A Flicker of Steel

by Steve McHugh

  Layla immediately lowered herself as the soldier leaned out to look at the spectacle. He flicked his cigarette butt over the balcony and turned to go back in just as Layla grabbed him by the neck and wrapped the walkway she’d been using around his body and mouth. Then she descended gracefully to the balcony.

  Layla placed the tip of a dagger against the soldier’s cheek, only an inch from his eye. “Don’t try to be clever,” she said. “I have questions—you answer them, and you get to live.”

  The walkway dragged the soldier off the floor and onto the roof as he struggled in vain to get free. By the time Layla joined him on top of the roof, the metal from the balcony had cocooned the soldier like he was a spider’s prey. She returned to the flat roof of the neighboring building the same way as she’d gone across. The metal cocoon deposited the soldier on the ground with a less than pleasant thump, then crawled up and over Layla’s arms, forming gauntlets.

  She kept the metal wrapped around the soldier’s head, but opened a hole over his face so he could talk and breathe normally.

  “If you scream, you die,” she told him. “You’re human, yes?”

  The soldier nodded, abject fear in his eyes.

  “You work for Avalon?”

  “Avalon,” he repeatedly quickly. “Inter-species Task Force.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s new, only a few months old. We’re tasked with helping Avalon do what they need to do to keep the world safe from people like you.”

  “People like me?” Layla sighed. “You think I’m a terrorist?”

  Despite his obvious fear, the soldier nodded. “Terrorist, murderer, you can pick whichever word you prefer. You are the reason humanity is afraid.”

  “Probably, although not for the reasons you think. Anyway, there’s no reason for me to try to change your mind. My friend is down there pissing off your buddies, so I’ll keep this quick. Where will your friends in Red Rock have taken prisoners?”

  “There’s a large playing field at the edge of town. To the east of here. Not far inside Red Rock itself. They’ve set up a command base there. Lots of tents and the like. Prisoners are taken to the camp.”

  “What about high value ones?”

  “The police station next to the camp. There are runes on the walls that stop powers.”

  Layla hadn’t been expecting to get so much, so easily. “Aren’t you meant to tough it out for a bit first?”

  “Why, so you can torture me? You’re going to go over there and you’re going to get yourselves killed. The ITF are taking orders from Abaddon, and she doesn’t play nice.”

  Layla wrapped all of the metal around her fist and punched the soldier out, leaving him safely on the rooftop before climbing down the fire escape to where Remy was leaning on his rifle, waiting for her.

  “You look proud of yourself,” she said.

  “I’m having fun. You know where they are?” he asked. “Those soldiers marched into the forest like little baby lambs into a fox’s den. They won’t be bothering us again.”

  “We need to get to those tunnels. You heard of the ITF?” Layla asked.

  Remy nodded. “I heard rumors about Avalon setting up a task force to come after us. Looks like they want humans to do the grunt work. Makes it easier for Arthur and his people to say, ‘Look at us, working with these lowly humans. Aren’t we the good guys here?’ I assume they’re also great cannon fodder.”

  “So now we have to put up with being hunted officially by the people we’re meant to be saving?”

  “Isn’t being the good guys a huge barrel of laughs?” Remy said with a large amount of sarcasm.

  “So far, all I can see is that being the good guys just means we get shot at more,” Layla said. “And that we have to hide from the world. It sucks, and I’d like it to stop now.”

  “Can’t disagree with that,” Remy said. “But at least we know that we’re in the right.”

  “I knocked out a guy who was terrified because he thought I was going to kill him. This whole thing just feels twisted. Helping serial murderers, having to fight people who are just terrified of us because they’ve been conditioned to believe it. Having to kill people because they think we’re evil and would give no second thought about killing us.”

  “It does suck, but it will get better.”

  “How do you know?” Layla almost snapped, before being able to stop herself.

  “Because what else am I meant to think? We do this because we need it to get better.”

  Layla nodded. “I know. It’s just . . . it’s just shit.”

  “And it can always get shittier. We have to keep fighting to make sure it doesn’t.”

  “Can we win this? Or are we just treading water?”

  “Yeah, we can win,” Remy said. “I’ve been in unwinnable situations before and managed to win. I fought a goddamn dragon in central London. I got my arse kicked, but, damn it, we won in the end. Nothing is unwinnable. Nothing is so ingrained that it can’t be changed. Sometimes change is hard, and sometimes you have to fight for it.”

  Layla smiled. “When did you get smart?”

  Remy shrugged. “I’ve always been smart. I just hide it under a veneer of barely-concealed rage and resentment.”

  Diana and Jared walked out of the tree line and jogged over to Remy and Layla. “Soldiers are dealt with,” Jared said.

  “Prisoners are released,” Diana said. “We told them to come with us into Red Rock, but they’re not exactly keen on that idea, so they’re going to head north to Pine Portage. There are only half a dozen of them, and they took weapons from the soldiers, so hopefully they’ll be okay. Besides, they stole one of the APCs in town. It’ll take them a few hours, but they should be safe now. You want to deal with the rest of the soldiers and go find your dad?”

