---

Chapter 19 - Shedding Light

---

Sure enough, someone arrived in a small, non-descript vehicle to pick up Indigo and rescue them from the gathering mob of people and their mobile devices.

Elites poured on to the platform as Athira and the others were ushered inside, with only a few quick words to Raph from Discord. Athira wasn’t sure what it was about Discord’s face, but there was something there that made her want to try and fix it with a solid slap.

Athira gathered her cloak around her and huddled into the corner at the back. Zoe and Shift were next to slide on to the smooth material of the seats, with Raph following a minute after. Then the door was shut and the driver took off into the city.

Shift tried more than once to lure her into conversation, but Athira was having none of it. Her words were expended for the day, wasted on journalists and sticky beaks that wanted to know everything from her favourite colour to how she put on her socks in the morning.

She rubbed her forehead. If only that was my biggest problem. Why did I agree to this Colour thing again? she asked herself, although she already knew the answer. Rathe... Sleeper... all that, but I couldn’t make myself leave Zoe again.

Talon’s voice echoed in the back of her head. It’s good that you have her back, Thira. I’ve never seen your mindscape so calm despite the way your colour’s been acting up.

I guess, replied Athira. She lifted her eyes without her chin to peer at Zoe’s form, listening to Raph talk about something unimportant Discord had said. Finding out she’s alive... I still don’t think I fully believe it.

Believe it, said Talon. You’re not that insane yet.

Thanks for the confidence vote, Tal.

Any time, Thira.

As Raph talked to Shift, Athira couldn’t help but notice how Zoe’s hand kept unconsciously rising to the Elite’s armlet circling her bicep. Each time, a slight look of discomfort would cross her face for a split second, so fast that Athira had to be staring to catch it.

The nausea that followed Athira around since the disturbance at the docks seemed stronger, too. She’d accepted its presence on the monorail with the sleeper directly in front of her, but here? In the car, alone except for these three and a driver?

She knew something wasn’t right.

Talon, what if part of the sleeper got into one of their mindscapes? asked Athira slowly.

Don’t think so. They’d have collapsed by now.

What if the sleeper was biding its time?

Talon seemed confused. Why would it bother doing that? From what I can tell, these things don’t have another purpose other than to sever the mind-body link in whatever beings they come into contact with.

Athira had to yield on that point. Imagining the sleeper blob with any ambitions other than ‘eat anything that moves’ was nearly impossible.

She tucked her legs further on to the seat, into the folds of her cloak. Fair. I’d feel a lot better if I knew how it got on the monorail in the first place, though.

They passed ideas back and forth, none of which seemed any more likely than the last until they reached Indigo base.

 A small crowd was gathered, huddled in the cold night air just outside the entry gate. As soon as they caught sight of Raph leaving the concealed safety of the vehicle’s interior, excited shouts broke out among them.

Athira took one look at the crowd and the way their devices lit their features and decided she was having none of it. Her colour was pooled at her hands and ready to press her body through the metal wiring, panels and glass when a warm hand touched her shoulder.

She tensed and spun around, locking eyes with Shift.

“You can’t stop me,” she said quietly, almost wanting to push his hand away.

“I know,” said Shift. He chewed on his lip. “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have pushed you into talking with all those people.”

That wasn’t what she was expecting to hear. “I... I’m fine.”

“You retreat into your cloak when you’re feeling exposed,” he said. “And you’ve barely moved the entire trip.”

Zoe exited after Raph with a quick backwards glance at Athira, who was still looking for words inside her head that fit this situation.

“I don’t do well with people. Not like that. I need my space.” Athira drew a steadying breath. “I almost used my colour on them. The people, I mean, I just couldn’t...”

Shift nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry. I honestly thought it would help you, like it did for me when Raph just threw me in but I screwed up.” He gave a shaky laugh. “Uh, guess you were right.”

“About?” she asked cautiously.

“Give the turtle some kind of power and it’ll still be useless.”

Athira took her hands off the wall. “You’re not useless. Just not trained yet.”

Shift brightened at that. “Forgive me?”

Athira nodded. Shift’s hand appeared next to hers, taking it and tugging her out of the car.

The shouts reaching her ears grew louder. She stiffened, the thought of being surrounded, pushed and shoved around by people who kept touching her threatening to envelop her once more. The panic rose up in her chest, once more telling her to get away from these people who wanted to know everything about her, no matter the cost to herself.

Her steps hesitated.

Shift gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “I’m a good distraction, don’t worry.”

Athira gave him a feeble nod. After that, the persona Shift adopted when dealing with crowds came into effect.

