76°00'08.2"S 53°43'31.2"E– Near the Paseo, Nuevo Trujillo Spanish Antarctic Colonies

  22.05.2024- 13:00 UTC +03.00

  I always took the sky for granted. And the sun – all year long, always a bright day. Keeping us warm.

  Spring and summer. That’s all we knew. And yes, sometimes there were clouds in the sky, or a breeze from Antarctica’s plains. That all ended almost twenty-four hours ago, when the night took over. A moon that circled the horizon, but never set, and a twilight almost of a dawn, never actually starting.

  “Here it is again,” I said.

  Glass made of nothing, invisible to the eye. It was not really made of glass, but that was how my mind understood it. It hovered in a spot in the night sky, and through it, the sun shone. The piece levitated, rose to the sky, and found its place in the celestial dome.

  Piece by piece, night was becoming day again. And I had never been more afraid.

  I was powerless.

  I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the couch. I inhaled deeply, startling Oriol.

  “Eight minutes,” he said, after checking the clock on the wall.

  Esteban was stepping up and down in the living room, angry. I could tell by the rhythm of his steps.

  “And two pieces,” Hani recounted. I was visiting her and telling her every time one appeared. She was sitting at the dining table, holding a pencil and taking notes.

  My head hurt as I stood up, and I felt a fit of dizziness.

  “You are doing great. You started with three minutes, now eight minutes of being a ghost,” Oriol said.

  “I am not a ghost,” I managed to mutter.

  “Sounds like a ghost, we can’t see you when you do it, can we?”

  “And how far complete is the sky?” Hani interrupted us.

  It was hard to estimate. The pieces looked above our head, but they were like a dome, closing on around the domain, with us outside of it.

  “From one to a hundred?” Hani insisted.

  “I don’t know. Five, ten? It is not fast, but it is not slow either.”

  Hani started calculating on the piece of paper.

  “Where is Cecilia?” I asked.

  “She is loading the car just in case,” Oriol said.

  Esteban stopped pacing.

  “Just in case? The boy was clear. If they mend it while we are out, we are not getting back in again,” he said, “we need to stop the experiments. We should run.”

  “I am happy to take a break,” I said, looking at Hani. She took a few moments poring over her notes.

  “Hani?” Esteban insisted.

  She then turned to us.

  “Ten to fifteen hours. That’s how much we got. If we plot a route to the Southern Chinese District, we should be there in an hour. We should have time to get back. Oriol’s glamours should be enough to sneak us in past any security.”

  “And then what?” Oriol asked.

  “We try to find Salva and the rest. There are other Escapada locations,” Hani said.

  “Sorry but. You are calling yourselves Escapadas. You made it. We are outside the Trastamara Domain. What good did that do to you?”

  I spoke before even thinking about it. I just blurted out the words, dizzy, but also frustrated. Yes, these people were on my side, for the time being, but the ridiculousness of their cause was so apparent in the situation. Esteban was freaking out just at the idea that we would remain what they wanted to be, Escapadas.

  “No good, ángel. Our companions are still in there. A whole state is still in there. Escaping is not about us. Escaping is about learning,” Cecilia said. She was wearing her jacket; frost had already powdered it white.

  She closed the door behind her as she got into the house.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “And don’t you want to learn what the fuck is all this?” She pointed at the window, at the night sky.

  I did not respond. Maybe I did not want to learn. Maybe I wanted to go back to five days ago, when my worry was how I would break up with Lucia.

  “Is the car prepped?” Oriol asked.

  Cecilia nodded.

  “Then I say we go, Hani. We have the cover of night anyway,” Esteban said. We all looked at her.

  She looked at me.

  It was not hard to tell what she was thinking. That I was a liability. That yet another day, I had not completed training. I did yoga, meditation, and then floated around watching the broken sky. Still unclear on how and why my Domain Curses worked. They should leave me behind.

  Or maybe she was thinking something else. In the end, it mattered not.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  ? ? ?

  Cecilia was driving us, with Hani next to her. Oriol sat on my left, and Esteban on my right.

  Esteban’s body language was clear; he was avoiding touching me as much as possible. Oriol seemed more carefree, but I was not sure he had fully understood what had happened the previous day. Or maybe he trusted me.

