There was an unexpected rasp to his voice, a hint of desperation. He stretched out one hand, as if to brush it across my cheek, or perhaps wrap it around my throat. I stumbled back out of his reach, shielding Alexia, who had followed me out into the hallway, from his sight with the whole of my body. I didn't care that he'd been looking for me — barely had time to process his statement — all I knew was that he wasn't getting anywhere near her.
Shouts of alarm began ringing out while I stood there, frozen. Calls of "Nightshade is in the building," and "Run," overlapped into a garbled, meaningless hum. Teachers attempted unsuccessfully to keep the crowds from panic, and the whole school descended into chaos, people pushing to get past.
"Lexi," I murmured shakily, "run."
She didn't move, peaking around me at what must have been the first supervillain she'd ever seen in her sheltered life. "I'm scared," she whimpered.
I repeated, "Lexi, run!"
I thrust my hands at her chest from behind my back, forcing her into motion. It broke her from her petrified stupor. She got going, while I did my best to follow.
The crowds of students, teachers, and families thinned around us, bottlenecking towards the exit, the worst place they could be, because even if we reached them, we'd be sitting ducks at the edges of the herd. I'd paint us into a corner, and endanger everyone around us in the process.
I saw that future with horrible clarity. Although the last thing I wanted to do was leave Alexia alone, to keep her safe I had to make a gamble. Lose, and other people could die; win, and I could die. Fantastic odds.
With no other choice, I clenched my teeth almost to the point of cracking molars and took a sharp right, hurtling up a set of stairs, away from everyone else.
Threads of ice encroached the walls behind me, chasing my steps up the first flight of stairs into the next hallway, encapsulating each classroom I sprinted past. More glass clattered to the ground as the sudden shift from warm to freezing caused thick fractures to fissure through the panes until they couldn't hold together a moment longer. Glass crunched beneath my shoes and flew across my bare skin, drawing out small rivulets of blood. I heard Shade giving chase, like I hoped — and feared — he would.
I had no plan, no long term goal beyond drawing him far as possible from Alexia and eventually escaping myself, as well. I barely had time even to consider how he knew where to find me, given that I hadn't even known myself that I would be there until a few hours ago when my dad told me to go. The idea that my dad could be in cahoots with a super villain to bring about my demise would have made me laugh under other circumstances.
"Stop running!" he growled, making a slashing motion with his hand, as though to slice through the air.
In response, a block of ice immediately began walling up the entrance to the next set of stairs leading towards the third floor just as I approached it, taking shape from the outside working in, leaving an ever decreasing gap in the middle.
I cursed between ragged breaths. "Why does it have to be ice?" I gasped out. "Why can't you ever have one of the worthless powers?"
"I said," he ground out, rapidly closing the distance between us, "stop running."
"Like sweet hell," I muttered mostly to myself, and wasted no more time diving through the closing gap.
My knees cracked hard against the floor with the promise for additional pain after the adrenaline in my system dissipated, but there wasn't any time to waste nursing my wounds. Each step a new taste of agony, I forced myself to keep going, keep climbing. Maybe I would lose him, duck into a classroom when he wasn't looking and wait for him to pass me by, before doubling back to safety. That possibility seemed increasingly unlikely. I rattled each closed door I flew passed, but frost cemented them shut.
The sound of the fire alarm blaring nearly made me jump out of my skin, no doubt pulled during the chaos to warn the unaware that something was amiss. The rhythmic blaring set me on edge. I could no longer hear my own thoughts, let alone what my pursuer shouted after me.
I fast approached the end of the hallway and a final narrow set of stairs leading up to the roof. Like the previous flight of steps, a thick pane of foggy ice had walled over the entrance, flat and a burning cold, only this one was already completely iced over, leaving me nowhere to hide, yet unable to backtrack. Neck straining to see over my shoulder, I watched Shade approach, cloak sweeping below his knees and frost exploding from his every step, leaving snowy footprints in his wake. Twenty feet away. Nineteen. Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen—
Terrified and out of options, I did the only thing I could think of in that moment and planted all my weight into a flat kick through the frozen barrier.
For a fraught moment, I worried it had already grown too reinforced. Then, a hole just large enough to fit my body appeared, and I threw myself into it, as the ice began restoring itself around me. Not a moment too soon, I crawled out the other side, pushing up into a renewed sprint. I heard the wet crash of the barrier falling away to water as Shade stepped through it mere heartbeats later.
