No Magic, No Problem

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No Magic, No Problem Page 16

by Blair Daniels


  "Yeah, why?"

  "I just wanted to know more about what happened. I mean, the Steele women were such amazing Hunters. And I never really took an interest in what they did before, and… I wish I had." All my life, I'd tuned out whenever their stories were told. Maybe, if I’d just listened, I could have learned something.

  Now I would never have the chance.

  I took in a deep, shuddering breath, and tried to steady my voice. "I wanted to know, like... how she captured him. What she did with the bodies. Did she return them to their graves, or bury them somewhere else?"

  "Oh, it's such a great story. She was hiding in an alleyway, a fireball in each hand, and he was just coming out to—"

  "What did she do with the bodies?"

  Mom paused. "Oh, hmm, she buried them at Wood Brook cemetery in Franklin, I think."

  Did Ryan hear that? I had a feeling if he did, I’d be dead by now. Instead, the gun remained on his temple, and he mouthed to me: hurry up.

  "Thanks, Mom. I actually... I have to go now. I'll have to hear the rest later." I shut my eyes tight, stopping the sobs. "I love you."

  "I love you too, Kira."

  I hung up the phone.

  The silence rang in my ears. Then Gavin was in my face, staring me down. "Where is she buried?" he growled.

  "It's..." I stopped myself. "Can I at least say my goodbyes first?"

  "What?"

  "You're going to kill me as soon as I tell you." And turn me into one of them. "I want to say goodbye, first."

  A low, rushing noise came out of his mouth. It crescendoed into laughter. "Kira. I'm not going to kill you."

  I stared at him, frozen. Something almost like hope coursed through me. "You're not?"

  "I thought that was the worst punishment I could give you. But I thought of something far, far better."

  His green eyes flashed in the darkness.

  "I want you to surrender yourself and join me. Force you to kill. Make you live with the guilt. Undo all the so-called good the Steele women have done on this Earth."

  His voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible over the whimpers of the Hunters.

  "I want you to be a disgrace to the Steele name." Then he laughed. "At least, more than you already are."

  My heart dropped. I took a step back, every muscle buzzing with fear. "No. I'd never do that," I whispered.

  "Then, they all die."

  I glanced into the crowd, from face to fearful face. My eyes fell on Abby's brown eyes, then Jim's. I could almost see the plea in his eyes. Please don't, Kira. We'll find another way.

  "I'll come with you."

  Abby whimpered. Jim stared at me, his face as still as if it were carved in stone.

  "But give me time. A few hours. I need to... come to terms with this. To say my goodbyes."

  "You need to say goodbyes... even though you're not dying?" he asked, with a scoff.

  "I'll never see them again."

  He laughed. "Oh, Kira. Don’t worry. You'll see them again. Just, this time... you'll be the monster they're hunting."

  "Listen, I need time, okay?" I said, trying to fight the tempest of emotions that was swelling inside of me. "You have to give me time. Until dawn."

  He sneered. The expression contorted Gavin's face in such an unnatural way, it barely resembled him anymore. "This isn't some sort of negotiation, Kira. I have an entire undead army at my fingertips. You have nothing. Not even magic."

  "But if you kill me, I can't give you the answer. And if you kill any of them, I won't."

  "I can make a visit to your mother."

  My blood ran cold. "No. She won't tell you. She's stronger than I am. I'll tell you everything, just—"

  "Fine. Tell me now and you'll get your time. It's not like you're going to do anything with hundreds of zombies and an actual dragon in the room, anyway."

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. I hope I'm doing the right thing.

  "It's Wood Brook Cemetery. In Franklin."

  His face split into a grin. "I'll see you on the rooftop at dawn. And rest assured, if you’re stupid enough to try anything—they will die. My soldiers already have the command. They're just waiting."

  With that, he turned on his heel and disappeared back into the shadows.

  I bought time. So what? That doesn't mean I have a plan. I have no plan, in fact. None at all. Nada.

  I needed to think.