It was a difference in the way he pronounced his words, the way he held himself, acted, the things he said. Her usual Shift, joking at the slightest provocation was smooth and cool, yet somehow managing to maintain his dignity through it all.

That’s how he deals with it. If it were you, you’d just rocket off into the sky and never be seen again.

Though she’d dropped his hand, Shift kept close by her side, using himself as a barrier between her and anyone that got too close right up until the doors closed behind them. With a thick, solid wall between her and the crowd, Athira’s muscles finally released their vigil.

Talia was in the hall as they entered, looking like she was adjusting the flexible metal bands around her waist. She clipped her rune-bag on as she took long, swift steps towards them. Finally, she glanced up.

She halted as she caught sight of them, relief flooding her face. “Kione! They’re back!” she called, before once more detaching her rune bag. “I was just coming out to look for you. We were getting worried that you weren’t--“

“The hell took you guys so long?” asked Kione, bursting into the room from the side. He too looked as if he were about to leave, suited up with his various gadgets attached. “Even Talia’s been back from patrol for half an hour!”

“Monorail was attacked by a sleeper,” said Raph, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “If Athira wasn’t there we’d be in the hospital with Will right now.”

Kione rubbed his chin. He glanced at Talia.  

“It’ll be related,” she said with a shrug. “But tell them what you found first. They need to know.”

“Tell us what?” asked Shift, confused. Then his eyes flashed. “The files?”

Kione silenced Shift with his hand and looked around, almost too casually for Athira to believe. His eyes darted from one corner to the next with a nervous energy she knew was unusual of him.

“Since you’re all so late,” he said. “We’ll need to go straight down to the control room and analyse the map. There’s a few interesting things I need you to take a look at.”

He doesn’t trust it up here, realised Athira.

Kione jerked his head at the corridor Athira knew led to the control room of Indigo base, the one Kione had rebuilt from scratch to ensure the Elites only heard what he wanted them to. Everyone followed in silence, nothing but footsteps in the hallway. Even Talia looked too worried to throw more than quick suspicious glance in Athira’s direction.

That’s when Athira realised whatever Kione had found, something in it was seriously bad. Serious enough for Talia to consider her the minor threat of the situation.  

The group moved down the levels and into the ground, walking past the various keypad and scan-locked doors Kione had designed. None of it particularly mattered to Athira when she could simply walk through the walls herself, but she guessed for anyone else it’d be significantly harder to enter without Kione’s authorisation.

 Upon entering the control room, Athira took her place against a wall. Talia took the other side of the room, while Shift and Zoe sat on the long couch and Kione made for his chair. Raph leaned over the controls beside him, his face a mask of focus.

“What’d you find?” asked Raph.

“I cracked into the Elite files, like you asked,” said Kione. His fingers flew across the keyboard rapidly for a few seconds before he pushed his chair back and stood, placing a palm to the screen. “Originally, nothing, but then...”

Athira watched a few 3D looking orange folders crystallise into existence on the screen as Kione continued.

“I found some that were hidden, completely off their main database. And the only reason I found them is because I followed a pathway one of their devices had recently activated when I noticed it didn’t show up on my initial scan, and bam. Hidden folders.”

“How is that possible?” asked Raph. “You can’t just hide files like that on a database anymore. An orange colour would just--“

Kione was shaking his head. His palm was now outlined in his colour. “Well, they did. And even then, I had to break nearly six locks and disarm two traps that nearly killed me when I inserted my colour into the tech. But we’re getting off track.”

The gradual neon orange glow that’d been building around Kione’s palm flashed, and Athira understood then why he’d pushed his chair back. Kione balled his fist and backed up into the centre of the room, holding on to a thin rope of orange colour that was slowly but surely pulling the files on the screen into reality.

The three folders rested in a web of orange, floating gently above the ground. “There were thirteen files in what I assume was the final database. Between myself and Jordan--“

“You brought Jordan into this?” asked Talia, pushing off the wall.

Kione barely noticed her furious stare, such was his concentration on the folders.

“Yep. I build systems. Jordan cracks them. And even with him, we only managed to open three of the files. The rest... the rest are more complicated, attuned to specific types of orange but we’re working on them.”

 “Do what you can,” said Raph. “But don’t kill yourselves over it, please.”

“I can’t believe you’d drag Jordan into this,” muttered Talia.

Kione shrugged. “I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise the same for Jordan. He loves these kinds of challenges. Either way.” Kione took the first of the three files into his free palm and channelled additional colour into it.

“We know the basic colour affinities, right?” he said. “Red weaponry, Orange tech, Yellow energy, Green transformation, Blue runes, Purple mental, and if you don’t have any of these, you’re colourless. Right?”

