moment my boots hit the ground, I stumbled and landed on the floor, stunned. My stomach heaved as I saw the maggots—tiny, squirming things in the eye sockets of the rotted flesh where the Big Guy’s head should be. Parts of his skull peeked through. I covered my mouth.

  This was impossible.

  “Ah, man,” Jessie said. “You ruined the surprise. Still, it’s impressive, right?” Flipping back to create enough space between herself and Rhys, Jessie took off one of her gloves, revealing a sickly pale, slender hand, and snapped her fingers.

  The monster started to move. Lumbering. Lurching at her command.

  But phantoms were the only monsters that were supposed to exist in this world.

  Phantoms and Effigies.

  “Take her, Dead Guy,” Jessie commanded her slave
. “Take the girl.”

  The girl. Me. My arms were lifeless at my sides as I stared at the maggots slipping in and out of his flesh. I couldn’t move.

  Suddenly, sirens echoed around us.

  Sect vans sped down the tunnel from both ends. Encouraged, I whipped around to face my attackers again, but Jessie didn’t waste any time. Without another word, she cut across the tunnel, grabbed something from her back pocket, and threw it against the wall. The small metal device latched on to the concrete with four metal arms spread out like a lucky clover, each arm lighting up with red bars down its length.

  A second passed.

  Then, the explosion.

  Rhys and I shielded our eyes from the dust. And once it settled, Jessie was gone, her monstrous puppet falling to the ground with a dull thud.

  A dead pile of flesh and bones on the pavement.

  12

  FAILURE. BETRAYAL. TWENTY-TWO HOURS passed in disarray as Sibyl conducted an internal review of the London facility’s entire roster, though many agents had no idea what had even happened in the underground tunnels.

  But that wasn’t enough for the Council. Apparently, after an emergency meeting, they’d called someone in from another facility to “aid in operations.” Whether that meant helping Sibyl or interrogating her, I didn’t know. Still, after what had happened, nobody could blame them for taking action. Only two agents had helped those mysterious soldiers attack us, but it was two too many. Lake’s and Chae Rin’s unit had successfully delivered their ring to its new fortified hiding spot. But Jessie had managed to make off with the one we were supposed to deliver. If backup hadn’t come when it did, she might have made off with me, too.

  Sibyl had told us to stay in our dorms, out of the way, while she conducted the investigation, but that didn’t last long.

  “Open up! Open up, it’s an emergency!” Rhys was pounding on the door.

  Chae Rin glanced up from her laptop. Lake and Belle burst out of their rooms on the second floor. Jumping up from the table, I ran to let him in.

  “What is it?” I asked, taking in the sight of a blue cast on the arm Jessie had snapped. Dark circles caved in the skin around his eyes, his full lips cracked from dehydration. He looked like he’d been grilled all night.

  “Bloemfontein’s APD was hacked. Parts of the city have just been attacked by phantoms.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, my shoulders lifting with my chest as I let the dread sink in. Saul was back in business.

  “Have agents been dispatched to the area?” Belle kept her eyes on Rhys as she walked down the stairs, her body mostly healed from her wounds thanks to her Effigy abilities.

  “Yeah. It didn’t look like it was a full-scale attack. The phantoms rampaged a farmers’ market for a while before disappearing again.”

  “How do we know it was him?” asked Lake from behind the second-floor railing.

  “It’s his pattern,” I said quietly, remembering New York. “Plus, phantoms wouldn’t just target a specific area, then disappear.”

  Phantoms were forces of nature. They followed no will but chaos. So far, only the ring could channel that pandemonium into some instrumental purpose. It was him.

  “We’ve been called to Communications.” Rhys was already turning. “Dot’s found something.”

  “Is it about that girl who attacked us?” I asked, following him through the door. “Jessie?”

  Rhys’s expression darkened as he tilted his head away from me. He rubbed his cast almost absently as he glared at something in the distance. “It’ll come up. Let’s get there first.”

  Under the night sky, we crossed the grounds to Communications, following Rhys up the elevator to the third floor. The room in which Sibyl, Dot, and Pete had been waiting for us overlooked the main floor, its front wall made entirely of glass.

  I assumed it worked only one way. Though I could see the agents below clicking away at their keyboards, their monitors lighting up as they tracked disturbances around the globe, they surely, hopefully, couldn’t see Sibyl pacing in front of a red-faced woman sputtering her usual anti-Sect rhetoric on the wide-screen television at the side of the wall. Tracy Ryan, Florida senator: the same woman leading the front on having us Effigies officially classified by international law as biological weapons of mass destruction so we could be quarantined accordingly.

  “You can see the Sect’s incompetence with your own eyes,” she said as CNN split-screened her slim, pigeon-sharp face with live footage of the phantom attack in Bloemfontein.

