Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  Through the narrow door I watched the churning fog leave the green-lit room to reveal the cages and their occupants. I braced myself for what I was going to see, but even prepared I was still stunned. The sight of those kids hanging in those strange harnesses, their unblinking eyes glazed over, was like a punch in the gut.

  >>>Lowering cages...

  Stabilizing contents...

  Removing barriers...<<<

  The transparent wall that had sealed the shadow vault from the rest of the Academy cracked into tiny shards and evaporated in puffs of golden steam. A strange smell wafted out of the shadow vault. It reminded me of an old bookstore, musty and stale. The cages descended until they rested on the grooved, rubbery floor, though the kids in them were still unconscious and strapped into their harnesses.

  >>>Disengaging stasis...

  Ghostlight transfers in progress...<<<

  A sudden and dramatic change swept through the students in the vault. Their bodies jerked as golden ghostlight poured through their harnesses and into their cores. They cried out, confused and in pain, their muscles twitching and stretching for the first time in far too long. It was like watching the dead rise from their graves. And then a kid in the front with jet-black hair and piercing green eyes tentatively reached up to touch his eyelids with his fingertips.

  He cried out in a language I didn’t understand, his voice ragged and tormented. The kid ground his palms into his eyes, then opened them, blinked, and screamed.

  >>>Analysis in progress...

  Fifteen students have suffered stasis shock...

  Estimated rate of recovery is currently unknown.

  Three students have suffered temporal dislocation...

  Recovery is uncertain.

  Students thirteen and nineteen have not responded to the ghostlight transplants. They are likely to perish in the next three minutes if they cannot be revived.<<<

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE TRIBUNAL’S MEMBERS eyed me uncertainly. Baylo reached out to put a hand on my shoulder, concern in her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “We have to help them,” I barked at Baylo. “Thirteen and nineteen are down. They need another ghostlight transplant, or they’ll die.”

  Ylor raised his hands defensively and shook his head. The others mimicked his gesture, and my heart sank.

  “We can’t do that,” Baylo explained bluntly. “As members of the Tribunal, our ghostlight is invested in the Academy itself. That’s one of the reasons we can’t leave the grounds. We have literally no energy to spare for the students. It could kill us to try a transplant.”

  “What about Monitor?” I snapped. “He brought me back.”

  “We know,” Ylor said. “That drained what little free ghostlight he had. The soulforged are not capable of regenerating their ghostlight in the same way as truly living creatures. He will need weeks to restore what he used to Awaken you.”

  The Tribunal’s explanation made sense, and it also made my blood boil. The three people standing in front of me were responsible for most of what had happened in the Academy. They were responsible for those kids and any injuries they sustained from being locked up in the shadow vault. And here those same people were, shaking their heads sadly, useless and unable to help.

  “Fine. Stay out of our way.” I grabbed my sister by the hand and marched toward the doorway. “It’s you and me, Biz. Just follow my lead. You’ll be fine.”

  We rushed through the small chamber and burst into the shadow vault itself. Biz’s teeth immediately began to chatter, and I felt the heat leak out of my body. The inside of the vault wasn’t just cold, it was draining. I struggled to keep ghostlight in my core where it belonged, and from the look of concentration on Biz’s face she was having the same problem. We had to get these kids out of here now.

  “That one,” I said pointing to the left cage in the back pair. “That’s nineteen. Thirteen is up here. When I tell you, put your hand on that kid’s chest and push ghostlight into him.”

  Biz reached through the bars and put a hand on nineteen’s bare chest, right between the harness’s straps.

  “Ready,” she said, her voice grave. “Just give me the word.”

  I found thirteen and put my hands on the exposed skin just above his harness. He was so cold and still. His skin was clammy, and rubbery, like a doll left out in the rain.

  “Now!” I shouted to Biz.

  I willed the blade of ghostlight from my core and into the boy in the cage. It slammed into him like a bolt of lightning, and his limbs flailed. His eyes rolled back into their sockets, and their lids fluttered wildly. His mouth opened, and a faint gasp escaped from between his pale lips. But, just as quickly, nineteen went limp again.

