Prologue – In a Place of No Shadows

 

November 4008

 

 

* This pod contains 1 message. Origin: inter-galaxy; unidentifiable. Press here to view message. *

 

My name is Krista Maroon. I have never seen darkness.

I live next door to my best friend, Ciel. We live in small apartments in Milwaukee. This will come to you as completely normal, everyday, same old-same old. But we have quite more than a few surprises awaiting you.

If Gustus doesn’t fail me, this will be going to the Milky Way, and float all the way down to Earth. I do hope you’re a scientist or a teacher or at least not a five year old trying to spell the word “apple”. (By the way, go ahead—pet him. He doesn’t bite. Well, not unless you’re eating chocolate. Then you might wanna watch out.)

There is another galaxy out there; somewhere humans take forms never seen. Somewhere seemingly normal people can do things unheard of. Things no one even knew they could do, not until they were bought to this compound. We train the special people, those people who can fight and have the ability to harness light itself in their own hands.

We’ve all never seen a speck of dark, not before we found out we were not like others.

And now we’ve seen more darkness than you can in your meek lifetimes.

I live in Incandescent Earth, where all has to be kept bright for its own sake. Every life form, every street, every street corner, every garden or school. Everything is warm and happy. All kept by the sun and by our goddess, Lumina. It seems like heaven, but it is hell. We just haven’t been looking deep enough.

The Darkness travels from one galaxy to another and might be coming for the Milky Way. Do all you can. Thin your ozone layer by at least two per cent. Let as much sunlight in as you can. Your best weapons are flashlights. Buy eight more. When the Darkness comes, you won’t have time to swap batteries. Evacuate your planet if you have to.

Whoever you are, don’t keep this to yourselves for too long. I know it’s a lot to take in.You’re probably scared, confused, or completely lost at the subject. But please, get help. Get all the help you can.

Shine some light.

 

* Press here to replay the message. *

2: Less is More

For we have given the light to the shadow

And the warmth to the ice

And that light has guided the caves

Lest we would be forever lost.

And ye, my brethren

Have light in thou hearts, in thou minds and souls

For ye all

Have been blessed by Lumina,

our goddess kind,

goddess mighty,

goddess unifying.

***

September 4008

“Goddess, she had more makeup on than my aunt Penny last year’s Brightening Festival.”

 “I know, right? We’re fifteen, I expected her to be more dignified.” Krista popped her gum, which had long gone tasteless. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her skirt. Her fiery orange hair was slightly thrown into the wind.

 Incandescent Milwaukee’s traditional elfish clothes might have been more earthly and modern, but the hems of her sleeves still shaped daisy petals. She often wore wooden necklaces with beads shaped like stars and a pendant shaped like a sun. Ciel’s mother still made him wore the more traditional uniform. He walked alongside Krista in a cotton shirt, the front sides sewn together with cross-stitches. He still always wore loose khakis tucked in the boots his dad used to wear.

 “How d’you reckon you did on the Incanian History quiz?” Ciel chimed, raking his dark hair away from his glittery green eyes. “I did terrible.”

 “Maybe you shouldn’t have been gawking at Toria Xavier the entire Earthly Resemblance lecture,” Krista cackled. Her steely blue eyes grew smaller when she smiled. She sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Ciel. You have no hope in this world.” Ciel threw his head back and laughed, shoving Krista, who was giggling maniacally.

 For a few seconds they stayed silent, and then Ciel cleared his throat, his smile fading in the slightest—enough for Krista to notice. He stared at his walking feet. “It’s…It’s Gracie’s Transfer anniversary tomorrow.” The slight fade in his smile had become whole. He and Krista stopped walking.

 Mary Grace was Ciel’s younger sister. Out of hatred for the Darkness, Incanians examined each member of families with histories of Darkness infection. They collected five-year olds from all over the world, diagnosed them. Ciel had taken the diagnosis—it was horrible, he’d said. They stuck needles in you and force-fed you. It had given Krista shivers.

When Grace had taken the test, they didn’t need to examine her any longer than every other kid. Ciel’s parents eyes were celery green and pale blue. Ciel had inherited his mother’s green.

 Mary Grace’s eyes were deep, dark brown.

 The kids who had gotten positive result where immediately evacuated to other planets. Disposed of, they’d said. Krista had had to hold Ciel back from trying to knock out the big security guards. Krista remembered that they had been put in uncomfortable-looking wheelchairs unconscious and shoved into escape pods. Krista had watched as the pods shot into the sky, leaving just a long trail of smoke in its wake.

 Ciel hadn’t gotten to say goodbye. They were only nine then, but Krista remembered well the look on his face; sad, confused, empty, and so, soangry.

