X-Marks: Rising Shadows

Here

In the bright light, all I could hear was the patter of my chest.

What was I so nervous about? I thought of what Mat had said earlier.

There were about a million people down here in the lower city. I wasn't going to find my family. Not that I wanted to anyway. I knew in my heart they weren't looking for me either.

I slid my hands into the pockets of my white lab coat and remembered Dimitri's instructions.

"You are locating missing donors. You will be back at this door by hour twenty-two and no later. I've inserted maps back to this location in each of your pockets. I trust you each can follow one well enough in my absensce. And again, do not draw attention to yourselves."

"We must be miles under," Mat said, as the latch of the door closed behind us.

I felt the walls press against me making me sweat. Mat always knew how to comfort someone.

The smell that I had thought was at its height, hit my nose faster than the light poured into the room.

"It doesn't end," Valen said, through sniffles.

I could barely talk. The rot was strangling me.

We walked forward into the crowd of shuffling bodies. Their dirt covered faces and drab gray clothes blended together like mud. It was like looking into a mirror of our traveler days but somehow different than I had remembered. Just slightly. The colors were less saturated than before.

The mud-like city rolled on for miles. Rows upon rows of flat clay houses disappeared against the black ceiling above. I kept my eyes on this bleak void.

This was their sky.

"Let's find what we came for," Mat said and started to walk into the crowds.

As we walked through, the people parted like startled geese. Our stark white coats and polished bracelets were looked over with wary eyes. I felt fortunate for once that I was used to be stared at, or I would have caused attention to us in more ways than just one.

I let in a deep breathe of the foul air to calm myself. It had less of a bite this time around. Mat had even lowered his shirt from his nose. Either it was going away, or we were getting used to it.

"Valen," I said and turned around, "Is it just me or -"

But she wasn't there. A man with a white stubbled face and deep-set eyes stared back at me, looking over my coat and bracelet.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were-"

He darted away before I could finish.

"Mat," I said and turned, this time making sure I wasn't truly alone, "Have you seen Valen?"

"Probably got distracted," Mat shouted, swinging his body around another, "You know her, always wandering off."

"What if she's lost?" I said, struggling to keep up with him and the crowd.

"She has a map too," he said, breaking through the tide to an open space between a row of homes.

"What are you in a rush for? I thought you weren't looking for anyone down here."

"It's not my fault I walk faster than everyone else," he said.

"No it's not, but it will be our fault if we don't find Valen," I said to Mat, but someone else stole his attention.

She stood no taller than my shoulders. Which finding someone shorter than me who wasn't a child was always something I noted, with pride of course. Her hair was a stark silver against her tanned skin and pinned into a perfect bun that curled around her ears. She had a brown blanket wrapped around her shoulders. I could see her arm tugging on Mat's arm.

"Come here," her small voice pleaded as she pointed down the rows of homes.

"What is she saying?" I asked.

Mat was talking to her, in words that were not familiar. They poured from him in drips, as he pulled at his hair. As if this would make the words come out.

"She's asking me to follow her," he said.

"Why? Do you know her?"

"No," he said, as the woman's voice continued muttering.

Mat began to move as the small old woman tugged him further into the dark alley. She swirled around him like an Iris.

"Where are you going?" I said in a hushed voice.

I was trying to not cause attention, but it wasn't working.

There was already a small crowd stopping and circling us now. All watching the little old woman and how she could drag Mat, twice her size, right out of his place. I followed them, though I had no choice. I didn't need Dimitri to tell me I should be alone here.

With each stop, she continued to say, "Come here."

I began to wonder if this was all she could say.

With each command Mat would reply in a lowered voice, so low that I couldn't hear him. I had expected him to be his usually brash self. But here he was letting an old women boss him around. I liked this old woman already.

I looked around the alley. The floors were dusted over so thick, it seemed as though we were stepping on dirt instead. The broken clay homes were as flat and lackluster as they appeared from afar. Each had uneven cutouts for windows. Inside each house, you could see faint signs of life. A flickering light, or laundry hanging from a line, sometimes even a person, usually old and sickly, hanging out from the window and watching the quiet motions of their side of the alley.

We turned and followed until we reach a home nestled in the darkest corner. If we had been here ourselves, we wouldn't have thought to stop here at all. Not if we wanted to remain unseen.

Outside the door hung a string of beads and a soft light flickered through a window.

"Come here!" the old woman shouted into the home.

Mat stepped into the door, lowering his head so he could fit through the small opening. I followed them inside.

"I'm sorry young man," a woman's voice said from another room, "Mrs. Abadía has a mind of her own these days, does this at least once a -"

The woman stopped herself before she had crossed the open door. Her black waves were tied back in an unruly knot, and her shaking hands hovered just above her pockets. She looked over us again and again with her unsettled stare, her striking green stare.

"Matias?" she said as if she did not believe her own words.

Mat let out a cry. A cry too delicate for someone like him. It belonged more to a small child. A child who had just lost a race, or scabbed their knee.

"It can't be," she said with her hand hovered over her mouth, "How?"

Mat removed the hat at his head, letting his dark waves unravel to his forehead.

This last piece was the twist of the faucet. The woman began to weep with arms stretch out for Mat.

"My son," the woman said, and at once understood.