Shadow Unit 13 by Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear

Author:Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear [Bull, Emma & Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2013-03-19T05:00:00+00:00

"Apolysis" - by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly

Act I

Janesville, Wisconsin, December 2012

The basement was dark, but she wasn't blind. The least light was enough, and air moving, and awareness of heat and moisture. Especially the latter, right now, but thirst was a good motivator. Work now, drink later.

The dusty metal of the air duct was slippery, and every movement made a reverberating scrape or clatter of sound. The bent, battered vent cover laid black bars across the view of the dim room beyond, and framed a hole just big enough to squeeze through.

She imagined forward. She imagined the taste of food and the undisturbed peace of home, and she envisioned it out there. Her own stomach ached with hunger. Forward.

The floor was shining-smooth and nearly as loud as the duct, tick-tick-tick. Hurry to a corner, press against it, and wait. The floor was motionless underfoot, and the space silent and empty—not just an absence but a palpable quality of not-there. She pushed around the corner into a high, wide angular volume of air—a hallway.

Against the dark stood the darker rectangles of doorways, and one outlined with a fog of light. A closed door, with light behind it, and moisture barely breathing out from beneath it. The bathroom.

The sound of rushing water quivered the air, and the floor vibrated with the thunder of it in the pipes. He would come out in a moment. Hurry to the door before he opened it. He'd be blind in the hall after the dazzle of the bathroom light.

The door opened in a wave of brightness that broke into dark as he snapped off the light. Before her was the pillar of warm and throbbing life that was her prey.

Calloused skin, that rough living leather, was no barrier at all. And why did blood never feel the way she expected it to?

She envisioned hurry, and flight, but light blazed again suddenly overhead. He must have found a wall switch.

Her own ears heard screaming, hoarse and broken-pitched, a man's terror. She cowered down in the cold behind the junipers, even as she ran, tick-tick-tick, across the bright tile and forced through a grate into the warmer darkness of the floor vent.

She was so awfully hungry. Home. Warm. Food. Foodfoodfood. Did the neighbors hear the screams from inside their houses? Would they call someone?

She didn't like that scream. The others had been quiet. He'd sounded so scared...

Of course he was afraid. He'd thought he was big and everyone else was small. Now he knew that didn't make any difference.

This is what I want. This is what it's like to be the one who makes the rules.

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