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Basic synopsis:
Alec lives in a town just beyond the border of the shadows, which is ever-expanding as the shadow creeps forward. Despite his father being a hero (saved the village more than once, and died trying to save it again), Alec is not recognized for it; he is an introvert, cold and cynical, and most people do not want anything to do with him. There are three important people/things in his life: His father, whom he is bitter towards for supposedly not taking are of him and leaving him, Rue, an older, able, resourceful girl that Alec respects, and Chimera, the source of the Shadow field. He initially tries to hide his immunity to the shadows, but is eventually discovered, and is confronted and pressured by Rue and several others to go into the shadows to try and find the source of them, and destroy it. Alec repeatedly refuses, and disgusted, Rue tries to go herself, but she and the rest of her group are presumably killed. This is where Alec finally decides to go.

The shadows can create obstacles even to somebody that is immune, like Alec. He constantly has hallucinations, irrational fears, dark thoughts, and often encounters monsters and people driven insane by the shadows. On the way, he discovers Rue alive; she has "made" her own immunity, though the rest of her group is either insane or dead. They go on, and eventually find Chimera.

Alec and Rue try multiple times to destroy Chimera, without success. They gather that it is a living entity, and must be defeated mentally. After another time trying to destroy it, Alec is shocked to find that the shadow core is really just a human being at heart, terrified to the point of insanity. He tries this time to comfort it and reassure it. In the process of navigating its mind, Alec comes to term with his father and himself, and many other things. However, killing the shadow core kills him as well (I'm still trying to make up an explanation for how this happens).

Back in the town, the shadows are gone. The citizens are both shocked and overjoyed. Rue approaches the town cradling Alec's body.

It’s been three months since so much changed. I, Rue, almost died. The Shadow left. Alec left, and he’s not going to be with us for a long time, maybe forever.
I’m sitting here typing this from a salvaged computer, wishing that I had paid more attention in my writing classes. Nothing comes to mind when I try to write this; no words seem efficient to describe what I’ve gone through. All of us are celebrating; kids run freely through the dusty streets for the first time in years, and the adults drink, toasting Alec’s name. The hero himself is too tired to join the jubilation.
Alec or Ulysses would probably tell this story better than me. A lot of the time, I try to imagine them standing with me, watching me write about all that happened in those few days. And if they’re here, I hope that they help me tell this to you.
When I first met Alec, I despised him. He was always so insulting and negative. He brought everyone down. He always said that the Shadow would never leave, and we would eventually all die. But in the short time that I’ve really known him, I’ve learned that he’s so misunderstood. Nobody gave him a chance to confide, or approached him as a friend. Not many people actually know why he was always so pessimistic, and even fewer know that it was just a mask for the loneliness he felt underneath.
I led a hard life. My family - my father, mother, and myself - were poor, living in a cramped apartment, living off two small meals a day. When the Shadow came when I was fifteen and spread to our city like a virus, it became even harder. We had to salvage our food from the streets, and run from those turned insane by the Shadow. Every day we saw people dead in the streets.
One by one the Shadow field took everyone in the city, growing stronger each day. I kept telling myself that we were going to be okay. And then my parents succumbed to the Shadow - That was around the time when the hero, Ulysses, was helping masses of people move across to safe zones, where the Shadow wasn’t present. And he probably could have saved my parents - but he chose not to, and I respect him for that. After my parents died, life grew unbearable. I had to find food on my own, and I had to run constantly from insane people, ever-growing in number. I knew I needed to leave the city and find somewhere the Shadow hadn’t reached, but I didn’t want to. I felt safe in the small apartment that I had shared with my parents. I felt like it was the only thing that kept me sane.
After a few weeks, I started to feel the Shadow growing inside me. I would have succumbed, but I was saved - saved and brought to a town of refugees far out of the Shadow’s reach. Slowly, eventually, they nursed me to health, I met Alec - and here I am now.
Yes, my life was hard, and Alec’s was probably a lot easier. But there was a difference; except for when I was living on my own, I always had people supporting me, helping me through things that I couldn’t go through by myself. When I was young, it was my parents, and when they had died, it was everybody at the refugee town that had adopted me. Alec - from the start, he had nobody. His father was a hero who was always gone from home, and nobody approached him, greeted him. He was always an outsider.
The things we went through together - I guess that classified me as a friend, and Alec told me a lot. That helped me understand him, and sympathize for him. And he did turn out better in the end - sometimes, turmoil serves to make us stronger.

part 1

Alec pulled up his collar and walked briskly against the bitter cold. That was what he did all day - not like the others his age helping expand the town or running errands, but just traveling continuously through the dilapidated town, taking in information, noting things, until the sun set, the end bell tolled, and he would head home. It was the least everybody could do, to not make him work - he was only fourteen. He didn’t understand why everybody else his age did what they did to help the town. Ever-expanding the buildings wouldn’t help - the Shadow would catch up more quickly than they could build. Even now, it had taken almost half of the town, and several people had been led away screaming and kicking in straitjackets in the past couple of weeks into treatment centers.
Alec was one of many refugees living there.
The town, Haven, was a “haven” to all that were victim of the Shadow - which was virtually everybody. Together, they survived as long as they could against the Shadow, growing food, continuously expanding out of its reach. Life was meager, but livable.
The Shadow - the Shadow had come when Alec was eight. He didn’t remember much - maybe pieces, figments of fear and turmoil.
He hadn’t known what was happening, but as he grew older, he had come to understand.

