Garth Nix - Shades Children

Gold-Eye crouched in a corner under two birdshit-caked blankets, watching

There was no time for discussion at the top of

Wake up!

Shades secret home was a submarine. Soon after the Change

So you are. I will come down.

Shade didnt say anything for a moment after Drum left.

After a single, bewildering night in the Submarine, Gold-Eye found

Theyre alive! said Ninde, sounding very surprised. I think.

They didnt stop running until they were a hundred yards

Im Ella. Who are you?

We have to get out, said Drum. Theres an Overlord

The far row of cars included several electric runabouts still

The sick bay was all gleaming stainless steel. Stainless-steel cabinets

Torpedo Lock 4 Sam Allen

Gold-Eye stopped outside the hatch that led to the four-bunk

The Overlords started changing the weather on the afternoon before

The eastern tower had a riveted steel door leading onto

They heard the grenade explode when the boat was just

The robots had already cleaned and racked their equipment. The

They never got to manhole twelve on Northwest Eightbecause that

Gold-Eye, go to the other end of the bus and

Sleep dust! shouted Gold-Eye, pointing up at the slowly falling

Meat Factory Reconnaissance

Ella had just touched the switch to bring Drums shelf

They were only a few feet behind the Myrmidon line

Hes alive! cried Ninde. She threw her arms up in

The first set of Deceptor batteries ran out as they

They had to use the Deceptors only once, in the

First Contact

The cache was located a hundred yards into a railway

If Shade had been expecting a dramatic response to his

Despite Shades assurances that it was unnecessary, they kept a

Three days after meeting Shade in the Eastern Line tunnel,

A Myrmidon threw itself on the grenade a second before

It was Drums pack that Ella had salvaged. Still done

There was a map in the police cara paperback road

There were seven Overlords sitting on seven thrones in the

Ninde and Gold-Eye had no idea how long theyd been

The Myrmidons didnt take them back to the cell. Instead,

Gold-Eye was just about to give up and breathe in

A razor blade gave me freedom from the Dorms. A small rectangle of steel, incredibly sharp on two sides. It came wrapped in paper, with the words NOT FOR USE BY CHILDREN printed on the side.

I was eleven years old then. Eight years ago, which means I am probably the oldest human alive. Five years past the time when the Overlords would have wrenched my brain out of my skull and used it in one of their creatures.

Actually, I guess Shade is the oldest human around. If you can call him a human.

Shade would say that it wasnt the razor blade that gave me freedom. It was what I did with it. The object is irrelevant; my action is the important part.

But that blade still seems important to me. It was the first useful object I ever conjuredor created, or whatever it is I do. I remember when I first realized what a razor blade was, staring at that faded page of newspaper I found. The newspaper that had lain in a wall cavity for forty, maybe fifty years, long before the Overlords decided to use the building as a Dormitory.

And there, in black-turned-gray on white-turned-yellow, an advertisement for razor blades with a picture perfect for me to put in my head.

It took three months of practice for me to build that picture into something real, a hard, sharp object to hold in my hand. Then one day, it wasnt just a thought. It was there in my hand. Real. Sharp.

Sharp enough to cut the tracer out of my wrist. To make escape a possibility

Well, I did it. Only one in ten thousand gets out of the Dormitories, according to Shade. Most cant find anything to cut the tracer out or dont have the wits to disable it in some other way.

Even when they do find something sharp, most dont have the guts to slice open their own wrist, to reach in and pull the capsule out from where it nestles between veins and bone.

Even now, when I look at the scar, I wonder how. But its done now. Ive been free for eight years.

I dont know why Shade wants to record this. I mean, whos going to see it? Who cares how I got out of the Dorms?

Of course, I really do know why Shade records. And whos going to see this video.

Ive been here with Shade for three years. But hes been around for nearly fifteenever since the Change. Theres been a lot of children in this place since then.

Ive seen their videos, but Ill never see them. You sit in the dark, watching their faces as they talk through their brief lives, and all the time you wonder what got them in the end. Was it a Winger striking out of the sky? Trackers on their heels till they dropped and the Myrmidons came? A Ferret uncoiling in some dark hole where theyd hoped to hide?

Now youre watching meand youre wonderingwhat got her?