Guardians of the Dark

Kasen stammered out of the railway pod even before it properly stopped. He struggled to keep to his feet, and toppled over with his hands on the concrete. His palms seared and his right eye throbbed, but he charged on, barging through the Metropolis of Light Hospital’s emergency entrance. Only emergency pods could typically access it, but the AOL pod from Craedor Fortress had taken him all the way around.

The emergency ward buzzed with life. Injured recruits lay on beds and stretchers and mattresses, some even on blankets against the walls. Blood spatters painted the floors, and a chorus of groans filled the air. Doctors and nurses rushed from patient to patient, constantly yelling requests for more bandages, sealing-spray and pain medication. Kasen stepped aside for two incoming paramedics with an injured recruit.

The girl lay on her side, clutching a wound under her ribs. She seemed familiar. Perhaps she attended his school in the Eastern Living Section. Tears slid down her cheeks, slowly and strained, almost painful-looking.

“Hey, is she going to be okay?” Kasen asked without intending to.

“Why? Do you know her?” asked one of the paramedics. When Kasen shook his head, he let out something of a scoff, then rushed on without replying. “We’ve got a girl, conscious but suffering from a deep laceration!”

A nurse from across the room called them over, and they wheeled the girl away.

Kasen stared after her, at a loss for words. What could possibly have happened to cause this much damage? Raiders typically only went for resources and weapons. They hurt whomever got in their way, but the recruits would’ve been evacuated the moment the incident occurred. His father would’ve made sure of it.

Damn.

His father.

Kasen forced his way deeper into the emergency ward. According to the news bulletin, his father was in critical condition, which meant he’d already been tended to. They’d have transported him to a room for sure. If only he could ask someone … He spotted a camera crew in the empty space behind the reception desk. His mother stood across from them, her back turned to the chaos and a microphone to her mouth.

“Mom!” he cried, but she didn’t hear him above the noise of injured recruits and medical professionals at work. He hopped over a pile of blood-stained sheets, on his way to the reception desk, when –

A nurse jumped in front of him. “Hello there,” she said as kindly as her out-of-breath, visibly-exhausted temperament could manage, “let me take a quick look at that eye of yours.” Then, before he could stop her – or respond in any way – she put her hand over his eyes and sprayed some type of liquid around it.

Kasen winced at the burn. Malcolm had quite the swing on him as well, except his fist didn’t look half as bad as his.

“Is this your only wound?” asked the nurse, examining him from top to bottom.

“Yea, but –”

“Really? Well, you might just be the luckiest one here!”

Kasen felt around his wounded eye. Puffy, and warm to the touch. He could only imagine what he looked like …

“Ah!” The nurse spotted his bruised knuckles and made to grab his hand, but he yanked it away before she could.

“There’s no need,” he insisted, “I’m actually a –”

“Oh … I see.” The nurse took a lengthy step back. Her eyes were on Kasen’s chest, on the emblem stitched across it. The Guardian emblem. She popped the spray into her coat pocket. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

Kasen raised his hands in defence. He tried to explain before she called security, “I know, but … I saw on the news …”

“Who do you think you are, young man?”

“My name is –”

“Kasen!” came his mother’s voice. She pushed the nurse aside and fell into his arms. She smelled of medicine, bandages, and a touch of perfume. He wrapped his hands around her, squeezing her tightly into him.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Traynor,” the nurse apologised, looking askance at Kasen. Her eyes every few seconds flicked to the emblem on his uniform. “I didn’t know this Guard – AHEM – recruit was your son.”

“It’s quite alright,” said his mother, prying away from him. She nodded at the nurse, then waited for her to set off before she spoke. “Kasen, my darling, what on earth happened to your eye? Oh, and look at your hand!”

Kasen held his mother by the elbows. “That doesn’t matter now. Mom, where is he?”

No answer.

“I need to see him …” Kasen tried to push past her, but his mother held him back with her hand on his chest.

Her lips trembled and she couldn’t speak.

“W – What happened out there? This couldn’t just have been another raid?” Kasen looked her in the eyes. Her red, watery, withering eyes. Something wasn’t right. He pushed past her again, still to no success.

“Kasen, they did everything to save him,” said his mother, at last.

Kasen stopped struggling. A fogginess filled his head, waxing over his eyes. He reached for his mother’s hand on his chest and clutched it in his own. Her fingers were cold and bony, trembling just as much as her lips.

“D – Dad’s,” he stuttered, “dead?”

A moment of silence cut between them. His mother shut her eyes, and a thick tear tumbled down her cheek. Only the one. She took a deep breath, then held it without exhale. When she emptied her chest and opened her eyes again, something about them had changed. Mutual grievance had switched to pity, to sympathy.

“Mom,” he managed to ask, “what is it?”

“My dear boy …” She placed her free hand behind his ear, brushing his hair. “Your dad will be just fine.”

Kasen jerked back. He frowned so deeply, he thought his forehead might stay that way. “Wait, he’s fine? Then what did you mean when you said they tried everything to save him?” He fought the urge to ball his fists.

No answer.

“Mom! What did you mean?”

“I – I wasn’t talking about your father.”

Kasen’s mouth parched. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he struggled to swallow, to manage a breath. The realisation passed through him the way icy water rolled across one’s skin. He broke into chills.

“I’m so sorry.” His mother stepped in for another hug, but a bed wheeled into the corridor, forcing them apart.

The nurses maneuvered the bed past them, grazing their fronts. A person lay on top of it. Another recruit, a guy. He had dark skin, curly hair, and a way-too-big mouth for his face. His eyes were shut and his chest didn’t move. Bandages, tubes and gauze lay all around him, soaked in reddish-brown liquid. Blood.

