Chapter 2 New Entry: Cheryl

The tiny figure was hunched in a corner, gripping her left arm painfully. Her eyes were red due to fatigue and her breathing was uneven. Sweat traced down the side of her forehead. The girl was in a small square shaped room with metal bars that started from one end of the wall to the other; just like in a prison cell. There was nowhere she could run to now. Her lips were dry. 'Water…' she whispered in a shaky voice.

The glass on the table in front of her began to tremble slightly. The girl narrowed her eyes, taking in deeper breaths which made it seem like she was having an asthma attack. She tried to focus her eyes on the glass of water but her vision was blurry. The glass kept revolving around repeatedly. She clutched her left arm tighter, digging her nails just around the area where the golden shards rested.

The shards glowed slightly. She clenched her teeth as needles of pain shot up her arm followed by a strong burning sensation. The girl glanced up at the glass and in the blink of an eye, it shattered, water spilling onto the bare floor. The tiny splinters were noticeable in the dim orange light that shone from the bulb on the wall behind her.

There was a shuffling noise from somewhere at the end of the hallway outside the room, which later turned into footsteps as the person approached. The girl collapsed onto the floor out of exhaustion.

.

It had taken me an hour under the bright, hot rays of the sun to fix the broken staircase from earlier. It was mid-day. People passed by underneath the metal stairs; some ignored me while others smiled and waved. I waved back.

"Hey, Dixon! Nice job up there, keep at it!" A man called out. It was Samuel, the guy who hired me.

I glared at him from behind the protective metal mask. He was the one making me do jobs like these. But it was a good cover for my actual job.

"Sure," I muttered under my breath.

My shadow grabbed another one of the twisted metal rods and pulled it straight. Nobody noticed anything from this far up. I lowered my head; soldering gun in hand, and began to fix it. The flames hit the metal piece which melted into the rod slowly. Something glinted through.

I thought it was just the reflection of the sun. As I brought the gun closer, a golden light tore through the flames. My gun stopped working all of a sudden. I tapped it, pressing the buttons, nothing happened. I quickly took off my mask and peered at the golden glimmering object lying on the joint between the metal rods.

I picked up the tiny piece of shard. It seemed to be unaffected by the heat of the flames. It shone brighter when brought into the sunlight.

"This… I've seen it before…" I trailed off, feeling someone's shadow on my back.

I straightened myself, wiping the dust off my black jacket and tucked the shard inside it. I was about to turn around when someone slapped my back so hard I staggered forward two steps. I turned in anger.

"Heya Di!"

All my anger drained away at the sight of a familiar face. I tried for a confused smile.

"Meryl, what're you doing here?" It came out more surprised than I actually felt.

"I'm just coming back from class," she said and chuckled. "So, what did you break this time?"

Meryl glanced down at the gun and then peeked behind at the metal rods I'd been fixing for so long.

"Does it look that bad…?" I wondered to myself.

I stepped to one side to let her pass, yet she stood there.

"They pressured you into doing another task for them." She made a face, brows creased.

Meryl had brown eyes, a round face with a heap of light-brown silky hair that was always tied to one side in a ponytail. She was only a few centimeters shorter than me and at times I thought she was still growing taller.

"Yeah, well they're paying me."

"They're not paying enough. How can you even live with such little income? This is why your house looks like a shelter for stray animals."

"But I bought a couch…" I murmured to myself.

She peered into my eyes worriedly. She clearly had no idea about the night duties I managed to earn plenty from; nobody did. People knew they had night guardians but they rarely saw their faces. That was how it had always been.

Even a childhood friend like Meryl had been kept in the dark about it.

"That's just life. Accept it," I said.

She took one tender look at me.

"Stay safe," she murmured and walked past.

At times it felt like she knew my secret and could see right through my disguise as an ordinary worker. Other times, she wouldn't have a clue. I wouldn't blame her for worrying because the two of us grew up together. I used to come over for the summer with my parents. We would stay at her house. The day my parents disappeared was the day we had decided to permanently move to Darkwood. They just abandoned the car in the middle of the woods.

Something must've changed in me after that because Meryl started being extra nice. Her family took me in, took care of me until I got my own place.

Somewhere around the disappearance of my parents I had begun to realize my potential. My shadow would at times deform into shapes that only clicked my mind for a second. Not long after that, I was secretly invited to join the night force as a night guardian. I had to complete a special training course before I was able to actually perform my duties.

I remember falling asleep during class and Meryl would nudge me with an elbow when the teacher was about to look. I had started to sleep a lot during the day since night was the time for duties. At times while exercising in the park, which was also part of my training but out of Meryl's knowledge, she would bring me snacks to keep me from overdoing it. I would sit on the bench with a towel around my neck, gulping down every ounce of juice in the bottle. Then when I was done, she would press me into drinking another one.