The Shadow was an invisible force, a field, the embodiment of fear and rage. Anybody that came within its range - they were the Shadow’s toy. It did any manner of things to you. Made you hallucinate, caused extreme fear, drove you insane. The worst thing was that there was no escape from it. It would just keep emanating from its source, continuously growing, and the Shadow field would swallow up even more - cities, towns, lives. Everywhere it went, it burned a trail of fear and death behind it.

Haven was only a temporary hiding place. Eventually, they would have to move somewhere else before the Shadow moved over the whole town and shattered them all.

Alec looked down at his feet, shuffling aimlessly along the dusty road. People were bustling all around him - The bitter cold was a precursor to winter, and then they would have the death of crops to worry about, in addition to the Shadow field. Everybody was busy drying and storing food, stocking up fuel for fires. The streets rang with sounds - the dull thudding of the cardboard boxes, the screeching of packing tape being unrolled, orders called and worn shoes tapping on the pavement. every one's voices were artificially cheerful; All of the town wanted to forget, for once, that the shadow was there and looming.

Somewhere at the center of Haven, a rope was pulled and a bell was rung. Alec stopped walking and looked up at the fireball sky as the clear notes spilled through the town like waves of water. The sun shone its last rays on Haven before it sank below the horizon, casting a golden glow on the faded brick buildings. Sound died down as the refugees, exhausted after the day, retired to cramped apartments and garages to sleep.

It was in times like these that he let himself believe that the Shadow wasn’t there, and it was all a bad dream. But then the sun’s rays disappeared, blue shadows washed over Haven, and the moment was over.

The difficult truth was that the Shadow was still there, and very much dangerous.
Alec turned on his heel and headed home.

He woke up to the sound of fear.
Alec reflexively jerked up out of his faded blankets, preparing to defend himself, only find himself alone inside the garage. But the sounds were there, the piercing screams and guttural cries, and the feeling was there - a cold tendril that slowly burrowed into his gut. The feeling of the Shadow. He threw off his blankets and stood up, his head buzzing. How had the Shadow field spread this far so quickly? It normally only took a block in one week. By the sounds coming outside, it had covered several blocks overnight. And more importantly, how much farther had it reached beyond Alec’s garage?
For a minute, he stood there, trying to contemplate the situation. He was relieved that he had his natural resistance to the Shadow, but then it was replaced by fear -
they must not find out that I am immune.
A sense of urgency pervaded Alec’s mind, and he squatted down near the garage door, peering out of a hole in its material. Outside, the dawn pink sky was rising, and inhuman screams continued to burst the air. But he couldn’t see the sources of the sounds, those turned insane by the Shadow, and it made him nervous. The second he set foot outside, he might be attacked by them, but if he stayed inside the garage, others immune to the Shadow might find him, and discover his resistance.
Without warning, a scream came like a gunshot behind Alec, and hands with iron grip seized his shoulders and sent him tumbling away from the garage door, his head hitting the cement with a dull thud. The world spun. Alec struggled to get up.
He brought his head up, and came face to face with a woman, her mouth stretched open and her eyes wide and wild - the strangled expression of fear. “HEeLP mEe!!” she shrieked. Alec shouted and pushed her away, crawling as far away as he could. The woman, seemingly without cause, uttered a strangled cry and collapsed, writhing like a burning snake. Alec stumbled up to his feet, shoved the garage door open - and ran.
The street that had been so busy yesterday was now deserted, and was replaced by a total, complete silence, broken only by human howls of fear and horror. He ran faster. more shrieks and cries rang out behind him, and his own footsteps weren’t the only thing he could hear pounding on the pavement. Run, run. Nobody must catch you, nobody must see you.
He felt something grasp the back of Alec’s shirt, and his heart seized. “Get away from me!” he yelled hoarsely. He kicked back, trying to wrestle his attacker free - but his foot caught, too, and he slammed into the road full-force, snapping his jaw shut. The impact reverberated through his skull, and he groaned. His elbows and chin were on fire.
Get away. Have to get away. Alec wondered if his immunity had given away, and his mind was slowly being consumed by the Shadow. He flipped over onto his back, tried to sit up. His body didn’t want to respond. Maybe it had been burned through, he thought hazily. The tendons had all been eaten through by the Shadow. He would just die here.
Without warning, he felt something seize him and lift him up by his collar, and his limbs exploded into action again. “Leave me alone!” he screamed. he convulsed his whole body in a vain attempt to escape from his attacker’s grip.
Then a sharp pain lanced through his neck, and Alec felt the life drain out of his limbs again. Neon clouds flashed through his vision, and he felt his consciousness fading.
I wonder if anybody will miss me.

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Now would be a good time to segue into how a large portion of the town was destroyed. He's saved by Rue after his assailant attacked him--and this is how Rue finds out that he is immune. She tries to convince him to join and, of course, fails. She gathers her group to go off and fight while he wanders the town as he normally would. After she doesn't return after a time, he begins to feel guilt and tails after her.

The "obstacles" that the shadows create are images of his father, which forces him to open up his repressed feelings--those about how he resents his father for being a hero and "leaving him" (dying).

When Rue and Alec finally confront the Chimera... Well, I have an idea, and it's kind of out there, but I know how he stops the Shadow and the Chimera. You say he tries to comfort it. You say he learns more about himself while doing so. Thus, I suggest that he defeats the Chimera through... empathy. This human that the Chimera is only alive because of the driving force of insanity--all other energy has long since left it. When Alec finally opens his mind to the Chimera, the insanity leaves the body, killing the Chimera by depriving it of all its life, but killing Alec in the process because he gave up his immunity to the Shadow by opening his mind. Thus, the source overwhelms him, but after it does, it disperses.

