Chapter 1 The Yellow Dress #2
Angelina kept her ringed fingers clasped at her waist, shoulders always perfectly square. She’d also been a medic on a scout team in her early years before becoming trained and certified as a Listener, capable of discerning messages from Spirits in the other reality.
“I think your intrusion has the chiefs second-guessing their security,” Angelina said, a message with a double meaning Ella wasn’t ready to dissect. “People don’t usually accuse Listeners in the wake of a crisis. They come to listen.”
“My entire team, in an instant, they–” Ella stopped short. How could she even describe it?
“You were adopted by a Listener. You should know better than anyone else that we live to interpret the world, not change it. What happened to your team was horrific.”
Dust bobbed through the light behind her, visible on the stacks of books and maps that characterized most studies in the Academy. In the calmness of the room, the chaos in Ella’s head pounded louder.
“What is all your power for then?” Ella challenged. “Politics? Everyone’s dead. And your job is nothing?”
“Ella,” Angelina said with a sharper edge. “You’ve been out in the field too long. You have my sympathy for what happened, but I’m not going to let you dig yourself deeper into the hole you’re in. Now, listen to me, did Crow say anything unusual in the last days of your journey here?”
“Did Crow say anything usual?” Ella repeated the question with a bite in her words.
Why would Angelina focus on something so trivial in the wake of such a tragedy?
There was so much more to be asked of it all, so much more to be said.
Ella begged for the right questions, like keys somehow capable of unlocking what she could not release on her own.
“I know. It seems like a ridiculous question for such an unusual person,” Angelina replied.
“Crow was a leader that got to the point,” Ella snapped back. “Being forward and honest—you’re right, these days that is unusual.”
“Maybe not as honest as you think,” Angelina replied without anger, irritation, or timidity.
“Embolisms between our world and the spirit world are spontaneous and dangerous.
The chances of your team accidentally being at the site of one are slim.
We believe Crow used the embolism between our worlds to cross over to The Quiet. "
“What?” Ella asked in disbelief. The mere idea of Crow having any interest in the spirit world was ridiculous. Much like Ella, he’d had little regard for the power of The Quiet. They had bonded over that.
“I understand you were very close. I know this--” Angelina began.
“You’re saying Crow did this to us? Our very own team leader killed everyone?”
Ella pushed, anger boiling up again, wanting to explode across the room. She felt violent urges gather in her hands.
“We were hoping you would know why.”
“You’re saying,” Ella forced the anger of her cracking words together and in a single breath rushed, “one of the most dedicated combat specialists, with over a hundred successful missions against Madness and no interest in The Quiet, suddenly decided the death of our entire team was worth paying a visit to the spirit world?”
Angelina didn’t reply.
“With no motive? How would someone even cause something like that?” Ella’s tone wavered as she finished the question. She felt herself losing control, a rare and unsettling feeling that pushed her to breathe and divert her thoughts.
The silence continued, but the fullness in Angelina’s eyes assured her the woman wasn’t at a loss for words. It seemed the opposite. Ella was urged to reflect back on her last mission and interactions with Crow.
They’d been assigned to hunt a mutated bear that had been terrorizing people outside of a distant colony.
It had morphed into a hungry, nasty thing, three times the size of a normal bear with an acidic mouth and grizzled, twisted teeth.
Mutated animals were hateful cases, Madness contorting the bodies until they died painful deaths.
They killed in their suffering, driven by an insatiable hunger and the need to infect others that Madness provoked in all things.
Not only had they killed the bear, but had been forced to hunt and shoot any animals bitten by it, burning several infected plants along the way.
The dark nature of the task aside, the large animal hunt wasn’t an unusual assignment for a scout team of their caliber. Every one of their team members was accomplished in their own right, and their assignments showed for it.
“Crow checked in with some Listeners a couple days ago, asking about the possibility of an embolism appearing,” Angelina continued. “They are very rare. It’s strange to ask about them.”
“A precaution,” Ella objected anyway, not caring at this point how unreasonable her objections might sound.
“But the route your team took back was where the Listeners had said one might appear. We checked records of past inquiries, and this is not the first time this has happened. The investigation is ongoing.” Angelina gave the information time to settle before adding.
“Most literature Crow has pulled from the library in the past year and a half all have references to embolisms. More records of casual inquiries have been pouring in, and the investigation has only just started. You’re right, we don’t know what motive there would be for going to The Quiet, but it looks like the leader you trusted was hiding something of an obsession with embolisms.”
