Cassian ran through the streets of Novus faster than she’d ran in a long, long time. She ran like hell because she knew exactly what sort of nightmares would be waiting in her precious district market when she returned.
“Oh my gods, Cassian, slow down!” Ali called after her, out of breath. The Outsiders had already fallen far behind.
“No!” Cassian cried, she rounded a corner into an alleyway she recognised and crashed through the wire-gate: the Shadow District’s first line of defence.
She reached a scrappy, graffiti-covered door and fumbled with the bolt, flinging it open and scrambling down the stairs on the other side into the city’s underground tunnels.
The Shadow District was a vast network of decommissioned tubelines, sewers and stations that spanned almost the entire radius of Novus, but only the centre-most region was inhabited by Novus’ Shadowers. The only people left. The only “non-Purples”, so to speak.
It was Cassian’s job, as Shadow District Deputy, to help protect these people…
“S’cuse me, comin’ through!” She called out as she sprinted down the hall, barely missing several Shadowers on her way to the commotion. The sounds of croaking laughter and frantic screams echoed through the tunnels, telling her exactly where she needed to be.
Ali, Felix and Sylvester trailed behind, the dense fog that filled the underground hit the Outsiders like a brick and filled their lungs. Sylvester was the first to find himself gasping for fresh air.
“Oh good heavens,” he heaved, doubling over for a moment. “She can-” he paused to cough. “She can run in this?”
Ali turned back, “You get used to it, promise.” He continued running for a moment, before adding, “Also, she’s a smoker, so how she can run like that at all is kinda… unique?”
The Outsiders stood for a moment in bamboozlement, the mere suggestion of a smoker being better at running than them felt like the highest insult.
“Come on,” Ali urged, “The Shadowers need us!”
He jogged off into the rusty fog.
At last Cassian reached the source of the uproar, the central hall of the Shadow Market. Looted second-hand clothes and belongings that were once for sale laid strewn across the hall, no longer on their sales racks. Several Shadowers were dotted around the room, waving around miscellaneous objects in an attempt to defend themselves and in the middle of it all, stood atop of a luminescent glass display cabinet, stood Karalee. Cassian’s heart fluttered nervously.
She could see more clearly the details of the mechanised slate and pink jumpsuit now; in her hand she branded a metallic sabre adorned with a glowing strip of pink light which Cassian presumed was electrified. Her kit looked like another example of Ali’s work and left the markswoman feeling a little envious.
Time was proving to be of the essence here, her hesitation would do little to help. She began firing at the Purples that filled the room, the streaks of amber light bouncing off of the brick walls and igniting the fog every time she missed.
Karalee leapt off of the cabinet in a showy semi-flip of sorts and swung her sabre, stunning a pair of Purples and landing on tiptoes, arms in the air like a gymnast. Cassian was beginning to see a trend of showing off with these friends of Ali’s and felt a little less guilty about her prior parkour display.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” Karalee skipped over to Cassian, her mask seemed to autotune her voice as she spoke, “I was gonna join you guys up on the street but I noticed there were Purples heading this way. It’s a good job I followed them.”
Realising it definitely was the Karalee she thought it was, Cassian’s initial words choked out of her like a deflating balloon. She took a deep breath and tried again, playing it off as casually as she could: “How long have they been here for?”
“One Shadower said an hour at least,” Karalee responded. “They started coming as soon as you left to help Ali up top.”
Cassian furrowed her brow, someone had drawn the Purples here on purpose. Someone who knew she and Ali were crucial defenders of the Shadow District. She already had a few theories.
The three men arrived at last, but a little out of breath. Ali stopped still at the entrance to the hall, frozen in shock.
“Oh no,” he murmured, “no no nonono this isn’t good.”
“Well don’t just fuckin’ stand there!” Cassian cried from the entry staircase, elbowing another assailant in the face.
Felix watched the chaos unfold for a moment and grunted to himself, eyeballing a free-standing coat rack sitting idly in the corner. His tail swished at his own ingenuity. Sylvester noticed immediately.
“Felix, what did we say about property damage?” He patronised.
“Do you have any better ideas? No. Didn’t think so,” he marched over to the coat rack, picked it up and snapped the thick mahogany pole in half as though it were a twig. “Let’s go.”
Using the two ends of the coat rack as batons, Felix began to swing at the oncoming Purples, knocking them hard enough over their heads to put a temporary stop to their advancements. Sylvester rolled his eyes and tutted before disappearing into thin air with a flash of green.
Felix’s frenzied attacks were quickly put to a stop by the market owner herself, “Oi! Lizard bloke! Is that the bloody coat rack?”
He shot a defiant look at Cassian, “It was ugly anyway.”
“UGLY?” She aggressively wrestled another Purple to the ground, “Fine! That’ll cost you a-hundred-and-thirty novi! Fuckin’ doughnut.”
The hybrid exhaled sulkily and blew at the curl of hair hanging over his forehead. Sylvester’s head and shoulders reappeared out of thin air next to him.
“I did tell you-”
“Piss off, Sylvester.”
