Joss the Seven

by J. Philip Horne

  He hadn’t trained with Mara like I had. I think I would have instinctively ghosted, but he just sat there staring at Janey in shock as my foot hit him like a sledgehammer. Luc toppled over, made some weird choking sounds, and vomited.

  “Go!” I yelled, and grabbed my bike. Janey ran to her bike and jumped on it. I hesitated to let her get ahead of me, then pedaled hard in pursuit. I glanced back. Black car. Luc curled in a ball on the ground. Blondie leaning against the car clutching his nose. Eyes boring holes into me. I turned away and pedaled harder.

  We swung into the alley behind our house and stopped at the gate. Janey punched in the code and the gate rolled open. I repeated the code on the keypad inside the gate to close it.

  “What’s going on? Who were those men?” Janey didn’t look angry or scared. She looked determined. Her mouth was pulled in a firm line, eyes narrowed. Her hands shook, though, and her face was pasty.

  “They came by the house yesterday,” I said. I stuck my bike in the shed before continuing. “You and Mom were out shopping. It got pretty intense between them and Dad. They wanted to meet us. Inspect us for the, uh, birthmark.”

  “Your birthmark? Why? Do we call the cops? They were going to grab us!”

  I held up my hands to slow her down. She glared at me, and then flung her bike into the shed. “I think we let Mom and Dad decide if they call the cops.”

  “But what did they want, Joss? How did they know about your birthmark?”

  The last thing I wanted was Janey getting into this tangled mess of Mockers, the Guild, and me. “Dad told me he needed to talk stuff through with Mom, okay? He needs to tell you about them. He’s the one who talked to them.”

  “So you’re blowing me off? I just helped rescue you, and you blow me off?”

  “No! I’m serious! You need to talk to Dad. How’s that blowing you off?”

  Janey didn’t answer. She just stood there, glaring at me. I needed to distract her. I held up my forearm at an angle. “Battlehoop!”

  She’d seen me do it with my buds. She knew what it meant. At first her eyes narrowed further, then a small smile turned up the corner of her mouth. She banged her forearm against mine. “Battlehoop.” She didn’t yell it proper-like, but it would do.

  “Seriously, that was incredible,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen you jump kick tons of times at Battlehoop. But in real life? Like, putting a man on his back?”

  Her smile broadened. “I thought I was going to throw up I was so scared.”

  “Yeah, well, you weren’t the one who threw chunks.”

  “I know!” she said. “Joss, you kicked him so hard in the privates I felt sorry for him.”

  I smiled back at her. “You don’t mess with the Morgans.”

  Her smile faded. “But you’re still not going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Janey, please. I don’t think it’s unfair to ask you to talk to Dad.”

  “We’ll see.” She turned and headed for the house. I followed, grimacing.

  Mom had pulled a Monday shift, so she and Dad arrived home about the same time. I expected Janey to rush them and tell everything. She didn’t. It was just a normal evening. It freaked me out.

  I cornered Janey as soon as possible. “What’s up? You going to talk to Dad?”

  “Yeah,” Janey answered. “But there’s more to this, and I want to hear it from you. I’m going to give you one day to tell me everything or I talk to them.” She jabbed a finger into my chest. “One day.”

  That was not what I expected, but I was glad. One less variable before my big mission that night. The rest of the evening was a blur. Dad pulled me aside after dinner and told me that he and Mom were still in a tangled mess of figuring out how to talk through everything as a family. He told me they expected to have it sorted out within a day.

  I managed to get in a solid two and a half hours of sleep before my alarm went off at 12:45. I had a pillow over it so it would wake me, but not everyone else. Ten minutes later, I was dressed in my work clothes and jogging down the street. I blended the whole way to make sure no one mistook me for a ninja. In the suburbs, people called the cops on ninjas.

  I didn’t stop when I reached Jordan’s parked car, but ghosted right into the backseat and dropped the ghost and blend. “Here,” I said.

  “Two minutes early,” Mara said from the seat in front of me. “Impressive.”