  “The soldier part of that question is already done,” Remy said smugly.

  “Let’s get moving then,” Layla said.

  22

  They found the entrance to the tunnels with relative ease. The basement of the apartment building where most of the soldiers had been contained a mark made by a conjurer; a species who used illusion and manipulation similarly to how sorcerers used magic. They were rare, but Diana had worked with a few over the years and managed to remove the mark without it exploding, revealing a steel hatch in the otherwise concrete floor. She pulled the hatch up and a rush of warm air greeted them.

  Layla looked down into what was a surprisingly bright tunnel. She climbed down the ten-foot ladder and found that black, gothic lamps were hung from the ceiling. They ran off electricity, and someone had gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that the supply wasn’t dangerous. The tunnel smelled damp and stale and condensation dripped on the stone walls, but other than that it wasn’t the least pleasant place Layla had been in the last few days; certainly no worse than traversing the swamps of Louisiana. A large mine cart had been placed close to the ladder, and she walked around it, noticing that the tracks it was on disappeared into the gloom further ahead.

  “I think we can use this,” Layla said once Remy, Diana, and Jared had all climbed down. “It looks like there’s a motor on the cart.”

  The four of them climbed inside the cart. There was enough room for all of them to sit down, although Layla wouldn’t have wanted more than four of them in it at a time. A control panel held two buttons: one red and one green.

  Remy pressed the green button and the cart slowly trundled down the tracks, lights flickering to life along the way.

  “This is going to take forever,” Jared said. They’d only managed to go a few hundred feet in a minute.

  “I don’t think this is used for a fast getaway,” Remy said. “Maybe we can get a bit more out of the motor.”

  Layla used her power to push the cart, gently increasing the speed. “Better?” she asked.

  Jared nodded a thank you and kissed her on the back of her hand. “Much.”

  Layla winked at him. She was glad to be in his company aga
in, even if it was to complete a mission to reclaim her father from Abaddon’s clutches and destroy a realm gate. Neither would be considered fun times.

  “We should go on a date when this is all done,” Jared said. “A nice date that isn’t cold or dirty, and where no one shoots at us.”

  “Well, someone clearly doesn’t understand romance,” Remy said, getting an elbow in the ribs from Diana for his comment. “Hey, I’m just saying. Bullets flying past your head, people trying to tear you limb from limb: sounds pretty romantic to me.”

  Jared shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “It would be nice,” Layla said. “A little normality would go a long way at this point.”

  The cart stopped with a bump as it hit the buffers, signaling the end of the track. It was lifted up from the rails before dropping back down again, jarring everyone inside.

  “I think we discovered why it moves slowly,” Diana said, climbing out.

  Layla rubbed her back and followed Diana out. “Okay, yes, that was my fault.”

  “Can we go faster next time?” Remy asked. “I want to see if we can get some serious air.”

  “In a tunnel?” Diana asked.

  “You only live once,” he told her.

  “You live twelve times in total,” Jared said. “Actually, how many lives do you have left now?”

  “Okay, well you guys only live once,” Remy corrected, pointedly ignoring the question about lives left. “And if you all die, I promise to tell everyone you went doing something awesome for science.”

  “For science?” Layla asked.

  Remy shrugged. “Better than doing something for stupidity.”

  Diana rolled her eyes at Remy and pointed to a ladder. “I assume we need to go up there,” she said. “I doubt once we’re out of here we’ll be having as much fun as Remy did riding in that cart.”

  “You don’t know that,” Remy said. “I’m quite looking forward to blowing up a realm gate.”

  “Did you mean to sound so happy about that?” Jared said.

  Remy made a sad face. “I promise I’ll look like this when it happens,” he said.

  Diana was already at the top of the twenty-foot ladder, pushing open the steel hatch, when she looked back at the other three. “You all coming, or what?”

  They climbed out of the tunnel and found themselves in a small wooden hut that was just about big enough to fit all four of them. Layla concentrated on the lock for a few seconds, and when she felt the lock click, she pushed the door open. She paused and then stepped outside into a large field. The dozens of buildings close by had suffered some sort of damage or were on fire. The field around her was scorched and smoking, as the remaining flames that had consumed it died away, but the wooden hut was completely unaffected. The smell was intense, and Layla wondered just how many people had died defending the town.

  “Someone really put effort into fireproofing this hut,” Remy said.

  “There are conjurer marks inside, so it was probably invisible,” Diana said. “Looks like more runes outside made it pretty durable.”

  “Shame they didn’t use those marks on the other buildings,” Jared said.

  The four of them heard voices and darted behind the nearest building away from the hut. It was three stories high, with one wall completely collapsed, along with part of the roof. It gave the impression of slowly folding in on itself.

  “What the hell is that?” a man asked.

  Layla heard footsteps coming toward them. She felt the metal in their weapons as they got closer and closer, until they were only a few feet away. Layla tore the weapons apart as Diana and Remy killed the six soldiers before they could react.

  Layla stepped around the corner of the building. “We need to split up,” she said. “The realm gate is to the south, and the prisoners are kept to the east next to a police station.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Jared told her. “Not that you can’t do it alone, but I’d feel better if you didn’t have to.”