“What are you doing about this?” Ella asked through a haze, still not convinced of Crow’s guilt but eager to act.
“We’re assembling a retrieval team.”
“I’ll go.”
“Ella,” Angelina shook her head, the answer evident in her voice.
“Not after what you’ve just been through.
We are only sending in Listeners. They have a good enough understanding of The Quiet not to disrupt anything there.
Few people have crossed over in almost a century since the war ended and we are already having to take unnecessary risks. ”
“An army of Listeners couldn’t dream of catching Crow,” Ella argued.
“The answer is no.”
The two women stared at each other for a long time, Angelina taking in a deep breath before admitting tiredly, “I wish I could do more for you, but the best I can offer is a stern hand. You’d do best to distance yourself from this. Hissing at the council did not help.”
Under the weight of the reprimand, Ella understood the subtle message Angelina had been inching closer to.
“We risked our lives over and over for the Imperia. We’ve been in the field for years,” Ella breathed.
“And that’s why they’re letting you walk out of here without a full interrogation.
I offered to debrief your handlers on your behalf, and they generously consented,” Angelina replied, cementing a harsh reality that she was indeed in a different world in the capital, a world with entirely different values than the field where she’d lived the past five years.
“They agreed to this even after your display in the council chamber,” Angelina finished. “Take that for what it is and go. We’ll call for you when further investigation is necessary. See one of our doctors, rest, and heal with the people you love.”
“The people I love are dead.” Ella bit coldly into the words.
“Not all of them.”
Time seemed to expand inside the room, pushing Ella closer to the door with every passing second. Ella shook her head in disbelief and walked out.
Searching for the nearest comfort, she walked right past the medical wings and patrolled the wide academy halls, grateful to hear a familiar voice teaching in one of the larger classrooms.
Kay was a researcher and technician who’d accompanied their team on quite a few of their longest missions. He and Ella had made quick friends, though it had been a few months since she’d seen him last. In a matter of hours, he’d gone from a good friend to the closest one she had left.
She leaned against the wall adjacent to the door, peering in to catch a glimpse of him. He traversed the room on long, gliding legs, blonde hair combed to the side. Kay always moved, fidgeting if not pacing, talking if not fidgeting, reminding her of wind that always had to animate the world.
He wore the navy Imperia uniform like a polished mannequin, not a wrinkle in sight, fatigue hitched at every button, bootlaces pulled to such perfect angles that they looked drawn on.
Ella leaned her head against the wall and listened to his voice the way she liked to listen to the birds in the morning.
She allowed herself to feel tired for a moment, sliding down the wall before she held her knees in sheer disbelief and exhaustion.
For all of their differences, Kay reminded her of the capital’s pleasant things, the sound of the lyre at sunset, exotic spices, noon bells, and the colorful tapestry of rugs that characterized the dye district on the East End.
He’d taken Crow, Alex, Jade, and her to all of those places, giving them tours with a natural and voracious hunger to know and educate about the world.
A blended wave of anger and confusion washed over her and she sunk her head into her knees.
Her body shook with every breath, so she trained her ears on the droning of his voice, the only sound in the vastness of the building.
It kept her in a manageable state until certain words tugged on her attention.
“We all have these inborn connections with the Spirits. We’re driven by Joy, Sadness, Hope, and Happiness because of our connection with them.
Madness, on the other hand, is the essence of brokenness and disfigurement,” he said.
“The energy is volatile and hungry, quick to eat anyone it infects, but centuries ago, there were a select few, the Strike, who not only became hosts, but manipulators of it. They subjugated humanity until the extremesist of that day, known as the ROSE, burned them all at the Burning of the Strike. As brutal as it was, it marked the end of the war.”
Guessing Kay was still in the middle of his lecture, and in no mood to hear more about history, Ella pulled herself up from the ground and wrote a quick message using the pen and board outside of the door. Not all instructors checked their messages after classes, but Kay could never help himself.
“Luckily, no one has been able to channel Madness for centuries since the death of the Strike,” he continued on as she wrote.
“The one comfort we can take from all of that is that the secret to channeling Madness died with those that discovered it.”
Ella backed away from the board, glancing down the hallway to see a guard still observing from a distance.
She’d see Kay soon but had one more person she had to visit first.