"Containment breach in Sector 5, containment breach in Sector 5, security personnel to Sector 5…"
It's dark. He blinks open his eyes, and it's light. His Man of Moon is smiling at him, and he smiles back.
"Nightlight," his Man of Moon says, and he flickers to attention. "There's something I need you to do for me."
…
"The lights were only out for a second. He can't have gotten far."
Kozmotis leans against the wall, trying to catch his breath. Shadow-travel is taxing; he feels as exhausted as he did after his first day of basic training. He's got to keep moving, though, or the guards the voices around the corner belong to are going to catch him in the middle of the open hallway, and he's in no fit state to fight.
"Surveillance says he's still in the building. They're checking all the cams, it's just a matter of time before they find him."
Dammit.
Kozmotis pushes himself off the wall, back onto his feet. It doesn't sound like the guards are getting any closer, and they don't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. But if he moves too much or too quickly, they'll definitely hear him. And he's sure they don't have orders to take him alive.
Still, if there's one thing he's gotten from this organization's sorry attempts at 'reprogramming', it's a solid understanding of how to work his new abilities.
He drops to one knee, smooth and soundless, and puts a hand to the slightly-sticky laminate flooring inside the patch of shadow he casts. It spreads out around his hand, tendrils of dark that stretch and warp and grow fainter the farther they reach. Not strong enough for combat, but more than enough for reconnaissance.
There are two guards casting shadows in the hall beyond, armed but with their weapons holstered, moving slowly, almost casually. If they'd been his men they'd never have been this lax, not with a dangerous hostile loose in the area. He'll have to teach them the error of their ways.
These halls are fluorescent-lit; the bulbs flickering as the gas inside them glows and fizzles with the alternating current. It isn't hard to find one weaker than the others, put it out with a simple nudge.
The guards go quiet.
"Was that -"
He doesn't give the man time to finish the sentence. The spikes of apprehension from both guards gives him the power boost he needs to wrap the new sliver of darkness around unprotected throats, bash heads together with enough force to put both men under. For one black and ugly moment, he considers killing them then and there. It won't do any real good, they're only a small, insignificant part of the evil here, and yet by their silence, their mere presence, they're letting that evil continue. And besides, if he gets rid of them now, there'll be two fewer guards to hinder his escape.
He shakes the feeling off, leaves them lying unconscious in the hallway behind him.
…
There are two Tall Ones sleeping on the floor. One is bleeding at the temple, but both are breathing. The shadows here smell foul, and curl into nasty shapes where his light touches them.
Nightlight grins, and glows a little brighter, and follows the trail of foul-smelling shadows.
…
There are three of them around the next corner, coming up on it too quickly to try the same trick with the shadows. Kozmotis swallows a curse, scans the narrow hallway for somewhere to hide, and finding nothing, presses himself flat against the wall by the corner. He hasn't got the energy to try to duck through shadow again, and even if he had, he wouldn't know where to go.
He should really have taken the other guards' guns.
The first guard to round the corner gets yanked into a stranglehold, pulled tight against Kozmotis' chest as a human shield even as he cuts off the man's air. The other two are quick to react, but not quite quick enough.
"Let him go," the woman holding the impressive handgun says. "You don't have anywhere to go."
"That's what the directors thought, too," Kozmotis bluffs. The woman's smile is pitying, but her eyes are steel and they don't leave his face.
"Drop 'im," the burly man demands, his voice surprisingly soft. Kozmotis scans the hall, mentally flicking through scenarios, trying to figure out the best way out of this mess.
"All right," he says, at last, releasing the first guard, who stumbles forward gasping in air like a drowning man. Kozmotis raises both hands –
- and before the bullets can reach him, pulls up the first guard's shadow and lets the bullets strike into it and clatter harmlessly to the floor, momentum spent. Before any of the guards can respond, he moves, diving out of the line of fire while coaxing the shadow up and over the first guard like a wave. His screams don't last long, barely audible as they are over the pounding of gunfire.
One of the bullets ricochets, somehow, and the light directly overhead shatters. The woman swears, a string of curses abruptly cut off when thick black shadow slams her and the burly guard against the wall. She sinks down, disarmed and looking dazed; her partner reaches for the pistol in his shoulder holster, and Kozmotis slams him against the wall again, for good measure. He goes down heavily and doesn't come back up.
