My room had become a dark, quiet space with only the sound of rainfall filling the void. Visions outside my window were foggy with no signs of life except a tainted memory of someone I lost.

Nightmares do come true.

At least, that’s what it felt like after Marcus’s death two days ago. He was announced dead on arrival after the ambulance took us to the hospital. Both my mom and Darius arrived soon after, with Marcus’s mother running in with tears seconds later. If my heart broke into a million pieces that day, hers shattered into a billion.

Someone else heavily impacted was Tory, who blamed himself for Marcus’s death and vowed to get even. Whenever his anger got the better of him years ago, there were always consequences afterward.

This time, the consequence could be death.

“I’m leaving,” I heard my mom say before the house door shut. She wanted to stay with me until I was feeling better about what happened, but with it being the first day of her new job, I didn’t want her to take off work and risk being fired.

After about ten minutes of listening to the rain crash against my broken AC in the vent, I threw on my blue hoodie and stepped outside of my house, where Ashanti had already been waiting.

“You ready?” she asked, pulling the strings of her pink hoodie that covered her head.

“Yeah, we gotta stop Tory before it’s too late.”

“We will.” She placed my hand in hers. “We’re in this together, Zayn. Let’s go.”

We ran through the storm out of the complex and into Tory’s building, where we took the stairs to reach his apartment. Just as I was about to knock, the door swung open with him preparing to step out.

“Tory, where are you—”

He brushed past us. “I have to fix this. This ain’t ‘bout you.”

“Nah, this ‘bout all of us.” My words paused his advance. “We sat in this hallway together and decided we were gonna do somethin’ about the violence goin’ on. Remember?”

Despite his back being turned to me, I knew he felt my words. He had too.

Ashanti stepped in the gap between us. “We should go over this more in your place, Tory, not the hallway.”

“Tory, you heard her. Let’s talk inside.”

He balled a fist before turning around and opening the apartment door. We walked inside and stood in the living room, with Tory looking to the floor with his hands in his black hoodie.

“I messed up,” he said, pacing back and forth. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Bro, you not the one who caused what happened. That could have happened at any—”

“It’s not just that, man,” he shouted with a swing of his arms. “This whole thing got social media ready to cancel me. People blamin’ me for Marcus’s death ‘cause they think I stagged the fight with a real gun. How could they accuse me of somethin’ like that? I even got sponsors droppin’ me ‘cause of what happened.”

Both Ashanti and I were stunned. We had no words to say.

“Everythin’ is my fault, Z. I thought I mastered my powers. I thought I could protect us.” He began to sob. “Marcus should still be here. I messed up and I’m sorry. I—”

I pulled him into me, sharing his pain. “It’s not your fault,” I cried with him. “It’s not your fault. Whatever we gotta do to end this cycle of violence, we gon’ do it together. It’s all of us or nothin’.”

Ashanti joined in on the embrace. We held each other until Tory separated and wiped his tears, revealing, “My brother might be in trouble. I told him everythin’.”

I took a step back after hearing that. “What?”

“Yeah. We fought for a minute—tussled and all that—‘cause he wanted to gather up his boys and handle the Cogs without me, even though I told him they were dangerous, and that I should come ‘cause I have superpowers. He wouldn’t let me leave the house, so I ended up gettin’ mad and hittin’ him with some of my moves. I didn’t mean to, though.”

“Don’t stress it,” Ashanti consoled him. “There’s a lot ‘bout our abilities we don’t know. Where is your brother now?”

“Him and his crew are on the way to confront Miguel at their trap house. You’d think the cops would’ve raided that place after what went down when I first got my powers, right? Maybe Mr. Payne got the police workin’ for him, too?”

Damn, what if he was right?

Ashanti headed toward the door. “I don’t know, but let’s go. Pray we get there in time to stop this.”

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☾☼☽

Heavy rain knocked on the roof of the cab before we hopped out a block away from the trap house. Lightning and gunfire battled for supremacy like the war between both crews, each claiming victory over my nerves with ease.

“Zayn, you okay?” Ashanti asked, somehow noticing my stiffness through the downpour.

“Y-Yeah, I’m good. Sorry. Let’s move.”

Our feet splashed in puddles as we scurried out of the line of fire toward the house. We waited behind another home for the shooting to end before we approached and saw a man laid out in cold blood near the fence.

“Bro, are you serious?” Tory fumed. “He was one of Darius’s boys. Damn.”

“Someone’s yellin’ inside,” Ashanti told us. “Let’s hurry.”

The smell went from an earthy scent to sulfur upon entering the house. Inside the molded, worn-down messy place were the bodies of mostly Cog members, with Darius’s crew surprisingly standing tall.

“Yo, why y’all in here?” one of Darius’s men in a black tee wanted to know. “Ain’t you D’s lil’ bro?”

“Yeah. Where he at?”

“Upstairs. He finna’ take Miguel out on his own.”

Ashanti and I followed Tory, who sprinted up the creaking stairs and into a large room where Miguel and Darius were facing off. Both men looked exhausted, but something was more apparent about Miguel.

The darkness he carried all this time had formed into a Shadow.

“I told you to stay home,” Darius yelled at his brother with hefty breaths. “You brought your friends into this mess, too?”

