by Alisa Woods
“A group gathering…” She was speed-reading the context around RODEO. Something about a trial test, but this one had the results in the report already. She went to the next document. Same thing. The next…
“They talk about it?” Swift asked, distracting her for a split second. “In the report?”
She didn’t bother answering, just clicked through two more reports and…
The final RODEO will necessitate large-scale planning and execution. A smaller in-field RODEO is recommended. Ideal time and location would provide necessary data for final assessment as well as prevention of early release of results. Such an event is recommended within the window of operability [32].
“Thirty-two,” Mercy breathed. “What the hell is citation thirty-two?” She scrolled like mad to the end of the report.
[32] Free Jumping National Competition.
“Oh no.” Mercy felt everything inside her go cold.
“What?” Swift demanded.
“Agent Walker’s going to the wrong location.”
Chapter Eight
The dread pulsing off Mercy was like a discordant rock band.
Her waves of emotion screeched against Swift’s skin. “What do you mean Agent Walker’s going to the wrong location?” he asked. Once again, her lightning brain had zoomed ahead, and he was playing catch-up. Not that he minded—it was kind of thrilling to be around someone that smart who also didn’t have an ego the size of the state. But he legit had no idea why she was blasting horror at him.
“Oh, God.” She swallowed and turned to face him. “We’ve got to call him back.”
“Okay, but… I need a bit more explanation.” He was so tempted to quell her rising panic by reaching out with his mind. But no way did he want Dalvi to replay this instant a dozen times, probing his feelings for the cute but definitely upset Ms. Mercy Strange. Instead, he reached across the back of his chair—the one that formed a barrier between them—and touched her shoulder. “Just tell me what you’ve found.”
She stared at his hand, oddly, for a moment, like she couldn’t understand why he was touching her—or perhaps she was just dazed and tired—then she blinked as she met his gaze. “They’re going to do some kind of group test—in the field. The FBI disrupted their clinical trial at the prison, so they’re taking it to the field. The public, Swift.”
“Okay, I get that.” He pulled his hand back. It wasn’t calming her anyway. “But what is this citation thirty-two business? What’s the Free Jumping National Competition?”
“Oh my God.” She seemed to get more freaked out the more she thought about it. “My sister, Ever, does free jumping. Well, she did—went to a regional competition at some point. No, no, no…” She spun back to her screen, brought up a browser, and was madly typing before he could ask any more. She quickly found a page that had brightly colored ribbons, several huge ones, fluttering down from a skyscraper. A lake glittered in the background. Swift vaguely recognized the building as the tallest one in Chicago. Only when Mercy scrolled down did it show a close-up image of the ribbon—and the person attached to it. At first, he thought it was an oddly-shaped parachute, but no. Free jumping. Apparently, it was a sport where people leaped off buildings and used their magick to brake them on the way down. There were several categories for the competition—thermal magick, air spells, and there was even an electromagnetic division for those whose field magick was strong enough. Gravity magick was explicitly barred, but then Swift knew that was extremely rare, anyway.
Mercy kept clicking through, bringing up new screens… finally, she found a calendar. She gasped, and he didn’t have to ask. In bright red letters at the top was NATIONALS! Register Now! And below that, the date… today.
At ten in the morning.
“You think this is…” He trailed off as Mercy whipped out her phone and stabbed at it.
She waited. Someone picked up… “Ever!” she gasped. “It’s me. Tell me, please, for the love of magick, that you are not free jumping today!” There was a brief pause, and the relief was clear on her face. The vibrating panic buzzing the air all around her dimmed slightly. “No, I just…” She dashed a look to Swift, but he just shrugged. Was she sure this was real? She looked back to the screen, and he could feel the worry and doubt tangle together. “I think… look, I think Zane’s going to the wrong place. I mean, maybe it’s the right place, maybe there are two things happening today—” She cut off and listened to her sister for a moment. Then she glanced at him and said, “I have Agent Payne here with me. But tell Zane that I think there might be a second event today. At the Free Jumping Nationals. It’s not at the right time, in fact…” She snuck a look at the screen. “It’s right now, but there’s this mention in the report, and…” She listened again. “Okay. All right. Yeah, we’ll check it out.” She swiped off the phone and looked to him, her pretty blue lips pressed into a line.
“What do you think is going to happen?” he asked.
She seemed uncertain. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s just a guess…”
“Tell me.” He gave her his best persuasive look. “Please.”
“I think they’re going to test the switch.”
“The switch that turns on Talents.” Then he dashed a look at the screen with all the witches plummeting to earth with a large fabric ribbon trailing behind them for the crowds to see, performing their death-defying tricks with just their Talents to save them. “Or turn them off.” Holy shit.
“Will you go with me?” She gave him a pleading look. “I have to at least…” She looked to the screen. “Try to stop it.”
“Of course.” He rose up from the chair. Could this really be it? “But it’s early. The competition’s already started. And the note said four o’clock.”
Mercy was out of her chair and yanking him out of his. He was up and moving with her through the lab before she answered. They made it all the way to the elevator, whose button she madly stabbed ten times, demanding that the car come sooner before she spoke.
