That was a hell of a thought to level at the city’s richest man, but it wasn’t exactly one I could push away.
Josh always thought I acted without sufficient evidence, but in a way, he was wrong. I was always hell-bent on putting the clues of a case together until I understood it. For it was only ever when I understood that I truly started to find.
Something clicked in my head at that thought.
Back when I’d discovered that I was a finder, I’d quickly realized my greatest limitation. I couldn’t find what I wasn’t looking for. Yes, you could have moments of serendipity, even as a finder, but they were rare. It was dangerous to rely on them, too.
And now, with the world apparently on the line, Madison City in lockdown, and with every possibility that Max wouldn’t live through this, I needed to understand. I couldn’t leave anything to chance.
That’s why this felt so wrong.
You can’t find what you’re not looking for…. Those words repeated in my mind once more.
What if there was a way out of this prophecy? What if there was an easy way to destroy the sets and save everyone? But I couldn’t find it, because I didn’t honestly know what I was looking for? What if there was one question I was yet to ask? One question that would solve everything?
“Can we head back yet?” the female agent asked.
“We were given clear orders to patrol right to the end of the tunnel.”
“It seems like such a waste of time,” she muttered again.
“Just because you don’t understand the plans of your superiors does not make them a waste of time. It makes you stupid.”
The female agent snorted. “It actually makes me ignorant. You’re stupid when you lack the capacity to understand. You’re ignorant when somebody simply hasn’t told you the truth,” she emphasized those words.
“Whatever. Just look alive. We’re coming up to the door,” he added, his voice grating down low.
I felt a surge of something through me. No, wait. I didn’t feel it through me, did I? I felt it reflected through Max’s hand. It wasn’t just as his fingers tightened around mine. I honestly felt as if I was connected to his adrenal system, and a rush of nerves cascaded through him and then shifted right into me.
… He must think the door was the entry point to the hidden sets.
Even as I thought that, I wanted to shake my head.
Something just wasn’t right.
Goddammit, I was missing something. I wanted to pause, regroup, and more than anything, read the file in my pocket.
Max wouldn’t let me. With his hand still firmly tucked around mine, he led me forward relentlessly.
Both agents became as quiet as the grave as they walked along the last section of the tunnel. There was rubble everywhere and construction equipment, and it was clear this section had only recently been dug.
I swore I could still smell freshly disturbed earth.
But that scent was almost irrelevant. There was something else playing over it. Something dense, something….
Max almost gasped. I heard him suck in a shaking breath of air.
“Hey, did you hear something?” the female agent asked as she turned over her shoulder in front of the door.
The male agent didn’t even respond. I could see his face from the reflected beam of his torchlight. It was awash with awe. The kind of awe you only ever achieved when you were staring down the barrel of absolute power. “Even the door is impressive,” he managed as he shone his torch beam onto it.
“That’s great, Jeff – but I swear I heard something behind us.”
“We were already warned that we could have hallucinations this close to the door – auditory and visual,” Jeff pointed out. His voice was elsewhere, though. His attention was elsewhere, too. It was completely locked on the door.
And the door was… a door.
I didn’t mean that it was entirely underwhelming – I could certainly sense magic lapping off it in waves. But it… didn’t seem to have the sheer power Jeff was suggesting.
It felt… I dunno, faked?
No, faked wasn’t the right word. Now I’d mastered fakery magic, I had a relatively good handle on it, and I felt confident I would be able to recognize it if I encountered it.
This door was… wrong.
Max’s fingers tightened around mine. He tried to pull me forward.
I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to take advantage of the fact these two agents honestly thought they would encounter auditory and visual hallucinations, and use it to knock them out.
I didn’t react.
I couldn’t.
Why did I feel as if I was on a precipice? And as if that door was a canyon people kept trying to pull me toward?
And more than anything, why did I frigging feel as if I was missing something? The most important piece of this puzzle? The one thing that would make everything make sense?
Max tugged on my hand again.
If I didn’t help him, I got the impression that he would break free and try to dispatch these two agents on his own.
I held my ground as my mind whirled.
Max was an opportunity finder, granted – but he wasn’t a complete finder. So why was he the finder spoken of in the Zero Prophecy? Why did a simple opportunity finder have the ability to find more than a complete finder, and a sorcerer, to boot?
Surely, if there was anyone placed to find the hidden sets, it was me?
And what about finding a way to destroy them? My mind suddenly added.
… Why did that feel key?
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” the female agent suddenly said. “I kind of feel like we’re being tracked.”
Max’s hand tightened around mine with the grip of someone holding on for dear life. It was clear he was begging me to take this opportunity.
“Paranoia. Probably a symptom of being too close to the door,” the guy said, and his voice did the weirdest thing as he said the word door.
“You’ve changed your tune, Jeff. The entire walk over here, you were telling me to act like an agent. Now…” she trailed off as she turned her head this way and that, obviously looking for some hint that she was being tracked.
