Within These Walls

Life After Dark: 25 (WTW Sequel)

This one is for any of my fans still out there. I'm ashamed that it's taken this long, but I promise to keep going no matter how busy life gets. 

Marcus scrambles to his feet beside me, but I'm frozen in the path of the Blanks and the Ancient controlling them. My chest is tight and heavy with the inevitability of the blank-eyed army before me, but also with indecipherable feelings of standing inside this eerily familiar place. I lose sight of the Ancient in the sea of mindless humans, but I never stop sensing him. I feel the reach of his grasp on these people, the waves of his power crackling around me like electricity. Reverberating in my head in a way that makes me want to lose control, too.

It's Marcus who breaks the dark quiet that has settled over me, just before the Blanks engulf us. With a furious yell, he thrusts out both arms, palms held out as if pushing against an invisible wall, and the shockwave of his telekinesis slams into the first rows of Blanks and knocks them over like dominoes.

The bright green light inside the crystal walls flickers as black veins dart through them. Almost immediately, my mind disconnects again like it did when we entered the crystals. My conscious scatters through thousands of caverns and touches countless flickering minds before it slams back down into my body. I suck in a breath like I've forgotten how to breathe.

My head feels heavier than before. Heavy with knowledge I siphoned from those that I touched. The Nexus. That's what they call this place. Made from otherworldly crystals that are the life force of the Ancients, connected like a circuit that spans coast to coast. It's their home, the force that binds them together and binds humans to them as well. The source of everything they are, including their power. With it, they have built entire civilizations beneath our feet. And with it, they could end us all instantaneously.

But that would come at a steep price. The Nexus is powerful and pure. That's why the Ancients aren't violent. If they tried to kill us with its power, they would corrupt and destroy the very thing that sustains them.

Marcus grabs my shoulder and jerks me out of my thoughts. "We gotta go!" he yells, that primal fear laced through his voice.

I don't blame him for his terror; I should be, too—but something about this place has suspended me in what feels like a gelatinous substance. I let Marcus pull me backward toward the wall that opened behind us like a curtain, each step thudding through me, each ragged inhale and exhale echoing in my head. I know how to end it, I want to tell him, but I don't know how to explain it. There isn't enough time. There aren't enough breaths, enough words, enough pleas. He'd never let me die to save anyone, not even him.

I turn abruptly and shove him hard in the chest, hard enough to send him stumbling back the last few steps through the Nexus wall. The shock in his eyes, followed by a flash of hurt and outrage, disappears when his back slams into the wall instead of passing through it. I stare wide-eyed at the wall behind him. Where it was a shimmering light before, it's now smooth and opaque and green—with thin black veins running inside it.

The Ancient blocked our only way out.

Caught off balance, Marcus manages to shockwave a group of Blanks away from us, but a fist clips my temple. I stagger and fall on my side, head spinning. I can't tell if the light is flickering again or if the pain has made everything go dark. A Blank tries to wrap his hand around my throat before he flies off me when Marcus shockwaves him in the chest. This time, I'm not imagining it when darkness sparks around us, there and gone in several heartbeats.

They swarm me, but Marcus has bought me enough time to get my head on straight. I focus on the nearest group of mindless humans and force them under my control. Then another group, and one more, insects caught on my spiderweb. My body pulses with the strength of the connections between my drones and me, like we are entangled entities with dozens of limbs and beating hearts but with one firm mind.