  I hit him with the ghostlight again.

  This time the kid jerked awake. His eyes shot wide open, and his jaw dropped down until I was sure it would hit his chest. He took in a huge lungful of air, and then a terrible ragged wail exploded out of him. The other kids were still hollering things I didn’t understand, but at least they were alive. We could figure the rest out once they were free of those cages.

  “How’s it going?” I shouted over the din.

  “He’s up,” Biz shouted back to me. “I think he’s okay.”

  “Good!” I lowered my voice and rubbed the kid’s back. “Are you all right?”

  The boy, who looked like he was about Biz’s age, grabbed my wrist with both of his hands. He unleashed a string of harsh syllables that made no sense. At least he was conscious.

  I willed the interface to open the cages and let the kids out of their harnesses. It was time to get them somewhere warm and put some food in their bellies. Then, hopefully, we could figure out what was wrong with them.

  >>>Releasing stabilized patients from containment vessels. Cage one opening in three...<<<

  I hustled back to the front of the room and yelled for Biz to join me. She arrived just in time for the first cage to pop open, and the blind kid who’d first awoken stumbled out as his harness detached from the hooks and ceiling. His legs were surprisingly steady for someone who’d been asleep for a few years, but the way he held his arms out in front of him made it clear that he couldn’t see. I took one of his hands, and that seemed to calm him down a bit.

  “The next cage will open in a few seconds,” I said to Biz. “Grab that kid’s hand and guide them into the hall. We want to sit them down against a wall. When they’re all settled, we can round up some food.”

  Biz snapped her heels together and shot me a jaunty salute.

  “You give the orders, bro. I’ll follow them,” she said sharply. “You’re turning into quite a leader.”

  That compliment from my sister meant more than I could put into words. I’d always looked up to Biz for her resilience and strength in the face of all the pain she’d endured. I’d only ever wanted to protect her. Now, though, I wanted something else.

  I wanted my sister to be proud of me.

  “Don’t go getting all mushy on me,” I said to hide the fact that I was the one getting emotional. “Let’s get these kids out of here.”

  >>>A secondary bonded task, “Freed Allies,” has been completed.

  You have been rewarded with three Akashik network credits.<<<

  Well, that was nice. I’d be sure to figure out what to do with those when I had three free seconds to breathe without something trying to kill me or make me do more work.

  It was difficult to wrangle a bunch of sick, scared kids who didn’t understand a word we said, and we ended up with more than a few of our new students wandering aimlessly in the shadow vault after their cages opened before we could get to them, but soon enough we had all twenty students seated in the hallway, their backs against the wall, legs crossed, hands in their laps. It was easy to tell the ones that were still blinded by the way they blinked and touched their eyes, and the ones who’d lost their hearing by the volume of their voices. The two that Biz and I had jumpstarted were grog
gy and stunned from their ordeal, but they weren’t blind or deaf, and they responded when Baylo questioned them in a low, calm voice.

  The three who’d suffered temporal dislocation were a different story. Their eyes were open, and they’d move if you guided them, but they didn’t respond and didn’t seem to understand what was said to them in any language. They were like zombies, though even brains didn’t interest them. I’d never seen anything like it, and I never wanted to again.

  “You did remarkable work in there,” Ylor said to me after we’d lined up the new students. “You have my thanks. And my respect.”

  The sincerity in the eldwyr’s voice surprised me. Since we arrived, he hadn’t shown anyone respect and had only grudgingly listened to what I had to say because I was the engineer and he needed me. After what happened in the shadow vault, though, he seemed to truly appreciate my contribution and understood that I wasn’t just the stupid kid who’d screwed up all of his plans.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Will they be okay?”

  Reesa and Baylo were going down the line of kids, checking them each in turn and then comparing notes on what they’d found. The looks on their faces told me they were concerned, but I couldn’t tell how dire the situation really was.