  I did not expect the drive to be peaceful. As the car revved through icy roads, with frozen bodies crumbled or standing like statues, grim reminders of the domain's collapse a few days ago, I knew it was a matter of time before things went wrong again.

  “No. Park it. Park, park, park,” Hani said.

  Cecilia quickly parked the car on the side, behind other frosted cars, parked for days.

  We all remained frozen. Hani was flustered, and she inhaled and exhaled as if she was trying to fend off panic.

  “Down,” she simply said, and we all lay low, as low as we could. We were like this for at least two minutes.

  “What’s happ…” I tried to ask, but Hani shushed me.

  Another minute passed, and then a mechanical whirring, an ominous sound like an electrical vulture, hovering above us, passed by in what seemed like seconds.

  Then again, and again. Crouched as I was at the back of the car, squeezed between Oriol and Esteban, and holding my breath, I slowly tilted my head. I wanted to catch a glimpse of what was the source of this sound.

  I only saw shadows passing by, as if quick and low-hanging clouds blocked the moon.

  But then they passed, and for a minute there was quiet again.

  “We are good,” Hani said and rose again, sitting normally once more.

  “If you say so,” Esteban said.

  “What was that?” I asked, while Cecilia sighed.

  “T-Drones,” Oriol said, “three of them. Armed enough to wipe out a small army. We are screwed.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Hani said. Her Luckweaving Curse – that’s how she called it – could come in handy. But luck had its limits.

  “Can’t you hide us?” I asked Oriol.

  “No. Conventional cameras spot us as blurry, T-Drones seek motion. If anything, I make us shine brighter for them.”

  I remembered how it felt being inside Oriol’s Glamour Ward. Everything felt like buzzing, ourselves included. I was not sure how that worked.

  “But I can sense them in advance,” Hani said, in an attempt to rally morale.

  “And I could float above, get an eagle’s eye view. Visit Cecilia, and let her know,” I added.

  “No chance,” Esteban said, scooting further away from me.

  “Do it,” Cecilia said, “but keep your hands on you.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. I focused on Cecilia, and her eyes were looking at me through the rear-view mirror.

  I floated above the car. Much like a drone, but silent and invisible. I floated as high as I could, perhaps eight or ten meters, but then I felt a force pulling me back to the car.

  It was similar when I had visited the Prince at the Santiago Towers. It seemed like when I visited someone, I was tethered somehow. Not possible to roam freely.

  I took one glance at the moon. It was full, in ways I had only seen in the movies. No stars were visible due to the moon. Pieces of daytime were floating, bringing further light to the already illuminated nighttime. The dome was twenty or thirty percent completed.

  “It should be…” I was about to say fine, and then I noticed the metallic monsters hovering in the sky. Some were closer, some were further away. One, two, three… “tens of them, I can’t count. It is a whole fleet.”

  “We need a new plan,” Cecilia said, and I could hear her speaking even though I floated so high above the car. I could not hear what the others said. “Yes, he says tens of them. No, wait. ángel, are they everywhere? Could we go from the East – Pizarro Avenue?”

  I looked to the East. T-Drones, this mix of helicopters and mini-planes, whirred everywhere. Occasionally, they would stop, hover, and change course.

  “They are everywhere, also there…” I said, “…but wait.”

  There was a pattern to their rhythm. They were automated after all, and they scoured the streets of the decimated Chinese District with a system, not randomly.

  “I can see the pattern,” I said. I could feel it. Their intention, where they would turn, before they would actually turn.

  I snapped back to my body so that everyone could hear me.

  “Listen, everyone, I know it is crazy, but it feels as if I know what they are doing,” I said.

  “Can you control them?” Oriol said.

  “I don’t think so. They feel foreign. But, they somehow can’t escape my eyes, like they belong to me; they just don’t know it,” I explained.

  “Of course. They are in your Domain,” Hani said.

  “Yes. And I could guide you through them. Watch over us,” I said, and I felt a mix of excitement and hope.

  And then the realization hit me. My Domain. Was that how it felt, wielding a Domain Curse?

  Everything belonged?