Extraction: Infinite Hunger

The autumn light stained the storefront glass amber the way it only did in the fall months, lying through every window along the block. Roasted coffee beans and steamed milk came out of a propped café door in one continuous breath, warm against the cold that had built since morning. Dead leaves scraped across the cobblestones ahead of them in slow arcs, the sound dry and papery.

"Sheila, Locke!" an excited barista said, seeing their regulars come through the clear glass doors. "The regular for both of you?"

Sheila nodded, as did Locke.

"It’ll be right out," the barista said.

Sheila approached the register and paid for both drinks while they were being made, without looking at or caring what the total was.

"Sheila, your cinnamon coffee is here, and Locke, that’s your matcha latte. Enjoy!"

They left the café afterwards, still having places to go on their day off.

Locke wore the academy uniform, a dark navy double-breasted jacket with gold buttons running in two parallel columns, along with the matching skirt. Locke moved easily in the uniform, despite its rigid first impression.

Cold wind brushed the ends of Locke’s straight brown hair where it fell against the back of her academy jacket and slipped across the bare skin above her knee-high socks as they entered a fashion boutique.

"That dress will only last you one season before it goes out of style," Locke said.

Sheila took her hands off the dress she had been examining. She had nearly decided to buy it before Locke made her remark. "You could at least pretend not to know everything all the time. Where is the fun in knowing the next time it will rain?"

"By not getting wet." Locke didn’t look at the dress, but at Sheila’s freshly dyed ombre hair.

Sheila scoffed, leaving without buying anything. Locke had already finished her drink and disposed of the plastic cup in a bin outside the door. Sheila had returned to drinking her cinnamon-spiked coffee in peace when the air around the alleyway they had just passed distorted.

A gate opened without any preface. One moment, the alley was made of bricks and the smell of old water pooling at the base of the drain. The next, a large diamond shape folded outward from a central point in the air at eye level. It held its shape in front of the two girls.

"Was that Gate supposed to happen?"

"No tracked Gates were scheduled to appear in this location for the next four hundred and ninety-five days, three hours, and—"

Locke didn’t stop because Sheila had made her stop.

Locke hadn’t stopped because Sheila told her to.

She stopped because she saw what Sheila was looking at.

A figure walked out the Gate.

His build was completely average in every way, making it impossible to remember any distinct feature about him. His arms hung loose; a dark cloth mask hid his face above the jawline. His eyes tracked the two girls in front of him.

His head tilted a fraction.

Sheila took one step back. Then another.

A bulky figure blocked her retreat. A man in his forties, grey already salting his hair, wearing the jacket of a Guild field responder.

"I’ll take care of this," he said, slightly moving Sheila to the side.

He moved without breaking stride, putting his body between the masked figure and the two girls.

The masked figure moved once, a punch already at the responder’s head before any of the three realized he had moved.

The responder absorbed the impact at the collarbone.

That was when they understood the punch’s true strength.

The responder’s body began to convulse; dark veins erupted from the point of contact, branching aggressively across his body. The responder’s Shade signature collapsed entirely, the Hollow signature surging up to replace it. He still held his right hand out toward the girls.

He mouthed his final human words to the two girls in front of him. "Run."

Sheila ran without looking back. Her cinnamon coffee dropped somewhere behind her. Looking back meant seeing what was behind her, and what was behind her had just been a person moments ago.

Locke hadn’t moved.

Her hands stayed frozen as if still cradling the matcha latte. The responder transformed at her feet. The masked figure stood at the edge of the open Gate, looking at her through the cloth mask.

Locke watched the Gate. Not the masked figure.

She began to count. One. The masked figure was already stepping back through the Gate. Two. The Gate geometry held without him on this side of it. Three. She noticed how the edges folded and held their shape. Four. The scent of the Gate finally reached her nose, a burning crystalline smell that never came through ordinary Gates. Five. The responder had finished becoming a Half-Hollow, rising on legs that were not fully his.

The Half-Hollow crept past Locke without acknowledging her, the pull of the main street dragging it forward.

