Page 2 of The Quiet
Ella sensed the hand of a guard before it connected, snatched it, and threw the person forward with immense force. She slammed her foot into the cuff of his shoulder, extending his arm out in front of her like a prize as her eyes connected with his.
“I know how to put an arm together, and I know how to take one apart,” she said. As soon as she saw the guard’s shock deepen into paralysis, she threw his arm onto the ground and stepped over it.
“It’s not mine!” Her shriek split the room, nails clawing across the dried blood on her chest before she threw her hands out in front of them, pulse throbbing in her neck.
“Ella.” Angelina lifted a palm to another set of encroaching guards.
Angelina rose from the balcony, sweeping her long robes aside as she descended the adjacent stairs with a silk cloth clasped in her hand.
“We found the scene only a few hours ago.” She offered the cloth to Ella.
Ella snatched it loose, the chiefs collectively jolting before she scrubbed her forearms, unable to bridle the violent surge of rage threatening through her. Her insides were boiling. Everything was boiling.
The scene, they called it. She’d walked seventeen miles fromthe scene. So vague a description as if no words had the audacity to truly describe its horror.
Somewhere along the way, she’d found the yellow dress. She could no longer remember where. The journey was a blur.
“Clean up, and we’ll talk. I’ll inform your handlers that you’re alive,” Angelina continued with a characteristic firmness that gave some rigidity to the natural softness of her voice. “I can have someone escort you to the barracks for clean clothes and a shower. I’ll wait for you in my study.”
Ella swayed sideways before snapping into a change of direction through the adjacent door. No one stopped her, but a few guards trailed far enough behind to follow.
The Academy and every connected building were her home, and she navigated the labyrinth to the showers of the nearest barracks. Her mind shoved out intrusive images of carnage as she stripped. Scraping her body with the cloth sent the monster that she was circling the drain. What remained was a womanshe recognized even less. Her freckles were now distinguishable from the dirt, and her sandy brown hair was freed from its entangled cakes.
She salvaged a camouflage uniform from a nearby locker and wrapped her hair into a tight, seamless bun, finding some sense of normalcy as she rebuilt the image of herself.
Clutching the sink, she gathered her breathing. The left side of her bottom lip was swollen, and a scratch passed over the sharp, freckled bridge of her nose. The tender curves of a doll-like face only made the marks on her body appear more brutal.
In borrowed leather boots, she took to the hallways again.
The guards re-directed her to a study near the chief’s council chamber where Angelina waited. This time, Ella didn’t throw the doors. She was a scout again, wrestled back into place by the fixtures of her tightly pulled hair and uniform. They barely contained her rattled soul.
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 worldand 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?”