  My hands went cold as I saw large, spiderlike phantoms crash through streets with their clawlike legs. People screamed as they rushed past makeshift booths to save themselves from beasts almost half the size of buildings.

  “I’ve said this before: The Greenwich Accords is nothing more than a locked and loaded gun holding the international community hostage while the Sect parades around, pretending to ‘handle’ these threats. But they’re not doing that. What they’re really doing is shoring up their arsenal and power while pretending to protect the rest of the world. They are waiting to strike.”

  “Well,” said the host, “there’s no evidence of them shoring up their power for any specific purpose.”

  “What more evidence do you need?” The big, blunt red headline beneath her face seemed to agree with her: TERROR IN BLOEMFONTEIN: ANOTHER SECT FAILURE? “If we don’t do something first, they will make their power known. It’s time for the international community to come together to protect ourselves. More military spending and fortifying our borders is where we need to start domestically. But we need to unify against this dark threat.”

  “Threat,” said the host, his head cocked. “Do you mean the phantoms? The terrorist Saul? Or the Sect?”

  “At this point, is there even a difference anymore?”

  “Idiot.” Sibyl grabbed the remote from the round table in the center of the room and clicked the television off. “I wouldn’t expect anything less than nonsensical fearmongering from that woman, especially when she’s up for reelection. But this is really—”

  She shook her head, staring at the black television screen for a moment, chewing her lip. Then, suddenly, she threw the remote to the floor.

  “Uh . . .” Pete stared at the broken pieces of plastic on the ground before glancing up and seeing us. “Oh, hey!” he said, his voice a little too high. “Lake! And the others! Lake! Come here. Please.” With a nervous grin, he waved us over frantically as he inched away from Sibyl.

  Dot was bent over in front of one of two large monitors atop the long bench pressed up against the window. She clicked the screen twice and pictures popped up, each of the same white corpse laid out on a metal table. Lake gagged behind me, but after the guy I’d seen in the tunnels, this maggotless body was actually a nice change of pace as far as the grotesque went.

  “No.” Rhys spoke in a quiet whisper, his lips parted as he stared at the screen. Having been with the Sect for so long, he was certainly no stranger to death. Surely he’d seen bodies like this before, but the color drained from his skin the longer he looked at the corpse on the metal table. “It can’t be. I can’t . . . tell . . .”

  “What is it?” I asked Rhys as he rushed up to Dot’s side. “Who is this?”

  “This,” Dot said, pointing her pen at the screen, “this is another question. A question named Philip.”

  “Philip.” Rhys sounded each syllable as if it were a foreign language. “Is that him? Maybe it just looks like him?”

  “Rhys, you know him?” I looked from him to the screen and back again. “I don’t understand.”

  Pete scratched the back of his neck. “You know that dead guy you found in the desert?”

  “That’s him?” The mysterious young man we’d found in the Sahara hideout. Silently, I watched Rhys’s face turn white as the body on the screen.

  Lake covered her mouth. “Gosh. He’s . . . really dead.”

  “Well, these pictures are from before he got dissected. You should
see the ‘after’ pictures—there’s loads more information to get from those!” Pete’s tone was a little too flippant for Lake, as if he’d forgotten that dissections and autopsies were only delightfully interesting to a select group of people with very special interests. A group Lake didn’t belong to. Her expression soured as if she was about to throw up.

  “Rhys,” I said carefully. “How do you know this guy?”

  “Th-that’s . . .” He stopped. Rhys was shaking a little, his eyes blinking rapidly, struggling to focus. He steadied his breath. “I think that’s—”

  “Philip Anglebart.” When Dot tapped the screen, it went dark and what looked like a graduation photo appeared. There he was, the boy who’d died in Belle’s arms, but with a few key differences. His blond hair was cut close to his skull in a buzz cut, his face not pale but rosy-cheeked. He was younger in this photo, as if he’d just entered his teens. But the downward slope of his close-set eyes was the same. “One of the seven chosen for the final cohort of the Fisk-Hoffman Training Facility in Greenland.” She flipped her pen around between her fingers. “Along with Agent Rhys and Agent Volkov.”

  There must have been some kind of dark magic in those simple words Dot had spoken; at the very sound of the name, the life slipped and fell from Rhys’s eyes. His neck muscles twitched as he clenched his teeth and nodded.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s him. I know him. We . . .” His eyes darted in my direction before he cleared his throat. “We trained together.” He wouldn’t look at me.

  Rhys had told me before that he’d trained for a time in Greenland. Some training facilities are a little tougher than others. That’s what he’d told me, though he’d never elaborated.

  Rhys shook his head. “But he’s dead. They’re all supposed to be dead. Only Vasily and I survived the . . . the fire.”

  “What fire?” Walking up to him, I gripped his broad shoulder tightly, tilting my head low to catch his eyes. It slackened beneath my touch. “What are you talking about, Rhys?”