Locke moved toward the Gate as it fizzled shut, the café’s warmth and the crunch of dead leaves already fading behind her.

Sheila sprinted across the tundra, breath tearing from her lungs, the cold biting into her legs with every stride. The tang of forcefully unmade Gates mixed heavily with the scent of spilled blood. Walls of displaced snow flanked her chest-high, the compressed weight exposing veins of pale blue ice at the base.

The recently sealed Gates left retinal afterimages fading across the frozen air in jagged, blue-white blurs.

She crossed twenty meters of cleared white snow toward Locke, who waited at the far edge of her vision. Locke’s legs swung playfully back and forth from a Gate she created behind her. Locke hopped off the Gate, brushing off the accumulated frost from the back of her dress.

The Gate sealed behind her with the sound of ice fracturing, the diamond-shaped pattern in the sky collapsing edge to edge, the light compressing to a thin line, then nothing at all. Snow particles rushed to fill the vacuum left behind.

Locke tilted her head slightly, unamused.

Sheila threw her punch without setup, the full commitment intending to decapitate her former friend cleanly.

Locke was already in motion, sidestepping before the fist had left Sheila’s shoulder, taking one clean step to the left, her weight shifting like water finding a new level. "The academy finally taught you to stop overextending," she said amusingly. "That punch used to leave you open for three seconds."

"It used to." Sheila quickly jabbed with her left hand, aiming for the right side of Locke’s body in the follow-through. Locke flowed freely around her hand, never letting the distance exceed more than four inches.

Locke struck Sheila’s shoulder with her palm, using little to no force. It was only intended to rotate her off-axis, but it was enough to make her complete five body spins before she landed back on the permafrost.

The air to Locke’s left fractured, the wide diamond shape of a Gate beginning to form. The blue-white light blinded, even in the vast white emptiness of the tundra. The snow particles near the opening split in half.

Sheila’s feet stuttered, her body registering the absence before her mind had caught up. Locke had disappeared through the Gate.

Locke reappeared behind Sheila, the sound of the Gate opening served as the tell, but Sheila missed it a half second too late when a palm struck her lower back. She turned; Locke had already disappeared, emerging through another Gate that ripped open to her left. Locke’s strike met the empty air where Sheila had been; Sheila had ducked after hearing the next Gate spawn.

Sheila raised her whole body, her fist cleanly connecting with Locke’s shoulder, crunching it inward and deafening the ambient sound of the Gate beside her.

Locke’s eyes moved down to the fist still connected to her shoulder. She didn’t look surprised. She looked more annoyed that her data model on Sheila needed to be updated.

Sheila changed hands, using her left hand to hook Locke’s right rib cage. Locke responded by using her own left hand to strike Sheila’s right rib cage. The blow ruffled the unpacked snow, condensing and settling on their hair and shoulders.

Locke’s eyes dropped to Ash’s hoodie that Sheila wore. The frozen Hollow gunk was plastered on it; light tears through the muted brown color showed the slight area where her blood vessels had popped during the Boreal fight.

She grinned.

Locke stopped engaging with strikes. Her previous exchanges were all observation. Now she was compiling the data she had gathered on Sheila.

And deep down.

Sheila knew what Locke did.

Sheila lunged. Locke dipped aside at the last instant and fell backward through a Gate she’d opened flat on the snow.

Locke reappeared from the same location. Sheila feinted the committed right. Locke stepped left into the gap the feint offered, while an exit Gate already formed to her right.

Sheila had already pivoted. She met Locke at the exit point and put a left hook into her ribs with full body weight. The impact cracked like a door slamming shut. Locke’s feet left the permafrost. She landed two feet back, her hand dropping instantly to the fractured bone. Her breathing hitched. Her perfect posture folded inward.

Locke didn’t counter. She created a Gate around her and let it swallow her whole, sealing with the sound of ice breaking. She reappeared twenty-five meters away, her hand still pressed to her ribs.

They circled each other, a Gate forming between their locations.

"That day," Locke said, "you ran. I always wondered if you’d keep running."

Sheila stopped circling. "You didn’t."

"Someone had to watch the Gate close."