It’s been three months since so much changed. I, Rue, almost died. The Shadow left. Alec left, and he’s not going to be with us for a long time, maybe forever.
I’m sitting here typing this from a salvaged computer, wishing that I had paid more attention in my writing classes. Nothing comes to mind when I try to write this; no words seem efficient to describe what I’ve gone through. All of us are celebrating; kids run freely through the dusty streets for the first time in years, and the adults drink, toasting Alec’s name. The hero himself is too tired to join the jubilation.
Alec or Ulysses would probably tell this story better than me. A lot of the time, I try to imagine them standing with me, watching me write about all that happened in those few days. And if they’re here, I hope that they help me tell this to you.
When I first met Alec, I despised him. He was always so insulting and negative. He brought everyone down. He always said that the Shadow would never leave, and we would eventually all die. But in the short time that I’ve really known him, I’ve learned that he’s so misunderstood. Nobody gave him a chance to confide, or approached him as a friend. Not many people actually know why he was always so pessimistic, and even fewer know that it was just a mask for the loneliness he felt underneath.
I led a hard life. My family - my father, mother, and myself - was poor, living in a cramped apartment, staying alive off two meager meals a day. When the Shadow came when I was fifteen and spread to our city like a virus, it became even harder. We had to salvage our food from the streets, and run from those turned insane by the Shadow. Every day we saw people dead in the streets.
One by one the Shadow field took everyone in the city, growing stronger each day. I kept telling myself that we were going to be okay. And then my parents succumbed to the Shadow. That was around the time when the hero, Ulysses, was helping masses of people move across to safe zones, where the Shadow wasn’t present. And he probably could have saved my parents - but he chose not to, and I respect him for that. After my parents died, life grew unbearable. I had to find food on my own, and I had to run constantly from insane people, ever-growing in number. I knew I needed to leave the city and find somewhere the Shadow hadn’t reached, but I didn’t want to. I felt safe in the small apartment that I had shared with my parents. I felt like it was the only thing that kept me sane.
After a few weeks, I started to feel the Shadow growing inside me. I would have succumbed, but I was saved - saved and brought to a town of refugees far out of the Shadow’s reach. Slowly, eventually, they nursed me to health, I met Alec - and here I am now.
Yes, my life was hard, and Alec’s was probably a lot easier. But there was a difference; except for when I was living on my own, I always had people supporting me, helping me through things that I couldn’t go through by myself. When I was young, it was my parents, and when they had died, it was everybody at the refugee town that had adopted me. Alec - from the start, he had nobody. His father was a hero who was always gone from home, and nobody approached him, greeted him. He was always an outsider.
We went through a lot together... I guess that classifies me as his friend. He did tell me a lot; it helped me understand him and sympathize with him.
And he did turn out better in the end - sometimes, turmoil serves to make us stronger.

part 1

Alec pulled up his collar and walked briskly against the bitter cold. That was what he did all day - not like the others his age helping expand the town or running errands, but just traveling continuously through the dilapidated town, taking in information, noting things, until the sun set, the end bell tolled, and he would head home. It was the least everybody could do, to not make him work - he was only fourteen. He didn’t understand why everybody else his age did what they did to help the town. Ever-expanding the buildings wouldn’t help - the Shadow would catch up more quickly than they could build. Even now, it had taken almost half of the town, and several people had been led away screaming and kicking in straitjackets in the past couple of weeks into treatment centers.
Alec was one of many refugees living there.
The town, Haven, was a “haven” to all that were victim of the Shadow - which was virtually everybody. Together, they survived as long as they could against the Shadow, growing food, continuously expanding out of its reach. Life was meager, but livable.
The Shadow had come when Alec was eight. He didn’t remember much - maybe pieces, figments of fear and turmoil.
He hadn’t known what was happening, but as he grew older, he had come to understand.
The Shadow was an invisible force, a field, the embodiment of fear and rage. Anybody that came within its range - they were the Shadow’s toy. It did any manner of things to its victims. Made them hallucinate, caused extreme fear, drove them insane. The worst thing was that there was no escape from it. It would just keep emanating from its source, continuously growing, and the Shadow field would swallow up even more - cities, towns, lives. Everywhere it went, it burned a trail of fear and death behind it.
Haven was only a temporary hiding place. Eventually, they would have to move somewhere else before the Shadow moved over the whole town and shattered all of their minds.
Alec looked down at his feet, shuffling aimlessly along the dusty road. People were bustling all around him - The bitter cold was a precursor to winter, and then they would have the death of crops to worry about, in addition to the Shadow field. Everybody ignored him, not passively, but purposefully; he could feel it and see it, the way they turned stiff, and the conversations turned strained and cold. He was, in their eyes, an outsider. Alec didn’t care; if they didn’t want anything to do with him, that was fine. Everybody was busy drying and storing food, stocking up fuel for fires. The streets rang with sounds: the dull thudding of cardboard boxes, the screeching of packing tape being unrolled, orders being called, and worn shoes tapping on the pavement. Everyone's voices were artificially cheerful; all of the town wanted to forget, for just a short time, that the Shadow was there and looming.