 Krista stopped looking where they were walking and turned to him, studying his face. He felt her gaze but didn’t turn to meet it, his mouth stretched in a straight line. He stared at the floor. The leaves of trees that loomed above them made polka dot-like shadows across the contours of his face, seen only now in the light of the sun. Ciel’s face never lost the child-like roundness to his cheeks, but his jawline was sharp. Its silhouette was prominent in his profile.

 “Oh, Ciel…” Krista breathed. Her eyes were sad, but her lips pressed in a tight reassuring smile. She reached for his hand and he let her, her small fingers fitting loosely in the spaces of his. “She never changed, you know.  She was never evil. It’s their fault. It’s their fault,” she soothed, her face pressed into his shoulder. But Ciel didn’t look sad of in need of her reassurance. He just stared at the floor, his face blank but troubled.

***

Klyde looked around at his fellow Board members. The only light bulb in the Compound conference room lit up over him, the shadows under his cheekbones dark. “We start retrieving our warriors tomorrow, yeah?” He boomed, and tilted up his chin. His low voice echoed off the cement walls. “We go with our strategy every year.”

“Less is more,” everyone droned in sarcastic monotone. Klyde didn’t seem to notice, however, and his face lit up like a child’s. “That’s right!” He had the habit of making extravagant hand gestures. “You see, it’s like choosing to kill flies first when exterminating insects during an infestation,” he paced back and forth with his chest puffed out, completely unaware of his Board members lip-syncing his every word perfectly.

 “By killing the flies first, we put in consideration the black widows and snakes and stuff.” He turned to them with a wicked grin. They all stared at him with bored looks. “Hey, you guys look none too happy. Well, anyways, here are the retrieval assignments.” Everyone cheered and threw their fists in the air. Klyde started and laughed sheepishly. “Well, looks like you guys are all better now, huh?”

 “GET ON WITH IT!” someone shouted, and Klyde rolled his eyes. “This happens every year,” he mumbled.

 “Team Gwyneth, you have Milwaukee with fifteen warriors.” Gwyn groaned, mumbling something about how she always gets the flies and earning chuckles. Klyde looked down at his paper. “Your first warriors are Krista Maroon and Ciel Litway. More specific addresses are posted outside.”

***

When they had gotten home, they’d bade each other goodbye and were about to separate, when Krista’s door had been thrown open. In front of her was her mother. Her face was frantic.

“Ciel, get in your apartment, now.” She said hurriedly, to which Ciel gave a confused look but nodded gravely, stepping into his apartment and closing the door behind him. Krista scanned her mother’s face quickly and asked, frantically, “Mom, what’s going on? Why are you in such a hurry?” Her mother paid no attention to the question and shooed her daughter into the apartment, closing the door swiftly behind her.

She looked around. Her eyes widened quickly and she ran to the carpet and threw it away, tearing at the floorboards. A compartment had opened. “Krista, get in, quickly.” Krista drew her eyebrows together and nodded. The moment she threw the carpet aside, Krista knew exactly what was going on. She climbed down the portable stairs and her mom followed her. Krista breathed heavily and thought darkly, why now?

On the wall of the bunker her mother had installed a program into a small television that showed what a camera built outside was filming. Krista watched intently the picture shown on the screen, and saw it.

 The Darkness.

3: Darker With Every Second

Ciel had always been less than brave when it came to the Darkness.

 He watched the screen, fear evident on his face, and saw it. A cloud of whirling void, almost like a raincloud but much, much darker. As if it had carried all the rain in the world.

 He read of what it was like to look into the void in person, and was mortified. They said you could hear the screams and cries of lost souls, have the weight of a hundred weights on your shoulders, feel as if your blood was singing; pushing through and up you veins and muscles and every layer of your skin. Your very blood would soak through your clothes and drop to the floor, making you fainter with every struggling step. No one would help you.

 While all of it happened, the victim knelt with his head down, their face pale and expressionless, their eyes slowly turning darker with every second. Ciel had had distant relatives become victim and there they still were, isolated in their rooms, quiet moans escaping their mouths until they get old and die into Lumina knows what.

 Ciel hadn’t witnessed the Darkness since forever. He stood in a powerless trance in their bunker, staring at the screen anxiously.

 In their tall apartment building, Ciel’s family had made sure to buy an apartment on one of the upper floors. He now understood why—the lower apartments had been cheaper, but they had no bunkers, and the residents just hunkered down under their beds and tables. Their apartments had windows implanted in their walls.

 Ciel heard their screams from where he was. He winced.

 He stood in the brightly lit bunker hand in hand with his mother, Kelly, waiting for his father to take the elevator up the building onto the eleventh floor. His mother stared at the screen intently, but he looked away distantly.