  Mars Street was near downtown in an area with lots of older buildings. Jordan stopped in front of a brick-clad building that was seven or eight stories tall, situated in the middle of a street with several other buildings of about the same height.

  Mara had shifted her face to the man personae, and pointed to the building one over. “Give me the details,” she said.

  “Sixth floor,” I said. “Grab the hard drive out of the laptop in office 678. Lots of security. Blend and ghost the whole time once I’m up there.”

  We talked it through for a few minutes, and I headed in. There wasn’t much of a lobby, but I noticed card readers everywhere. The doors to the outside, the elevators, the hall doors off the little lobby. Cameras were mounted in every corner. That freaked me out. I ghosted just in case one of them was the kind that could see my heat signature.

  There was no fire escape map, but I found the stairwell in less than a minute. Running up the stairs while ghosting took a little practice. If I went too hard, my feet punched into the steps, which would yank me to a stop. While ghosting, my body seemed to respect physical boundaries, but only to a point. By the time I passed the door to the third floor, I had found the rhythm.

  A minute later, I was on the sixth floor landing. There were no cameras here, so I let go of the ghosting. I stretched, giving myself a moment to catch my breath. I was already feeling the strain of blending and ghosting together while running up stairs.

  The utter madness of the past two days felt like a dream. Maybe if I succeeded tonight, we’d take down the Mocker. Maybe he was the guy stalking me and my family. Either way, I needed to move. I only had so much more energy to ghost and blend. I took one more deep breath, ghosted, and plunged through the door to the sixth floor.

  Chapter 15

  THE SIXTH FLOOR

  WOOD PANELING. THAT was my first impression as I stepped through the stairwell door into the offices. It was my second impression, too. There was a lot of wood. I stood in a hallway with dark wood paneled walls, dark wood floors, and a light wood paneled ceiling. Maybe one in four lights were on, so the light was dim but sufficient.

  Office 678. I wanted to get in, grab the drive, and get out. I glanced each way. The hallway went a short distance to my left and then turned to the left. To my right, the hallway stretched much farther before turning to the right. Wood paneled doors stood at regular intervals in the wall I faced.

  I spotted four security cameras. They were small, dark globes hung at even intervals from the ceiling that contained regular or IR cameras. Or both.

  I strode to the closest door on my left and was relieved to see it was numbered. A small bronze placard beside the door said OFFICE 672. I had gotten lucky. I continued down the left end of the hall to the next door. OFFICE 670. Well, I’d had a fifty-fifty chance. I jogged back the other way. Four offices later I arrived. OFFICE 678. I ghosted through the door.

  A wave of dizziness swept over me. Keeping up the ghosting and blending was proving harder than I had thought.

  I glanced around. The office was not what I’d expected. First, it was huge. Like, as big as my house’s living room, family room, and dining room combined. I guess I hadn’t noticed how far apart the office doors were off the hallway. Second, there was no wood. The floor looked like tiled marble, and the walls had been dressed with some sort of rough stone.

  The corner to my right was a mini kitchen. Stainless steel appliances. Marble counters on what looked like smoked glass cabinets. Glass shelving holding bottles of all shapes and sizes. A security camera globe mounted in the corner. To my left, was a living room wi
th leather, more leather, and, oh yeah, leather. And another security camera. Was this an office or an apartment?

  I looked to the far end of the office. A giant, dark wood desk hulked in front of windows that stretched floor to ceiling and overlooked the nighttime city. A tall maroon leather chair stood like a sentinel behind the desk, and a lone laptop was the only item on the desk’s massive surface. Two more security cameras were mounted in the far corners.

  I hurried over to the desk. The chair was pushed under the desk, but there was plenty of extra room under there for me to hide. I ghosted through the chair into the leg space, then arranged myself so no part of my body was overlapping with the chair or desk. It was a tight fit, but I managed.

  Tucked in under the desk, I was completely hidden from the security cameras. I let go of my ghosting. There were no alarms. No shouted warning. I released the blend as well, and sagged back against the wood. The relief from the strain was immediate.

