Walking With Darkness

Chapter 11

"This is unnatural."

Cage was failing. That was an unforseen circumstance. One we had thought was impossible. It siphoned off the the shadow-hopping ability of the prisoner. And not even by a substantial amount. It siphoned off a miniscule part of their energy, constantly, so they could never prepare themselves enough. The energy it took was used to transport electrical energy in from one of many secluded locations. The stronger the prisoner, the more electricity could be transported in with the same amount of energy. And thus, the more energy could be taken in the next cycle.
Ingenious if I do say so myself.

It was the sixth in a series of prisons invented by the shadows to contain this prisoner. Each one created before the last one failed. Which, in turn, they all had.

This one though, had lasted. It's mesmerising blue glow and it's cylindrical shape managed where others had failed. It even had shadow metal bars that formed the length of the tube. As such, it was appropriately named "Cage".

And it was failing.

Which really made no sense. Not much was known about the birther of the prodigy, but I'd assumed that she fell prey to the laws of physics and..... Well...... Reason. They were laws after all. It all seemed to make sense. On paper, it was flawless. Which made me wonder how exactly it was "failing".

I approached the Cage, passing multiple shadow incarnations. I briefly wondered where their humans were. But, as I said, it was a brief thought. One of the only humans there walked towards me, her skin a deep blue.

"Do none of you supposed, scientists, know what is happening!? " I demanded, knowing I would soon be bombarded with explanations, rushed apologies and reassurances, everybody trying their best not to lose their jobs. It was to be expected.

Instead I was ignored.

The woman at least tried to answer. Though her answer did nothing except waste my valuable time. She should've remained silent.

"They are working on it" she said.
"The biggest problem is that they don't understand why it's failing in the first place. The physics is solid. What she's is doing impossible. Well it should be. There's no reason behind the failure of this machine. "

Which of course, helped me in no way.
Especially since the knowledgeable ones, the shadows, were blatantly ignoring me. And so, unable to do anything, I walked away. Out of the bunker in an undisclosed location, and sat on a bench outside. It was nighttime. No birds were chirping. No owls either. Just silence and the gentle hum of work in the bunker. Most of the shadows were efficient enough to make little to no noise as they worked, so I assume the noise came from the humans. I looked up at the cloudy, starless sky and listened to it. It was soothing in its own way. Like the sound of a mother calming her child.
Consistent.
Constant.
Slowly getting louder as it went on.
The one note becoming overpowering.
As if it was trying to take over your mindset.

And abruptly my calm moment ended and I quickly sat up. That gentle hum had become a forceful shout. Now it was clear something was wrong. And as I stood up to run the alarms started blaring. There was no one in the halls as I ran. I reached the room and it was as if nothing was wrong. The panicking humans were not enough to disrupt the calm the shadows held over the room. There were more of them than before. One decent person came to explain things to me.

"Sir, it seems she's found a way around the machine. " she started.

Which again, made no sense.
" What do you mean? "

" Well apparently she's been monitoring her own Shadow levels, and how the machine siphons it. " she continued.
Okay so far I'm understanding, as impressive as it is, that doesn't really explain anything.

"Apparently she's been doing this for a substantial amount of time. The Shadows are under the impression she now knows everything about the machine.

"And so, after studying the Cage, she started trying to shadow-hop again. Brain activity also increased during this time. The human scientists realised there was a possibility of her replenishing her energy faster than the Cage could take it away. Unlikely as it was, to prevent this, they increased the the energy taken by the Cage. "

She seemed to be wary of saying the next part...... I looked forward and it seemed the birther was stirring from a slumber. Of course, defying the laws of reason was tiring work.

"Basically, since the Cage takes energy from a specific general area, she just stopped supplying energy to that area. We noticed this but we looked it over, as it meant she was unable to make the jump. But then we noticed the levels of Shadow energy in her body remained constant in her body, which showed there was an over load in some places. At first, these places were unstable. But soon enough, she stabilised them. We don't know how. And that's where the alarms were triggered. "

The birther was fully conscious now, and she was seated in a meditation pose. Her eyes closed.

"They called in other shadows and they started studying her. The adjustments they were making rendering most humans here useless. We didn't know what they were doing. It wasn't our invention anymore. "

The birther untangled her fingers and pulled her hair back.

" Speculations were that if she Shadow-hopped with more energy than necessary she would be able to take more than herself with the leftover energy"

She stood up and straightened her black jumpsuit.

"No one was sure if it was possible but they extra Shadows tried preventing this from happening, but they couldn't. If they shut down the cage to incapacitate her, she'd make the jump, but if they didn't, she could make the jump anyway. All they could do was increase the energy that was siphoned and hope for the best" she concluded.

The birther looked like she was ready for something. She stretched, her eyes still closed, and did little jumps. As if she was warming up.

And with her eyes tightly shut, she smiled.

"PREPARE THE SHADOW-ZONE TROOPS!! SHE GOING TO JU-" I started, my words in vain.

She looked around the room, opened her eyes and vanished.