Available Darkness Season 2

the hall and into his office, clicking on the small lamp beside his desk.
    He opened his laptop. Its glow lit his face as he clicked on e-mail and started typing a message to Bob Cromwell.
    We have a problem. Hope is remembering.

    TO BE CONTINUED…

EPISODE 9:
    CHAPTER 1 — John

    “You OK?” John asked.
    Tiny stared up at him, confused, blood gushing from a six-inch gash, slashed in a lazy river across the big man’s stomach.
    “Yeah, I think so,” Tiny said, sitting up. He pulled his black tee up the length of his torso, lightly pressing his fingers into the depths of his wound through the pouring blood. His flesh was already stitching itself healed. “Shit, I had worse than this before I was near invincible.”
    “What happened?”
    “Little fucker snuck up on me, stabbed me before I even saw him. Confused the sense out of me before I knew what was happening. I couldn’t think straight, or defend myself. He picked me up and threw me in here, even though he was a buck thirty tops.”
    “That’s Shadow; he’s a Halfworlder,” John said. “With all sorts of magick weapons, powders, and spells. No telling what he did for sure, but I’d guess he only stunned you. Do you think you can get up?”
    Tiny stood, wobbly at first, then looked back to his wound, completely healed and nearly invisible except for the fresh pink scar painted across his dark skin, where it would stay for at least a day until it turned invisible.
    “So what the hell we gonna do now?” Tiny asked.
    John looked up at the well’s opening and the moonlight which would soon be sunlight painting the stone walls of the well, bringing their death with it. Then he looked at the door. “If you can help me open this door, maybe we can get out of here. Shadow did something to me. I’m a lot weaker than I was. I can’t get the thing to budge. And I can’t climb or jump for shit.”
    Tiny began pushing at the door, shoving his shoulder hard enough against the metal to nudge a groan from his mouth. The door didn’t move, or even flinch in its frame, so Tiny took a few steps back and ran into it like a bat to a ball with the bulk of his body. The door still didn’t budge.
    “Shit!” Tiny said. “I’m weaker, too. What the hell?”
    “I don’t know,” John said, scrounging the well’s bottom with his eyes, searching for something, anything among the dirt and debris in the darkness that might help them escape the bottom of the well.
    John focused again, and tried to reach Larry. Still nothing.
    John wondered why he could reach Tiny but not Larry or Abigail. Tiny shared the Darkness with him, same as Abigail — with the same parasite bred into them both. They were, in essence, his parasite’s children, and if he’d been able to connect with Tiny, he should have been able to connect with Abigail. If he could contact her, he could tell her to tell Larry to come save them.
    John tried reaching out to her again.
    Abigail?
    Nothing.
    A round of automatic gunfire cracked the pre-dawn silence above.
    “Shadow!” a man screamed out. “Just give us the crystal.”
    John looked at Tiny. “You bring friends?”
    “No, didn’t have time to round up the crew, though I wish I had.”
    John closed his eyes, absorbing the outside world in his mind — he felt several people closing in on one, Shadow.
    What the hell? What crystal?
    Another round of gunshots punctuated the darkness as Shadow’s fear continued to balloon until it was so swollen that it finally pulsed inside of John as though it were his own. Shadow’s fear was a rapidly rising tide, fueled by confusion. Shadow knew at least some, if not all, the people in his ambush.
    John turned to Tiny. “His people turned on him, I think.”
    “How you know that?”
    “I can sense some of Shadow’s thoughts. You can’t?”
    “Hell, no. It’s not like you gave me an instruction manual with these powers, bro.”
    John laughed. “I don’t know how I do it. I just do. Afraid I can’t help you there.”
    Sudden movement skittered on the other side of the door, like an injured animal thrashing.
    John turned to Tiny, “Get ready, he’s coming!”
    Tiny balled his fist. John stood back from the door, ready to pounce.
    The door burst open, and Shadow threw up his hands. “Wait, wait!” he cried. “I’m not going to hurt you!”
    Tiny moved in to take a swing, but John waved him back. “Hold on,” he said, studying Shadow as he closed and locked the door, sealing them away from