Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) by Jonathan R. Stanley Page B

the guard reaches for the service door and unlocks the padlock.  I hold it shut but he has nothing left in him to pull it open.  As the life leaves him, the kharma possessing his body escapes like a puff of gas and sweeps over the elevator.
    Five .
    “ Roger, light,” Corbin says.
    “No,” I say.  “Blow the doors off.  Now!”
    Roger pulls out a rune stone, pushes Corbin behind him and presses it against the elevator doors with his palm.  There is a deafening crack followed by a resounding explosion, ripping the metal doors apart and tearing through several feet of reinforced concrete.  The elevator is halfway between level five and six, with a small opening from the explosion leading to the lower of the two floors.  The elevator, despite the shockwave, continues to rise.
    “Out!” I yell to Roger as Corbin and I grab onto the concrete and metal beams and begin to push down against the elevator’s motor with our legs.  Together we exert enough force to match the 4,000 lb. weight limit and cause the emergency brakes to engage.  At the same time though, the entropic kharma outside begins to swirl inside.  It’s visible, in the form of smoky shadows, and a form – a source – is somewhere within it, but too small or too fast for me to pinpoint.  Roger slides out onto the fifth floor and rolls to his feet, followed by Corbin.  Behind me, the shadows begin to take a form.  They creep down across the back wall and then suddenly, over me.  It’s hot, like an intense fire is at my back, yet I feel strangely calm and wonder if this thing isn’t trying to help me in some way – if it’s not trying to tell me something.  Suddenly hands reach through the film of blackness and grab me by the collar.
    I am pulled from the shadow by Corbin and the act is intensely painful.  Doubt and fear fill me along with an intense longing to return to the shadow.  It’s an urge so strong that I’m alarmed.  “Stay out of the shadows!” I yell over the ringing in my ears.  “No shit,” Corbin mumbles as he helps me away from the elevator.  I hear Roger next to me, yelling, “I have a plan!  We have to get outside!” Corbin points to the nearest exterior half-wall where we can see our reflections in a glass office building across the street.  We start running, the smoky shadows spilling out of the elevator shaft behind us.  They hiss loudly as little threads connect shadows within the garage together and the energy moves between the dark spots.  We near the fifth story edge as I sense Roger begin to hesitate.  “How high to the roof?” he gasps between breaths.
    We don’t bother to answer – we need to get to the roof, we’ll get to the roof.  Corbin and I grab Roger under his arms and lift him up as we get to the edge and leap onto the railing.  Roger dangles out over the edge before Corbin tosses him around and holds him by the back of his coat like a cat by the scruff of his neck.  I make the jump to the sixth floor and hook my legs into the guard rail before leaning back, upside down, to help Corbin and Roger up.  We repeat the process and find ourselves on the flat gravel covered roof, surrounded on all sides by sky scrapers.
    “Now what?”  Corbin demands.
    Roger seems slighted.  “We’re outside, aren’t we?”
    “This was your plan?” I yell.
    He points hesitantly upwards towards the overcast sky.  “It’s daytime.  No shadows.”
    Corbin looks to me.  He senses nothing. “Did it follow us?”
    I look around but don’t see or feel anything either.
    “See?” Roger says.
    “You’re just a shadow,” I hear a female voice say.  I whip around but Roger hasn’t reacted to it.  Corbin is looking around though, like he heard something , but not as clearly as I did.
    “What?” Roger asks but we both shush him.
    “We’re all just shadows on the wall.”
    I feel a tingling in my ear and quickly reach for the itch.  I grab a hold of a delicate insect limb and pull a tiny