Nods of affirmation around the room. Athira didn’t bother mentioning her own colour, intrigued to see where Kione was heading with this line of thought.

“Wrong,” said Kione. “The colourless aren’t really colourless at all. They’re pinks. And the pink affinity is the ability to see the past, present and future in various ways, depending on the person.”

“You’re telling me there’s another colour everyone is oblivious to? And their affinity is prediction?” said Raph.

Kione had the first folder completely open by now, its contents strewn around the air in the control room. He started on the second.

“Apparently the Elites discovered it during a test to see...” He waved a hand. “Anyway it doesn’t matter. What matters is that these pink colours can see through time and space, given their colour allows them to. And no one else ever picked up on it before because their colour works purely in their mindscape, unless they voice their thoughts, but then everyone just thinks that they’re crazy as a result of having no colour.”

Athira’s body felt cold.

“Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?” asked Shift.

“Because of this next part. The second folder,” said Talia, who was back on the wall. She still looked annoyed, but there was a grim edge to her expression. “This is where it gets interesting.”

“Interesting is one word for it,” said Kione. “After the Elites found out about the pink colour, they started gathering any pink they could. Claiming they were helping the colourless fit into a world of colours.”

“When in reality, they were gathering them up to get their prophecies,” said Zoe, her hands folded under her chin.

“Exactly,” said Kione. “But the scary bit is what they uncovered using the pinks.”

He opened a file that seemed to be composed more images of than words.

“The way the pink colour works varies from person to person, as every other colour does,” said Kione. “Zoe uses light, Discord uses sound but they’re both still yellow. Same with pink. Some see the future, some see the past, some draw it while some compose poems and read them aloud. But there’s one thing that all of them get a glimpse of.”

A shiver ran down Athira’s spine. She already knew the answer before Kione voiced it.

“The coming of Rathe,” she said, staring at the floor in front of her feet.

“The c-- yea, how’d you know that, Athira?”

Images were flashing through her mind, the woman’s face, the way her eyes rolled back in her head as she clung to Athira’s arms with a grip she  couldn’t shake spouting words that made no sense.

KingdomofSinKingdomofSinKingdomofSinYoucan’tyouwon’t please  don’t   let    him     in      --

Someone touched her arm, snapping Athira back to the control room.

Shift’s fingers brushed against her arm. “Thira?” he said. “You okay?”

“A woman,” said Athira, grabbing her arms and trying to order the memory. “I met a woman once, a colourless, she was spouting words that had no meaning, but if it’s as you say and she could see the future--“

“Then she recognised you as related to Rathe, somehow,” finished Shift.

Athira nodded. Which means in her visions, she saw me.

Athira didn’t voice this thought. She needed to hear more. See if the Elites knew anything that she didn’t. Was what she’d been searching for at her fingertips the whole time? Was it the Elites that held the answers?

“What else is in that file?” she asked, stepping forward to stand beside the files.

“There’s no single timeline of how it happens,” said Kione. The images shifted mid air, lining up into nearly a hundred different lines composed of images and words. “But in all of them, there’s a few common factors the Elites have managed to isolate, and some timelines seem more reliable than others.”

Once more, Kione moved his hand and several images enlarged over the rest.

“In every timeline, there’s something the Elites termed a ‘Prism’. Whatever it is, it seems to be the key to how everything else plays out. It’s the thing that will either combine the Spectrum, or destroy it, depending on whose hands it falls into.”

“Reader mentioned the Spectrum,” said Shift. “What is it?”

“For starters, the Spectrum isn’t an ‘it’.” Kione highlighted seven images. “From what I can tell, the Spectrum is a group of people, one of each colour, that has the capability to fight Rathe -- and win -- with the help of the Prism. In the timelines where Rathe gets through quickly, one or more of the Spectrum die, refuse to fight, or not all of them are found. Or the Prism gets into the wrong hands.”

As he spoke, the seven images spilled their contents into the air around them. Each was a different colour with a variety of shapes, words and sensations attached to it. Some were bright, some dark, but all of them were distinct in their own way.

Athira took in the sight like she was breathing for the first time in years.

Hope was filling her. There was a way to fight Rathe. She didn’t know where she fit in --maybe she was meant to gather them together? Unite them? Uniting people had never really been her thing, but if it meant Rathe would be defeated...

Kione interrupted her thoughts. “The yellow Spectrum seems to be the one they have the clearest image of. It’s the one person that they’re sure is part of the Spectrum. Which leads us into the third and final folder that we currently have access to.”

