Shadow

By the time they let me leave the station, the lights in the editing room had been switched off one row at a time.

“Can you wipe the studio floor before you go, Samantha?” the producer called from the doorway. “The cleaning crew’s been cut again.”

I looked at the mop in my hand, then at the camera bag hanging from my shoulder. “I thought I was here to learn reporting.”

“You are.” He gave me a tired smile that meant he knew exactly how ridiculous it sounded. “After the floor.”

The station had a budget for one working camera, two microphones that crackled if you held them wrong, and enough coffee to keep the presenters upright. It didn’t have a budget for a cleaner every night. Interns came cheaper, especially interns who needed the experience badly enough not to complain.

So I made coffee, carried scripts between studios, fetched batteries, and mopped the floor beneath the desk where the evening anchor had spent an hour telling the city that everything was under control.

On the screen above me, the ruling party’s spokesperson stood at a lectern beneath a gold-and-blue banner. He spoke about public safety and the government’s successful prison reforms. A caption beneath him read: A SAFER FUTURE FOR EVERY FAMILY.

The report that followed showed a different city: a shop owner locking his shutters before sunset, a woman describing a robbery outside her own building, a police officer asking residents to stay alert. The anchor’s voice stayed calm. The footage didn’t.

I wrung out the mop. “How can they call this safer?”

The producer glanced back at the screen. “They’ve got better cameras where they live.”

It was the closest thing to an answer I’d heard all evening.

At twenty-seven, I was a final-year media student, 5’6” tall, with dark-brown hair and a face people often called pretty. I was still working as an unpaid intern. Dad had saved for years so I could study. I couldn’t afford to waste the chance, even if the station thought “learning the job” included scrubbing coffee stains from the studio tiles.

When I finally stepped outside, the night had settled over the city. My phone said 11:18. The last bus had already gone, and the walk home would take forty minutes if I kept to the main roads. I pulled my hood up against the wind and started down the side street.

I heard the first shot before I saw them.

It cracked through the narrow lane and bounced off the brick walls. I stopped so abruptly my camera bag swung into my hip.

At the far end, a man had fallen beside a parked car. A woman was crouched over him, one arm wrapped around a little boy. The second man stood a few steps away with a gun in his hand. His companion was already turning back towards them.

I knew their faces.

Their photographs had been on the news three nights earlier. Two violent offenders released early under the new “restorative justice” programme. The party had called it humane. The anchor had called it controversial. The men in the lane looked like they had never heard the word humane in their lives.

“Please,” the woman said. “He’s only a child.”

The second shot came before I could move.

The woman crumpled beside her husband. The boy’s cry cut through the silence that followed.

The man with the gun turned towards him.

Something inside me went cold and clear.

I had practised with coins, bottle caps, keys. Little things, when nobody was watching. I could make them slide across a table or lift for half a second before dropping. I had never tried to stop a gun.

I raised my hand.

The gun jerked sideways.

The shot struck brick above the car. The boy ducked, and one of the men swore.

Both turned towards me.

“Hey!” one shouted. “You—hoodie!”

They couldn’t see my face in the dark. From a distance, with my hood up and my shoulders hunched inside my jacket, I must have looked like a young man.

“Walk away,” the one with the gun said. “This doesn’t concern you.”

I looked at the child, frozen beside his parents. “It does now.”

The gunman lifted the weapon again. I felt its weight as if it were in my own hand. My fingers tightened. The barrel turned up, away from the boy. The man tried to force it down, but the metal trembled in the air between us.

His companion came at me from the side.

I shoved without touching him.

He flew backwards into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from him. I stared at my own hand. I hadn’t meant to send him that far. The gunman’s eyes widened. For one second, all three of us were as surprised as each other.

Then he saw my face beneath the hood.

“A girl?” He laughed, glancing at his friend. “You came out here alone?”

The way he looked at me changed. The child was still behind him. I could hear the boy crying, could see his small hands pressed over his ears. I could also see what the man thought he could do to me once the child was out of the way.

