Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Children of Olive

He wiped the tears from his face. He looked at the tall watcher, and his expression changed. The fear evaporated, replaced by a cold, hard fury.

He raised his hands again. He pointed at his own throat.

He opened his mouth.

And he screamed.

But no sound came out. Instead, a wave of force hit the room. A blast of pure, silent rejection that hit Amal like a physical wind. Her hair whipped around her face. Papers flew off the tables.

The watcher stumbled back. Its red eyes flickered. The darkness around it seemed to shred, like smoke in a hurricane.

Omar screamed again—silently, furiously. His face turned purple with the effort. He was pouring every ounce of his pain, his humiliation, his rage into that silence. He was taking the weapon they had given him and turning it back on them.

YOU CANNOT HAVE IT, the silence seemed to say. IT IS MINE.

"Push it back!" Amal yelled over the wind. "Keep shouting! Don't stop!"

"OMAR! OMAR! OMAR!" The chant was a roar now, a rhythmic wall of sound that battered against the watchers.

The tall watcher roared back—a sound like grinding stones—and lunged. Its hand, the one that had stolen the voice, reached out, its fingers elongating into claws.

But the wall of sound held it back. The red eyes dimmed. The figure began to lose cohesion, its edges blurring into mist.

Omar took one final step forward. He reached out with both hands, as if grabbing something invisible in the air. He grabbed the space where the watcher's "box" would be.

And he squeezed.

With a sound like shattering glass, the tall watcher exploded.

Not into fire, but into shadow. It simply burst apart, its form losing all structure. And from the center of the explosion, a single, clear sound rang out.

A gasp.

A human gasp.

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