Indigo (NaNoWriMo13)

Chapter 24 - After Dark

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Chapter 24 - After Dark

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Shift was starting to worry.

He lingered in the corridor that led to Indigo’s sleeping quarters, unsure whether to pursue Athira. As her door’s panels were engulfed in colour and slammed shut behind her, he realised that he was too late.

Shift sighed and walked back down the stairs into the common room, rolling his shoulder.

Today’s villain had been a particular pain, throwing him through a window and towards the wall beyond. The only reason his head wasn’t split like a watermelon now was because Athira’s colour had wrapped around his waist at the last second and pulled him forward, landing him awkwardly on his shoulder instead of repainting the wall Cu’lur Shift’s brain.

He was considering changing out of his suit and into something more comfortable when he spotted Zoe sitting on the couch, forehead resting in her hands. Her yellow aura flickered around her as it often did now the Elite’s armband was removed, but Shift suspected it was more due to her recent colour use than her emotions. Her face told a story coloured by guilt.

Shift went over and sat beside her.

“What’s up?”

Zoe glanced at him. “The colourle-- pink kid, the one that was with Reader,” she said. Shift could barely hear her over the entertainment system Talia had blaring in the corner. “I can’t stop thinking about him. What did we send him to when we let him go with Discord? When we handed him over?”

“We didn’t know, Zo,” said Shift. He rubbed her back. “Even if we did, what could we have done? Discord would have found out.”

“Something, anything.” Zoe shook her head. “We condemned that kid. We betrayed him. Zac. We betrayed Zac.”

“You think they’ll really hurt Zac?” asked Shift. “They need him alive and well if they want to figure out what he knows. You know as well as I do that if you mistreat a kid, they’re going to seal their lips and cry. Even Discord isn’t that stupid.”

“You think?” said Zoe. Her aura flickered, but she didn’t look convinced. “I hear his words before I go to sleep, you know. For a kid, he certainly had some vivid images in his head.”

“Like what?”

“Talking about the light,” said Zoe. “Every time I lit my hand up, like this,” she intensified the glow around her hands, “he’d try to grab it. Talk about the light being the only way to see through the dark, that the darkness would rule if the light wasn’t there. He mentioned pools of fire and broken rocks more than once too, huge mountains that were impassable except by the air. Pillars that shattered but always rebuilt.”

As Zoe’s description continued, Shift grew colder. “He saw Athira’s mindscape. Or something really, really similar. Although why is another question entirely.”

“He knew ‘he’ was coming, too. That the Sleeper was waking up.”

“I can only imagine how he lives with the knowledge,” mumbled Shift. “Especially if he sees it so vividly. Maybe he’s too young to understand what he was seeing.”

Zoe went silent.

Shift’s hand moved automatically across her shoulder blades, the heel of his hand applying pressure as it moved back and forth. Why would a child of prophecy be able to see Athira’s mindscape? Knowing of the Sleeper made sense, but a mindscape?

“What was it like in there?” Zoe asked after a moment. “In Athira’s mind?”

Shift paused, unsure of what Athira wouldn’t kill him for telling her.