Kasen’s hands clipped around the bed railing. He squeezed with everything he had, but since he didn’t have much left, his grip easily came loose. He sauntered after the bed, clawing at it, mumbling inaudible words.

“Kasen,” said his mother, trying to hold him back, but he broke past her and launched himself at his best friend’s feet.

“Clay!” he outright bawled. Most of the emergency ward went quiet. “No, no … wake up! Clay, wake up!”

But Clay didn’t move.

The tears in Kasen’s eyes blinded him. A couple of nurses approached to pull him off the corpse, but he yanked and kicked, fighting to keep a hold of Clay. He heard his mother calling out to him in the background, and the nurses ordering him to let go. He heard his own cries – a stranger’s wails – which sounded as though they came all the way from the other side of the hospital. A patient in the psych ward, perhaps.

Kasen got a firm hold of the mattress and jerked himself forward. He fell face first in Clay’s lap, his nose buried in his clothes. It smelled of fabric softener – baby powder scented – and the tropical fruit bubble-gum he used to chew. The packet rattled in Clay’s pocket, and Kasen reached through the bandages for it.

“Kasen, get off of him right now!” shrieked his mother. Her voice pitched – a sound he seldom heard her make.

Kasen held the packet of bubble-gum against his chest and relaxed. The moment he did so, the nurses yanked him off Clay, practically flung him to the ground, and wheeled the bed out of the emergency ward.

The hospital floor seared icily against his bottom. He sat with his head between his knees, blinking, staring, gawking at his hands, stained with blood. With Clay’s blood. His mouth watered, and something more than just bile rushed up his throat. He tried to resist it – to be strong – but he threw up right there on the floor.

“Kasen!” His mother crouched down next to him. She used the tip of her blazer to wipe his mouth clean. “It’s alright. Let it all out. I know this is difficult, and I know you’re hurting, but he saved your father’s life.”

Kasen squeezed his eyes to wring them dry. “W – What do you mean?”

“Exactly that.” She raised his chin with her fingertips. “Clay stepped in just in time. Your father would’ve died.”

“B – But why would he do such a thing?”

His mother shrugged.

Kasen allowed her to pull him to his feet. Once upright, he removed her hands from his chin and squeezed them. “I swear,” he said through clenched teeth, “if I ever find the Raider who did this – I’ll kill him.”

“Kasen, you don’t know what you’re saying –”

“No, I do. And I mean it.”

“Please, you don’t understand …” His mother shook her head at him, dismally. Her bottom lip curled over and more tears surged down her face. She reached to cup his cheeks, but Kasen slapped away her hands.

“I do understand. Whoever did this has to pay. They took away an innocent guy’s life … he had so many dreams, mom … so many things he wanted to do.” Kasen cleared his throat. “Clay’s murderer must die!”

“I was him, Kasen,” his mother blurted out.

He frowned. “Who?”

“Look for yourself.” She pointed a trembling finger at the projection pad on the wall behind the reception desk.

Kasen turned. It took him a moment to figure out what she meant, but the second he saw the news footage, everything that remained of his person, of his soul and spirit, shattered to pieces. He stared up at the surveillance footage of Clay’s death – of the attack on his father, and the Raider who pierced them both with a staff.

He wasn’t particularly large, but towered an entire head above Clay. He wore all black clothing – the colour of his hair – and had a terribly pale complexion. Blood gushed from his shoulder and he hunched over in pain, but didn’t let go of the staff. The next moment, he fell, and his face turned to the camera …

“N – No,” whispered Kasen.

Those eyes.

That nose.

Those tiny little creases around his mouth.

Kasen stepped back, right into his mother. His first instinct was to writhe, to struggle, but she held him tighter than ever before. She buried her chin in his neck, and whispered his name into his ear, over and over.

“It’s impossible,” said Kasen.

“Darling …”

“I don’t – I don’t believe it!” Kasen choked on his own saliva. He still tasted vomit in his mouth, and a slight hint of metal. “Samael would never do that … he’s not a killer … he wouldn’t … he just wouldn’t …”

Kasen stopped writhing. He relaxed in his mother’s arms, then allowed himself to be courted down the corridor and into a room to their left. The sounds of the emergency ward were replaced by that of several machines, all beeping in unison. A man’s breathing cut above them all. A man in a bed in the middle of the room.

“Look who came to see you, Bentley,” said his mother as if his father wasn’t just lying there, unconscious.

“Mom, he can’t hear you,” he insisted.

“You don’t know that.”

Kasen sat down on a chair next to the bed. His eyes drifted to his father’s heart, to the patch of white gauze that covered his stab wound. How was he even still alive? Why was he still alive, when Clay wasn’t?

“Is he in a coma?” he asked.

“Medically induced, yes,” said his mother. She walked over to the window, then opened the blinds to let in some light. “Some of his organs went into failure, and his heart isn’t strong enough for the restoration process.”

Kasen drifted off as she droned on. Then, he suddenly blurted out, “The last time dad and I spoke, we were fighting.”

His mother shut up.

“I didn’t even see him this morning. He didn’t want to see me off.” Kasen made to get up from the chair, but his mother rushed in and pushed him back down. She sat on the arm of the chair, holding his father’s hand.

“I know things aren’t ideal, darling,” she whispered into his hair, “but he’s alive, which means you’ll get to see him again.”

A pause.

“You’ll get to make things right with him again.”

Kasen nodded without saying a word. He feared that if he did, he would burst into tears again. He wanted to cry, not out of sadness – well, he was sad – but out of tiredness and anger and utter disappointment. He was tired of defending Samael, angry that he let himself believe a Corrupted could ever be good, and disappointed that the person whom he thought of as a brother, turned out to be a monster …

Everyone had been right all along.

Malcolm too.

Samael of the Dark should’ve been left that day to die.