Max leaned right into me, planting his face alongside my ear. “Now,” he hissed. “The opportunity is closing.”
“I definitely heard something,” the female agent said, her voice arcing up high and punching through the tunnel.
“Auditory hallucination. Or maybe it was just a rat.”
“Now,” Max said again.
What is an opportunity, but a means to get what you want? An opportunity is nothing more than a clear pathway to what you desire.
But how do you decide what to desire?
“Beth,” Max actually snarled. “Snap out of it.”
“No, I heard something,” the woman snapped as she reached a hand into her holster and pulled out her gun.
Without warning, she fired.
I shoved into Max, pushing him out of the way just in time as a bullet sliced across my arm.
Blood splattered everywhere. And though I could hide, I could not hide my blood.
As it splattered over the woman’s shoe, she jerked back.
And she kept firing.
I had no choice anymore.
I threw myself forward, punched my hands out, and sent two perfect charges of magic barreling straight into both agents.
They struck them in their chests and sent them skidding backward. As they thumped against the base of the tunnel, they fell unconscious.
Max took a snapped step away from me. The two torches of the agents had rolled toward us, and one of their torch beams was slicing across Max’s face, highlighting his anger. “Why did you hesitate?” he demanded.
I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the female agent.
I almost wanted to wake her up and ask her what she thought was going on here.
Of course I didn’t get that opportunity.
Max snapped in, d
ucking his head down, trying to capture my attention. “Beth? What happened? Why did you keep ignoring me? You can’t ignore me,” his voice became twisted with compassion and yet complete frustration. “We have to work together. If we don’t, we’ll run out of time. And if we run out of time—”
“The world ends. I understand,” I said, but my voice was dead. As I did not frigging understand.
Nothing seemed set in stone anymore. Everything was confusing – just this uncertain mix of possibility that felt like it wanted to drown me.
“What’s wrong with you?” He slammed his hands on my shoulders and tried to look into my eyes once more.
I wouldn’t look his way, though.
What was wrong with me? What was wrong with me was I’d finally done what everyone had told me to do. I was trusting myself.
Not just my magic, but my intellect.
Max seemed to be a man who trusted his heart more than his brain. While Josh was a guy who trusted his brain more than his heart.
And now I realized that the only way to be was somewhere in between.
If you gave up on your intellect and only followed your instincts, you’d find opportunities, sure. But they’d be selfish, and nothing more. But if you combined intellect with strong passion?
There wasn’t anything you couldn’t do.
I suddenly looked up at Max sharply. “I know you don’t want to hear this – but we’re missing something. Something isn’t right here. My magic—”
“Is confused. This door seems to be designed to confuse people’s desires. But as a strong opportunity magic finder, it’s having no effect on me. Trust me, Beth – that’s all I ask you to do.” His voice wavered.
I’d heard Max become desperate before – this was different.
This was desperation that cut all the way down to his heart, almost as if it were trying to pull the damn thing from his chest.
I stared at Max, dead-eyed. “I don’t want to just trust in things anymore – I want to understand,” I said honestly.
Max looked as if he’d been slapped. He almost pulled away, then he pushed in, tighter and closer, his hands so riveted on my shoulders, it would’ve taken a team of crowbars to remove them. “This is too much for you. I understand that. You’re too tired. You’ve been facing danger all day. Unlike Josh and me, you haven’t had a chance to heal. You’ve been using your magic for hours. I understand you want to rest. But, Beth, you can’t. We have to keep going. Our window of opportunity—”
“Is closing?” I asked. It wasn’t a statement as if I agreed with him – but a direct question. “Max, you once told me that sometimes you can’t trust opportunity finding magic. Sometimes it is only self-serving. But you know what you’ve never told me? How to ensure it isn’t.”
“Beth?”
“How do you ensure it isn’t? How do you pick opportunities that are right for everyone, not just the few? How do you decide what’s right?” I added, voice arcing up high with passion.
Max almost receded, then he got a strong look in his eyes. “This is no time or place for a lesson—”
I brought my hands up and clamped them over Max’s, and my grip was just as strong as his. “There will be no other time for a lesson. So tell me, Max. How do you decide what is an opportunity for everyone?”
He seemed floored. “It’s a fine art,” he began.
“I don’t think it is. I think it isn’t that hard at all,” I answered my own question. “I think you just have to find your set of morals and stick with them. I think you just have to find what’s important to you,” I emphasized that, “and stick with that.”
“It’s much subtler—”
“And the one thing that is important to me and society as a whole is the truth,” my voice reverberated down low. “If you let the truth hide, if you build your world on lies, you lose sight of reality. Nothing else will matter. Justice will become nothing more than a cruel game,” I said, voice twisting as I thought of Frank and what his wife’s brother did to him. As I thought of Hayden and Isabella. As I thought of Howard. As I thought of every key case that had brought me here. “If you lose sight of what is true, you have no foundations.”
