Shadow Walker

Get Out

 They made it back through the first set of doors, and then the second and the third, all the way back to the main foyer. Dec bore a track for the exit, following the bounce of Teegan's torch beam as she charged through the doors.

Just as he was about to descend the cool marble steps out front, he heard something – a rattle like a coin tray released from a register and a handful of cresols hitting the floor. "What was that?"

Teegan grabbed his arm and pulled.

The coin tray rattled again. "Did you hear that?"

"It's nothing. Quick!"

Dec snatched the torch, "There's someone inside," and lunged back into the foyer.

"Dec!" Teegan's shout was sharp and panic stricken, but he barely registered it over the adrenaline blood-pump in his ears. He didn't expect Teegan to follow him, only knew she was there from the high squeak of her shoes on the polished floor trailing him inside.

They found the mother and daughter huddled beneath the serving counter, so folded in each other's arms, they could have passed for a single person. Black hair, black eyes, both Northerners. A cash drawer lay overturned at their feet, a splash of gold sols and silver cresols making a chequerboard of the tilework. It seemed as though they'd been attempting a quick robbery of what they thought was an unoccupied building.

The mother withdrew violently in Dec's torchlight.

"You have to get out of here," he said, louder than intended, desperation soaking his words in aggression. "This building's about to blow up."

The mother recoiled even further. It was clear she hadn't understood a word of what he'd said and Dec reeled in the face-slap of irony that in the two years he'd shared a country with these people, he hadn't learned a single word of their language.

He turned the torchlight on Teegan, who shivered in the beam like he'd doused her in icy water. "Do you speak Northern?"

"I'm a chemical engineer," she said, failing to control the rising decibels of terror in her voice. "Not a fucking translator." Still, she turned to the woman and repeated Dec's words as though by saying them twice, and louder, would make a difference.

When the woman still didn't respond, or make a move to leave, Teegan gave an incoherent exclamation and, as though losing all control of her body, pitched forward and grabbed the Northerner by the shoulders, attempting to haul her out from under the counter.

The woman screeched, a high, terrified sound and let go of her daughter in the struggle. White-eyed and gripping her mother's leg in terror, the child began to wail, long, haunting exhalations.

"Teegan, stop," Dec shouted, trying and failing to haul the blonde-haired scientist away. But like a dog with lock-jaw, she wouldn't be shaken, and with one arm in a sling, and the pain in his shoulder pricking holes in his vision, there wasn't much Dec could do without forgoing his ability to stand upright.

In all his debilitating fear, Dec barely reacted when someone brushed up beside him, ripped the torch from his hand, and shone it directly on the feuding pair. A sharp voice elicited from the intruder, saying something indecipherable in Southern first, then, switching to Northern—"Let her go."

Both women froze—Teegan with her hands reaching for the Northerner's neck, the Northerner mid-way through delivering a blow to the side of Teegan's cheek. Dec could do nothing but clutch the countertop for balance as he took in glossy raven hair, black jeans and a tight black skivvy much too hot for an Atundan summer. The slightest graze of her arm against his had left him feeling again like he'd just stepped onto the port and into the sun for the first time in two years.