It was crazy how she was always there for me when I needed someone, yet I could never return that favor. I picked up my safety mask and the soldering gun and walked back through the metal door into the building. It was brightly lit, mostly due to the sunlight pouring in through the windows. I walked along the pale white corridor, passing doors every few steps. The stairs were at the far end, I headed down.

"You mean there could be more incidents like these?" I heard a lady say to a man, who was presumably her husband.

"You better believe it. Don't let the kids outside after 6. Don't send them on errands alone either. Send Jonathan with them. He's always roaming around the streets doing nothing. He should make himself useful by taking his little cousins to the square," the man spoke in a rough voice.

I shook my head as I exited the building and onto the street. Jonathan lived a couple buildings away from the one I had been fixing. It was another one of the dreary looking, gray painted buildings; paint that was falling apart at places. I looked up, a hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun. Even from several floors down, I could detect his windowsill dented at one corner.

Nobody would have guessed that the dent was actually from when Jonathan had been slammed into the window by a former enemy. The enemy was later captured and jailed under the supervision of the night force but the dent was never fixed.

I entered the building and went straight towards one of the empty elevators across the lobby. Barely anyone looked up from their work. The guests were comfortably seated on the couches, busy with their conversations. The assistant manager smiled at me from his desk where a family stood, getting reservations into one of the apartments of the building.

I smiled back awkwardly and entered the elevator, pressing the floor number. The doors closed. When they opened again, I almost bumped into a guy my age who had been about to walk in. We looked up at each other.

"Jon. I was just about to–"

"Didn't you get the call?" He looked shaken.

"No, I-"

"We're all being gathered at the nightforce," Jonathan replied urgently, without even letting me finish.

"But… your equipment. The gun and the safety mask."

I held up the two contents in front of him, stepping out of the elevator. It took him two minutes to run back to his apartment to put the stuff inside and then come back to join me near the elevator. The two of us stepped inside, pressing the ground floor button. Jon kept the button pressed while taking out his night force pass and inserted it into a thin, horizontal space. The light on the ground floor button suddenly changed from yellow to green.

I watched him tuck the card in his shirt pocket. Jon was an inch taller than me, a skinny fellow but a strong fighter. His copper hair was combed neatly, parted to one side but it never stayed at one place. It kept falling onto his eyes every often. When he turned his head to look at me, his brown eyes were grave.

"What's with that look?" I asked.

"Did you not notice what happened to the buildings last night? Even with us owls on the watch all the time…" He shook his head, more hair falling onto his eyes.

"You think they're calling us to reproach for our carelessness?" I asked, for the fear in Jon's eyes was evident.

"That's gotta be it. I mean, why else would we be called?"

"By we, you mean…"

Jonathan exhaled loudly. "Only the ones who were on duty last night. We made a mistake, we'll have to face the consequences."

He looked tired. I could tell he hadn't slept properly after getting back from his duties. The two of us exited the elevator into the institute that was located underground. Only members with the card could come and go whenever they pleased.

"There is one thing we night guards make sure of, besides keeping an eye out for trouble. It's that we get the right amount of sleep during the day… which, clearly some of you have been neglecting," the coach spoke, eyeing Jonathan who had opened a big mouth to yawn.

I nudged him with an elbow and he quickly straightened his face. We were standing in a line, all facing the coach who paced back and forth in front of us. There was a long, black table with empty chairs for us to sit. It was a rectangular room, white painted walls and a whiteboard occupying the wall at one end.

"Do sit down now. We have much to discuss about last night's events. If not all, some of you might have witnessed something. I would like each of you to share your accounts with me."

There were about seventeen of us. I took my seat next to Jonathan. The coach stood at one end of the table, right in front of the whiteboard, his usual place. He wore a sleeveless, blue jacket with a full-sleeved gray shirt underneath. Gray strands of hair were visible through the hump of dark hair on his head.

"Alright." He put his hands on the table. "We'll start with you, Edward."

All eyes turned to Edward as he stood up to speak. The chair screeched back.

"Nothing happened on my watch. I was on the higher shift, on the roof of the taller buildings. If anything, the ones on the lower shift should've seen it." He sat back down, sinking into the chair.

"Alright… How many of you were on the lower shifts?"

A few hands went up. I was one of them. Jonathan was spared as he too had the higher shift, meaning he was assigned to watch from above. The ones assigned closer to the ground were only seven. They weren't the only ones in the entire town, of course. They were just assigned to that particular area.