Somewhere at the center of Haven, a rope was pulled and a bell was rung. Alec stopped walking and looked up at the fireball sky as the clear notes spilled through the town like waves of water. The sun shone its last rays on Haven before it sank below the horizon, casting a golden glow on the faded brick buildings. Sound died down as the refugees, exhausted after the day, retired to cramped apartments and garages to sleep.
It was in times like these that the refugees let themselves believe that the Shadow wasn’t there, and it was all a bad dream. But then the sun’s rays disappeared, blue shadows washed over Haven, and the moment was over.
The difficult truth was that the Shadow was still there, and very much dangerous.
Alec turned on his heel and headed home.

---

He woke up to the sound of fear.
Alec reflexively jerked up out of his faded blankets, preparing to defend himself, only find himself alone inside the garage. But the sounds were there, the piercing screams and guttural cries, and the feeling was there - a cold tendril that slowly burrowed into his gut. The feeling of the Shadow. He threw off his blankets and stood up, his head buzzing. How had the Shadow field spread this far so quickly? It normally only took a block in one week. Judging by the sounds coming outside, it had covered several blocks overnight. And more importantly, how much farther had it reached beyond Alec’s garage?
For a minute, he stood there, trying to contemplate the situation. Initially, he was relieved that he hadn’t been affected yet. But then the second thought entered his mind - The shadow might affect him any moment now.
The third thought he didn’t want to think about.
A sense of urgency pervaded Alec’s mind, and he squatted down near the garage door, peering out of a hole in its material. Outside, the dawn pink sky was rising, and inhuman screams continued to burst the air. But he couldn’t see the sources of the sounds, those turned insane by the Shadow, and it made him nervous. The second he set foot outside, he might be attacked by them, but if he stayed inside the garage, they would eventually find him and then he would be trapped.
Without warning, a scream came like a gunshot behind Alec, and hands with iron grip seized his shoulders and sent him tumbling away from the garage door, his head hitting the cement with a dull thud. The world spun. Alec struggled to get up.
He brought his head up, and came face to face with a woman, her mouth stretched open and her eyes wide and wild - the strangled expression of fear. “HEeLP mEe!!” she shrieked. Alec shouted and pushed her away, crawling as far away as he could. The woman, seemingly without cause, uttered a strangled cry and collapsed, writhing like a burning snake. Alec stumbled up to his feet, shoved the garage door open - and ran.
The street that had been so busy yesterday was now deserted, and was replaced by a total, complete silence, broken only by human howls of fear and horror. He ran faster. more shrieks and cries rang out behind him, and his own footsteps weren’t the only thing he could hear pounding on the pavement.

Run, run. Nobody must catch you, nobody must see you.

He felt something grasp the back of Alec’s shirt, and his heart seized. “Get away from me!” he yelled hoarsely. He kicked back, trying to wrestle himself free from his attacker - but his foot caught, too, and he slammed into the road full-force, snapping his jaw shut. The impact reverberated through his skull, and he groaned. His elbows and chin were on fire.
Get away. Have to get away. Alec wondered if his immunity had given away, and his mind was slowly being consumed by the Shadow. He flipped over onto his back, tried to sit up. His body didn’t want to respond. Maybe it had been burned through, he thought hazily. The tendons had all been eaten through by the Shadow. He would just die here.
Without warning, he felt something seize him and lift him up by his collar, and his limbs exploded into action again. “Leave me alone!” he screamed. he convulsed his whole body in a vain attempt to escape from his attacker’s grip.
He heard yells of “calm down”, but he was too panicked to comprehend them.
Then a sharp pain lanced through his neck, and Alec felt the life drain out of his limbs again. Neon clouds flashed through his vision, and he felt his consciousness fading.
I wonder if anybody will miss me.

-----


Alec woke up once again to the sound of fear. He felt himself lying on his back on something soft. He snapped open his eyes, and tried to run; but soon he recognized the screams as those of his own voice. He forced himself to stop, swallowing. his throat felt charred. He didn’t feel the same irrational panic as before; the shadow must have caused it when he had been running. Now he remembered the shouts to him to calm down; his “attacker” must have been somebody thinking that Alec had been claimed by the Shadow.
In that case, he was safe. Now the question was whether the Shadow field had spread farther while he had been unconscious.
At the thought of it, a hailstone formed in Alec’s stomach. If it had, it had already...
He didn’t want to finish that trail of thought. He sat up, finding himself in a small tarp, sitting on a dirty blanket. He guessed it made sense; all the mental clinics had probably been claimed by the expansion of the Shadow field.
Alec jumped as the tarp flap was thrown open. He squinted and blinked and his eyes watered; it was midday outside, and it was a bright, cloudless day over Haven. He shielded his eyes. “I know you,” it was an older girl’s voice. “You’re Alec, right?”
His eyes adjusted and he made out a girl squatting in the entrance of the tarp. She looked to be around eighteen or nineteen, with dark hair and pale skin, presumably Asian. Her expression was peculiar; a mixture of disappointment and hope. “Rue?”
“Yeah. Is your head fine?” Her voice sounded familiar; it was the tone that everybody took when he was around them. A sign that said that he was an outsider.
Well, I don’t give a crap. She can think what she wants. Alec thought bitterly.
But it still hurt.
Alec took a while to answer. “Fine, I guess.” It came out in a rasp, and it hurt. His throat felt like sandpaper had been stuffed down it.
Rue was something of a renowned figure in Haven. Alec remembered when she had first arrived at the town; a weak, twelve-year-old girl, carried on the back of a refugee. As she grew healthier, and her mentality was restored, she had gained his attention; not because he found her attractive, but because of the way she acted. Yes, often she was impulsive and didn’t always find the best solutions, but Alec admired her quick wits and level-headedness that often saved the town a great deal of trouble.
Once, a few months after Rue had come, the Shadow had made a sudden spread through several blocks, and refugees turned insane had run amok through the town; she was the first with the idea to catch them with improvised tranquilizer darts. In addition, she had been the first to coax a Shadowed refugee back to health, through certain actions and conversations.
On top of it, she was a leader; she was naturally independent, solved disputes easily. Everybody followed her, and everybody wanted to follow her; even among the adults, she held a place of respect.