  And I couldn't do that with hundreds of undead staring me in the face.

  I turned around. Walked down the hallway. Got in the elevator and descended to the fifth floor.

  The computer lab.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I sat in the computer lab.

  It was empty, now. The entire tech team, like everyone else in the building, was currently held hostage. Now the silence—which I normally would have welcomed—was reduced to a deafening ringing in my ears.

  I glanced at the clock. 8:42 PM. I had several hours before I turned myself in.

  To think of a plan.

  This is insane. There's nothing I can do. Every single real Hunter is upstairs. Their life hanging in the balance.

  I'm powerless.

  And it was all my fault, too. I knew Jim said it wasn't, but... if I'd never joined NIMP, this never would've happened.

  He'll let these people go. But how many others will die because of me?

  And how many of those people... will die by my hand?

  Ryan's offer hung in my mind. It weighed and pressed on my thoughts, extinguishing everything but guilt and grief. A disgrace to the Steele name.

  I already had been a disgrace before this entire thing happened.

  Now I'd fallen further. I'd undone the work of Gertrude Steele. I'd allowed an army of the undead to rise up from their graves.

  And now, to save a few hundred lives, I was signing over my soul to Ryan Banks.

  The Gravedigger.

  Would he make me kill? Images ran through my mind—horrible ones—of breaking into a home. Seeing a terrified family before me. Children screaming and sobbing, clinging to the legs of their parents.

  Hearing them beg for their lives.

  And then killing them anyway.

  Or maybe he'd give me command over the undead. And those rotting husks of men and woman would be my pawns. Prowling over the city, killing all that came into their path.

  Saving the few hundred lives of NIMP employees was a drop in the ocean, compared to all the lives I’d take.

  No. I lifted my hand and slapped myself in the cheek. "Stop moping! Think! Think! Think!"

  My cheek stung, and I regretted my decision.

  Okay. Start at the beginning. He's controlling thousands. Other necromancers only controlled ten. How is he doing that?

  My mind was blank. Filled with static, with endless darkness. No thoughts, no ideas.

  Just nothing.

  I raised my hand, considering another slap. Instead, I began tapping my nails at a frenetic pace against the wood. Think, think, think.

  "How is he controlling so many zombies?" I asked myself again, the question hanging in the air.

  I answered myself slowly, as my brain raced to catch up with the words I was forming. "He sort of... duplicated their motions, somehow. The zombies holding everyone hostage... all used the exact same pose. Right arm linked around the victim's neck, left hand holding the knife."

  That thought ignited another. "Wait. Just like on Gavin's roof. When I hit those two zombies with bricks, they both coughed."

  Okay. So he found a way to automate the process. To duplicate their actions.

  What does that mean?

  He'd only have to send the command once, but then it would be replicated hundreds, thousands of times in the undead soldiers. Each one would react the same way, but he wouldn't have to waste brainpower on controlling each one of the thousand individually.

  "But how? How do you duplicate a command like that? How do you make a thousand undead react in the exact same way?"
/>
  My eyes fell on the dark computer screen in front of me, and I gasped.

  He's controlling them with code.

  He wasn't controlling each one individually. He was controlling code that dictated their actions. A string of instructions, repeated over, and over, and over—ad infinitum.

  It made perfect sense. So many things in the magical world are controlled by code, now. Mages’ spells, shields, even some transfigurations… and now necromancy.

  I broke into a small smile. I know code.

  All this time, I'd been pretending that I belonged here. Lying to everyone, telling them I had magic. Trying to teach myself combat with a scimitar. I was so caught up in that, I didn't stop and use my true power.

  My mind.

  I reached over and hit the power button. Once the computer booted up, I pulled up the dark magic map. Dug into the software and opened the source code.

  After ten minutes of searching, I found it.

  One line that overrode the map's input from sundown to 8 PM, today. To set loc_8756 as a dark magic source—which I could only assume was the abandoned mall.

