Samori
The change began in my bones, a slow, creeping weightlessness that spread through my limbs like ice water in my veins. The gunpowder-thick air around me shimmered, colors bleeding out of the world as if someone had drained the saturation from reality itself. The deafening chaos of moments before screams, gunshots, the grinding of machinery compressed into a silence so complete it pressed against my eardrums like cotton.
I struggled to my feet, Bean's lifeless form cradled against my chest. She felt impossibly small now, her head lolling against my shoulder, dark hair spilling across my arm. The warmth was already leaving her body. My legs trembled under her weight not because she was heavy, but because my own strength was abandoning me. Blood from my shoulder wound painted her pale cheek in crimson streaks.
Around us, the cavern had become a frozen tableau of violence. Officers hung suspended mid-charge, their weapons extended, faces twisted in fury behind those insectoid goggles. A worker stood motionless with his pickaxe raised above his head, mouth open in a silent scream of pain from Bean's psychic assault. Even the dust motes hung motionless in the stale air, caught between heartbeats in this suspended moment.
"I know you're here," I huffed, struggling to project strength I didn't feel. My voice echoed strangely in this colorless world, as if the sound itself was being drained of life.
The temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant. Shadows began to gather in the corners of my vision not moving, but somehow becoming more present, more aware. The silence shifted, taking on weight and intention.
"Who taught you my name, Samori? Why would you call on me?"
The voice materialized like honey poured over broken glass—feminine, melodic, but with an edge that made my skin crawl. It came from everywhere and nowhere, too casual for this tomb of violence, too beautiful for this moment of death. She spoke as if we were discussing the weather, not standing surrounded by frozen corpses and the girl bleeding out in my arms.
"We need your help," I retorted, my voice cracking with exhaustion and grief. "You didn't help her and she died. Now at least you can help her—"
"She's dead, huh? Well, that was going to happen sooner or later. I'm surprised you all lasted this long... well, you did, but your sister is—"
"My sister is right here," I finished, cutting through her casual dismissal like a blade. I pulled Bean closer, feeling her cooling skin against mine. I wouldn't let her become past tense. Not yet.
The air around us rippled with something like amusement.
"Take me out of here," I demanded, but even as the words left my mouth, I could feel this unnatural pause beginning to fracture. One of the frozen officers' fingers twitched almost imperceptibly.
"I cannot move you, just as I couldn't move your mother every time she drugged herself to call upon me."
The mention of my mother hit like a physical blow, but it also confirmed what Bean had told me. The final gambit. The last resort that might kill me but could save us both.
"Nzingha." I spoke her name like an incantation, each syllable deliberate and weighted with purpose.
Following Bean's desperate instructions, I closed my eyes and reached out with my power—not just to the dying officer at my feet, but to every frozen soul in this cavern. I felt their suspended emotions like live wires: the officers' intoxicating rush of authority and control, drunk on their power to decide who lived and died. The workers' bone-deep depression, years of grinding hopelessness that had worn them down to shadows of themselves. The fear, the rage, the resignation I pulled at all of it.
The sensation was overwhelming. Each person's emotional state crashed into me like a physical force. Officer Cam's arrogance felt like swallowing molten metal. A worker's despair tasted like copper and ash. Another officer's sadistic excitement made my stomach lurch. But I gathered it all, wrapped it around Nzingha's name like chains forged from human suffering and determination.
My vision blurred as the mental strain mounted. Blood ran hot from my nose, mixing with the tears I didn't realize I was crying. The high-pitched ringing in my ears from using my power reached a crescendo that threatened to split my skull. But I held on, pouring every ounce of collective human emotion into that single word.
"Come!" The word tore from my throat with a voice I didn't recognize deeper, older, carrying the weight of every soul in Howl's desperate hunger for something better.
The frozen world around us began to crack like ice under pressure. Fissures of normal time and color seeped through the grey suspended moment.
"Samori... please," Nzingha's voice rang with something I hadn't heard before genuine worry, maybe even fear. "This is unnatural."
My knees buckled, and I collapsed with Bean still in my arms, the stolen emotions of dozens of people still coursing through my system like poison. But I had done it. I had forced her hand.
Now I just had to survive whatever came next.