Guardians of the Dark

Sleep has abandoned me, forced me to lie awake, counting the water stains on the ceiling until the numbers blur in my mind. Two. Six. Eight. They’re growing by the day, spreading like a sickness, eating at the plaster. I could do something about it, try to treat it, but it’s no use. Nothing heals out here in the Dark.

Not even a broken heart.

My transmission band beeps, and I roll over to find it on the nightstand. I grab it, silence it, and check the time.

12:00 PM. Noon.

Muddled sunlight creeps through the line of windows into my room, a curtain of soft grey in an otherwise black abyss.

I don’t need it to see, of course, but I like watching it, like imagining what its rays would feel like on my skin.

Sitting up, I latch the transmission band around my wrist. My feet meet the cold cement floor as I slide out of bed, my spine crackling as I reach for the bundled tank on the floor. I pull it on over my head, tuck it into my pants and tighten my belt. The buckle extends farther every day, each week I feed less and less.

I sit down to pull on my boots, keeping my eyes trained on the mirror behind the door. A ghost stares back at me, a washed-out face with shoulder-length, ebony hair and matching eyes. Shadows encircle them – my body’s cry for sleep. I’d been out all night, tracking Roamers on the northern outskirts of the Veil. A useless expedition, as we’d returned with only three in tow. Barely a week’s feed for a working Corrupted.

A day’s feed for Their High Darkness, Emperor Kai Sumuri.

I clasp my boots, comb back my hair and cross the room to the kitchen. The transmission band around my wrist drones, and I tap the screen. A calendar pops up, highlighting the date, but I quickly swipe it away. I needn’t look at the entry to know today’s significance. Every year, every 12th of July, always as hard.

I walk around the control counter and place my palm over the handprint in the middle. The panel lights up, displaying a tragic selection of only two items. Water, and a red velvet cupcake. My finger hovers over the latter, and the panel turns from red to green. The control counter whirrs – louder than it probably should – and opens up to reveal a rising plate with a cupcake on it. Nutritionally useless to me, and definitely not worth the two Roamers I had traded for it, but I wanted to celebrate today with something special.

Kasen’s eighteenth birthday.

With the plate in my hands, I cross the room to my nightstand, where I rummage through the wonky top drawer for a birthday candle. Kasen’s birthday candle. After fifteen years of use, it’s a short stub with a thin, crackly wick. I pop it in the cupcake and search my pockets for the old lighter I had collected some weeks ago.

The candle sets ablaze, and I near the window. The Metropolis of Light glows in the distance, a fire that never dies. A sun than never sets.

“Happy birthday, Kasen,” I whisper, barely loud enough to hear. “Wherever you are.”

I sit in silence for a minute, trying to recall his face, to imagine what he might look like today. His clear-blue eyes and ashy-blonde hair. The two of us are complete opposites. Like night and day. Dark and light.

The flame crackles, letting off a combined smell of wax, frosting and fire. I reach for the cupcake, but before I latch my fingers around it, someone knocks – hammers, is more like it – on the door. Their fist collides with the steel in rapid, impatient blows, making me jerk. And spin. I blow out the candle and hide the cupcake under my bed. A trail of smoke follows me across the room, coiling through the air like a ribbon.

“Uhm, who’s there?” I call out, wafting away the evidence.

“Room service. Who the hell do you think it is, Samael? Open up, damn it!” The person behind the door grunts to himself, still hammering away. Olaf, one of Emperor Sumuri’s right-hand lackeys. He’s as tall as he is wide, and hasn’t exactly been taking the Roamer shortage all that well. Always hungry, always angry.

Hangry, I guess.

“You hiding a guy in there, Sammy boy?” comes a second voice. Ollie. A shorter version of Olaf, only with less hair.

The two never separate.

I run across the room and place my wrist over the panel. The door slides open, revealing two shiny-faced Corrupted dressed in tattered leathers. Ollie peers past me into the room, searching the space with his eyes. A tree of veins trace up his neck and into the left side of his face to frame his forehead, black, thick and swollen.

My fingers instinctively reach for the inside of my right arm, tracing my own splash of veins. The touch of the Dark.

“Come on then, let’s see him,” Ollie persists. “It’s about time you brought someone over.”

Olaf steps forward with heavy feet. “No unauthorised visitors are allowed in the Needle. You’re not breaking the rules, are you?”

