Strangers In Boston: Tales from a Strange World Book 1 (The Strange World Series)

by T. S. Mann

  She caught herself before using Invisible College terminology instead of that preferred by her host.

  “The father has been ... corrupted by the Adversary.”

  Mother Eagle leaned back in her chair and idly scratched her seeing-eye dog behind its ears. “And you can get us in so we can end all this before calamity strikes?”

  Electra closed her eyes for a moment as she contemplated the enormity of her decision. “I have conditions,” she finally said.

  The small group of paladins assembled in the meeting room tensed at the girl’s presumption, but Mother Eagle simply smiled.

  “Of course, you do, child. Of course, you do.”

  CHAPTER 15:

  BETRAYALS

  The Invisible College

  The Break Room

  Twenty minutes later, Matt’s anger hadn’t cooled. If anything, it had grown hotter at the revelation that his father had not died at all, not to mention all the other ways in which John Sullivan’s strangeness had torn their family apart.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said through clenched teeth. “There was no car wreck. Our dad just ... went strange and then, what, just abandoned us?”

  Matt, Luke, Ethan, and Bryce were seated around a table in the College’s break room. After what seemed like an eternity in nothing but black silk boxers, Luke was now attired in MIT sweats with his trench coat slung over the back of his chair. Bryce had shown him how to use the magical vending machine, and he’d helped himself to an energy drink and a few candy bars, the first solid food he’d had since that morning. It was Bryce who answered Matt’s question.

  “He had no choice, Matt. After everything that happened, the Unity Blade declared him to be an ‘agent of the Adversary’ which is how they refer to Strangers touched too deeply by the Beyond. If he’d stayed in Boston, they would have used you and your family to draw him in and kill him.”

  “What?” Matt exclaimed. “Just for going strange?”

  “It, uh, was a good bit more than that,” Ethan said. “They told us about what happened eight years ago. Your dad didn’t just go strange, he caused a lot of collateral damage in the process when he, um ....” The boy trailed off, but Bryce finished his statement.

  “Your father initially went strange after witnessing something magical at work that day that nearly got him killed, and Reality shifted around him to make the whole world believe that he’d died earlier that morning in a car crash. Not realizing what had happened, he tried to go back home to his family, to you two and your mother.

  “There were a lot of complications along the way, and several supernatural factions got involved, but long story short, he eventually crashed his own funeral service ... which was being held at St. Mark’s, the same church where you two had your own Insights. We think that the magical damage he caused weakened Reality around the church – people have been saying it was haunted pretty much since that day. That made it ideal for what Lindsay was trying to do.”

  Matt furrowed his eyes. Doc had mentioned something about a friend who’d gone strange and attended his own funeral with disastrous results. Was this the “friend” he referred to?

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Bryce took a swig of his drink. “He caused a scene by trying to persuade everyone of who he was, and when that didn’t work, in a moment of rage, he pulled open the casket lid and ... boom.”

  “... boom?” Matt repeated dubiously.

  The other Stranger nodded. “Boom. Reality can take a lot of punches, but it couldn’t withstand the paradox of a man opening his own casket and finding his own corpse inside. It triggered what the Invisible College refers to as an event collapse. The Unity Blade calls it a cataclysm. Other groups have different names, but the principle is always the same. Magic causes something blatantly impossible to happen in front of a lot of witnesses, and as a result, for just a second, everything ... falls apart. Then, the second passes, and Reality knits things back together, but ... well, it never gets the details quite right. In fact, sometimes, the details are drastically wrong.”

  Matt wiped his eyes with his fingers. “You lost me.”

  Luke spoke up. “Matt, when I connected with Dad mentally ... I got a good look at what his life – and our lives – were like before ... well, before everything changed. You and I remember growing up poor with a single mom who worked a crummy factory job and a dad who was unreliable and frequently drunk before he got himself killed while running a red light. We always lived in a cheap apartment and got most of our clothes from thrift stores. Hell, I bet part of the reason that Tom Brady jersey is so important to you is that it’s the most expensive article of clothing Mom ever bought for you.

  “But the truth, if that word even means anything for us anymore, is that you and I were rich and spoiled. Dad was an up-and-coming lawyer about to make partner in his firm. Mom was finishing up medical school. We lived in a two-story McMansion in a gated community. And all of that got reset when Dad pulled open that casket.”

  “And not just for your family,” Bryce added. “Your dad couldn’t have known what he was doing, but there were over 200 people who attended his funeral, all of whom had their personal fates rewritten, some fatally so.”

  “What does that even mean?” Matt snapped.

  “It means that for some of those people, history itself was rewritten so that they died at some point prior to attending the funeral. That or they were never even born. The 52-year-old priest who presided over your dad’s funeral never went to seminary. In fact, he was murdered in prison at the age of 35 while serving a stretch for armed robbery. Your boss’s old secretary choked to death on a toy part when she was a toddler. Several of your childhood friends were never born because their parents never got together.”

