Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)
Sarah Raughley
To the whole fam.
PART ONE
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
—Plato’s Republic
1
“I NEED TO THROW UP,” I said.
Not the kind of words that inspired confidence before a secret mission. Still true, though.
Our helicopter’s electromagnetic armor protected us from the phantoms outside, but I could still hear them thrashing in the sky, screeching through the violent Saharan winds that battered the metal. Between the howls and my motion sickness, my stomach was lurching. “No, really, I feel nauseous.”
“Oh, so it wasn’t just me, then?” On the opposite bench, Lake laughed nervously as she finished strapping on her parachute with the help of the agent assigned to monitor us. “It’s actually kind of funny, but my lungs seem to be having a hard time, um, inhaling.” Lake pulled at the maroon fatigues she wore under the vest, the same as mine, then turned to the agent. “Are you sure this parachute vest thingy is supposed to be on this tight?”
Mine was definitely a bit too cozy, but then one did have to be serious about safety measures before taking suicide jumps out of a flying vehicle.
“God, you two are so pathetic.”
Chae Rin. For the purpose of the mission, she and Belle were in other helicopters, but I could still feel her biting presence. Her laughter battered my skull through my inner earpiece. “Like, is this your first mission? Suck it up.”
“Excuse me for showing a bit of humanity,” Lake bit back. Somehow it sounded even more dramatic in her British accent.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m seriously throwing up now.”
“Swallow it,” a voice snapped at us through my earpiece.
It was the glorious lack of compassion I’d come to expect from Sibyl Langley, director of the Sect’s European Division. The woman had spent the last two months unapologetically delivering me directly into harm’s way, so I knew it was stupid to expect anything else.
“You’re a mean lady,” I complained.
“So I’ve been told. But I’ll get over it, and so will you.”
She was at the London facility, monitoring us from Communications, which meant every stupid thing I said would be heard by an entire room full of people who were probably endlessly thankful that they were several thousand miles away from danger. Lucky bastards.
“Now,” Sibyl continued, “we only have five minutes before we get to the drop site. This is a sensitive mission. We’re going over the mission details one more time.”
“Seriously?” Chae Rin sounded annoyed. “You know I typically like to relax before flinging myself headfirst into danger.”
“We’ve got one shot here to capture Saul, so I want to make sure you are one hundred percent clear on what you need to do today. Now stop talking.”
Only one shot. But that’s how it was with Saul, the man who’d somehow managed to harness the power of the phantoms to reign terror upon the world. Under his command, phantoms had attacked cities, including mine, and murdered thousands. I’d seen it with my own eyes, seen the bodies left in the wake of his cruelty. We Effigies—Lake, Belle, Chae Rin, and me—came together in the first place to stop his murderous spree, to find out who he was and why he was wreaking havoc. We captured him, yes, but we weren’t able to uncover all of Saul’s secrets. Maybe we would have if he hadn’t escaped.
We almost had him. Two months ago in April, we stopped Saul from blowing up a train full of innocents, but he still managed to get away. The Sect had been trying to track his frequency all this time. Didn’t have a lead for weeks—until today. In that respect, Sibyl’s urgency was understandable. Needless to say, since Saul had escaped from Sibyl’s custody in London, she was under immense pressure from the world’s governments and Sect higher-ups to deliver his head on a platter.
Which is where we came in.
I peered at Lake, who busied herself by fiddling nervously with the pair of goggles the Sect had given us to guard against the sandstorm. Neither of us was particularly keen to face Saul again, but this was our job. We were the Effigies. He was the terrorist. No-brainer.
I gave her my best reassuring nod anyway. “Okay, so this is a simple grab mission. We capture Saul and get out, hopefully with our limbs still attached.”
“With Saul, nothing’s that simple,” said Sibyl, and I could almost see her straightening her back, brow furrowed. “On the one hand, according to our intelligence, Saul’s hideout should be at these coordinates.”
They flashed on the monitor bolted in the corner, just above Lake’s head. She twisted around to see it too—the blinking red square above a satellite image of desert dunes.
“Nice to see Saul found a hole to hide in,” I said. “With all the other dirt-dwelling creatures.”
“Fitting for him, annoying for us, since we’re the ones who have to ferret him out.” Chae Rin’s voice came through loud and clear in my inner ear. “Scratch that—I’m the one who has to ferret him out.” She paused. “None of you pay me enough.”
“Yes, Chae Rin will dig out the hatch,” Sibyl said. “His bunker should be approximately one hundred feet below the surface. Lake will aid in the descent from the helicopter.”
“You guys don’t pay me enough,” Lake muttered under her breath.
Sibyl’s sigh was enough to quiet them both down. “We have a lock on his spectrographic signature, so we can confirm that he’s still at the location.”
Spectrographic signatures were how the Sect was able to trace phantoms—and, when they needed to, Effigies. The Sect could trace the frequency of a special mineral, cylithium, existing naturally in both. For us, it pops up on the Sect’s radar whenever we use our powers, even if they can’t tell from the signature itself exactly which Effigy they’re tracking. But Saul wasn’t like the rest of us Effigies. Somehow, he’d found a way to mask his frequency. If we’d kept him in Sect custody for a little longer, we might have been able to find out how. But for now all we could do was chase him down along with the questions he’d left in his wake.
A shiver suddenly tightened the muscles in my arms. I guess I was still getting used to thinking of Saul as an Effigy like us.
“On the other hand, like I said, with Saul, nothing’s that simple. For several days after the train incident, Saul’s spectrographic signature had been unstable, as if he couldn’t control his ability to mask it from us. Your encounter with him may have destabilized his psyche.”
“Well, you did kind of cut off his hand,” Lake said.