  “In theory, they should recover,” Ylor said quietly. “What we don’t know is how long it will take. After the other members of the Tribunal finish their examinations, we’ll have a better idea if this is a physical problem or mental shock from entering the shadow vault.”

  I chewed on the inside of my lip and considered the situation. We needed the students to be healthy and functional to help repair the Academy. If they turned out to be sick or permanently blind or deaf, that would complicate things and extend my stay here. I wanted them to get well, and I felt guilty because it wasn’t just for their sake. The cold truth was that I couldn’t afford to waste time or resources taking care of people who wouldn’t help me get home.

  “Why don’t they speak English?” Biz asked. “Monitor and you three didn’t have any trouble with the lingo.”

  Ylor chuckled at Biz. He shook his head, and his long, silver hair rustled against the smooth fabric of his robes.

  “You misunderstand,” Ylor said. “The Academy is what allows you to understand us, and us to understand you. We’re not speaking English, and you’re not speaking eldwyr, sultauni, or mungla. The students have not yet fully integrated into the Academy, but once they do, you will be able to communicate with them as easily as you do the rest of us. Excuse me, I need to confer with the other members of the Tribunal.”

  I waited until Ylor was actively speaking to Baylo and Reesa before I turned to Biz. My sister still looked healthy, but she was quieter than I was used to, and I caught glimpses of a faraway look in her eyes.

  “How are you holding up, sis?” I asked. “Still feeling all right?”

  “I’m good. Better than good, really. Sometimes, I almost forget what being sick was like.” Biz shrugged. “If I don’t keep circulating my breath, I get a little run down, but I’m not coughing up any blood, so I’ll take that as a win. I just wish we could let Mom know we aren’t dead. She’s got to be worried sick.”

  That pained me, too. I wanted to reach out to her, somehow, and let her know that we’d be okay.

  If, that is, you considered being chased by snake spirits, scrats, and a bat-riding Fell Lord to be okay.

  “She’ll be glad when we get back,” I said. “When she sees that you’re well.”

  “Let’s hope it sticks,” Biz said. The faraway glint was back in her eyes. She shook her head and squeezed my hand. “What’s your plan with all these new kids?”

  “Put them to work,” I said with a chuckle. “There’s twenty of them. I figure we put five of them with Ylor, five of them with Reesa, and give the rest to Baylo.”

  I wasn’t sure those exact numbers would work, but I had a sneaking suspicion I was close to the mark. I imagined that Baylo’s training would be the most straightforward because it was mostly physical. If she’d been able to teach the glowy-hands trick to Biz, I was sure the rest of the students could at least handle that. But not everyone was cut out for the life of a bookworm or a weird elfin sorcerer. That was a big part of why I wanted the kids to pick. They knew what they liked, and they’d work much harder if they enjoyed what they were studying and doing.

  Of course, there was also a good chance that I was completely wrong. That was a tomorrow problem, though. For now, I wanted to get the kids fed and tucked away in their rooms, in that order.

  At my mental command, the interface pulled up a crude map of the Academy. The west wing of the fourth floor held eleven small student dormitory rooms, each of which could hold two students. Those were now activated and waiting for new occupants. Something told me those rooms would be perfect for these kids, and that once they’d settled into their new quarters, they’d adapt to the rest of their new lives much more quickly.

  “Biz and I are going to scrounge up some food for the kids,” I said to the Tribunal. “We’ll be back soon. Don’t let them wander off and fall down the stairs or anything. After they’ve eaten, we’ll move them up to their dormitories and get them settled in. Hopefully, they’ll be able to see by then so we won’t need to post a babysitter in the dorm hall.”

  “Before you go,” Ylor said cautiously, “would you be so kind as to assign the students to us? It would help us all rest easier knowing we have our fair share of the new students.”

  “No way,” I said with a stern frown. “I haven’t changed my mind on this at all. Ask them what they want to do. If they want to fight, they go with Baylo. If they’re the kind of kids who mess around with ink and pens and books, Reesa will teach them. And if they’re feeling particularly goth and want to live underground, they’re all yours, Ylor. We are not forcing anybody to do anything here. It’ll just irritate them, they’ll dig in their heels, and we’ll never be able to train them. We need allies, not rebellious teenagers who don’t want to study.”