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Perhaps even "Her expression was a peculiar mixture of..."?

It’s been three months since so much changed. I, Rue, almost died. The Shadow left. Alec left, and he’s not going to be with us for a long time, maybe forever.
I’m sitting here typing this from a salvaged computer, wishing that I had paid more attention in my writing classes. Nothing comes to mind when I try to write this; no words seem efficient to describe what I’ve gone through. All of us are celebrating; kids run freely through the dusty streets for the first time in years, and the adults drink, toasting Alec’s name. The hero himself is too tired to join the jubilation.
Alec or Ulysses would probably tell this story better than me. A lot of the time, I try to imagine them standing with me, watching me write about all that happened in those few days. And if they’re here, I hope that they help me tell this to you.
When I first met Alec, I despised him. He was always so insulting and negative. He brought everyone down. He always said that the Shadow would never leave, and we would eventually all die. But in the short time that I’ve really known him, I’ve learned that he’s so misunderstood. Nobody gave him a chance to confide, or approached him as a friend. Not many people actually know why he was always so pessimistic, and even fewer know that it was just a mask for the loneliness he felt underneath.
I led a hard life. My family - my father, mother, and myself - was poor, living in a cramped apartment, staying alive off two meager meals a day. When the Shadow came when I was fifteen and spread to our city like a virus, it became even harder. We had to salvage our food from the streets, and run from those turned insane by the Shadow. Every day we saw people dead in the streets.
One by one the Shadow field took everyone in the city, growing stronger each day. I kept telling myself that we were going to be okay. And then my parents succumbed to the Shadow. That was around the time when the hero, Ulysses, was helping masses of people move across to safe zones, where the Shadow wasn’t present. And he probably could have saved my parents - but he chose not to, and I respect him for that. After my parents died, life grew unbearable. I had to find food on my own, and I had to run constantly from insane people, ever-growing in number. I knew I needed to leave the city and find somewhere the Shadow hadn’t reached, but I didn’t want to. I felt safe in the small apartment that I had shared with my parents. I felt like it was the only thing that kept me sane.
After a few weeks, I started to feel the Shadow growing inside me. I would have succumbed, but I was saved - saved and brought to a town of refugees far out of the Shadow’s reach. Slowly, eventually, they nursed me to health, I met Alec - and here I am now.
Yes, my life was hard, and Alec’s was probably a lot easier. But there was a difference; except for when I was living on my own, I always had people supporting me, helping me through things that I couldn’t go through by myself. When I was young, it was my parents, and when they had died, it was everybody at the refugee town that had adopted me. Alec - from the start, he had nobody. His father was a hero who was always gone from home, and nobody approached him, greeted him. He was always an outsider.
We went through a lot together... I guess that classifies me as his friend. He did tell me a lot; it helped me understand him and sympathize with him.
And he did turn out better in the end - sometimes, turmoil serves to make us stronger.

part 1

Alec pulled up his collar and walked briskly against the bitter cold. That was what he did all day - not like the others his age helping expand the town or running errands, but just traveling continuously through the dilapidated town, taking in information, noting things, until the sun set, the end bell tolled, and he would head home. It was the least everybody could do, to not make him work - he was only fourteen. He didn’t understand why everybody else his age did what they did to help the town. Ever-expanding the buildings wouldn’t help - the Shadow would catch up more quickly than they could build. Even now, it had taken almost half of the town, and several people had been led away screaming and kicking in straitjackets in the past couple of weeks into treatment centers.
Alec was one of many refugees living there.
The town, Haven, was a “haven” to all that were victim of the Shadow - which was virtually everybody. Together, they survived as long as they could against the Shadow, growing food, continuously expanding out of its reach. Life was meager, but livable.
The Shadow had come when Alec was eight. He didn’t remember much - maybe pieces, figments of fear and turmoil.
He hadn’t known what was happening, but as he grew older, he had come to understand.
The Shadow was an invisible force, a field, the embodiment of fear and rage. Anybody that came within its range - they were the Shadow’s toy. It did any manner of things to its victims. Made them hallucinate, caused extreme fear, drove them insane. The worst thing was that there was no escape from it. It would just keep emanating from its source, continuously growing, and the Shadow field would swallow up even more - cities, towns, lives. Everywhere it went, it burned a trail of fear and death behind it.
Haven was only a temporary hiding place. Eventually, they would have to move somewhere else before the Shadow moved over the whole town and shattered all of their minds.
Alec looked down at his feet, shuffling aimlessly along the dusty road. People were bustling all around him - The bitter cold was a precursor to winter, and then they would have the death of crops to worry about, in addition to the Shadow field. Everybody ignored him, not passively, but purposefully; he could feel it and see it, the way they turned stiff, and the conversations turned strained and cold. He was, in their eyes, an outsider. Alec didn’t care; if they didn’t want anything to do with him, that was fine. Everybody was busy drying and storing food, stocking up fuel for fires. The streets rang with sounds: the dull thudding of cardboard boxes, the screeching of packing tape being unrolled, orders being called, and worn shoes tapping on the pavement. Everyone's voices were artificially cheerful; all of the town wanted to forget, for just a short time, that the Shadow was there and looming.