“The note is bullshit,” she said between her teeth. “If you’re a mad scientist trying to test your crazy illegal gen-magick in the field, are you going to lead the FBI right to it?”
“You’re going to create a diversion.” It made sense.
“While you’re off murdering people in a whole new way.” She was getting steamed now. All that panic had converted into a driving pulse of anger. “All so you can develop a weapon to kill even more people. Or turn them into your puppets.” The elevator arrived, and they hurried in. Mercy stabbed the parking garage button with even greater fury.
As they plummeted, the gravity of it sunk in. And all of Mercy’s lessons from before came back. “How are they going to flip the switch? For that matter, how are they going to get the switches installed in the first place? How can they get the drugs to a bunch of elite magick athletes?”
“We’ll have to figure that part on the way over,” she said tightly. “But the real question is how would you test it? How would you know, without any doubts, that your test had been successful?”
He couldn’t tell if she wanted him to guess or if she was just talking out loud. The image of the free jumpers leaping into the air, their streamers pointing the way, and then desperately trying to stop their fall with magick… a magick they suddenly no longer possessed. “A life and death situation is a fairly extreme test.”
The elevator reached the parking garage and opened. “But a thorough one,” she said as she strode out into the maze of parked cars. “If you wanted to force people to display their magick, to make sure that all abilities had been effectively turned off, a plummet to your death would be a good motivator.” She screeched to a stop on the concrete floor. “Shit. I forgot to summon a car.” These uber-rich Stranges never drove anywhere—they had drivers for that sort of thing.
“We can take mine.” Swift waved her down the line of cars to his standard bureau-black sedan. He traveled all over, so he borrowed one of the bureau’s cars wherever he was on
assignment. He had a temporary apartment as well. Which just reminded him that his time here with Mercy wasn’t permanent. They would solve the case then go their separate ways—her back to her high-powered life, maybe now with the formula for ground-breaking research, and he would move on to the next assignment the FBI had for him. If he was lucky and didn’t screw this up.
They didn’t talk—the tension rolling off her just clenched his stomach as well—and quickly got in the car and headed toward the lake. They weren’t far from the cluster of towering buildings in downtown Chicago. The morning sun was bright, and the traffic was light—they were there within minutes, but a whole section of the street had been blocked off for the competition, and there was nowhere to park. He left the car in an alley, illegally parked, but CPD was unlikely to tow a car with bureau plates. As they neared the perimeter, the crowd got thicker, people everywhere out in the bright Saturday morning to enjoy the show.
Dread worked through him as they pushed through the crowd. Mercy kept pace, her intense glare moving people out of their way when they bothered to look. They arrived at the barricade, and Swift reached for his badge so the Chicago Police stationed there would let them through, but Mercy grabbed his hand and stopped him.
“What?” he asked.
“Let’s go around.” She dragged him away from the officer who had lifted her eyebrows at their whole little show. Mercy edged him along the barricade, toward the main building that was clearly the focus of the event—long streamers decorated the sides, running all the way up the hundred-plus stories to the competition platform at the top, shiny and winking light in the morning sun.
He leaned in to be heard over the murmuring of the crowd. “What are we doing?”
She flicked a look to him. “They have to be here. To watch the test. You can’t go flashing that around—they might be able to stop us.”
It was a good point. “Okay, but what’s your plan here? We’ve got to shut this down, right?”
She nodded, sharply, then turned forward and kept fighting her way through the crowd. She lost her hold on his hand with all the jostling around people, and with her smaller frame, she more easily slipped through the spaces in the crowd. Swift gritted his teeth and tried to keep up. He was not going to lose her. He sent a low-level pulse of harmony and accommodation into the minds of the people ahead of them so they would more easily part and let them through. He would probably have to use his Talent the whole way with this. But what was their objective? Storm in and stop the competition? Somehow do that without being detected by whoever was watching?
He finally caught up to Mercy at the sidewalk that ran in front of the competition building, just before she looked poised to barrel through the barricade and take on the officer with her bare fists. What the fuck? He caught her wrist and tugged her to the side.
She struggled against him, and only then did he see the wildness in her eyes. Her raging fear had been buried under her steely determination and the mass of vibrations from the people around them. Crowds had always been tough on him—they were a drowning sea of emotional noise banging on his head—and he had to focus to sense her in the midst of it.
“We have to get in there—” she sputtered, indignant, her hand now on his chest to push him away.
“I know.” He put a hand on her shoulder again, pulling her closer to be heard and trying to calm her without resorting to using his Talent. There was way too much for Dalvi to read into all this. “What are you going to do? Just tell them to call it off? Let me handle this, okay? I’ll be discreet with the badge. No one will know. It’ll be fine.” In reality, he would persuade the hell out of whoever he needed to—but she didn’t need to know that.
The torment on her face was hard to watch, and he felt it even more, tucked up against her, holding her wrist and her shoulder like this. It was a physical closeness demanded by the situation, partly to keep her from rushing into something and partly to be heard over the rising noise of the crowd, but that didn’t make it unpleasant.
