Shadow Army: A Shadows Rising Novella

1. Beginning

Nox

... a hothouse plant in a hanging basket – the kind Marin loved, with the big white flowers, hanging in a sunlit corner of her studio...
... zig-zags of bright orange...
... images jumping and flipping upward like a rolofile in my head...
... more bright zig-zags that slowly died into a thin orange line at the edges of my vision...
... no more flowers...
... white walls speckled with peeling green and yellow paint...
... Marrin. Where was —

"Adjust zone 752."

... rapid zig-zags —

"Too far."

... Green paint on a wall in the distance. I could see every flake, every crack. That was impossible. How did I know that was impossible?

"Name."

I blinked slowly, trying to make myself focus on the blurry figure in front of me.

"Name," he said again.

Features came into sharp detail – thick, black eyebrows, the hair shafts of eyelashes, the tiny creases between the individual skin cells around an eye...

"Name."

I blinked again, then again, and looked away. I had a name. I knew I did. Everyone had a name...

Dr. Marodian clicked his stopwatch and noted something on his clipboard. I had seen him do that before, but he had been wearing a different vest beneath his blue laboratory coat. The memory overlapped oddly with what was in front of me, as if I were watching the two moments at the same time. I hissed in a breath through my teeth as my vision jumped and flickered between the two images. It felt like I was in two places at once. Nausea swarmed through my middle, sending ice through my veins.

No. It was fire. I was on fire.

But I was so... cold...  

I started shaking and couldn't stop, my muscles shuddering wildly beneath my skin while the quiet scritch-scratch of the doctor's fountain pen nib suddenly rose to a deafening thunder, pounding against my frayed nerves.

"Lets try this again," Dr. Marodian said slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly and loudly. Much, much too loudly. "Name?"

I closed my eyes, a white-hot throb starting just behind my eyes. "Ilfistu son mourir, arrinox gravidaros..." I jerked, panic slicing through me. I could feel my tongue forming words, but my voice wasn't mine. And what in all the seven blue hills was I speaking?

"Subject is displaying cognitive dissonance," Dr. Marodian said calmly. He was speaking to the tall man who stood behind a table full of blinking switchboards, rubber tubes and glowing electro-resistor jars. "Reset to forty-two-oh-nine."

I knew what that meant. I remembered it from some other time. I had no idea how, or why, but I shook my head, desperation clawing at my sluggish body. "Nau! Nau! Auroste mei -"

- a blinding blur of pain, and a flare of blinding blue, then... nothing.

>>><<<

"Name."

I stared at the man in the laboratory coat. Dr. Marodian. I knew that. I blinked. Maybe if I just said something. Anything —

Dr. Marodian squinted at me, then brought up a magnifying lens on the oculafier strapped to his head, and peered into my eyes. "The code is running, but the secondary processor is caught on the language binary pin. At least it's just a physics problem. Reset to forty-two-oh-nine."