Somewhere at the center of Haven, a rope was pulled and a bell was rung. Alec stopped walking and looked up at the fireball sky as the clear notes spilled through the town like waves of water. The sun shone its last rays on Haven before it sank below the horizon, casting a golden glow on the faded brick buildings. Sound died down as the refugees, exhausted after the day, retired to cramped apartments and garages to sleep.
It was in times like these that the refugees let themselves believe that the Shadow wasn’t there, and it was all a bad dream. But then the sun’s rays disappeared, blue shadows washed over Haven, and the moment was over.
The difficult truth was that the Shadow was still there, and very much dangerous.
Alec turned on his heel and headed home.

---

He woke up to the sound of fear.
Alec reflexively jerked up out of his faded blankets, preparing to defend himself, only find himself alone inside the garage. But the sounds were there, the piercing screams and guttural cries, and the feeling was there - a cold tendril that slowly burrowed into his gut. The feeling of the Shadow. He threw off his blankets and stood up, his head buzzing. How had the Shadow field spread this far so quickly? It normally only took a block in one week. Judging by the sounds coming outside, it had covered several blocks overnight. And more importantly, how much farther had it reached beyond Alec’s garage?
For a minute, he stood there, trying to contemplate the situation. Initially, he was relieved that he hadn’t been affected yet. But then the second thought entered his mind - The shadow might affect him any moment now.
The third thought he didn’t want to think about.
A sense of urgency pervaded Alec’s mind, and he squatted down near the garage door, peering out of a hole in its material. Outside, the dawn pink sky was rising, and inhuman screams continued to burst the air. But he couldn’t see the sources of the sounds, those turned insane by the Shadow, and it made him nervous. The second he set foot outside, he might be attacked by them, but if he stayed inside the garage, they would eventually find him and then he would be trapped.
Without warning, a scream came like a gunshot behind Alec, and hands with iron grip seized his shoulders and sent him tumbling away from the garage door, his head hitting the cement with a dull thud. The world spun. Alec struggled to get up.
He brought his head up, and came face to face with a woman, her mouth stretched open and her eyes wide and wild - the strangled expression of fear. “HEeLP mEe!!” she shrieked. Alec shouted and pushed her away, crawling as far away as he could. The woman, seemingly without cause, uttered a strangled cry and collapsed, writhing like a burning snake. Alec stumbled up to his feet, shoved the garage door open - and ran.
The street that had been so busy yesterday was now deserted, and was replaced by a total, complete silence, broken only by human howls of fear and horror. He ran faster. more shrieks and cries rang out behind him, and his own footsteps weren’t the only thing he could hear pounding on the pavement.

Run, run. Nobody must catch you, nobody must see you.

He felt something grasp the back of Alec’s shirt, and his heart seized. “Get away from me!” he yelled hoarsely. He kicked back, trying to wrestle himself free from his attacker - but his foot caught, too, and he slammed into the road full-force, snapping his jaw shut. The impact reverberated through his skull, and he groaned. His elbows and chin were on fire.
Get away. Have to get away. Alec wondered if his immunity had given away, and his mind was slowly being consumed by the Shadow. He flipped over onto his back, tried to sit up. His body didn’t want to respond. Maybe it had been burned through, he thought hazily. The tendons had all been eaten through by the Shadow. He would just die here.
Without warning, he felt something seize him and lift him up by his collar, and his limbs exploded into action again. “Leave me alone!” he screamed. he convulsed his whole body in a vain attempt to escape from his attacker’s grip.
He heard yells of “calm down”, but he was too panicked to comprehend them.
Then a sharp pain lanced through his neck, and Alec felt the life drain out of his limbs again. Neon clouds flashed through his vision, and he felt his consciousness fading.
I wonder if anybody will miss me.

-----


Alec woke up once again to the sound of fear. He felt himself lying on his back on something soft. His eyes snapped open and he tried to run; but soon he recognized the screams as those of his own voice. He forced himself to stop, swallowing. his throat felt charred. He didn’t feel the same irrational panic as before; the shadow must have caused it when he had been running. Now he remembered the shouts to him to calm down; his “attacker” must have been somebody thinking that Alec had been claimed by the Shadow.
In that case, he was safe. Now the question was whether the Shadow field had spread farther while he had been unconscious.
At the thought of it, a hailstone formed in Alec’s stomach.
If it had, it had already...
He didn’t want to finish that trail of thought. He sat up, finding himself in a small tarp, sitting on a dirty blanket. He guessed it made sense; all the mental clinics had probably been claimed by the expansion of the Shadow field.
Alec jumped as the tarp flap was thrown open. He squinted and blinked and his eyes watered. It was midday outside, and there was a bright, cloudless sky over Haven. He shielded his eyes. “I know you,” it was an older girl’s voice. “You’re Alec, right?”
His eyes adjusted and he made out a girl squatting in the entrance of the tarp. She looked to be around eighteen or nineteen, with dark hair and pale skin, presumably Asian. Her expression was peculiar: a mixture of disappointment and hope. “Rue?”
“Yeah. Is your head fine?” Her voice sounded familiar; it was the tone that everybody took when he was around them. A sign that said that he was an outsider.
Well, I don’t give a crap. She can think what she wants, Alec thought bitterly.
But it still hurt. A faint throb formed behind his eyes.
Alec took a while to answer. “Fine, I guess.” It came out in a rasp, and it hurt. His throat felt like sandpaper had been stuffed down it. “How much of the town was taken?”
“Almost half.” Came the bleak reply.
Almost half the town had been wiped out in an entire night.

