I was standing in the middle of the street with what felt like hundreds of screaming people running away from the direction I was looking. They were running away from the flames that bathed the street in a horrific blue light. I saw some being tripped and trampled by others who were only interested in saving themselves. I understood the need for self-preservation, but this just seemed cruel, and I couldn’t unhear those horrible screams of those on the ground. Begging and pleading for help, only for it to never come to them.
When I saw Jarrett McLeod walking forward, his sword shining brilliantly with his flames dancing around him, I understood their fear. It felt like a cold knife pressed against my throat. His massive presence totally dominated the space around him. A wicked grin broke out across his face as he admired his work of ruined buildings and burned bodies. Finally, his gaze settled right on me. He marched closer, his flames parting around his path, not daring to harm their master.
“Ethan, won’t you join me?” he asked, his voice as deep and booming as it was on TV. He pointed the tip of his blade at me. “You’re not meant for this life. You can do so much more than these people. These are animals who will grovel at our feet and beg for our mercy. Isn’t that right, brothers and sisters? Should my campaign end here and now?”
From behind him, shadowy figures emerged, before the deathly pale girl from the attack appeared. She was the only one I could recognize, the others remaining hidden in shadow. From a chunk of rock she was controlling, she dropped a small body in front of McLeod. She gave him a small nod and backed away, joining her allies in the shadows once more.
By that point, the rational part of my brain knew it was a nightmare. I couldn’t feel any heat from the fires that raged around me, and my breathing was unhindered despite the smoke that swirled around me. I couldn’t even smell anything burning. Still, that didn’t help my situation any. The fear of looking the man who could destroy lives so effortlessly drowned out that rational part of my brain that was screaming it was all fake.
That fear was only amplified when he grabbed the shirt collar of the body on the ground and lifted it up, revealing Shelly’s slightly burned face to me.
You know how you can never really run or move that well in your nightmares and you always kick yourself in the morning for it? Like, you’re running away from a masked killer who’s just walking at you slowly when you manage to trip over your own two feet? I was in that position. The fear had left my body completely frozen. I couldn’t even manage to twitch one of my fingers. I could only watch as he lifted my screaming and coughing sister higher in the air, her arms and legs flailing uselessly.
God, even knowing it was a dream, hearing her screams tore my heart to pieces. I wanted to slam my hands over my ears and drown them out, but I just couldn’t do it. I could only stand there and watch her try and fight back. Even if I didn’t factor in his Anomaly, Shelly was still a small lady. She never would have stood a chance against someone of that size and strength.
I saw her turn her head weakly at me, tears dripping from the corners of her eyes. I had never seen her cry, not even after Mom and Dad died. Not once during the funeral, not once when visiting their graves, not a single time when she had to step in to be a sibling and two parents to me. And there she was, unable to hold back her fear in the face of this evil. I screamed at McLeod, but I don’t even think I said anything coherent. Just a yell of fear and anger.
“I will remove the last link of the chain that binds you to their world, Ethan,” McLeod said, pointing his sword at my sister. “You have untapped greatness in you, and it is my job to deliver you to your potential. You will transcend, Ethan.”
With that, he stabbed his sword through my sister’s chest, the now-red metal pushing through her back. I heard one sharp gasp from her before her arms and legs went limp. He slowly pulled his blade out from her body and tossed it to the ground. With a snap of his fingers, blue flames engulfed her corpse.
When I cried out for her, my eyes snapped open to reality, where I still couldn’t make myself move. Unfortunately, I screamed in real life and not just the dream, so my sister immediately busted into my room with a panicked expression. I knew it was just a nightmare, especially when I woke up to my boring bedroom, but when I saw her safe and sound, I began to cry. It had been years since I ended up crying from a nightmare, but I’d never had one like that before. They’d always been about my parents, never having to watch my sister die.
Upon seeing my reaction, she calmed down a bit. Since I was still in bed under my covers, she reached down and rapped her arms around me in an awkward hug. I was only in my underwear, and I had been sweating buckets, making me grateful for my blanket. She hugged me until I calmed down. A lot of people wouldn’t like being held like that at eighteen, but not many people were put in the same position that Shelly and I had been at such a young age. Our reliance on each other was one of the things that built our relationship. And it wasn’t like I struggled with my sister touching me.
Once I managed to calm down a little bit and controlled my breathing, she pulled back slightly. Concern was plastered all over her face. Her ability to support me without words was a skill I hoped to master in the future. It was something so important, but something so undervalued. There are times when words just aren’t what a person needs. She knew that better than anyone else who’d tried to help me with my grief.
I grimaced for a second when I noticed that it was only five minutes before my alarm went off. A little bit of relief did wash over me because I remembered that they cancelled school until further notice, and there hadn’t been any notifications about the school reopening. In the face of this unknown threat, the school district was not playing any games with its faculty or students.