Ten feet away. Nine.
I crested the top step, violently out of breath and feeling as though my lungs themselves were bleeding, bursting out of my chest. I couldn't scream if I wanted to, there wasn't enough air left to try.
The last door was unlocked and yielded to my touch, crashing against the wall. By the time I reached the fence bordering the area, the door slammed shut, cutting the fire alarm into an ignorable throbbing hum.
"I told you to stop running." Shade's voice was close and even, not at all affected from the chase, but also.... off in a way I couldn't describe.
I spun to face him, my back flush up against the fence, pushing against it as far as I could go, until the uneven metal spokes stabbed into my shoulder blades. "And you expected me to listen? Don't answer that, and don't come any closer, either! I'll — I'll jump!"
The instant the words left my mouth I regretted them. I'd jump? To my death? The state of being he was currently trying to put me in? If anything, I would be saving him energy. That was hardly a threat.
My physics teacher, trying to evoke interest in unenticing subject matter, once had us calculate the average lowest height a person could die falling from. Although it was a morbid lesson in acceleration, it had the intended effect. She had our full attention for those fifty-three minutes of class time, and the answer? Forty-eight feet. Roughly four stories. Standing there, fingers entwined through a wrought iron fence atop a school building, I stared down three floors, so maybe I wouldn't die. Maybe I could—
"You don't want to do that," Shade said, breaking through my rushing thoughts.
I gripped the fence tighter, uttering through a tight throat, "I might. It's no doubt better than whatever you plan to do."
"Unlikely." He edged forward. "You don't know what I plan to do — what I need to do."
Again, he stretched out a hand, shivering slightly, despite his cloak. All that clothes didn't protect him from his own ever changing ability, apparently.
"It's a bit dramatic to say you 'need' to kill me." I laughed nervously, not paying much attention to what spewed from my lips, merely talking in order to give myself time to think about better alternatives to jumping. With my luck, I'd beat the average and be one of the fifty percent who died upon impact below forty-eight feet. "At most, I'd say you really, really want to kill me. A lot. Violently."
"Oh... I am not going to kill you."
"Great. So you plan to torture me. I feel so much better."
He took another step, and in response I found quick leverage in the fence and propelled myself over onto the other side. I may not have been a runner, but I had great experience hopping fences at the back of the high school in order to get unsanctioned lunch off campus.
"I told you to not come any closer," I choked out, dutifully ignoring how the heels of my feet hung over the edge. This was fine. Totally fine. Just peachy. "Don't make me jump."
I wanted to make it sound like a warning. Instead, it came out like a plea. Please don't make me jump.
His eyes, the only part of him I could really see due to his black mask that curved up over the bridge of his nose and his hood that obscured most of his profile, narrowed. Distinctly irritated.
Another rush of cold surged through me, starting in my toes and sweeping up higher. I knew without looking that he was trying to freeze my feet in place, edging the ice past my shins against my best efforts to break free.
"Now," he said with a note of finality, voice low. "Time to go."
The space between us closed too quickly. Five feet. Another long step. Three.
My skin shredded at the ankles from how hard I worked to jerk myself free, simultaneously clawing one handedly at the hard frozen crystal, the other hand wound in a death grip through the wrought iron.
This couldn't be happening.
He tugged off a single leather glove, leisurely in his confidence that I no longer stood a chance of escape, even if I was desperate enough to take the leap, which I wasn't sure I was. I liked having the option, though, before he robbed me all semblance of choice. Maybe I would have jumped. Maybe I wouldn't have, but at least it would have been my own decision.
I couldn't shake one thought, one mundane concern that shouldn't have been the most important thing to worry about at that exact moment, yet was all that permeated my mind: when I never got off this roof, how would Alexia get home? Would her teacher keep her out of harm's way until a parent could arrive? Or would she be left scared and alone?
Shade's hand was still trembling, sharp, unmistakable tremors, and his pupils, they seemed dilated, especially obvious in contrast to the light shade of his irises.
Too caught up in each other, in my fear and his victory, neither of us noticed how the fire alarm temporarily peaked in loudness, only for a few moments, and then a glass bottle containing a single egg and a burnt out match from a science fair project downstairs smashed over Shade's head from behind.