  While I rested, I pondered my next steps. The laptop was directly above me with several inches of wood between. I could try to do something fancy with ghosting, where I made my fingertips solid while reaching through the desk to push the laptop to the edge. It sounded like a cool idea, and totally ridiculous. Even if I could pull it off, it made me tired just thinking about it. No, I was just going to have to reach up and around to grab it while blending. If my hand was going to set off some IR motion alarm, so would moving the laptop.

  I took a deep breath and blended again. After shifting onto my knees in a tight crouch, I reached up past the edge of the desk. The laptop was a couple inches further back from the edge than I’d thought, but after shifting up onto the chair a bit, I managed to reach it. Once I got a good grip, I took one last breath and pulled the laptop under the desk.

  No time to wait. I dropped my blending and got to work with the screwdriver and multitool. The hard drive cooperated and came out of the laptop in two minutes flat. I lay my head back against the desk and closed my eyes. So tired.

  “I’m going to need that hard drive.”

  My stomach shot up into my throat as my eyes popped open. The chair was gone, and a man wearing jeans and a snug fitting T-shirt knelt in its place. His dark hair was short and parted on the side, and his short beard had a few white hairs on the chin. The laptop and hard drive fell from my numb fingers. He reached in and picked up the hard drive.

  “Good. Listen, you’re not in trouble, okay? Can we talk?” He looked concerned.

  How had I let this guy sneak up on me? I must have been focusing on the hard drive when he arrived. My training kicked in, and I began tactical breathing. In for four counts. Hold for four counts. Out for four counts.

  “I get that you’re scared. Why don’t you step out with me?” The man stood, his legs remaining visible as I sat under the desk.

  Escape. That one thought moved me to action. I ghosted and blended. Standing up, I drifted back out of the desk away from the man and toward the office door. The man stood with his arms crossed, tapping one finger on an arm. His eyes looked in my direction, but through me. He was about Thomas’ height, with a lean build.

  I started backing toward the door. His eyebrows came together in a frown, and he crouched for a moment to look under the desk. He stood back up and shifted. I didn’t know what I was seeing. He didn’t change, but it felt different. His eyes focused on me.

  “You don’t want to run. What hold do they have on you?” He stepped toward me through the desk as he spoke.

  My eyes widened in shock. How could he… another Seven!

  My thoughts must have been written on my forehead, because he started smiling, still walking toward me while I walked backwards toward the door.

  “That’s right. I can see you. They didn’t teach you that, did they? That someone blending can see others blending?”

  I shook my head no, still walking backwards. He was blending and ghosting. A Thief.

  “They sent you in here, and haven’t even taught you the basics.” He shook his head. He looked angry. “They sent you into a trap, you know. We had motion sensors under the laptop. It was all a setup to draw them out. Look, we’re going to find you. There are only so many families that produce Thieves and aren’t established in the Guild.”

  My back hit the door, and I pushed through it into the hall. A moment later the man burst through the door and I instinctively lashed out with a kick. Which was a waste of time, since I was ghosting.

  My foot connected with his chest and threw him back through the door. I was so shocked that I overbalanced and fell through the wall on the opposite side of the hallway into a pitch black room.

  He could blend and ghost, which must allow him to see me and touch me. The hard drive was lost, but that meant nothing to me. What had he been talking about? The Mockers wanted to help me? It made no sense. I had to escape. What were my options?

  I could fight him, ghost to ghost, but that sounded idiotic. He was a grown man. A Seven.

  Wait. A Seven. But I was the Seventy-Seven. It came to me. I knew what to do. Mara had said this was a high security floor. Hopefully that meant the other floors were low security. I needed to take the fight to another floor, away from all the security cameras. I didn’t want to advertise myself any more than I already had.

  I aimed for the hall at a forty-five-degree angle, and entered it a few feet from where I’d left. The man was stepping through the opposite wall into the hallway several feet away.