“This is not the time and place—”
“This is the time and place,” I practically spat. “Because we are missing something. And until we find that, we won’t find anything else. Because that,” my voice rang down, “is the basis of finding magic. If you do not have the truth, you have nothing but lies. And if you seek the answer to a false question, you will get a false answer.”
“Beth—”
“Don’t tell me that doesn’t make sense. Because this is the only thing that has made sense since this whole damn mess began. I’ve been denying my natural sense. I need to find the truth.”
“Over saving people?” he asked, his voice becoming harsh.
In fact, his whole demeanor became harsh. Max, who always seemed to be ready to support me, no matter what, started to curl in on himself.
He wasn’t becoming vicious or anything – he wasn’t turning out to be just like Jason. This was stress. Pressure embodied. I swore I caught a glimpse of the Max who’d lived his whole life with the prophecy over his head.
I’d had this freaking prophecy haunting me for the past two months, and that had been bad enough. But at least I’d been able to lead a normal life before then.
Max? He’d lived under the certainty that one day this prophecy would take everything from him, including his life.
So that was why his fingers dug into my shoulders harder. “Beth,” he said, his exasperation marking his words until they could barely make it from his throat. “We are nothing if we can’t protect others. The truth is an important concept, but it does not outstrip protection. And we must never seek the truth if others will die because of it.”
I stared at him.… It would’ve been easy to give in to the strength of his emotions, for his emotions were far stronger than mine. They were like a bridge connecting us – like a hand waving me over to his side.
At the same time, I couldn’t so easily give up on my own convictions.
Because he was wrong. “Truth shows you what you’re dealing with, Max. It pushes away the lies and allows you to see what is really there. And without it, you don’t know what you’re doing. You could kid yourself into thinking you’ve saved more than you’ve condemned, but how would you ever know?”
My question actually floored him. For all of several seconds. Then his passion rose up to meet it. “Beth – you can’t be doing this – not here. Not when we’re so close.”
I gestured behind him to the closed door. “So close to what? We don’t know what’s through there.”
“An opportunity—”
“For what?”
“To save everybody,” his voice arced up high with exasperation and punched through the tunnel.
I didn’t react to his passion. I didn’t react to his presence. I didn’t react to the promise of that kiss in the past. For the first time in my frigging life, I pushed past all of that.
I looked right at Max. “There could be another way—”
“We have no time to find it. If you back down now, you’ll be condemning everybody,” he spat.
… Everybody? Really?
Would everybody honestly die if I didn’t help Max gain access to that room?
Was there another way?
“Beth—”
The floor shook. The move came out of nowhere, and it was hard enough and sudden enough that I lost my balance. I fell to my side, banging hard against the bullet wound sliced into my arm. Fortunately the bullet hadn’t penetrated through the arm, but had only gouged a pretty deep slice down the side of my bicep. It was enough that as I struck it, pain blasted through me and blood splattered everywhere.
“What was that?” Max demanded as he jumped to his feet.
Before he could reach for me, I jumped to my feet too.
We picked up the sound of footfall headed tow
ard us.
“Dammit, they’re onto us,” Max screamed. “We’ve run out of time. We have to enter the room—” he said, jabbing a hand at the door behind us.
I refused to get flustered.
But Max was right – it was time to leave.
I came to a decision. Maybe a suicidal decision. Maybe a frigging disloyal decision that didn’t just go against Max, but every frigging memory of him from every frigging past life I’d ever lived.
It was time for me to do this alone. For whatever reason, Max couldn’t see clearly. Or maybe he could, and he was right, and I was too weak and stupid to think of anyone other than myself.
But it didn’t seem that way, and most importantly, I was relying on more than gut instinct and magic to come to that conclusion. I was using my brain.
We couldn’t run into that room without more information about what it was. Especially not considering it seemed as if we were being chased into it.
“Move,” Max spat as he whirled on his foot and thrust toward the door.
“No,” I tried, but I wasn’t quick enough. Max wrapped a hand around the handle and pulled.
And that’s when something laced through the handle and into his body.
I reached the door, and just before he could open it fully and allow that magical spell to escape, I shouldered it shut.
Max began to jitter, his eyes rolling into the back of his head.
“Max,” I shrieked as I reached in and wrapped an arm around his back before he could fall forward.
There were screams behind us now, and more footfall.
We had to escape.
I locked my hand on the handle. But as I did, I allowed magic to press through my skin, saving me from whatever strange spell had struck Max. I also concentrated 150 percent on Max’s mother’s mansion – and that seemed to cut through the spell entirely.
Then, just as the footfall from behind became thunderous, I yanked the door open. I pulled Max through. I fell onto my back and kicked the door closed just as I started to see agents heading my way.
I didn’t dare reach up, open the door, and check to see if they were still there. I simply lay there on the floor, Max now collapsed in my arms as I stared at the door and waited.
And waited. And waited. After a full minute and a half it became clear that the agents hadn’t reached the door in time. I’d managed to kick it closed before they could figure out where we were and try to grab hold of the map spell.
Forgotten Destiny 5 Page 9
