The Sinister Shadows by Sian Webster (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📕

“Do you really think,” the soldier could barely speak, “that you can save your race, after doing this to its members?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, shaking my head. “Don’t.”

Somewhere far away, I heard a confused, “Don’t, what?” from William Harper.

The soldier stepped forward, straight through the counter, and I fell to the ground – a failed attempt to back away from the soldier in fear.

“You… Destroy… Everything.” The soldier managed.

Will came over to me then, walking straight through the image of the soldier, dispersing him into a cloud of smoke.

“Codi,” he muttered, his eyes wide, “are you alright?”

A soldier I killed over a year ago just tried to attack me. I thought to myself. I’m doing damn  fabulous. Aloud, I said nothing, I just shook my head.

“Come on,” Will took my hand in his, trying to comfort me, yet not pulling me up to stand – being cautious, “we should get you to the infirmary. They might have something for the hallucinations.”

I managed a weak smile. “Maybe I wouldn’t be having them if you hadn’t stole my apple.”

One sentence. That was all it took for me to make a friend at the New York Compound.

Will let out an exasperated laugh. “You yell at me for trying to get you to eat food, then you yell at me for stealing said food. I can’t win with you, Codi Watterson.”

“No one can win with me.” I told him, looking up at him sharply through my eyelashes, suddenly serious.

That was when I heard Eli burst into the cafeteria – someone must have told him my situation. Word travelled fast when everyone was spooked about the end of the human race, I suppose.

“Codi!” He exclaimed as the doors slammed open. I imagined his eyes scanning the room frantically, searching for his baby sister, the one who always needed protecting. I can protect myself! I wanted to say, but I knew that both Eli and Will would dispute that before the words even finished coming out of my mouth.

“Calm down, calm down,” Will waved over to him, somewhere above my head, “she’s fine. A little shaken, but fine.”

Fine? The voice in my head wasn’t mine, but there were no hallucinations that time. The edge of my vision blurred, dark patterns swirling before my eyes. Not so fine, Will. Probably not fine. I opened my mouth to say the words, but no sound came out.

“What on Earth are you doing with her? Who gave you the right—” Eli was saying, I assumed to Will.

“Whoa, big brother, step back a second—”

Then the dark swirling patterns spread throughout my vision, and I succumbed to subconsciousness.

* * *

Much to my dismay, as unconsciousness overwhelmed me, I was sent back to the bunker.

“We’ve got ourselves a girl,” the soldier closest to me drawled in his American accent. He had barely finished his sentence when the three others crowded around and eagerly started pulling the debris off us. At first I thought they were there to help us, but that was wishful thinking at its best.

 The first soldier dropped to the ground at my side, his face uncomfortably close to mine. As he spoke, his hot breath blew against my face, making me nauseas. I tried to scramble away from him, but with my back against the wall, it was useless.

“Don’t try to run, darl’.” Another one said, smirking as he threw away wooden beams from the collapsed roof. “You’ve got nowhere to go, anyway.”

“Unless you like bombs.” A third soldier joked.

I happen to make them. I thought to myself, but I knew better than to say it. They would kill me outright if they knew what I did for a living.

“Touch my sister,” Eli croaked beside me, “and I’ll kill you myself.”

The first soldier narrowed his eyes. “Then we’ll just have to kill you first, won’t we?” The other soldiers nodded in agreement. “We have uses for girls. We have no uses for you.”

“Quit messing around.” A voice said from further back in the collapsed bunker. “Just send them to the camps.”

“Which one?” The third soldier asked.

The soldier at the back was still out of my line of sight. “You heard the kid. English accent. Midlands, I bet. Send them with the rest. It’s not rocket science.”

“But, Sir. She’s a girl.” The first soldier argued.

“Yes. I heard. At least leave the girl her dignity.” The unseen soldier must have been a higher rank than the rest, considering the soldier before me called him ‘Sir’.

“This is war, Sir, I can take what I want.”

I heard ‘Sir’ sigh. “Come here, soldier.”

The soldier before me rolled his eyes and skulked into the dim light towards the back of the bunker. I heard the thud of a fist against bone, and a cry of pain. I shuffled closer to Eli, choking back a sob. I wasn’t prepared to let these soldiers know how scared I really was of them.

“You do as I say.”

In the dim light, I saw the first soldier stand up and raise his arm in salute. “Yes, Sir.”

* * *

“Codi?”

Someone was gripping my hand tightly, their thumb tracing the skin of my hand almost affectionately. My mind was shrouded in confusion; I could only sense one person in the room, and the voice didn’t belong to Eli, the only person who could possibly feel any type of affection towards me. I hadn’t heard any footsteps to signify another person leaving the room. There were no sounds other than the jagged breathing of myself and the person in the room with me, and the constant beeping of medical equipment.

