Chapters

“Slow him down!” I shouted over the wind that whipped between the buildings, howling at me as if even nature was on Alek’s side. “I’m trying!” Nell replied. “He’s slippery, just like the bugs.” Alek briefly looked over his shoulder at us and then banked sharply to dart inside an apartment complex. Chittering and the […]

My whole body reacted, straining to reach Nell’s side but the armored creature in the doorway held me fast in a grip that felt like an iron vise. “Nell!” I shouted. She stumbled back, face stricken with fear as the monster opened its large pincer with an audible snap. She raised her hands instinctively to

I took out two flashlights from my bag and handed one of them to Nell. The twin beams flicked on and cut through the dark, illuminating chairs and desks stacked against the walls. Alek walked ahead, leaving footprints in the thick layer of dust. Nell shone her light on a pile of stacked boxes that

The deeper we walked into the Old Town, the more the colour was leached from our surroundings as the light from the lively nighttime city was left behind. In the dark, lit only by the moon, the buildings turned grey and ominous, seemingly becoming uniformly hostile, like our presence was being acknowledged. We passed a

The last few rays of sunlight were dying over the rooftops of the suburbs as I arrived around the corner from Kay’s place. I stretched my arms over my head, feeling the heft of the backpack around my shoulders. This time it was filled with tools that could potentially get us into Dad’s old workplace:

I reached the cafe and spotted Mac sitting near the window. He waved cheerily at me and I smiled and waved back even though I felt a tremor of trepidation at seeing him in his work clothes. Well, his more normal work clothes. I could still imagine him in full tactical gear, with guns and

The frontrunner of the group approached. He was tall with spiky red hair and wore a purple sports jersey emblazoned with a picture of a snake sinking its fangs into a basketball. I was frozen in horror, watching some kind of realization creep up his face, his mouth forming an “O”, his eyes darting between

Thin flowering trees created a canopy of white and pink petals, shading the dirt path that ran behind the biology building. The travel of hundreds of students had beaten this trail into the earth, an alternative and more scenic route between the various faculties of Sillwood University, going around the back of many of the

I sat on the bus to Sillwood University, my brain repeating the same stupid worries over and over in a circle. What if you out yourself at school? What if Alek threatens to out you? What if you do something else stupid? To distract myself, I scrolled through a paranormal message board. One user, Crawler012

I’d questioned Alek before on why we were running homemade obstacle courses in the trainyard. If the point was simply to become more in sync with Nell and get better at Shaping, surely it would be less of a hassle to do it in a gym. The answer became clear as I hurtled a chest-high