Reprise

Chapter 3: The Shadow-kin





Anzu rested her head against the wooden doors, her eyes clenched tight and her body shaking with silent sobs. Joey felt dirty, he felt like he had imposed on the most tender parts of someone else’s soul. Unsure of any other option he slid out silently from his hiding place, in the corridor just out of sight. He walked in the direction of Anzu, she looked like she needed some form of comfort right now. He placed a hand on her shoulder, but as he did his arm screamed in agony as a series of cramps forced his arm up and around his head.



With a sharp intake of breath, he cried out in pain. He was now flat on his back on the floor, his arm twitching painfully.



“Oh, Joey!” Cried Anzu, “I’m so sorry Joey, I didn’t realize it was you. My mind was somewhere else!” Anzu bent down and tried to help him get back up, with an apologetic look on her face.



“You…you flipped me!” Joey was stunned, he had just been floored by a girl, a girl who looked like she would have a hard time lifting a bag of groceries.



“I know, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that though. For all I knew you were a Shadow-kin.” She dusted off his T-shirt with her hands.



“Shadow-kin?” He asked.



“We’ll talk about that another time,” She replied, wiping the evidence of her tears away with the back of her hand. Joey nodded, he didn’t want to push the issue any further, Anzu looked like she was trying to be strong in front of Joey. “I’m going to go help Ishizu with the cleaning. Why don’t you go visit Yugi, he’s in the basement. He is in the room next to the medical bay, the one you were in. He’s better at explaining this stuff than I am.” Without further exchange, Anzu turned and walked into the hallway that Joey was hiding in, apparently going to her bedroom.



Passing through the dining hall again, Joey noticed the pale skinned boy still sitting by the table, reading a tattered book. He looked up from his book and gazed at Joey.



“Murder.” He said.



“What?” Joeys eyes widened, his brow elevated quizzically.



“The book…its about murder,” He replied, his voice seemed distant and dream-like. “My names Ryou.” Without waiting for any further reply, he lowered his head back into his book. Leaving Joey feeling quite bewildered by the awkward conversation. Turning, he quickly descended the staircase into the basement and glanced around for the door he came out of. Paying more attention to the corridor there were three locked doors on the left and an open door at the other end, leading to another corridor. He continued on until the sound of metal crashing against metal from up ahead made him stop.



He heard some muttering, then some more clanging and then silence. Curious, he continued on until he got to an open door, the room beyond was no bigger than the medical room next to it, but it seemed even more claustrophobic as its walls were lined with various guns and melee weapons. Sitting at a wooden table in the middle sat Yugi, his hair tied back in a short ponytail, his hands and face seemed to be smeared with engine grease. On the table in front of him sat a chain link whip, with a sharp dagger at the tip.



Yugi looked up from his work and grinned from ear to ear, “Joey! You came to see me!” He indicated with his hand to sit with him at the table, which Joey gingerly did.



“Yeah…Anzu said I should come take a look. Learn some things, get in the loop, y’know?” Joey prodded at a red crystal that was sitting next to some spare parts. It felt warm to the touch.

“Oh! Great idea, so she sent you to me, huh? My reputation proceeds me! So, you want to know what the hell is going on I bet? I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose my memory and wake up in such a strange situation, though in some ways you are lucky, some of us would rather forget…” Yugi’s eyes looked past Joey, into the distance, looking at nothing in particular.



Joey nodded.



“Great! Well, I ‘spose I should start at the beginning. Last year, in 2014, the sky turned red one day. There was no reason for it, and no one could figure it out. It didn’t seem to have any negative side effects, crops still grew, and the atmosphere remained intact,” Yugi picked up a screwdriver while he was talking and tightened some screws on the whips handle. Joey listened intently, knowing first hand that the sky was indeed now red. “However, more and more people started disappearing. At first it was only a few localized incidents, stories of families who went to bed one night and woke up with one, or even two members missing. Pretty soon though, people started to panic. The disappearances only escalated and people were afraid to even sleep, fearing that when they woke up, their loved ones might be gone. It wasn’t healthy.”



“What happened to them? Where did they go?” asked Joey, his eyebrows knitted tightly in curiosity.



“We still don’t know, to this day where they go during the day. However, we do know that they return at night. We call them Shadow-kin.”



“Anzu mentioned those!” Exclaimed Joey, but quickly covered his mouth with his hand and indicated that Yugi should finish his story.



“Yes, I imagine Anzu would know plenty about the Shadow-kin. Anyway, the Shadow-kin are the bodies of the people taken, but they are empty inside. They are cold-hearted, intelligent, machines with no morality. They don’t even know right from wrong.” Yugi paused, momentarily stopping his work to read Joey’s expression, he must have looked pretty frightened because Yugi put his own hand over Joeys.



“It’s okay,” he said in a gentle tone, “we are safe here. Well, safer than any other place. We have the weapons to fight them.” Yugi picked up the handle of the whip in one hand and one of the red crystals in another.



“We have to test everyone we meet in the outside, to make sure they aren’t Shadow-kin. If a Shadow-kin gets you, you become one of them. We don’t know what happens to the old you, I guess you die in a way. That’s what I believe anyway, Seto thinks otherwise.”



Joey was sweating, he didn’t remember his old world, but he knew it was nothing like this. This was some sort of nightmare. Would he be able to survive in such a strange world?



“I think that’s enough for today…you don’t look well. Maybe we over-exerted you on your first day out. You should go rest in the medical bay again. I’ll come wake you up for dinner. Sorry if I wake you with my noise.” Yugi let go on Joeys hand, some engine grease now marked it.



Joey nodded wordlessly and stood up in a daze, leaving the room quietly. This was all too unreal. When he got back to the less-cramped-but-still-tiny medical room, he was glad there weren’t any windows after all, who would want to look out at that nightmare?



A/N: I hope people are enjoying reading this, because I am rather enjoying writing this. The story is marked under the Yaoi section because the main romance will be a homosexual one, although I have already introduced you to Anzu and Mako’s relationship. This is, as you might of guessed, not a smut fic, it is just what it is, a survival horror story, with elements of fantasy, romance and science fiction thrown in. As for why Mako had a deck of cards, you will just have to keep reading to find that one out! :D