How?

Rue was something of a renowned figure in Haven. Alec remembered when she had first arrived at the town; a weak, twelve-year-old girl, carried on the back of a refugee. As she grew healthier and her mentality was restored, she had gained his attention; not because he found her attractive, but because of the way she acted.
Once, a few months after Rue had come, the Shadow had made a sudden spread through several blocks, and refugees turned insane had run amok through the town; she was the first with the idea to catch them with improvised tranquilizer darts. In addition, she had been the first to coax a Shadowed refugee back to health, through certain actions and conversations.
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. Outside the tarp, Alec could hear the panting and screams of Shadowed refugees, and sobs of those who lost their loved ones; the casualties had been heavy that night.
Such was the power of the Shadow.
Alec was rocked out of his thoughts with Rue’s next statement.
“You’re immune, you know.”
He felt a cold rush travel through his body, and he stared at the dark-haired girl squatting at the tarp flap. “What did you say?”
“You’re immune. To the shadows.”
Alec took a moment to process what he had just heard. His mind buzzed, and everything else seemed to go silent. No, he couldn’t be immune. He had just.... he had just been lucky, that was all. He had been on the edge of the Shadow field and hadn’t been as affected as strongly. Confused, he shook his head. When he replied to Rue, his voice sounded lost and confused. “No, I’m not. I just didn’t get affected as much, is all.”
Rue looked like she was about to reply, but was cut off by the sudden tearing screams from outside. Not the screams of those already affected, but those being affected, fresh, louder, terrified.
The Shadow was expanding again.
She turned back to face Alec coldly. “We’ll talk later about this,” she said, and disappeared with a rustle of the tarp.
Outside, it was chaos. Terrified people, both sane and insane, streamed through the tarps that mottled the streets. Alec didn’t have to see where the Shadow was; Wherever it went, a new wave of screams rang out, and more people collapsed to the ground, clutching their heads like hell itself had entered their minds - which it had. People payed him no attention and rushed past him.
He didn’t know whether to stay or run. He was confused. Was he immune? Was he not? He stood hypnotized in the center of the turmoil, while people collapsed around him, some dead, some writhing in fear.
Without warning, someone grabbed him roughly by the collar, and Alec snapped out of his trance. Rue stood by him, her face concealed by a mask, holding a riot shield. “Are you going to help us or not!?” She yelled at him over the clamor.
Without waiting for a reply, she sprinted past him to try to contain the insane refugees whose screams merged to form a disturbing symphony. Several others joined her with similar equipment.
Alec couldn’t think clearly.

I am not immune, he told himself. I’m not. I’m not.

I’m just like everybody else.

I’m not different, I’m like everybody else.

Everything was a blur.

----

When Alec woke up, it was silent. There was no ambiance, no low howl of the wind; just a sharp silence that pierced the air.
He took a moment to reorient himself, and sat up. The muscles in his body felt like they were on fire. He had been lying on his back in a collapsed tarp.
Where was he? He raised his head to scan his surroundings.
What he saw was worse than anything he had seen before.
The streets of Haven were completely desolate of any life. trampled tarps for the once-Shadowed lay strewn among countless bodies. As far as Alec could see, there were bodies. Their faces strangled in expression, their mouths stretched open, their eyes staring sightlessly into space.
They had all died of fear.
A low haze of dust hung below the buildings, billowing faintly through the sea of corpses below.
The strong, pungent feeling of the Shadow was all too distinct; The cold tendril burrowed into his gut once more, but with more vigor and fear. His head throbbed.
Shakily, Alec forced his muscles to comply and stood up. Looked around.
How had this happened? Only yesterday, this place had been alive with activity. Now it was filled by death and madness.
And overarching all of it, he was immune to the Shadows. Any uncertainty had been cleared, and the realization came with a sharp stab of reality. A blessing, yet a curse, for reasons Alec wanted to keep from rising up within his thoughts.
His mind and thoughts returned with bitter clarity, and for a second, he wished that he had stayed the same as before; hazy, confused.
Now there was only one truth: he was Immune.
Alec was surprised at his own reaction; He thought that he would have been furious, angry. Instead, he felt bleak, like a prisoner sentenced to death, counting down the days to his execution. It was a helpless feeling of knowing that it was coming, but not being able to stop it.
He looked around again, and started trudging in the direction that had the least bodies strewn on the road. Find food, find shelter, maybe even somewhere the Shadow hadn’t reached yet; even if he was immune, a sickening feeling accompanied being in the Shadow field.
Without warning, the tolls of a bell washed through the deserted town, the notes like a lament to what he had lost and gained in the last day. Alec looked up at the fireball sky, streaked pink and orange by the sun. Its last rays cast over Haven, shading the bodies in the streets and the deserted buildings in gold. Then the sun sank behind the horizon, and the town was plunged into blue shadows.
There was no comfort this time.

Alec pulled up his collar and walked briskly against the bitter cold.

okay, at this point, I have to figure out a way for Rue and Alec to meet and Rue try to convince Alec to help in the attempt to destroy the Shadow.

Once again, Alec woke up to the sound of fear. As he came to, he became aware that he was lying down on something soft. Suddenly, panic seized him: his eyes snapped open and he tried to run, but then he realized that he was the one screaming. He steadied himself and swallowed; his throat felt sore and craggy. He realized that he wasn't irrationally panicked like he was before, so he reasoned that the shadow was the cause. He remembered that someone had been shouting at him to calm him down. It was very probable that his presumed assailant was someone that believed that he had been claimed by the shadow.