“If I was breaking the rules, Olaf, I wouldn’t be caught this easily.” I raise a brow at him, then lock eyes with Ollie. “Relax, there’s no guy. I was just sleeping. Spent the entire night tracking Roamers in the north.”

“Any luck?” Olaf asks.

“Nothing worth getting excited about ...” I scratch the back of my head. “What are you both doing here anyway?”

“The Emperor wants to see you,” Olaf says.

“Right now?”

“Now,” Ollie insists.

My shoulders drop.

This has last night’s patrol written all over it. I’ll probably have to explain myself, promise to do better next time. Like I can control the Roamers’ movements. Like they come running at the snap of my fingers.

I look over my shoulder into the room. Kasen will have to wait. “Fine. Let me just get my jacket.” I run to the side of my bed where my jacket lay bundled on the floor, exactly as I’d dropped it when I got in earlier.

The leather crunches in my hands, my eyes taking in the official Tracker emblem on the front: a pointed knife, dripping with blood.

Not red, but black. The colour of Corrupted blood.

“What’s that smell?” Olaf asks as he steps into the room.

I wince. “Smell?”

“Yeah ... I think it might be smoke.” Olaf takes a whiff and nods. “Yep, that’s smoke alright.”

“Did you burn something in here, Samael?” Olaf asks.

“Nope. Nothing. There’s no smoke, and no guy.” I pull on my jacket and usher the pair out of my room. “Sorry to disappoint.” The door shuts behind us, and before either Olaf or Ollie ask any more questions, I say, “Thanks for coming, but I don’t need an escort. I’ve been summoned enough times to know my way.”

“Not exactly something to boast about, is it?” Olaf smirks with his arms crossed over his large, mountainous chest.

“Good luck, anyway,” Ollie adds. “You’ll need it alright.” His words do nothing to untangle the knot in my throat.

I set off down the shadowy corridor to the line of elevators, all of which, for the fourth time this week, are out of order. The door to the stairway bangs against the wall as I swing it open and tackle the stairs. Seventeen flights to go. Seventeen flights to the Needle’s top floor, home to the Emperor’s lounge.

My boots feel heavy, and my lungs thick. It’s been three days since my last proper feeding, and my energy’s running low.

I breathe in and speed up. Emperor Sumuri doesn’t take kindly to weakness, albeit from slowly starving. If I pitch up with tired eyes and dragging feet, I can kiss any chance at asking them for a promotion goodbye.

If I even have the guts to ask, that is.

I reach the top landing and pause, hanging on to the railing to catch my breath. Like so many times before, I rehearse the words in my mind – asking the Emperor for a place among the Raiders. While tracking’s not bad, it’s not what I’ve been working towards. I’m tired of hunting Roamers, of watching the battle from afar.

The Raiders are the real soldiers, the strongest of all Corrupted. Each time they return from raids on the MOL, they bring back weapons, ammunition and valuable technology. The Corrupted shower them with praise.

They’re admired and respected. Feared throughout the Veil.

I trudge down a murky corridor leading to a pair of tall, dark steel doors. My boots resound off the marble floor, my outline reflecting in its shine. I keep my eyes trained on the camera above the doors, its eye enlarging as it zooms in on my approaching figure. It casts a net of red lasers across my face, scanning me.

“SAMAEL, SENIOR TRACKER. ACCESS GRANTED,” says a computerised voice, and the gears inside the doors come to life.

They scrape open across the floor, giving way to a crescent-shaped space with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out across the Veil – a crush of tall, shadowy buildings with crumbling roads winding in between them. Lights are scattered across the city, orange-and-white glows illuminating the lives of labouring Corrupted.

I cross the doorway into the lounge, immediately swallowed by the blanket of moonvine smoke that hangs over the space. It tastes bitter-sweet in my mouth, like scorched flowers. I suppress the cough clawing up my throat and follow a ribbon of wispy smoke across the lounge. It leads me to a red, bed-sized sofa facing the line of windows. Like everything else in the lounge – from the long, mahogany table and chandelier hanging over it, to the patterned tapestries adorning the walls – the sofa is classically regal-looking, complete with a pile of velvet cushions swallowing a bony, narrow-eyed person in a kimono.

Emperor Kai Sumuri.

“Samael,” they say before I reach the sofa. “Where are your escorts?”

“Your Imperial,” I greet them, lowering my eyes to the floor. “I don’t need any.”

Emperor Sumuri raises a long, thin pipe to their lips. “I know you don’t need any,” they say amid a tumble of smoke. “But it’s customary.”

