Chapter 2

Rina ran.

Quill’s hand gripped hers like a vice, dragging her down the block and around a corner so fast her shoulder nearly dislocated. They turned left at the next intersection, the rubber of her shoes straining to remain in contact with the pavement. Her lungs burned. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Worse still was the pressure. It was like her skull was caught in a vice. As they turned the corner, Rina glanced back.

Behind them in the distance, the two masked figures moved in jerking, inhuman bursts. Their porcelain faces stared expressionlessly forward. Their limbs twisted around poles and clung to walls like some kind of insect. Elbows bent the wrong way. Fingers served as feet.

And the silence consumed everything. Deep. Pressing. Reality itself felt submerged.

Rina wanted to scream. She wanted to ask what they were. What was happening. But she couldn't. Even her breath made no sound in her lungs. But as silent as the world was around her, her inner world roared with feelings. Deep, primal feelings. Rage. Fear. Pain. Loss. A deep wrongness that felt like it was pouring in from outside and trying to overpower her, to crush every good thing inside her. She felt the overwhelming urge to despair, to go numb, to give up.

But this wasn’t the first time she’d felt like this. It wouldn’t be the last. With a practiced intention borne from years of meditation, she let it flow over and through her, giving it no place to take hold.

She glanced at Quill. He was panting now. Pale. But the way he moved suggested he wasn’t as tired as he may look. There was a limber grace to his movements that she’d only ever seen in her brother, who despite being close to fifteen years her senior still did advanced gymnastics three times a week. His eyes darted about, looking for their next move.

Stairs.

A long flight led down into Minowa Station. They took them two at a time, stumbling into a crowded terminal. As soon as they plunged into the crowd, the pressure in her head vanished. Sound returned in a deafening rush — voices, footsteps, blaring advertisements, the metallic shriek of an incoming train. Rina gasped like someone who’d been underwater too long.

Quill shoved past bodies. “Move, MOVE!”

“What the hell is happening?!” Rina shouted, following close behind. “What are those things?!”

“They’re called the Silent Choir,” Quill said, eyes darting back toward the entrance. “They aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Not supposed to be here? What are they? What are you even talking about?”

“They steal emotion,” he snapped. “Not just your feelings. You. They erase people from the inside out. There’s no way they should’ve followed me—”

The intercom overhead chimed in, announcing the coming arrival of the next train in a few moments.

“We can’t stay here. We’re taking the next train. The crowd’s masking our emotional signature, but not for long. We’ve got to get far enough away that they lose our trail for good. Be ready.”

A few seconds later, the train roared to a halt in the station. He grabbed her wrist again, and pulled her with him onto it, going as far toward the front of the train as possible. Once he found an area near the front that was mostly devoid of people, Quill took a seat. The intercom announced door closure. Within moments, they were out of the station and speeding along to the next.

Rina sat in silence beside him, her mind reeling. Thirty minutes ago, she’d been listening to Shiro talk about her mother’s attitude. Now here she was, riding a train to some random station along with a member of her group she’d only just now officially just met. After being chased down by inhuman… things in masks. And that wasn’t even beginning to unpack the suffocating silence they seemingly brought with them. Some part of her was convinced that this was all some sort of very convincing lucid nightmare. But, no matter how many times she’d pinched herself, she was still here.

Finally, Quill cleared his throat.

“I know you’ve got questions. If you want to ask them, now’s the time.”

He was looking at her. The expression on his face was a complicated mix of emotion, but fear, sadness, and exhaustion were all part of it.

“Quill, why are those things chasing us?”

“In my world, they hunt people the government wants to silence. I fled my world to escape them. There wasn’t supposed to be a way for them to follow me here, but….”

“What do you mean, ‘my world’?”

“Rina, I’m not from Tokyo. Or Earth, for that matter. And neither are they.”

Rina fell silent, trying to process this. Her first instincts were to laugh at the absurdity of what he’d just said. Or to accept what he’d just said as evidence he was out of his mind. But she couldn’t deny what she’d just experienced. Those things chasing them had been real. The feelings and the silence been too. …Hadn’t they? Was she losing her mind too?

“If you’re not from Earth, what are you? Are you an alien or something?”

Quill snorted.

“No, I’m not an alien. Not like you mean it, anyways. I’m not from another planet in your universe. I’m from… someplace else. I suppose ‘another universe’ might be the most accurate explanation.”

“Then how did you get here?” Rina asked.

“The resistance got our hands on plans for a transport device the Ministry were developing. We built it as a means to escape the city. I volunteered to be the first one to test it. We thought it’d lead to a different part of our planet. Instead, I ended up here. That was ten years ago, by your reckoning of time.”