  “Nice kick. Caught me off guard. Not gonna happen again. What hold do they have on you? Why are you working for them?” His blue eyes shone in the dim light of the hallway. He didn’t look angry, or scared. He looked confident.

  I drifted down into the floor and dropped ten feet to the floor below. I stopped ghosting as I fell and landed in a forward roll. I stood in the middle of a room that looked like the break room at Dad’s office. I only had a moment to glance around, and the man dropped through the ceiling to land beside me.

  I could see it now. He looked off, like he wasn’t fully there. He was still ghosting. He grabbed me, and I didn’t resist. His arms passed through my body. I’d been right. Ghosts could touch other Sevens ghosting, but not Sevens who weren’t ghosting. What I hadn’t guessed was the jolt of recognition that hit me as his arms went through me. I had a sense of him, like we’d known each other for a long time. He seemed honest. How could some Mocker hireling feel honest?

  “Nice trick,” the man said, and his body firmed up. He had stopped ghosting. Nice kick. Nice trick. I was sick of his compliments.

  He reached for me again. I kinneyed as best I could on short notice and used my bruiser talent to harden my fist. My body was spent, and kinneying wore me out. I had one shot at this. It had better work.

  As I kinneyed and sped up, the other Seven seemed to slow down, his arms spread wide, reaching for me. I punched him on the side of the head, hard and fast. His eyes snapped up into his head and he dropped to the floor unconscious.

  I pumped a fist in the air. “Seventy-Seven, baby! Bet you didn’t see that coming!”

  Then I ran.

  I flipped back to ghosting and blending, and cut through walls, looking for the stairwell. It didn’t take long. I ran down those steps and into the lobby like my life depended on it. For all I knew, it did.

  Outside, the BMW was parked in the same place. I ran to it and ghosted into the back seat. Once inside, I lay down out of sight and released the my talents.

  “And he’s back!” Mara disguised as a man said. “How’d it go?”

  Jordan gunned the BMW forward as Mara spoke. “Where’s the drive? Do you have it?”

  “It was a trap,” I said. “They knew I was coming, and had a motion sensor on the laptop.”

  The car lurched a bit as I spoke. Jordan whipped his masked head around to look at me for a moment, then looked forward and kept driving. Mara looked away from Jordan toward her window. I was lying across the back seat, panting, trying to catch my breath. My head was t
oward Mara’s side, and I saw a smile split her man-face.

  It was there for a moment, and gone. She turned back toward Jordan, and I sat up so I could buckle up in the middle seat.

  “What happened?” Mara asked.

  “I got it. Found the office. Really amazing place. Leather, stone, big wood desk, security cameras everywhere…”

  “Joss, cut to the chase. What happened?” Jordan said over my description.

  “I went under the desk, grabbed the laptop, then ripped the hard drive out of it. That’s when the Seven showed up.”

  The car swerved again.

  “A Seven?” Mara said.

  “Yeah. Blendy ghost. A Thief. He could see me even when I blended, and when we both ghosted, it was like it cancelled each other out.”

  “I know how it works, Joss,” she said.

  “Well I didn’t! And I didn’t expect them to be waiting for me. You almost got me caught by the Mockers!”

  “Keep calm,” Jordan said. “Stuff happens. How’d you get away?”

  “I ghosted down a floor, away from the security cameras. He followed. I dropped the ghost so he couldn’t grab me. When he dropped his ghosting, I punched him hard. Like, kinney-bruiser hard. Not that I’m good at either, but it worked.”

  “Smart move,” Mara said.

  “Not bad,” Jordan said, nodding in agreement. “We’ll sort all this out. For now, let’s just keep your training going.”

  Oh, yeah. What was there to worry about? I wanted to scream, but I kept my mouth shut. I had too many questions. Why had the man said I wasn’t Guild-trained? And why had he wanted to train me and not simply stop me? Did he know that other Seven, Luc?

  Most importantly, why had Mara smiled when she’d learned it had been a trap? Whose side was she on? Had she been part of setting me up?