“I know the answer already, but I’m still going to ask you if you’re okay. That was horrible screaming from you. Screaming I haven’t heard in a long time.” Shelly adjusted herself so she could sit on the end of my bed more comfortably.
“Yeah, I think so,” I replied, knowing I did not sound okay in the slightest. “Awful nightmare. McLeod had destroyed a section of city, lots of people were screaming, and in the end he…he killed you and I was powerless to do anything. It was like Mom and Dad all over again. You only died because I was there and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Told me that you were the last thing binding me to this kind of life.”
I wiped my eyes on my forearm and saw Shelly looking at the floor, her hands balled into fists. “Ethan, I know we haven’t had many emotional, heart-to-heart conversations before. Those were more Mom’s specialty. I need you to know I’m always here for you, okay? I don’t know what I can really do for you, but I want to be as supportive as I can. If there’s anything you need, I’ll do my best to give it you. You’ve had to go through things that I can’t even imagine. It’s unfair for you to suffer alone.”
Shelly obviously knew about the nightmares I’d had and the shadows I’d seen. Waking up screaming in the middle of the night or jumping because I saw something move out of the corner of my eye weren’t things I could easily hide. I’d never told her the full extent of how much I blamed myself for everything that happened. A little part of me always worried that she resented and hated me for what happened to our parents, even though nothing she said would indicate that was the case. Our relationship had always been good, and that had managed to ease some of the guilt had felt. Not all of it, though.
I figured that it was as good a time as any to tell her how I felt. “I blame myself for what happened. When I slipped off that doorframe and he killed them, that’s what’s always stuck with me. What if I hadn’t slipped off, or even been there at all? Would he still have shot them, or would he have just taken the things and left? There’s no way for me to know for sure, but that possibility has made me feel sick every time I’ve thought about it for the past six years.
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“And I’ve always hated what that ended up doing to you. You were only eighteen and had just left the house, then you had to come back and try to finish raising a kid? Those should have been some of your best years! You finally had independence and a chance to pursue what you loved, but you couldn’t do that, and I blamed myself for it. An eighteen-year-old shouldn’t be forced to become a mother like that. It’s not fair and you deserved better than having to come back to raise me. I feel like I’ve taken your life away too.”
Shelly sniffled and rubbed her eyes a bit. “I’m so sorry, Ethan. I didn’t know you had been feeling this way. I…I admit that I didn’t think it would be easy at first, but I don’t regret the choice to come back home, and I damn sure don’t regret our relationship now. You were such a good kid. You never gave anyone any problems. God, I can’t believe I didn’t notice how much this hurt you. If anyone lost time, you were the one that lost out on the happiness of your teenage years. I never had the money to let you go do the fun things I got to do growing up. I...God, you deserved better than this. You were always such a sweet kid.”
“So, it looks like we both had guilt about it, huh?” I asked after a brief silence. I think we knew that we would never blame each other, even if it meant blaming ourselves to unreasonable levels. “You always did a good job. We had a roof over our head. We had food on the table. I don’t think you could have done a better job without winning the lottery, Shelly.”
She gave me one of the biggest smiles I’d seen her give. “You really don’t know how happy that makes me. Every day I worried about whether you were getting enough and there was never a complaint from you, even if you would have been justified in doing it. You helped make it so much easier than it could have been, Ethan. I can’t even remember a single day where you gave me a hard time. You had every damn right to be angry at life.”
We were still a bit misty-eyed, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Once I started, my sister did too. We had both been so worried about how we made the other’s life worse, that we never thought about how it might not have been the end of the world. Of course, having Mom and Dad here would have been ideal, but maybe Shelly and I would have never gotten along the way we did if things hadn’t worked out the way they did. We weren’t nearly as close before she left for college. Finding the silver lining in every negative made accepting those negatives a little bit easier.
Shelly and I were both startled by a knock on the door. Not expecting anyone that early, we were a little weary. The nerves from the day before hadn’t quite settled yet, even with a night’s rest. We looked at each other and shrugged, neither one of us really knowing who it might be. A little voice in the back of my mind kept telling me that it could be McLeod here to force me to his side, but that was absurd thinking. Unless he had a tracker here, he would have no idea who I was, and I had serious doubts about him having a tracker in rural Oregon.
I asked Shelly to turn around so I could throw on a shirt and some shorts. Quietly, we both exited my room and approached the front door. Still a little sleepy and out of it from crying, I took care to make sure I didn’t slam my shins into the table or couch. Impressively, I managed to avoid tripping over my own two feet and made it to the door next to my sister. I wasn’t sure what to do if it was someone here to do harm, though. I didn’t know what my Anomaly was yet, and I had nothing to use as a weapon.