I stop next to the sofa, my hands gathered behind my back. “My apologies, Your Imperial. You summoned me?”

Emperor Sumuri’s eyes don’t break away from the line of windows, their long fingernails rapping on the armrest. “Quite the tragic patrol you had last night. Only three Roamers? You’ve lost your touch, dear boy.”

I grit my teeth. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Your Imperial, Roamers are impulsively attracted to light.”

“Naturally.”

“Well, ever since the Metropolis of Light’s latest expansion to the east, the number of Roamers in and around the Veil has greatly diminished. I suspect the MOL, being the brighter light source, is luring them away.”

Only now does Emperor Sumuri look at me, their tiny black eyes meeting mine, drilling into my deepest thoughts. Like it’s my fault the Metropolis of Light keeps expanding. Like it’s my job to stop it from happening.

“Those wretched thieves,” they hiss, pinching together their robe and getting up off the sofa in a single swing of their legs. They wield their pipe in my face. “They lock us out of their precious city, gather our Dark like it’s theirs to dispose of, and now they’re stealing the only source of sustenance we have left?”

I try to keep a straight face, to maintain firm eye contact, but my throat involuntarily tightens into a swallow.

Emperor Sumuri spins on their heels and flees toward the windows, a trail of smoke dancing through the air in their wake. “I won’t have it. I simply won’t have it! Hamman did this on purpose. He’s out to starve us!” They raise their eyes to the horizon, a spark of light splitting the Dark in two. The Metropolis of Light.

“What are we going to do about it, Your Imperial?”

“The only thing we can do. I shall arrange an immediate raid on the Eastern Collection Point.”

“A raid? Your Imperial, we’ll be outnumbered.” I step forward. “The Eastern Collection Point is not only base to the Gatherer Academy, but with their proximity to the Veil ... Surely, they’d have enhanced their security?”

“In that case, I shall double my own soldiers in retaliation.” Emperor Sumuri turns to face me. The light from the chandelier illuminates their face, every crease and emaciated angle. “This is war. If we don’t fight back, they’ll trample us. You of all people should understand this. You do understand this, don’t you?”

“I do.” I straighten my stance.

Emperor Sumuri walks past me to the side of the sofa. They place their pipe on a silver tray and momentarily stare at their own reflection. I watch them rub their ringed fingers along their eyebrows, mumbling frustratedly under their breath. Maybe now’s not exactly the right time to ask them for a promotion. When I first decided to, I was hoping for an easy raid on the northern water plantation, a quick in and out.

The Eastern Collection Point, however ...

It’s suicide.

Emperor Sumuri turns back around. “Words are empty promises, Samael. Empty promises yet to be proven by actions.” They approach me, slowly, gracefully, their kimono dragging on the floor. “You say you understand, but how do I know you mean it? The Metropolis of Light was your home. You had a family.”

“Those people weren’t my family,” I insist, leaning away from the Emperor’s dangerously close face, their breath reeking of moonvine.

“You know,” they whisper, “ever since the day I found you in the Dark, abandoned by that horrid man, Bentley Traynor, you’ve continuously professed your hatred towards them, vowed to seek your revenge.” A grin tugs at their mouth. “And yet, after fifteen years of knowing you, you’ve never once done anything.”

I stumble back, a flush of emotions taking over my body. Anger. Guilt. “It’s because you never give me the chance, Your Imperial!” I clench my fists. “Those people looked down on me. They saw me as an outcast.” A disease. A monster with no feelings or thoughts of my own, purely there for them to experiment on.

And when their experiment failed, they tossed me away.

My breath catches in my throat, my cheeks warming. No one yells at the Emperor. Those who do never live to tell the tale.

Emperor Sumuri watches me for a moment, their face an empty canvas. When they speak, their voice is surprisingly calm. “Big words from a small boy.” Man. “How am I to know you’re not just saying these things?”

“Let me prove myself to you,” the words spill from my mouth before I can stop them.

“Prove yourself?” they ask, raising a pointy brow. “How?”

“The raid on the Eastern Collection Point. Let me join the Raiders.”

A moment passes in which Emperor Sumuri scans my face, an amused glint winking at me in their eyes. “You? A raider?”

“Please, Your Imperial.”

The Emperor rotates toward the windows. They twirl the ring around their left index finger, their gaze not on the Veil below, but on my reflection in the glass. “What do you, a Tracker, know of being a Raider?”