I was in the infirmary.

Hesitantly, I forced myself to pry open my eyelids.

“Codi?” The voice asked again, their hands quickly slipping away from mine. The loss of contact came almost as a shock, jarring me into consciousness.

I blinked, peering at the boy beside me; mousy brown hair, streaked with flecks of blond from the afternoon sun that intruded through the window; eyes the colour of melting chocolate, gold sequins scattered around the circumference of his pupils; a light dusting of freckles across high cheekbones creating constellations far greater than any of those in the never-ending universe.

“Will?”

He looked down. “I, uh, yeah.” He shrugged. “I felt like I should come and see how you were. I mean, considering everyone thinks I’m trying to killed you like I allegedly killed all the scientists in Florida.”

My brow furrowed and I looked down, unsure of what to make of his almost-confession to the fact Eli had told me two days earlier.

“Do you believe them?” He asked hesitantly. “Do you believe I could do that to a person?”

I shrugged. “Like I said, we’re all responsible for an insane amount of deaths in the War. We all did what we had to do to survive. I know I did.”

He looked up at me, disbelieving. “What happened to you?” He asked. “Sure, pretty traumatising stuff happened to the rest of us, but none of us have side-effects like you.”

“I don’t talk about it.” I said defensively.

Will raised a single eyebrow. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

“What about you?” I asked sceptically. “Did you really kill all those people?”

He looked down. “Not those specific people, no.” He said carefully. “But I would be lying if I said I didn’t kill anyone in the War.”

“You weren’t responsible for the bombing of your lab?” I asked slowly.

“Of course not. But someone always has to be blamed. I didn’t go into work that day, so as it turns out, the only logical person to blame is me.” He shrugged. It was almost as if he didn’t mind being blamed for so many peoples’ deaths.

“So if that’s not how—”

He shook his head, stopping me before I could finish the sentence. “I don’t talk about it either.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Well I guess we have an agreement then, Mr Harper.”

“I guess we do.” He looked down at his long, thin fingers as he had the first day I met him.

We were quiet for a while, our agreement eliminating any further conversation. My eyes travelled over to the heart monitor being projected into the air beside my bed, following the jagged lines of my heart beat from left to right, left to right, left to right. Eventually, I mustered up the courage to start up a conversation again.

“Where’s Eli?” I asked slowly. “Do you know? I… I would’ve thought he would’ve been here, after… everything.”

Will shrugged, a sly smile spreading across his lips. “Your brother doesn’t seem to like me very much. He refused to be in the same room as me.”

“He seemed to think you were very agreeable the other day when you told me to go home.” I pointed out.

Will’s smile turned into a smirk. “That was before I said you can stay.”

I laughed slightly, then we fell into another silence. I wracked my brain, searching desperately for a topic of conversation we could pursue. It was an odd feeling, but I didn’t want Will to leave the room. I felt almost as if I needed him there.

He looked up and met my eyes. “Do you have any ideas?” He asked hesitantly. “For the Invention.” He added, when I didn’t respond very quickly.

I shrugged. “Don’t you?”

He shook his head, the sun swirling patterns into his hair as it moved against the force of his movement. “I don’t believe the human race can be saved.” He reminded me. “So I figured maybe I could ask someone who desperately believed it could be.”

Slowly, a smile spread across my face. “I have this research,” I told him, “something I was working on before the war. I don’t really know if it would be useful, but…” I shrugged.

His eyes widened, almost in excitement. “Can you show me?”

My smile grew. “You want to see?”

He nodded, a slither of excitement breaking through the steel wall he surrounded himself with.

I reached over and closed the heart monitor projection, as well as a couple more projections surrounding me. I thanked the heavens I was in New York; I had no wires hooked up to me in this modern infirmary.  I stood up and took Will’s hand.

“Come on, then.”

His eyebrows raised. “Now?”

It was my turn to smirk that time. “Now.” 

I fumbled with my keys, excitement coursing through my veins. I had never shown anyone my research before; I had never wanted to. If I could get it right, it could be revolutionary – it was like my own little secret. Yet, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted to please William Harper in that moment.

As the keys rattled in my shaking fingers, I could see my surroundings flickering. Another hallucination.  I knew what it would be; I remembered the cold, metal bars of the abandoned prison, the hard bed against the wall, the cheery tune the guard insisted on whistling, winking as he walked past my cell, and the way he would wave to me, the keys in his hand jingling away