Keeping the Spectrum images open focused on the yellow, Kione spread his palm across the third, currently unopened folder. A single file emerged from its depths, which Kione promptly split into several subsections.

Athira wasn’t looking at the subsections at all. Her entire focus was on the single word that named the file, and in the ensuing silence, she knew the rest of Indigo saw it too.

“That...” Zoe paused, giving Kione a confused look. “That file has my name on it.”

“Yup,” was Kione’s only reply.

Zoe looked at him helplessly. “Why?”

“Because the Elites think you’re Spectrum,” said Talia quietly.

Zoe’s eyes went wide. “What!”

“Why?” said Raph. “Why is Zoe Spectrum, and not some other yellow?”

Kione tabbed back to the Spectrum images, zooming in on the yellow one.

“The pinks get glimpses of the Spectrum, and for whatever reason, the yellow one is always mentioned in some aspect by the pink in question. They talk about light, the healer’s touch calming the storm... There’s even descriptions of her physical form. Everything matches Zoe to perfection.”

As he spoke, images flashed across Athira’s eyes.

One in particular caught her attention. A faceless girl with platinum blonde hair and a flower stood surrounded by a halo of light, her wounds healing before their eyes. Another showed her as the centre of a group Athira assumed was supposed to be the completed Spectrum. Somehow, the yellow figure was holding on to them all at once, the constant bond between them to face the looming, black threat in the distance.

Athira couldn’t argue, no matter how much she wanted to. There was nothing she could see that would suggest it was another Colour. The aura, the regeneration, the light and the hair -- everything matched.

A scrap of what seemed to be poetry broke free from the rest, flippantly drifting around the room. Athira caught a glimpse of it as it passed.

      The healer’s touch may calm the storm, the raging tempest near to dawn--

              But without her light to guide the way, the dawn will never break to day.

Athira raised an eyebrow as it lapped the room. Of all the things to describe it as...

 “This is... insane,” said Shift. “You’re saying this is purely from the pink’s descriptions?”

“From thousands of pinks all over Thols, yes,” said Kione. “The larger picture is what the Elites are referring to in their documents as the ‘Kingdom of Sin prophecy’.”

“Kingdom of Sin?” asked Shift. He gave Athira a curious look. “That’s--“

“So even if the Elites are right, so what?” asked Athira quickly. She refused to meet Shift’s gaze. “We have something that can fight Rathe. Why are you and Talia still looking as if it’s a bad thing?”

“If that were it, it’d be okay. Cool, even. Hey guys, Zoe’s a saviour!” Kione shook his head, the orange colour flowing from his fingers wavering for a second. “But there’s more.”

The file pulled back together, and Kione’s colour scanned through the words, pulling out certain phrases.

Suggestions for the power amplification Project have currently been denied due to lacking information and potential risk to subject.

Tests will be conducted to explore the effect of the energy upon the Yellow Spectrum.

After recent interviews with the Yellow Spectrum, it has been concluded that The Project will be delayed until further Spectrum are found, but testing will proceed as planned.

“The hell is all this?” asked Shift.

Kione shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you exactly. Haven’t cracked into the Project’s file yet. But what I can tell you is that it involves harnessing some kind of energy, and that they seem to think that’ll buff Zoe’s colour and make her stronger.”

As Shift, Raph, Kione and Talia started arguing over what it could mean, Athira’s eyes fell on Zoe.

Her friend sat there quietly, hands under her chin, eyes staring without seeing at the floor. There was no glow surrounding her, only her pale skin and a haunted expression to mark her presence.

Zoe’s hand slid down her arm, fingers coming to rest on the armband.

Athira stopped breathing as it hit her. The armband the Elites had given her.

As if Athira needed more proof, without the support of her hands, Zoe’s head started to droop into her chest.

Hot anger overcame Athira, igniting the searing colour that swirled inside her. It sprung into action, it knew that feeling. It knew when its chance had come to finally escape from her body.

She startled Shift as she thrust a trembling hand towards Zoe. The Elites thought they could do as they please, did they? That they could simply infect her friend, her sister in everything but blood with whatever they wanted?

Black colour flared around her hand, translating immediately to the band around Zoe’s arm.

Zoe looked up in fright, eyes immediately alert as Athira closed her hand into a fist. She glared at the armband as if her will alone would suffice.Two words, clear as the fire in her veins entered her mind.

Destroy it.

Her colour obeyed. Like it had with the sleeper on the monorail, her colour didn’t simply break the armlet. It shattered it, trapping the pieces within a prison of ebony fury where the only escape was to be executed from reality.

The final piece fizzled in her grip. With nothing left to hold, her colour retreated inside her.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Vote and such if you feel like being nice =]