One by one each of them stood. Almost all of them were in their early or mid twenties. None of them, however, had witnessed anything. One of them, a girl, who looked around my age, stood up. She looked too weak for a night guard. Here, even the ladies had heavy builds, with arms that could punch through walls. But she just looked fragile; like a gust of wind would just take her away.

"I was out near the forest when I saw this little girl," she began.

I glanced up at her. Something about her, it just seemed familiar. It would seem strange to anyone that very few of us had actually ever met in person. We would mostly only meet at emergency gatherings like this one. Sometimes dozens of guardians would make an appearance, so it was hard to remember everyone by face. However, this girl… something just nagged me at the back of my head.

"I was about to follow her when I spotted a herd of black Catters. They chased her into the forest. They didn't see me because I hid myself. I couldn't stop them on my own so I had to contact someone nearby…"

She stopped and looked at me. She had dark eyes that were shadowed by the thick, red fringes over her forehead. The rest of her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail.

"The sensor in my cell phone could only detect one other night force guard nearby. I contacted him immediately and asked him to go after the girl. I don't even know your name…" I noticed she meant me.

'How the hell did she know it was me?' I thought, quickly realizing that I was frowning at her and that people were watching. I straightened my face.

"It's Dixon," I told her.

"And what was your name, child?" the coach asked in a softer tone than that which he used with the rest of us.

"Cheryl," she smiled timidly. She looked too innocent when she smiled. No wonder the coach treated her differently, like he couldn't be more proud.

"You're our newest member, and if I'm not wrong, the youngest, at the moment. How old are you again?"

"I'm sixteen."

There it was. The proud fatherly smile that he was going to use later to make us work to death by giving her example. Not that I cared how much I had to work. It was the fact that nobody was going to question why someone as frail as her was in the night force. She wouldn't last a month.

"Back to the topic here, Dixon, you're up. And I don't want to hear again about how you ran off position chasing after something that turned out to be nothing," the coach suddenly sounded very tired when he spoke to me. He wasn't wrong, though.

I rolled my eyes and got up, silently pushing my chair back.

"After I got her call, I went inside, took care of those Catters and got the kid out."

"Did you ask that girl about why the creatures were chasing her?" The coach raised an eyebrow. I shook my head, telling him about last night's event and how the girl had just suddenly disappeared from the apartment.

"Do you think it has something to do with those cracks and dents on the building walls?" A woman asked when the coach did not respond to my story.

"This is all too strange. Nothing can be deduced by what Dixon just told us. Of course, even he did not see the real culprit," the coach replied, sulking as he sat back down.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, sinking into my chair coolly, when something pricked my finger. I took out my hand. There was a tiny dot of blood on my index finger. I rummaged through the pocket and came out with the golden shard that I'd kept earlier.

"Wait! There's something else I want to share…"

All eyes turned to me. The coach was at his feet in an instant, looking at me like I was the last shred of hope he had left.

I simply narrated my second meeting with the little girl. They all listened intently. Cheryl, especially, had her eyes glued to me the entire time. I let our eyes meet. She just kept staring.

Ignoring her, I continued to tell them about the dark shadow that had been lingering around the town square. It was so fast that I'd never managed to get a proper look at it.

"And that's when I heard a scream. Then there was this flash of light. When I went to check, the girl was gone."

The coach looked at me for one long moment after which we were dismissed.

"Now that was weird. Coach didn't yell at us for being lazy," Jonathan said once we were out of the room and heading for the elevator at the end of the hallway.

"It's weird that they're making a great fuss out of it," I said casually, "Things like these happen all the time except that this time, nobody was around to see anything. That doesn't really give us any reason to gather like this. It's like they know something else and aren't telling us."

I shrugged, uninterested and pressed the elevator button.

"Maybe they're just scared," a girl spoke from behind me. It was more like a murmur as she passed by us.

"What're you talking about?" Jonathan spoke up. I rolled my eyes in annoyance.

Cheryl half turned to look at him. Her dark eyes scanned his face for a second.

"The nightforce just wants everything to be in their control. Knowing things makes it easier to control them."

Jonathan began arguing in favor of the nightforce, none of which I cared to listen to. I watched how uninterested she seemed in the conversation. Then my eyes shifted down to her hand, partly clutching her full sleeve. She quickly hid her hand behind her back. I could've sworn I saw red stains on it. I realized she was staring at me and Jonathan had also stopped talking. I could feel the tension around us. Her shoulders, every so slightly, stiffened.

There was a short bell from the elevator as the doors opened behind us. Without a second's delay, Cheryl rushed in, shutting the elevator doors in our faces.

"What was that all about?" Jonathan asked. I shrugged, pretending as if I couldn't care less.