  He hasn't just been using code to control the undead. He's been using it to corrupt all our systems. Leading us astray.

  That must be how he broke into the morgue, too. He must've hacked the security system. And that could even be why Jim's shield didn't seem to work, even after I'd painstakingly tested it.

  All this time... he was right under our noses. Messing with every technical system we had.

  "Okay. So if I take down the code, I deactivate the zombies." I took a deep breath. "At least until he uploads new code."

  If I could kill him right after I deactivated them, that would be ideal. Of course, I'd never killed anyone in my life, and taking on the most powerful necromancer to walk the Earth was probably a bad place to start.

  "Focus. Focus on taking out the zombies first."

  So where's he keeping the code? On this computer, or in some sort of cloud?

  My memory shot back to the weird notification I'd gotten on the computer. Program 382 is running. Protected by a password.

  I poked around the file folders for about an hour before I found it. A suspicious-looking bit of software called reanimate, saved in the NIMP Cloud, accessible from every computer in the lab.

  Password-protected.

  I'd have to write code to hack into it, and then stop all processes.

  How do I hack into code a tech billionaire necromancer made? They don't teach you that in college.

  I stared at the screen, unblinking, my eyes starting to burn. I wasn't as smart as he was. Or as experienced. It would probably take years to hack into something he wrote.

  Years.

  The word echoed in my head.

  It's been years since he coded anything.

  He wasn't around to defend himself against Lucifer 2.0—a piece of malware by demons, in 2006. Or 2013's Wyrm virus—a timing attack that could guess a password by calculating the amount of time it took the computer to reject wrong passwords.

  If I was lucky, his software was riddled with more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese.

  But there was a problem.

  I wasn't a mage. Any code I wrote in Serpentine would be useless.

  "No!" I yelled, slapping the desk. The keys rattled, and tears burned my eyes. "Dammit!"

  No magic. So many problems.

  I glanced at the clock—10:15 PM. The hours were quickly whittling away. Running through my fingers like sand. Soon, I would be under Ryan's control.

  Wait.

  I needed a mage to compile magical code. I didn't need one for doing some good old hacking.

  I didn't open Serpentine. Instead, I clicked on Eclipse. The normal coding program, for magic-less humans like me.

  My fingers hit the keys.

  I couldn't replicate the demon malware—I'd need to have a demon for that, which was something I definitely didn’t have. So I started with a timing attack similar to the Wyrm virus. After a few hours of coding and testing, my hacking program started on guessing the password. I watched as passwords entered themselves, and were rejected, over and over.

  Then, a few hours later—ding.

  A small icon with a 'r' shape popped up on the screen, and underneath was the word: reanimate.

  I was in.

  It opened two windows. On the right were lines and lines of multicolored code, calling functions like walk(), find(), and even hold()—which told the undead's right arm to hook around the target's neck, and hold them hostage.

  Exactly what was being executed upstairs.

  On the left were two video feeds. One was of a street corner I didn't recognize; the other was of the NIMP atrium. I saw the multitudinous shadows of the undead, holding every Hunter, every employee hostage. My heart dropped as I made out Jim's large form among them—and Abby's, sparks jumping from her palms and dying out before they reached the floor.

  Wait. I can see them.

  There was enough light in the atrium to see them in the video feed. Which only meant one thing.

  It was dawn.

  I'm out of time.

  I glanced at the bottom of the screen. There were two buttons: PLAY and STOP. With a deep breath, I hit the STOP button.

  Stopping all processes...

  3 minutes remaining

  What? I didn't have three minutes!

  I ran out of the room, down the hall, my feet slapping against the carpet. The elevator took me down to floor 3. I dove into the first training room and flung open the weapons cabinet. Grabbed a gun.

  Then I made my way to the elevator, and pressed 'R'—the button that would take me to the roof. The elevator swayed and ascended underneath me.

  Ding.

  I found myself in a dark, attic-like hallway with a slanted roof. Only one source of light existed: a red sign that read EXIT, hanging over the door. Crouching so my head wouldn't hit the roof, I stumbled through until I was at the door.