  The Tribunal accepted my mandate grudgingly, and I watched them start the process of picking teams. I watched carefully, still unable to understand any of the languages they spoke here, as the Tribunal questioned the students, one by one. Now that we had them all lined up, I was surprised to see that some of the kids weren’t human. There were a couple of green-skinned kids who looked a lot like Baylo, a handful who resembled Ylor, and exactly none that looked anything like Reesa. A few very short students had managed to find each other and sat at one end of the line. I’d originally thought they were younger kids, but it turned out they were part of a species that Baylo called drems. They had small, pointed ears hidden under thick, curly hair, and gem-like eyes that glistened with an inner light. There was also one girl, about my height, with skin the color of fresh ashes, long, black hair, and a pair of slender horns that curled back from her temples. She hadn’t been affected by blindness or deafness, and she watched the rest of us with careful eyes. She rarely spoke and avoided conversation with any members of the Tribunal.

  Biz and I fetched trays loaded down with sandwiches, strange fruits and vegetables neither of us recognized from the food storage facility to feed the new kids. As we handed out the food, I tried to coax the interface into revealing more about them. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem obliged to help me out on that front.

  >>>Entity analysis denied. Insufficient Akashik network level.<<<

  I puzzled over that response while Biz and I headed back downstairs to refill our trays with more food. There had to be some reason I couldn’t analyze the members of the tribunal or the students who were there with me, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. Maybe I had to unlock that ability by advancing my core again.

  When we returned from the second food run, the horned girl pushed off the wall and approached us. She took a sandwich off my tray, lifted the pitcher to pour a drink of water straight into her mouth, and then offered me a wide, toothy smile.

  “Engineer?” she a
sked, pointing at my chest.

  “Engineer,” I nodded and then added, “Kai.”

  “Oh, great,” Biz muttered. “You’ve already got a girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend,” the girl responded, and tapped her sternum with her thumb. “Xin.”

  Well, that was mortifying.

  “Glad to meet you, Xin,” I said haltingly. I really didn’t want this girl to think we were an item. I’d only just met her, and the horns were terribly intimidating. “I need to bring this food to the rest of the students.”

  “Xin,” she called after me, her mouth filled with sandwich. “Girlfriend!”

  “She likes you,” Biz taunted in a high-pitched, singsong voice. “Kai and Xin, sitting in a tree...”

  Chapter Fifteen

  WE SPENT THE REST OF that night corralling blind and deaf students into the dormitory. It was a tedious, exhausting task. Even with Monitor and the Tribunal helping, the new kids outnumbered us more than three to one. Every time we had half of them squared away, the others would wander toward dangerous stairs or windows with broken shutters. It didn’t help matters that the blue fuzzball ran around underfoot, trying to steal from the new kids who didn’t have anything to take. The little guy only knocked it off after Baylo growled at him.

  When all twenty students were safe and secure in their rooms, I was more exhausted than I had been after my encounter with Lord Inphyr. Monitor agreed to stand watch in the dorm hall, just in case any of the Academy’s new residents wandered out in the night. Thankfully, soulforged didn’t need sleep like the rest of us, who slumped off to a well-deserved rest.

  “Crud,” I muttered as Biz and I returned our room.

  “What’s wrong?” Biz asked. The fuzzball jumped off her shoulder and onto her bed. “I thought we had a pretty good day, all things considered. I knocked the snot out of a bunch of scrats, you buried some bad guys under buildings, and nobody on our side died.”

  “I forgot to ask Baylo about advancement.” I flopped down on the end of my mattress and pulled off my tennis shoes. There were rips in my Chucks’ canvas, and the toes had some nasty gashes in the rubber. My clothes didn’t look much better. My T-shirt had been punched full of holes by shrapnel during the shootout in the ruins, and somewhere along the way I’d torn the left knee completely out of my jeans. “I’m going to need something new to wear, sooner rather than later.”