Kozmotis reaches up, and out, and every light in that span of hallway explodes at once, a chorus of loud pops and showers of sparks, plunging the hall into darkness. Maybe it'll just make it easier for them to find him, but he thinks the gunfire probably did that already. He's lost the element of surprise. Now, he needs to be armed, needs to use the terrain to his advantage. After all, there are only two ways he can go from here; forward, or back the way he came. And even if they didn't know how much shadow-travel takes out of him, he'd still expect them to send the heavy artillery to box him in. It isn't a matter of whether there'll be another confrontation, but when.
He hurries forwards, carefully scanning the hall before him for doors or branches which might conceal an ambush or offer an escape. The lights overhead flicker out in his wake.
…
The trail leads straight into darkness.
Nightlight pauses where the first curling shadowsedge away from his toes, and draws the weapon his Man of Moon has given him. It's not quite like a dagger, and it's not quite like a light, but it glows brightly enough to drive back the nastiest of the shadows and he has no doubt it will cut quite sharply when he asks it to.
He holds it high, and he smiles his brightest smile, and he darts bravely forward into the dark.
…
It's too quiet.
There should have been something by now, should have been some response to the gunfire and the dark. Surely whoever is in charge of surveillance has seen the trail he's left behind him. But there's been nothing, no sign of life anywhere, and Kozmotis finds himself just waiting for the axe to fall.
He stops at the intersection of two hallways, unsure of which direction to take. He still hasn't been able to find any doors or any sign that these hallways serve a purpose other than to confound him, and he's just beginning to suspect that he's walked straight into a trap when that suspicion is confirmed. A section of wall slips soundlessly aside in the hallway to his right, answering his question about where the doors are. Five – no, six black-clad figures spill out, all of them masked and armed with almost comically oversized assault rifles. He turns to his left, and yes, there's another small squad coming from the other hall. The sound of booted feet against the laminate flooring tells him that the way forward, too, is blocked. At least someone in this building knows how to coordinate an ambush.
They're all so overconfident knowing that they've got him boxed in. Despite the fact that they're facing a lone, unarmed man who has nonetheless somehow managed to evade death three times in the past hour, not one of them is properly afraid. It's like an itch just behind his eyes, and the smile that curls across his face feels sharp and unfamiliar.
He'll just have to change that.
…
There's a commotion up ahead, shouts and bangs and screams and low rolling thunder. No, not thunder. Laughter. Nightlight has heard laughter before, often, has an easy laugh himself, but that always sounds bright. Not this dark and strange and maddened sound. For the first time, he frowns.
His smile returns, though, when the light from his dagger pierces through the swirling dark and points him straight toward the Tall One he's come to find. The strange and sordid laughter is his, as are the nasty-looking shadows, and for just a moment Nightlight pauses, because the screams do not. This dark and sinister stranger is the one his Man of Moon has sent him to find, and suddenly Nightlight knows why he was given the dagger.
He raises it, without hesitation, and glowing as fiercely as he can, flies straight into the battle and the dark.
…
Three members of Alpha Team are down, Beta Team's compromised, and William is starting to understand why they sent three full squads to take down this sonofabitch. He'd laughed at the idea before; now, he's wishing they had another squad or two to back them up. Or maybe an army. Guns aren't going to be enough. The bastard fights like a madman, without any regard for personal safety and with a kind of unholy glee. It doesn't help that half the time they can't even see him, and he comes out of –
Shitshitshitshit!
William fires, aimlessly, blindly, but the bullets can't touch the shadows and the gun is wrenched from his hands before he can react. Something collides with his chest, knocking the breath out of him even as it knocks him off his feet, and his vision explodes in stars. He gasps for breath, trying to blink away the afterimages, trying to move, but he can't, he's going to die here -
There's a burst of brilliant light that shorts out his goggles, floods the hall, drives all of the shadows away. When it clears, the fluorescent lights flicker back on, the dark losing its strange heaviness and mindless menace. There's no clue left behind to explain what just happened, nothing but black-armoured bodies lying strewn across the hallway and chunks blasted out of the walls.
Pitch Black is gone.
William doesn't know if he should be relieved or even more worried.