Thankfully, that meant that he was safe. So then the question became whether the Shadow field had expanded while he had been unconscious.

At the very notion, he felt a void in the pit of his stomach.

What if it had... If it had already--

He didn't want to finish that trail of thought. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and found himself on a dirty blanket inside a small tarp. It made sense--the organized mental clinics had likely been claimed by the Shadow field's expansion.

He jumped as the tarp flap was thrown open. He blinked rapidly and his eyes watered. While the flap was open, he noticed that it was around midday and that there was a bright, cloudless sky over Haven.

"I know you," came an older girl's voice. "You're Alec, right?"

As his eyes once again adjusted to the light, he saw a girl squatting at the entrance of the tarp. He assumed she was around eighteen or nineteen, and she had dark hair and pale skin--likely Asian. Her expression was a paradoxical mixture of disappointment and hope.

"Rue?" he asked tentatively.

"Yeah, that's me," she said, nodding. "Is your head alright?"

He began to recognize her expression. It was one he had seen in many a person in Haven before. It was that look of disdain and misunderstanding. He might have lived in that city, but since his ideologies and mannerisms so often conflicted with theirs, he might as well have been an outsider. He was treated almost as a mentally unstable patient: just waiting to be set off at the first remark that could even begin to be considered as offensive.

He shook his head and closed his eyes. "Ugh, not again," he muttered under his breath. He tried to convince himself that it didn't matter to him, but he had trouble ignoring the sinking feeling that came with being branded.

"What was that?" asked Rue, as she leaned in closer.

He realized he had spoken aloud. He cleared his throat and quickly snapped his gaze to her. "Oh, uh, nothing... Yeah, I'm fine." He looked down, and then realized he had another question to ask: "Do you know how much of the city has been obliterated?"

It was Rue's turn to close her eyes and sigh. "About half, I think."

Half? Alec thought. He was puzzled over how much destruction could have happened so quickly. He briefly felt a sinking feeling as he began to wonder just how much time had really passed. But he backpedaled and realized that it could not have been that much--he didn't feel that well rested.

A looming silence settled between them, quickly turning uncomfortable. Alec closed his eyes and listened to the sounds around him. He heard the cries of babies and the cooing of their mothers in a feeble attempt to reassure them that they were safe. Both mother and child knew, however, that such a word held no water in the hell that this place had become. He heard an arbitrary few words of honor being said by a priest about an individual who had died during the attack.

Despair, destruction, desolation; all caused by the ominous entity that was the shadow.

"Alec... You're immune, you know that?" she asked, shocking him out of his reverie.

"I--wait, what?" he stuttered.

"The shadows can't hurt you," she said.

"No, I just didn't get hurt that time," he reasoned.

"How else could you explain that you're here now?" she asked defiantly.

"Uh, how about being lucky? There's such a thing, believe it or not," he retorted. He was beginning to feel annoyed by this girl's pressuring.

Moreover, he was started to feel frightened. Although her reasoning made some semblance of since, he didn't really want it to. He didn't know how he would be treated, but he loathed the idea of becoming an outsider to the point where the city might actively shun him.

"Uh, how the hell do you explain that?" she echoed in a slightly mocking yet irritated tone. "Half the city is in shambles and you say you're lucky?"

"What about all those people out there right now? They're alive and they're not immune. Explain that!" he said, his voice rising to a yell.

"You were attacked by a shadow and they weren't!" Rue's voice began to match his volume. "Anyone else would have been driven insane or--" She stopped herself and took a deep breath. "Listen," she said, visibly more calm. "You have a gift. You could use it to help this world." She suddenly jolted back and her eyes went wide, as though reaching an epiphany. "You and I should team up."

"Wait, what?" He was shocked by the sudden swerve in topic.

"I know it's crazy, but..." Her eyes began to shine. "We could stop everything. We could go to the heart of the shadows and eliminate the source."

"And what's in it for me?" he asked.

Rue looked at him as though he had three heads. "Um, how about the fact that you could save this city--save the world?"

"I believe I said 'what's in it for me,'" he said coldly.

The more she heard him speak, the more her face blanched and the more her expression turned to one of pure horror and disgust. "Isn't helping the city enough for you?"

His expression had shifted into emotionless features. "I don't see what they've done for me. So I don't see what I should do for them."

She was visibly shaken, her eyes were blazing, and she was basically gritting her teeth as she spoke. "You're pathetic! This city has kept you alive and protected you!"

His face twisted into a distorted smile. "Didn't you just say I was immune? If that's true, then I don't need the place."

"I can't believe you! Do you only care about yourself!?"

He shook his head. "Actually, I care about three people: me, myself, and--"

"Don't even go there," she said venomously as she plowed over his words. She opened her mouth to continue, but suddenly a shriek reverberated through the tarp.

She threw aside the tarp cover and Alec saw that the shadows had once again arrived. The clouds had turned overcast, and the makeshift camp was a complete mess. Rue began to run outside, but then she looked back at Alec.

"Aren't you coming?" she demanded.

"Go to hell," he said shortly.

She blinked rapidly for a few moments. "If you're not going to help me, then I'll just form a group of people and we'll go to the center of all this and stop it, even without your damned help!" She sprinted outside and drew out a weapon designed to fight shadows. As she began to fight them, he saw several more people take up ranks alongside her. That was his last look before the tarp flap closed.

Suddenly he felt very tired. He laid down and allowed the darkness to take him.