“Everything, Your Imperial. I’ve trained with the Raiders since you took me in. I’m both qualified and prepared for this.”

“Being qualified and prepared is not the same thing as being ready. Are you ready to face the demons of your past?”

“My demons?”

“He’ll be there, no doubt.” That’s all Emperor Sumuri has to say for me to know who they’re referring to: General Traynor.

Damn it. I didn’t even think about it, didn’t even consider it. After so many years, we could meet again. Would he recognise me, experience any regret? I know I would. I’d regret it if I leave without killing him.

“I’m more than ready,” I growl through my teeth.

But Emperor Sumuri still has a reluctance to their stance. “Are you really, Samael? You do realise, the new recruits will be there too?”

New recruits?

I swallow. Of course, how could I forget? Turning eighteen, Kasen would’ve applied to the Army of the Light. And if he’s anything like his father, he’d have been selected as a Gatherer. If I go ... If I run into him ...

“Samael?”

I speak over my thoughts, forcing them down, down, down to all the memories I’ve worked so long to supress. “When do we leave?”

Emperor Sumuri turns, interest sparking across their face. “Tomorrow morning. Think you’ll be awake by then?”

“I’ll cut short tonight’s patrol.” I breathe in, my lungs filling with thick, smoky air. It’s not as bad when you’re relieved. When you have something driving you. “Thank you, Your Imperial, you won’t regret it.”

“No, I won’t. Because you’re not a Raider yet.” They pause. “This is a trial position. If the raid goes well, we might consider making it permanent.”

I give a single nod, careful not to give away the excitement bubbling inside of me. “Thank you,” I repeat. “I will give it my all, Your Imperial. I’ll lead them to victory and prove my worth. That’s a promise.”

“Lead?” The Emperor chokes.

My excitement fizzles. “Uh, of course. I’m the most decorated Tracker in the Veil, am I not? Like I said, I trained with the Raiders. The MOL used to be my home, I know what it’s like.” My feet itch to bound forward, but I manage to stay in place, to control myself. One more outburst, and they might change their mind.

“My dear boy,” the Emperor tuts, “the front lines are cruel and unpredictable. Frankly, you don’t have the experience.”

“Well, then ... Who’ll be leading?”

“Theon Crux, my second-in-command.”

“Theon?” I blurt out. Of course it has to be him. Of course it has to be the one person who had hated me since the day I showed up.

“I know the two of you ruffle each other’s feathers –”

“That idiot doesn’t ruffle, he shreds!” I breathe, stabbing my nails into my thighs. “Again, my apologies, Your Imperial.”

Emperor Sumuri stares at me without blinking or moving. “Good soldiers obey their superior without question.”

Silence.

When the moment grows too tense, I yield, “As you wish, Your Imperial. Theon it is. But I refuse to call him by any title.”

“Samael.”

I raise my eyes.

“I might have provided you a home in the Needle, and I might allow you entry to my lounge without an escort, but I draw the line at disrespecting my authority. You will let Theon lead. Not by your own accord, but because I order it. And you will address him by whatever title he prefers as the second-in-command.”

More silence.

“Am I making myself clear?”

“Like crystal,” I say, forcing myself to bow. It’s the only way to keep the Emperor from seeing me grind my teeth. “Your wish is my command.”

“Good.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that’ll be all.” Emperor Sumuri waves me away, so I spin and march across the lounge. The doors open up to reveal Ollie and Olaf standing guard on either side, electric spears sparking in their right hands.

“Sam ...” Ollie eyes me. “What happened? You got exiled or something?”

“How about you just shut up for once?” I spit without stopping or slowing down. “Guards are supposed to be seen, not heard.”

Ollie mutters something in reply, but I enter the stairway and barrel down the stairs before making out his words.

Theo-freaking-Crux? Emperor Sumuri can’t be serious. And this after scouring the Veil for Roamers at the darkest hours of the night, losing sleep and any chance at a decent social life for them, keeping them fed.

The Emperor knows where I come from. They know what I went through, and still they don’t believe in me.

My feet echo off the walls as I stomp down the corridor and into my room. I make a line for my bed, reach under it and take out the cupcake. Instead of relighting the candle, I turn toward the windows and raise it to line up with the spark of light in the distance. I was nothing to them. Nothing but a monster and an outcast.

Things were supposed to be different here. I was supposed to be seen as useful and valuable, but I’m still a nothing. Nothing, and no one.

“Happy damn birthday, Kasen.” I close my hand around the cupcake and squeeze.