Published:
March 16, 2023
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“Sector Seven under fire, Sector Nine under fire, Sector Thirteen has visual on another advance force!” The radio chatter continued on, delivering a continuous stream of bad news. The Chizerein Gates were under attack.
“How did they find us?” Secretary Graham, top brass of Interdimensional Affairs, asked as he watched the monitor feeds of the carnage befalling his planet.
“They didn’t track us,” an agent said, “they invaded everywhere.”
“Then what hope is there for us?” Graham asked. His hands fell limp beside him.
* * *
The black corridor rushed by, strange light shining from the wall-mounted sconces. This place was the opposite of what Oleg was used to. Light was reversed. The black illuminating, color seeming to drain away at what once were bright LED lamps. When the Shadow descended, they changed the fundamental nature of this world to one that was more suited to their own.
His steps were heavy, the hard metal of his combat boots reverberating in the narrow hall, disguised only by the war happening outside of the building. Ahead, the corridor forked in two, and just as Oleg veered to the left he saw the haunting red eyes of the enemy. Their sightline looked like some strange scanner, the outline of their field of vision evident as it clashed with the weird shadows of their domain.
The red cone spun towards Oleg and he threw himself right and half slid, half tumbled into the other hall. Graceful, Oleg thought, pausing. He waited to hear if the two Shadow soldiers were heading towards him. Still safe.
He was deep within Sector One, where all the Gates were controlled. It was the first stop for the invaders. Oleg was lucky. He was a mechanic on the lowest rung of the lowest totem pole here. By sheer coincidence he was trapped in an air vent when the Shadow appeared. When he freed himself, he was the only one left alive, alone in a world where the light turned inside out.
“What to do,” Oleg mumbled as he ran through the Sector, aiming for the innermost sanctum; the First Gate and the only method of turning them off. Soon he would run out of hallway, ending instead at a manned checkpoint and his certain demise, but where there were rooms, there were air ducts. Another turn and it was there; an air supply vent that led directly to the control room.
A moment of battery-powered screwdriving and the grate fell away. Oleg stepped inside, then pulled the cover back over the opening. His hands fit through a few gaps and tightened the screws with his fingers.
Past fans and dead ends, through increasingly cramped metal corridors, Oleg crawled the final yards to the lone vent that oversaw the Sector Gate housing. Just beyond an enormous violet swirl of light and darkness were a steady stream of those red-eyed monsters, from a world beyond Oleg’s own. Each soldier that stepped through darkened the world around them just a little more, and with the darkness came a feeling of dread. Oleg watched, looking for a pause in the operations, some way to sneak out to the small computer room that lay so close to him he could feel the vacuum of air pressure when the door opened. A sudden leg cramp nearly caused Oleg to cry out but instead he jerked a little, enough for his metal boots to thump against the ductwork.
The metal beneath Oleg gave way as it was ripped apart, two soldiers taking him by force and pulling him down. He braced himself for a sudden and violent death.
“Open your eyes,” a human voice spoke, “and look at me.”
Oleg did as he was commanded. In front of him was, strangely, a man. He never expected to find humans beneath these shadow monsters' armor. They looked like anybody he could cross in the street, save for those eyes. Hellfire eyes.
“What did you think to accomplish here, child,” the man asked, laughing as he did. He watched Oleg’s eyes dart towards the computer room, the door hissing open. “Ah, a hero.”
“J-just a mechanic, sir,” Oleg responded. All thoughts of heroism evaporated in front of this demon. Those eyes pierced him, drove through him, and chased away all hope.
“Just a mechanic? Pity, I had hoped you would be more. I am Samael, not that you deserve my name. I am a conqueror.”
Oleg’s hands found his pockets. He grasped a familiar cylinder, its presence reassuring.
“We, the Legion, have conquered worlds much stronger than yours, and never have they come down to the heroics of a single actor.” Samael leaned in closer, his eyes centimeters away from Oleg’s.
Oleg pulled the cylinder from his pocket, knowing its weight, the shape, every intricate detail of the wondrous item he held with him, the thing he worked with daily, the reason he was trapped when the Legion attacked.
“There’s a first for everything,” Oleg smirked and threw the cylinder. It tumbled end over end, disappearing in the glowing portal beside him.
The Chizerein Gates were a link between dimensions, a strange interlace of some mysterious force between atoms, somewhere between stability and a nuclear tear in space. They could only be harnessed under the strictest of circumstances. Even something as small and innocuous as a single-cell battery would overload the Gate, destroying it and anything connected to it.
Sector One detonated in an atomic blast, collapsing into itself shortly after in a final implosion event. There were forty Chizerein Gates, forty sectors of invasion. One by one, each sector lost control of their gates and were swallowed whole, the invaders meeting the same fate. The dark world of shadow didn’t last long without its soldiers to fuel it. The sweet taste of vengeance carried Oleg through his final moments, that smile persisting until his own atoms split apart, swallowed by the weapon of his own making.

Copyright 2023 - SFS Publishing LLC
The Shadows Upon Us
Those Eyes Chase Away All Hope
J. Charles Ramirez

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