My fear didn’t disappear. It narrowed until there was room for only one thought: He is not getting to that child.

The gun tore from his grip and spun into the air. I flung it down the lane. It clattered beneath a delivery van, far beyond his reach.

The other man pushed himself away from the wall and charged again. I threw out both hands. The force that answered me was too much, too fast. He hit the ground and slid across the wet pavement. The gunman stumbled to his knees as if the street itself had risen to meet him.

I kept my hands raised, shaking so hard my sleeves rustled.

“Stay down!” I shouted.

Neither man moved.

I ran to the boy. “Look at me. Can you stand?”

He stared past my shoulder at the bodies. I crouched in front of him, blocking his view as best I could. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

He grabbed the front of my jacket. I lifted him carefully, though my arms felt weak. Behind us, one of the men groaned. I turned, and the loose metal rubbish bin beside the wall rolled across the lane and pinned his legs until the police could reach him.

My phone was on the pavement where I’d dropped it. I called emergency services, gave them the street, then carried the boy towards the main road. A shopkeeper had come outside. He took the child from me and wrapped him in his coat.

“Who did this?” he asked me.

I looked back towards the alley. Red and blue lights were spreading across the wet pavement.

“I don’t know,” I said, and hated how small my voice sounded.

The boy was still staring at me. “It was a shadow,” he whispered.

I pulled my hood farther forward and stepped away before the first officer reached us.

By the time I got home, my hands had stopped shaking. The rest of me hadn’t.

Dad was awake at the kitchen table. Our house had two small rooms and no living room; the narrow kitchen was where we ate, studied, and tried to pretend there was space for company.

At fifty, my father, Henry Dawson, stood about 5’9” tall. He was shorter than his older brother Carl, but the family resemblance was unmistakable. They shared a strong set to their features, though Dad’s face was gentler and less striking. He had come home from his modest civil-service job and should have been asleep. He looked up as soon as I came in.

“You’re late.” Then he saw my face. “Samantha, what happened?”

I sat down opposite him. “Two men shot a couple in the lane behind the station. Their little boy was there.”

Dad went still. “Were you hurt?”

“No.” I looked at my hands. “I stopped them from shooting him.”

He understood what I meant. He had known about my power since I was a baby, though neither of us had ever found an explanation for it. I had told him about the small experiments I’d been doing. I hadn’t told him what it felt like when the force surged through me tonight.

“How?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know. I just—” My voice caught. “I couldn’t let them hurt the child.”

Dad reached across the table and covered my hand with his. “You got him out.”

“The people they released were on the news this week. Everyone knew they were dangerous.”

“I know.”

“They keep saying the reforms are working. They say the streets are safer. But crime is getting worse, and they keep letting men like that back out.”

Dad’s mouth tightened. “The people in power have guards, motorcades, locked gates. The rest of us walk home.”

“They want people scared,” I said. The thought had been forming in my mind for weeks, between the reports we filmed and the official statements we were told to repeat. “If everyone’s frightened, they’ll vote for the party that promises to protect them. They can call it a coincidence, but how many coincidences does it take?”

“Suspicion isn’t proof,” Dad said. “You know that better than anyone at your station.”

“I know.”

He looked down at our joined hands. “Your uncle once told me there was an easier way. A better position. More money than I could make in this job.”

“Carl?”

“He said I could stop worrying about bills if I joined him. I told him I wouldn’t get rich by stealing from the people.” Dad released my hand. “We argued. We never became enemies. But we never saw the world the same way again.”

The news was still playing on the tiny television above the counter. The spokesperson had returned, promising that the party would keep every family safe.

On the screen, the anchor reported that two suspects had been detained after a fatal attack. A witness said a hooded figure had intervened and saved the child. The boy had described the stranger as “a shadow.”

Dad turned towards me.

I looked at the television, then at my hands.

I had spent my whole life trying to understand what they could do. Tonight, for the first time, I understood what I had to do with them.