  “We’ll meet you at the realm gate,” Remy said. “Get your father to the gate as quickly as possible. This town is only a few miles in length, so hopefully it won’t take you long to get to us, but if we get swamped, we’re going to blow the gate. You do not want to get stuck out here.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Diana told Layla and Jared. “My nose will help you find your father quicker than just searching for him.”

  Layla nodded. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll go let Zamek know not to blow anything up,” Remy said, and sprinted off into the town, vanishing from sight after a few feet.

  “I wish I could do that,” Layla said.

  The three of them moved as quickly as possible. There were multiple Avalon patrols, and it was soon evident that fighting one would bring many more down on top of them, so going through the houses became the best way to get around. It helped that the streets were all in parallel lines, allowing them to run through one house, across the street, and straight through the front door of another.

  The people had been evacuated quickly and most of their belongings had been left behind. It was what Layla assumed the apocalypse might look like: cups of half-drunk coffee left on tables next to half-eaten food.

  A huge rock wall had been created around the realm gate at the end of the town. It wasn’t visible from where Layla and the team had first entered, but the further east they went, the more impressive the two-hundred-foot-high structure looked.

  “How are we going to get in there?” Layla asked, pointing to the mass of gray-and-brown rock.

  The three of them were hiding in the front room of a house missing most of its upper floor. It looked like something had ripped it apart and strewn most of the belongings across the road.

  “Who made it?” Jared asked, sounding genuinely impressed with what he saw.

  “Besides Zamek, there were a number of earth elementals here,” Diana said. “Zamek told me that he was going to do something big if the need arose. I didn’t expect that wall, though. Hopefully he’ll know we’re there somehow and let us in.”

  “And that we can avoid the army outside it,” Layla finished.

  There were tanks and military personnel all around the section of wall closest to them, but no one appeared to be fighting.

  “I did notice the lack of noise,” Layla said.

  “It looks like they’re waiting,” Jared said. “Any idea what for?”

  Diana shook her head. “Let’s not be here when it arrives.”

  They ran from house to house and stopped behind rubble or bushes to hide from the patrols, which lessened the closer they got to the police station. The three of them ran into a sporting goods store, which had been hit with a large blast of magic that had almost taken off the entire front of the building. Layla moved first, running through the store and hiding behind a large wooden counter before motioning for the others to join her.

  “They must not like tennis,” Jared said. “The entire section is just a big puddle of melted goo.”

  “The police station is across the street,” Diana told them after looking over the counter.

  “The command center tent is exactly where that soldier told me it would be,” Layla said. “My dad is inside the police station, but we can’t use any powers once we’re inside the building.”

  “I’ll check the perimeter,” Diana said. “Remove anyone who might become a problem. If there are prisoners in those tents, I’ll see what I can do to help them. Maybe create a Remy-sized distraction.”

  Diana sprinted across the empty road, vanishing from view behind a hedgerow that was still intact. Apart from the sports shop, most of the street appeared to be in one piece; maybe Jared had been right, and someone just really hated tennis.

  “You ready?” Jared asked.

  Layla nodded, and they ran across the road, up the steps to the police station, and, after looking through the glass doors for any guards, moved straight inside. Layla’s power switched off in an instant.
r />   “Shit,” she said. “They weren’t kidding about the power stop.”

  The reception area for the police station consisted of wooden desks opposite the front door. The desks were placed on either side of another door that lead further into the station. Various police notices were placed on the wall, and a corkboard held several announcements for fundraisers that were about to take place in the city. Layla pushed the door open to reveal a large open-plan office. The dozen or so desks inside had been thrown around, and the paper and electrical items that had sat on them were all over the floor. At the rear of the office were three more doors, one with the word “Toilet” on it.

  “I think we can ignore that one,” Jared said.

  “Oh, I hope so,” Layla said.

  The pair moved through the ruined office, keeping low to ensure that no one outside could see them through the windows, which were mostly intact. There were no bullets in the walls, or blood, so Layla assumed that the invaders had arrived, found it empty, and trashed the place anyway.

  Jared reached the middle door first and pushed it open, revealing a long windowless corridor. They reached the end and Jared opened the next door.

  “Cells,” he said, stepping into the room.

  Layla followed him. The cells lay next to one another along one side of the room. There was enough of a pathway for people to stay out of the prisoners’ reach. The cells—four in total—stretched to the end of the room and were completely separated from each other. The door to each cell was open, revealing their contents: a bed, sink, and toilet, along with a barred window on the far wall. There was another, larger window on the wall outside of the cells; it too was covered in a crisscross of black metal bars.

  “Layla,” Jared said, pointing into the cell the furthest from the entrance to the block.

  Layla looked inside and saw a pair of cuffs and a sorcerer’s band. She went in and picked up the band. “You think this is for my father?”

  “No,” Jared said. “It’s for you.”

  Layla turned around as Jared fired a dart into her neck. She dropped to her knees, the sorcerer’s band falling from her hand.