A Sense of Dark

Prologue

by Kye Syr

It is the dead of night, because that is the only good time, and storms clouds roll and knead overhead. One of his clever ideas have led them here, but now that he is here, he is not sure it is so clever. He has remembered that, after all, their hostage is the boss's daughter, and if he goes somehow wrong then he is doomed. Their enemy is here, though, and the two of them are enough to uproot four wind-tossed flowers and plant them rather more permanently under the ground.

There is nothing wrong with the plan, he tells himself, ducking behind a pillar and whispering to one of the enemy like a serpent. Nothing wrong with it at all—if only I could concentrate.

For there is something in his mind, the sharp mind, the perfect mind, the Mastermind, that is not as it should be, something buzzing, tingling, tickling, teasing. He does not understand it, but even as his purring, lying voice slides through the air and into the ears of fools, it purrs at him, taunts him, takes him in its grip.

He ducks when the katana blade slices improbably through his shelter, grins his Cheshire Cat grin, tucks his hands in his pockets. Who could ever doubt the words of a snake? his smile says. Not this snake. No one could ever doubt this snake.

The enemy thinks otherwise, and they lash out, despite internal confusion. He fights back, and his comrade-in-death appears, a whirlwind and a fury, to trample their weak and self-righteous foe. He shoots, his comrade slices, and then he realizes there is nothing left to shoot. As he realizes, the presence in his mind pinches at him, and he gives a tiny gasp. He and his comrade are back-to-back, and he leans against the other just enough that he can remain standing. A mind is a delicate thing. The pinch is terrible.

The enemy strikes, while the girl is now on the ground next to her brother—yes, he told her that, and serve them right. One bleeding heart and one brat. Better that they are related than that they be allowed to make miniatures of themselves.

His comrade fights back and he dodges; his speed makes him a good dodger. But he would rather be killing. Killing would at least perhaps stop the ringing in his ears, the one that roars and shrieks like tinnitus. Suddenly the roar crescendos and he cannot see. In his blindness, he projects his disorientation and his confusion.

His partner, aiming at the brother, feels the jolt of projection, and, blinded in both eyes for a moment instead of one, looses his bullets into the wrong body.

When the vision of both has cleared, they see the enemy staring between them and the trembling girl's body. The brother has begun to scream. They see this and know that things have gone terribly wrong. The first shakes, almost invisibly, and then shakes out of his frozenness.

"Come on!" he commands the other. His partner blinks his one eye, swears, and sprints after.

When the enemy is out of sight, with no sign of following, the one eye turns on him, keen and wary.

"You are broken," says the eye's master. "What is broken in you?"

The other does not reply. Behind them, as rain bursts free of the heavy clouds and spatters the earth like cold, thin blood, the girl stops breathing, and her brother wails.