“Ethan? Michelle? Are you guys okay in there?” Lori asked, slightly muffled from the door between us. My sister and I both let out long breaths, remembering that she was now our neighbor. We brought her home after our lunch and we all did our own things. With the start the morning had, it didn’t surprise me that we both forgot about that little detail.
Shelly opened the door right as Lori was about to knock again. She didn’t look much better than I felt. She still had her messy bedhead and hadn’t changed out of her pajamas, which consisted of a tank top and some soft, comfy looking pants. Despite her disheveled appearance, Lori did look alert and ready.
“Hey guys, I opened myself to emotions a little while ago to make sure everything was fine after yesterday,” she began, “and I noticed a lot of fluctuating feelings in here. Are you both okay?”
My sister gestured for her to come in and she cautiously took a few steps forward, as if she was unsure how to enter someone else’s home. Lori placed her hands around her back and glanced around, but not appearing like she was looking at much. Must’ve been some kind of nervous habit, like shaking your leg or tapping your desk. The poor girl just looked so awkward and out of place that it was hard to remember that she was older than me. I would have bet even I didn’t look that awkward.
“Yeah, we’re good. Just some confessions that have been stirring for too long. It was nice, though.” Shelly waved toward our couch. It was old and worn, but clean and wouldn’t collapse under my butt. “Come on in, Lori. I was just about to make some breakfast. This is the first time Ethan’s had a friend over. Please, join us.”
I sighed, and Lori giggled a bit. “It’s okay, I haven’t either. Not many people back home are interested in coming over for a nice breakfast with the quiet girl when you can shoot fire from your hands.”
Right as we went to sit down on the couch, Mrs. Carmichael appeared in the living room with Fink, the Teleporter, looking tired and stressed with dark circles under his eyes. Just as quickly as he appeared, Fink was gone, leaving the well-dressed woman in my home. Considering how long it must’ve taken her to get dressed in that suit, Mrs. Carmichael had probably been up for a while. She looked like the kind of person that would be up at the crack of dawn to tackle the day.
Lori screamed and jumped nearly a foot in the air before realizing that it was just Mrs. Carmichael and not someone more sinister. Leaning forward, she put a hand on her chest and tried to catch her breath. “God, I’m going to need to carry a change of underwear if you’re going to teleport in on me every time I’m away from Luna.”
“Save that for your house and not my floor, please,” Shelly said, rolling her eyes.
“Apologies, but we’ve gotten word that McLeod has appeared in Seattle,” Mrs. Carmichael interrupted, her voice hard. My heart started pounding in my chest. “Ethan’s the only potential recruit for me, and I understand how stressful this can be, so I wanted to be here and assist if I could. A problem shared is a problem halved, or something along those lines. If you would please turn on the television, Ms. Harper.”
Shelly picked up the remote and turned on our TV, which had been left on our local news station. By the time the screen came to life, they had already switched to their correspondents in Seattle. People on the ground were looking up at the sky, most clearly in awe. The anchor’s view switched from the camera and the sky, fear evident on his face. He gestured for the camera’s operator to look up, which they did, giving us a view almost identical to the first attack.
Five figures floated in the sky with McLeod front and center. That pale girl was there again, but farther back this time. Getting more focus were the three other individuals that I couldn’t make out from the first broadcast. One was almost as tall as McLeod, wearing pitch black armor with a sword on his hip. That one was easily the most remarkable of the four that stood behind McLeod. A tall, stoic knight whose Stygian armor took hope away from everyone who looked at him.
The one that stood behind the knight was a slim, bald man who reminded me of a scientist. He had a thin goatee and small glasses. Getting a better look at him, he also put the image of a struggling author working tirelessly to overcome his writer’s block in a dimly lit coffee shop in my mind. He stuck out just enough that I would be able to remember him. He had no real defining features like McLeod’s sinister eyes or the knight’s armor.
On the opposite side of the scientist and knight, between McLeod and the pale girl, stood a tired looking woman, arms crossed over her chest. All the others looked forward or at the city around them. She did her best to just look down and keep her face hidden with her long, brown hair. Maybe she had been ashamed of what she was helping with. Considering the camera was angled beneath them, however, we were given a good view of her face.
Mrs. Carmichael had started a phone call once she saw the five on TV. “Flynn, whatever you do, you are not to send anyone in. We do not have anyone prepared to handle this unknown threat, and they could exacerbate the problem, leading to more casualties. This is not a problem we’re equipped enough to handle yet.”
I listened to her conversation in the background while keeping my eyes glued to the television. Sweat formed on my palms and I could hear Lori’s breathing pick up. They hadn’t even done anything yet. They just stood on the air somehow, only watching the world around them. It was like they were just teasing everyone about what they were going to do. Like their goal was to just build anticipation for a grand finale. The only thing it was giving me was miserable anxiety.
I already knew it was going to be terrible. I was powerless to stop it.