Cassian was most of the way up the main stairwell taking pot shots at the Purples attempting to enter from the street through the narrow fire exit door. The only way to stop them would be to close it. Ali’s frisbee flew up the stairs just beside her, reaching the final swathe of Purples and knocking them all to the floor before curling round and flying back towards him, narrowly missing the markswoman yet again.
“Quick, Cass! Get the door!” He cried up the stairs.
Cassian darted up, “What the hell did you think I was-?”
Suddenly she had a bad feeling. Her eyes trailed down to the door’s lock. It was completely defunct: the bolt had been sawed off.
“Oh bollocks,” she uttered, right as a new crowd of Purples swarmed the doorway, knocking her back down the staircase. The right side of her face hit the floor with a loud thud and the uncomfortable sensation that could be felt in her wiring returned. She tried to lift her head, but the dizziness she felt as the Shadow District spun around her was too much.
Dabbing at her temple with one hand and pulling it away she noted the sticky red blood that coated her fingers. Ali approached, standing over her with a look of concern over his face.
“Ohhh, shit that’s nasty… Sylvester? You there?” He called into the air, in the time it took Cassian to blink heavily the eldrin man appeared at his side. “Take her to sit this one out.”
“Of course,” Sylvester reached down and took ahold of Cassian’s blood-covered hand. “Now, this might make you nauseous, dear.”
Cassian was unsure if the events that transpired from this point were a work of injury-induced delirium or chaos-induced reality but she was certain that she’d never once in her life experienced such a deranged five-minutes.
At the touch of Sylvester’s hand the two of them were suddenly transported into what she could only perceive as the space-time equivalent of an old video tape. It was as though she was viewing the world through green-tinted cassette footage and everyone around them was paused still whilst Sylvester half-dragged half-carried her through the Shadow District to a safe, secluded corner. He set her down and their green surroundings blinked away as soon as they’d appeared.
She instantly felt the feeling of sickness set in, rapidly creeping up her throat.
“This should be safe,” he sighed, noting her pale complexion and tight throat. “Right-o! Happy retching!”
He blinked away once more and right on cue Cassian turned and puked on the floor to her side. She slowly sat up and wiped her mouth, leaning back against the wall and breathing deeply.
For the first time in a while, she felt as though she was no longer the faultless, almost untouchable force she was known to be. She felt useless. A nuisance to Ali and his new friends, who were doing seemingly fine on their own. Silently, panic began to set in. If she couldn’t prove her worth, she would lose her footing.
She would lose her cover.
“Fuckin’ hell,” she cursed beneath her breath, slowly peering around the corner of the wall and laying witness to the brawling that continued in her market. At that moment she knew she wasn’t the only one watching anymore, “Wild out there, huh?”
Her VisoCom instantly connected itself to a transmission channel: a private one.
“Indeed,” the voice on the other end responded, “It seems the Purples have shown to me twice now that you’re no longer a match for them. Should I be concerned, Cassian?”
“I think,” she began, contemplating her next words wisely, “I think you should stop ‘em.”
“And put this fantastically pathetic display to an end?” The voice responded, she could hear the pout in his tone. “Now where’s the fun in that?”
“There’s nothin’ fun about it,” she spat, slowly shuffling away from the pile of her own bile, “I know what you did. You started this attack on my market, you’ll bloody well end it.”
“Your market should no longer exist, as far as we’re concerned,” the voice taunted.
Cassian growled, “I don’t wanna hear it. Stop this. Now.”
“Can’t we discuss it first?”
She curled her fingers in her hair and cried out, “NO, JUST FUCKIN’ STOP ‘EM!”
The transmission fell silent.
“Later. We talk,” the voice uttered flatly. The viscommunication ended.
She took a moment to calm herself before peering round the corner once more. Sure enough, all of the Purples in the area had fallen to the ground. Ali, his guests and the remaining Shadowers stared down at them all, confused.
“What just… happened?” Ali murmured, nudging one Purple with his foot.
“Seems like they just… stopped Purple-ing?” Karalee leaned over the body of another, noting how their eyes had stopped glowing entirely.
“We should shift them back outside before they wake up,” Felix began to lift one of them by the shoulders and haul them up the stairs.
“We’ll help!” A group of Shadowers ran to his aid, also picking up Purples of their own. Ali sauntered over to the corner where Cassian was sat.
“We’ll get you to the infirmary, yeah? That gash on your face looks…” he hesitated. “Well.. it could look better.”
“Thanks for puttin’ it nicely,” Cassian scoffed, spitting blood onto the floor as she wobbled up onto her feet. Sylvester and Karalee also came to her aid.
The four of them began heading down the tunnel to the nearest medical stop. Cassian noticed how Sylvester was also looking a tad worse for wear; His eyes had sunk deep into their sockets and dark green veins seemed to crawl up and down his face and neck. Karalee had several gashes in the soft material of her suit and Ali had received some sort of blow to the nose, dried blood sat beneath his nostril.
“Well now that’s done,” Cassian said, “No more fuckin’ about up top, yeah Ali?”
Ali chuckled quietly to himself, “Not sure I can promise that, Cass.”
She spent the remainder of the walk wondering what on Etrah that meant…
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