  This is it.

  The gun was slippery in my hands. My heart pounded in my chest, and at any given second, I thought I might faint. But I was the only option. The only hope.

  I certainly wouldn't have chosen myself for the job, but here we were.

  I took a deep breath. Then I grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open.

  In the dim light of dawn, I saw two people standing on the roof. Gavin stood at the west end, Ryan at the east. They watched me approach, both wearing the same sly smile.

  "I didn't think you'd actually show," Ryan said, stepping towards me.

  Delay him. For just a few minutes. "What other choice did I have?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "Running away. I would've found you eventually, but it would've bought you time."

  "Then my friends would have died."

  "Right. Your friends.” He straightened himself and held out an arm. "Now. Come with me."

  "No." I paused. "I mean, uh, yes! But not at this second. I... I don't feel so good." That part was true. The nausea was crashing over me like waves at sea.

  "That's not your choice to make."

  "Please. I really feel awful. I need to stay here for a moment."

  "You're a powerless human, talking to the greatest necromancer that ever lived. Do you really think you have a choice?"

  A powerless human.

  The words ignited something furious in my blood. "You're wrong." I stepped closer to him, my legs shaking. "I'm not powerless. You're right—I have no magic. But that doesn't mean I have no power."

  He stared at me, his mocking smile slightly faded. "Okay, sure. You can give me your philosophical crap before you surrender. Just make it quick."

  "The truth is... this is just all a distraction." I leaned in close, and whispered: "The battle's already won."

  Or would be, in a minute or so.

  "What are you—"

  He stopped.

  A terrible thumping sound reverberated up to us.

  "What is that?"

/>   I didn't reply.

  "Steele," he growled.

  He ran to the edge of the building and peered over the side. I followed him.

  Down on the streets below, the undead fell like dominoes. The motion started at the corner of Maryland Ave. and 8th Street; then it fanned out in all four directions, each successive row of undead falling to the ground.

  "What did you do?!" he screamed, stumbling towards me.

  "I hacked in."

  I raised my gun. My hands trembled.

  And that's when I realized my fatal mistake.

  I can't aim. Oh, crap, I can't aim. He advanced towards me, and the gun trembled in my hands. How did I ever think this was a good idea? I've never even shot anyone before. Or anything.

  I didn't think this through.

  This was a terrible idea. No, no—

  Crrack.

  A bullet sailed through the air. It hit Ryan directly in the center of the forehead.

  He fell at my feet.

  I leapt back, nausea climbing into my throat. Then I turned around.

  Gavin.

  He stood at the opposite end of the roof, the gun smoking in his hand. For a second, he was still—a silhouette in the cold light of dawn. Then he swiftly walked towards me.

  "Kira."

  "Gavin." I whispered back.

  The silence stretched between us. I just stood there, staring at him, until I couldn’t bear it anymore. "I'm so sorry. Being controlled by him. That must... must have been so awful for you."

  Tears stung my eyes. I took a step back—careful not to trip over Ryan's lifeless body—and put distance between us. I had to. There was no way I could stand that close to him, and remember the way he wrapped his arms around me.

  And know that every second of it was fake.

  "What happened? How did—”

  “It was code. He was controlling everything with code. I hacked in and stopped it.”

  “Wow. That’s incredible.” He took another step towards me. “Kira, about what happened, while he was controlling me—I’m so sorry—"

  "You don't have to say anything. I know that... what happened between us… wasn't real." Then I turned away from him, tears burning my eyes, and walked back into the attic space. I took the stairs down, hoping he wouldn’t follow me.

  The 8th floor was filled with Hunters—and the lifeless bodies that once held them. As soon as they saw me, a silence fell over the crowd. Then they swarmed at me. Cheering. Smiling. Faces I barely recognized—the man with the goatee, the antlered man—they were all pulling me into hugs. "You did it." "Wow!” "I can't believe it!"

 

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