 At that moment, the thing that still flooded his thoughts was Gracie. She’d never witnessed a Dark Flood, and Ciel was glad she hadn’t. Who would’ve thought a young girl with all her life ripped away from her by the Darkness, and to never have witnessed it. To be so young, but to be so consumed and defined by a monster—enough to have all she was taught be erased and replaced with deadly black nothingness. Ciel didn’t get to say goodbye.

 Tears stung at the backs of his eyes, and he leaned into his mother’s shoulder absentmindedly. She started for a split second, but exhaled knowingly and ran her hand through her son’s hair. She nuzzled her face into his temple and kissed it quickly, her lips taut. Her thin-rimmed eyeglasses were askew.

 “What about Dad?” Ciel asked anxiously. “How will he get inside? All the doors should be locked by now.”

 “I-I don’t know, sweat pea,” his mother’s voice shook.

 That was when he breathed in, breathed out. His knees were weak. He felt broken, and he gave, crashing down on the floor. He breathed in, breathed out. The tears that threatened to fall never did. He just thought, my sister is worse than dead. My father is worse than dead. And he felt that he himself was going to die, or already somehow was.

 ***

 “Right, Team Me, listen up!” Gwyneth’s voice echoed through the air hangar, and her team of eight slowly silenced their mumbles. “Let’s have a strategy rundown, shall we?” She looked down at the clipboard in her gloved hands. Her feathery ty-dyed hair caught the sunlight.

 “You heard Professor Metaphor. Our first goal is Sunny Heights, rooms oh-eight and oh-nine on the eleventh floor. I got word that Ciel and Krista just got back from school, so they’ll be—most probably—doing homework. Easy-peasy. Alright, let’s get mov—“

 “Hey!” One of the satellite operators ran, breathless, through the large doorway-like opening of the hangar. “Wait, you can’t go yet. Dark Flood,” he heaved. “Reported to be affecting the entire Milwaukee area in an hour. Klyde said to cancel all retrieval operations.”

 Gwyn’s eyes narrowed, and then she clapped loudly, bellowing, “All right! Looks like we have some minor setbacks, but don’t you worry; this isn’t the first time this has ever happened. After all, we are our own weapons, aren’t we, team? Warriors of Lumina,” she started.

 Her team followed: “Instruments of Her Light.”

 She grinned. The operator stood, mumbling fearful words of refusal, and Gwyneth acted like he didn’t even exist. Her team exchanged looks of childish mischief. With a cheeky smirk, she cheered, “Let’s move it, team, come on!”

 Eight teenagers’ worth of loud whoops and catcalls filled the hangar, making the poor operator in the background wince. They piled into the large jet behind them, Gwyn at pilot. Her microphone turned her voice grainy, but the excited and determined tone in her voice was still evident. “Right, ladies, ready to get this show on the road?”

 ***

 It’s a feeling unalike any other, knowing your best friend is going to die.

 Especially when that best friend is doing it to himself for a reason completely unknown.

 It took just a glance at the screen, a sharp intake of breath, a fixed stare at the achingly familiar face stepping out the door into his unfortunate fate. Krista felt faint. She gasped. “Mom…Ciel’s outside. He’s outside! Mom!” Krista’s voice shook.

 “I need to get him back in, he’s going to die out there, doesn’t he know that—“ Her mother cut her off with a stern look in the eye. “You’re not going anywhere. No exceptions.”

 Andrea Maroon was not the kind of mother to be overprotective, but that didn’t mean she would let her daughter risk her life.

 “Mom, you know he can’t fight it, Mom—he’s going to look. Everyone does. He’s going to die. My best friend is going to die. I need to save him, I need to get out of here,” her voice was choked, but she didn’t cry.

 Andrea avoided her daughter’s eyes. She looked darkly at the floor. The fluorescent light above caught in her bright red hair.

 “I would do the same for you.”

 Her mother snapped her head towards her. Krista and Ciel had known each other since they were young. Andrea knew how much he meant to her, and respected Ciel, trusted him, knew him as much as if he were her own son.

She knew when her daughter was serious. More serious than Adrea’d ever seen her. “Oh Krissie, baby…” she sighed, pulling her daughter into her thin arms.

 She would’ve kept Krista like this entire Flood: her baby in her arms, safe from all the dangers raging about outside.

 So she did: “No.”

 And Krista suddenly became blank of mind and moral. In a second she’d clawed at her mother, blood streaking her fingernails. But she didn’t see it, didn’t feel it, didn’t care even when her mother screamed and cried.

No sound. Just ringing in her ears. Then silence outside and white television noise in Krista.