“Ten years?! Why didn’t you ever go back?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Rina. Take a wild guess,” he said dryly. Seeing the blank look on her face, he leaned back and sighed.

“I intended to, when I first arrived. The plan was for me to go into the portal, which would close behind me. If I made it through safely, I’d use the resonance link in this bracelet here to re-open the portal and come back through to report back.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Once I was here, and free of the Ministry’s influence, I could experience happiness, and hope, and so many other things I’d never felt before. I could go back through and tell the rest what I’d found, but if I did, it’d collapse the connection link to this place. It’s a one-time round trip. What would happen if I made it back through and could never return?”

“So you chose to stay even with everyone counting on you?”

“Yes. I suppose that makes me selfish. But for once in my life I wanted to choose my own happiness over fighting for anyone else’s. I thought maybe I could live a life here that would be free of the horrors of my old life. But now that the Choir’s here….”

The train’s intercom chimed.

“Minami-Senju Station. Now arriving at Minami-Senju Station.”

The train slowed to a halt. The doors hissed open. Passengers rose and began to deboard. Quill and Rina rose too, steeping out onto the platform. Quill’s head turned one way, then another, his eyes still on high alert. He took her hand again, and led her up the steps out of the train station.

It was almost fully night now when they exited. The street was almost entirely empty. Quill’s eyes darted around, checking every avenue of approach. Once he seemed satisfied that nothing was coming, he turned back to her.

“You don’t live far from here, right?”

Rina blinked.

“Uh, no. I don’t, actually. How–?”

She stiffened as something large shambled out of the alleyway a few dozen steps behind Quill. The light of a nearby streetlamp glinted off its mask. White. Blank. Flawless. Seeing her eyes go wide, Quill spun around and swore. The word died in mid-air as the sound was sucked out of reality. The pressure that she’d felt in her head returned even more intense than before.

They ran. Quill turned down one side street, then another. Then they cut through an alleyway to another street. Rina’s chest burned. Her legs ached. Her eyes watered. But they kept running. Quill was pale now, his breath visibly gasping like hers. The look on his face was not just fear anymore, but terror. The same look an animal running for its life from a predator wore. In a strangely detached way, she wondered if her face wore the same kind of expression.

They rounded another corner. Another dark shape rose up in front of them, maybe a dozen meters away. Quill pulled the two of them to a sudden stop, his eyes darting around frantically for any place to run. A few paces ahead on the left was another alleyway. Pulling her along, he dove into it. They made it a few steps when Rina’s heart flew into her throat.

The alleyway ended in a solid wall. Barring a few trash cans and a fire escape perhaps ten meters overhead, there was nothing else. No doors. No other way out.

They were trapped.

Rina could see Quill swear silently. His eyes darted around, looking for a solution. Then he ran to one of the garbage cans and flipped it over. Trash spilled all over the ground. He carried it under the fire escape and stepped up on it. Even with its boost, he was seven meters short of reaching it. He stepped down and ran to another, emptying it and bringing it next to the other. He stacked several of the cans together in a pyramid and climbed to the top. But even on top of this, he was still nowhere near reaching the fire escape ladder.

The first of the Choir Voices entered the entrance to the alleyway, its looming black form blotting out the streetlight behind it and casting the entire alleyway into deep shadow. The pressure inside Rina’s head swelled even further, the roar of negative emotion threatening to overwhelm her. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes and ran cold down her face as she stared at the creature approaching her. Some part of her mind remained in denial, even as it drew closer and closer.

This isn’t real. You’re dreaming. When it grabs you, you’ll wake up. Don’t run anymore. Just relax. It’ll be over soon.

Despite this, Rina kept backing away. The Voice was approaching slowly now, its movements slow. Predatory. It drew closer and closer. The roaring and pressure inside Rina grew to such a fever pitch that her grip of consciousness began to fade. She felt light. Dizzy. The edges of her vision began to blur, then darken.

Something bright flared to life behind her, casting a spotlight around her and throwing her shadow onto the approaching monster. A hand grabbed her arm and spun her around. A flickering circle of light hung suspended in the air, and Quill stood in front of it. He motioned for her to follow.

Come on!

She looked at him through water-soaked eyes, her brain struggling to make sense of what she was seeing around the overwhelming pressure in her brain. Quill stepped into the floating circle, his leg and the left side of his body disappearing into it, leaving his other half oddly suspended in mid-air. His mouth was moving again. He held out his hand.

Rina! HURRY!

Rina glanced back. The Choir towered over her, only steps away. She turned back to Quill and took his hand. He nodded, and she found herself lifted from the ground as he grabbed her wrist with the other and pulled her in.