Free Shades of Gray by Jackie Kessler

“It’ll last you longer.” He looked dreadful, his skin pale and his nose leaking blood.
    Lester set his bag down, slowly. You didn’t make sudden moves around dangerous animals, or Shadow powers. His Light could burn, but it couldn’t choke the life from you. Lester had a healthy respect for predators higher in the food chain.
    With Shadows, you had to outsmart them, distract them. If you came at them head-on, you’d lose.
    He said, “You try to take on Behemoth again? Not smart, mate.”
    “I was practicing.” George sniffed and swiped at the blood on his face. “I want to use the Shadow to fly, like Night.”
    “Night’s a freak of nature,” Lester said. “Just be happy with what you have, is my advice.”
    “I can do it.”
    The snap in George’s voice made Lester pause. George was mild-mannered to a fault, so mild that he wouldn’t even speak up to Angelica and tell her that he fancied her to the point of pain. “All right, Georgie-boy.” Lester clapped him on the shoulder. “If you want a Shadow sled, you’ll have one. Out of curiosity, did the Shadow punch you in the gob as well?”
    “I just … feel …” George’s jaw twitched. “I’m fine.”
    “Maybe you should see a medic,” Lester said. “You look like death, if you want my honesty.”
    “Well, I don’t!” George shouted. “And if you tell anyone, if Corp finds out about this and throws me to Dr. Moore to experiment on, it’ll be your fault, you Limey idiot!”
    Lester blinked, but before George could continue his rant he swayed and fell over, his head cracking against the metal lockers in front of him.
    “Bloody hell.” Lester bent over George, while he bellowed toward the practice room: “We need a medic in here!”
    George’s eyeballs twitched under his lids. His pulse was racing like a hover engine when Lester pressed two fingers against his neck.
    “Blackout. Blackout. George. ” Lester shook him. “Come on, son. Wake up.”
    George’s arm whipped out and caught Lester by the front of his shirt. His eyes were full of Shadow, black like someone had spilled ink across them. Lester felt his heart twitch in shock, but he let George hold on to him.
    “Make them stop,” George hissed. “I hear them and they never stop. I can’t keep fighting, Les …”
    A medic crew burst through the door and moved Lester to the side, working on George with smelling salts and a portable cauterizer for the cut in the back of his head.
    “He lose consciousness?” one of the medics demanded.
    “For a moment.” Lester watched George’s gaunt face. “He said he was …” He bit his tongue just in time. “He said he was feeling dizzy.”
    The lie rolled seamlessly out. Lester’s father, a man obsessed with honesty to the point of lit cigarettes and leather straps, had impressed on him his need to be a superlative liar.
    Of course Lester should report George’s incident.
    Make them stop. I hear them and they never stop. I can’t keep fighting …
    Of course George needed help if he was hearing voices.
    But there was real fear in George’s eyes, and Lester wouldn’t be the one to condemn him to that barbarian Moore ripping out his brain, his innermost thoughts and secrets laid bare. Secrets were all somebody like George Greene had.
    “Take care of yourself, yeah?” he told George. “And look on the bright side—maybe Holly will come and kiss you better.”
    “Screw you, man,” George rasped, but his eyes were his own again, and he managed a weak smile.
    Lester breathed a small sigh of relief. His teammate was going to be all right.
    He had to be. Otherwise, Lester had just lied for a man who needed psychiatric help desperately, who could endanger the very people he was supposed to watch over, and Corp would bury them both.

CHAPTER 10
    NIGHT
Aaron is fascinated by the Shadows. If it were up to me, we would lobotomize the both of them. They scare the hell out of me.
—From the journal of Martin Moore, entry #18
    N ight