She flicked looks at the officer watching them a dozen feet away, then finally gave Swift a nod. Just then an announcement was made over some sound system set up somewhere.
“The contestants this year hail from every state in the union.” The booming voice drowned out any possibility of being heard. Swift felt the rising excitement of the crowd like an almost dizzying wave that washed over him. “The first heat is four extremely Talented adepts, all from the great state of Texas—” A swell of cheers rose up from part of the crowd. Apparently, Texas brought their own support crew.
Swift switched his hold on Mercy to her hand, then led the way back to the barricade. He had to shout at the police officer to be heard over the cheers and the announcer, who was droning on about the backstory of the contestants, but it wasn’t Swift’s words which would get them in—he was flooding the towering, muscular officer with a heroic level of accommodation tinged with a sense of urgency.
“We really do need to get inside,” Swift was saying, but the officer was already moving the barricade.
“Of course, sir. Completely understand. No problem. You’ll find the restrooms inside on the left.” He was jabbering on, his mind flooded with the emotions Swift was sending, but he quickly moved out of the way.
Swift pulled Mercy through the opening the officer had made and hurried her toward the building—the effects of his Talent lasted for a moment or two after he was out of reach, but he didn’t want to give the officer any visual cues to question why he’d just let them in.
Swift pushed their way through the revolving door, keeping Mercy in the same compartment with him.
“What did you say to him?” Mercy hissed as they were bunched up in the cell.
Swift smirked. “That you had a terrible condition that needed urgent use of the bathroom.”
She gave him a dirty look then led the way out of the revolving door. Swift still had her hand, so he tugged on it then hustled ahead, making sure he got to the security check-in before her. He’d already reached ahead mentally, as soon as they were within his range of about twenty feet, and flooded them with an eagerness to help and a heavy dose of accommodation.
“We were held up at the airport,” he said, hardly slowing as he and Mercy cruised through the security arch. “Her competition starts in ten minutes. We need to get to the staging area.”
A few of the older guards were eyeing Mercy’s dress-coat with its buckles and lace, not to mention her knee-high boots—her clothes were nothing like the shiny, monochrome competition suits Swift had seen in the pictures—but it must have been plausible to be in street clothes. The youngest of the guards eagerly waved them over to the elevators.
“Right this way, sir!” He used his keycard to open the elevator door.
Swift hustled himself and a wide-eyed Mercy into the opulent gold-and-mirrored elevator car. The guard stepped in long enough swipe his keycard and press the floor labeled Competition Staging. Then he ducked back out with a smile and a thumbs up.
Mercy waited until the elevator doors closed and they were whisking up the hundred story building before saying, “What in holy hell was that?”
Shit. Swift bit his lip. “I flashed my badge and—”
“No, you didn’t.” She gave him a pinched look.
Fuck. “I told you, I can be persuasive when I need to be. I’ll tell you all about it once we…” He looked up at the rising floor number—they were almost there. “After we save these people, okay?” The look of horror on her face was stabbing into him. Telling her the truth wasn’t an option—if he blew his cover, Dalvi would pull him from the case for sure. But if he used his Talent on Mercy, he’d have to brush away her suspicions with a haze of some overwhelming emotion. Gratitude. Fear. Maybe full-blown terror. His gut twisted with the mere thought of it.
Please don’t make me do this, he silently implored with his eyes. He was ostensibly begging her for the grace to explain later… but when that time came, he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. F
uck.
The elevator lurched to a stop.
“Later,” she said, tersely, eyes forward, waiting for the door to open.
As soon as it did, they both dashed out.
Only the floor was packed. What the hell? Some of these people had to be VIPs or trainers or crew or something, but the open lobby area was jammed with people. Beyond them, over their heads, Swift could see a set of glass doors, and beyond that, the wide-open competition room, also filled with people, but with a platform extending out into the windy morning air.
A ledge a thousand feet in the sky, dangling over the city… and four jumpers lined up, their shiny-bright competition suits standing out against the blue sky. A giant roll of sheeting was attached to their suits at the base of their necks like they were wearing endlessly long capes. The streamer ribbons.
Mercy, ahead of him, was fighting hard to get through the crowd, practically shoving people aside with him following closely in her wake. The announcer blared so loud it nearly shook the glass doors, deafening in the small space. “The countdown has begun, folks. Let’s wish them all a safe journey to the street!”
“No!” Mercy’s scream was drowned out by the cheers. Every body in both rooms was vibrating with tension, all riveted to the competitors, who could be seen both through the glass doors and on the large screens mounted in every corner of the lobby and the staging area beyond. Swift was manipulating like mad, trying to shove accommodation into every mind, but there were so many, and there was nowhere for them to go.
Mercy slipped ahead, clawing her way past people when they didn’t move fast enough. She reached the glass doors before him and pulled them open. A blast of cold air shoved the doors open, knocking into people and causing a chain reaction that nearly sent Swift sprawling. He fought to follow as she charged into the staging area.
Then she rushed toward the ledge.
“Mercy!” he yelled out. What the hell was she doing?