“Good,” Miguel sneered before cackling like a maniac. The Shadow stood behind him like a dog on its hind legs. “Now I can kill all of you like I should have a long time ago.”

“Nah, it ain’t goin’ down like that,” Darius retorted. “You shot and killed my homie outside. I ain’t lettin’ you get away with takin’ his life. Yo ass done today.”

Darius and Miguel collided in the middle of the room, swinging left and right at each other with body shots that connected hard until the tussling battle began. What surprised me most of all, though, was the absence of a wild ability from Miguel. Everyone being controlled by a Shadow had one so far, so why was he different?

Despite this, he was gaining the upper hand in the fight—which tempted me to step in—but Tory dashed over first, tossing Miguel against the decaying walls. He then mounted over Miguel’s body, delivering a combo of punches to Miguel’s face with a purple glow radiating off his hands.

Ashanti looked away from the assault. It was starting to get uncomfortable.

“Tory, maybe chill out,” I suggested. The purple aura now swirled around his body, changing its color to red and black. This shift seemingly enticed the Shadow judging by its gaze at Tory.

Tory grabbed the gun holstered in Miguel’s jeans and stood with it aimed down at him. Ashanti and I gasped while Darius inched toward his younger brother.

“T, put the gun down,” he demanded. “I’m serious. This ain’t—”

“This ain’t what, huh?” Tory snapped back, his finger ready to squeeze the trigger. Miguel was so battered on the floor, he was almost unrecognizable as he could only plead for his life with mutters of agony. “Why shouldn’t I end him? You were gonna do it anyway.”

“Nah, I wasn’t,” Darius refuted. “I was gonna make sure he’s put behind bars for life. Mr. Payne won’t be able to bail his sorry ass out this time after killing my boy.”

Tory didn’t care about none of that. He was ready to end it all with a single pull.

I had to make sure that didn’t happen.

“Tory, bro, you’re stronger than this. You overcame your emotions before, and you can do it again. Right now.”

“Nah, Z. It’s heartless people like him who make life hard for everyone. They take lives over and over again with that weak ass excuse of, ‘this is the streets. This the code we live by.’ Nah, forget all that. If it ain’t the cops killin’ us, it’s him. It’s people like him that make it hard for all of us. He got the outside world thinkin’ we all animals, Z. I’m too young for this, bro. I’m tired of it. I don’t wanna be around it anymore.”

Darius was now close enough to grab the gun, but he gave me a side glance to signal I had one more chance to talk Tory out of it.

I wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip away.

“Can’t you see the light, Tory? Through all that darkness you talkin’ ‘bout, there is one. The second you kill him, it’s gonna disappear, and the violence will continue with someone from his crew comin’ after you and your brother. The violence ain’t never gonna stop unless we make it stop ourselves. The Shadows know this, and they’re gonna keep corruptin’ us until we grab that light and make peace with ourselves and our enemies. The process can start right here, with you.”

His teeth dug deep into his bottom lip before letting go with a long exhale. He dropped his aim on Miguel, allowing Darius to take the gun out of his hand and pull his little brother into a one-armed hug.

“You did good, Tory,” I heard Darius say. “I was in a similar situation before, and I can tell you right now, it ain’t worth it. It never will be, you hear me? I refuse to let you go down the same path I did. You gon’ be better than me, I promise.”

With no one else to latch onto, the Shadow disappeared. Darius let go of Tory and stood above Miguel with the gun still in his hand.

“If you somehow get out of prison,” he pointed the weapon at Miguel’s head—I was doubtful he’d kill him after everything he said to Tory, “I better not ever catch you ‘round my brother, his friends, or anyone on my side again.”

This…moment.

It was this moment. The gun. The positioning. Everything. This moment was unnerving before the truth even registered in my mind, but when it did, it hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking me into an unconscious state.

The nightmare began, but this time, I could hear my heart pounding as I witnessed a memory once blurred. The silver pistol. My father’s body. Even the shooter.

Everything was clear to me.

My father, on the ground at the mercy of the hooded figure who stood above him, stared directly up at the individual and said, “Don’t do this. You don’t have to be another cog in the machine, Darius.”

The gun went off, ending my father’s life. After everything, the person who murdered my father was in front of me the entire time.

Darius.

“Yo, Zayn. Zayn, get up.”

Tory’s voice freed me from my shackled horror. I rose to my feet and made eye contact with everyone staring at me in the room.

Including him.

“You good?” Tory asked. “You just blacked out on us.”

“Y-Yeah, I’m okay. My fault.”

“Cool, ‘cause we gotta dip before the cops show up. Darius already tied down Miguel, and we found some dude in a torn-up black suit locked in a closet. We takin’ him with us for answers.”

I turned my head to look outside the room and saw a Vietnamese man with long, messy black hair standing in the doorway. If I recalled correctly, he was the same guy who got body slammed by Mr. Payne outside of the hotel.

“We need to move. Now,” Darius commanded. “My boys downstairs already folded the rest of Miguel’s crew and bagged’em up nicely for the police. Let’s roll.”

All of us in the room made our way outside the trap house and into Darius’s car. Hiding from Mr. Payne would be damn near impossible now, but at least the truth of the past had been revealed.

A truth I was ready to face.