  As the boys listened in horror, Bryce continued.

  “At least thirty people ceased to exist that day, with most of the rest suffering adverse but non-fatal changes to their personal histories. The surrounding few blocks, which had been an upscale gentrified neighborhood, instantly turned into a slum area. That’s why the Unity Blade put out a death warrant for your dad. It wasn’t his fault, but where damage to reality is that severe, a lot of Strangers err on the side of caution.”

  “And for the Church of the Unity Blade,” Ethan added, “erring on the side of caution means chopping your head off before you have the chance to do something worse.”

  Both brothers shuddered at the implications of what Bryce had said. Matt was shaken at the realization of the guilt John Sullivan must have been carrying all this time. No wonder he felt compelled to just leave town. Luke, however, had other concerns.

  “How often do these ... event collapses ... happen?” he asked cautiously.

  Bryce shrugged. “Honestly, it’s hard to say. Only the most powerful Strangers clearly remember what things were like before a collapse. Most of them are small – sometimes no bigger than the contents of a single room. Maybe everything gets rearranged, or important mementos disappear. Sometimes, a little bit of the Beyond sneaks in through the cracks during a reset and creates some sort of magical anomaly out of an item laying around … or out of a person who had the misfortune of being too close. But some event collapses are big. And a few are very, very big. The absolute worst-case scenario is a total event collapse that can change the history of the entire world.”

  “And how often do those happen?” Luke asked slowly.

  Bryce swallowed. “We think ... on average ... about twice a century.”

  All three boys stared at him in shock. Even Ethan was not aware that Reality was that fragile.

  “And that,” Bryce continued, “is one reason why some Strangers go crazy and become nephilim even years after going strange. The constant, never-ending awareness of the fact that we’re all basically living on a soap bubble world that could pop at any moment. And if we’re lucky, in the aftermath of a total event collapse, we all pick ourselves up and go one with life with no more than a relative handful of p
eople on the entire planet aware of what’s changed.”

  “And if we’re unlucky?” Matt asked.

  Bryce hesitated. “We’re not around to pick ourselves up at all. Because some change in the past has ensured that humanity isn’t around anymore.”

  Across the hall in the Gym…

  The large room that the Invisible College used for sports and the occasional duel was a study in contrasts, magically speaking. It was a heavily enchanted room but also one where much of the ambient enchantments were bent towards suppressing magic, especially harmful magic, within its area.

  This, ironically, made it the ideal location for storing the quasi-dead body of Lindsay Forrester and the comatose body of Mickey St. Angel – as the master of the entire facility, it would be a simple matter for Doc to alter the magical properties of the room as needed in response if either of them became dangerous. He could block other Strangers from entering the room completely. And he could suppress any magic used by either of the two dormant Strangers ... unless either of them became fully consumed by the Beyond, in which case all bets were off.

  And if worse came to worse, he could expel the entire gym from Reality itself. That option was rather sub-optimal of course -- Doc himself could only do so from inside the room and would have to go along on a one-way-trip to a realm of pure madness. Granted, Doc had been preparing himself to ascend to the Superstructure for weeks now, but that was quite different from exile into the Great Beyond.

  The psychomancer took a moment to study Mickey and Lindsay with an array of magical senses. Beside him, Widget was doing the same with a touchscreen tablet that was keyed into the building’s magical sensors. Doc smiled. As gifted as Widget was, she was still young despite her chronological age, and she still insisted on using instruments, and especially scientific instruments, to focus her magic.

  While a reliance on instrumentality was a remarkably common lifestyle choice for members of the Invisible College, Doc personally thought that too many of his fellow Collegians used science as a crutch rather than a tool for understanding. Neither Widget nor Bryce would ever reach their true potential until they chose to embrace magic as magic rather than just another part of the universe that could be understood and measured if only you could find the right tool.

  “I believe they are both as contained as we can make them,” he said.

  “Agreed,” Widget replied while tapping some buttons on her touchscreen. “But the chaos fragment is still growing, though at a slower rate. There is still a danger of it actualizing within about six hours.”

  “I’d say we have closer to nine or ten hours,” Doc mused idly.

  “And I’d say,” the woman replied with an uncharacteristically sharp edge, “that we shouldn’t risk the fate of our species just to give John Sullivan a few more hours for Fate to step in and save him.”

  Doc crooked an eyebrow. He accepted Widget’s comment as an implied rebuke for trying to keep his friend alive, despite the incredible dangers, in the hopes that his direct invocation of Fate would give them the means to save everybody. But he was also struck by her use of Mickey St. Angel’s True Name, a surprisingly blunt admission by Widget that she already had enough sympathetic links to Mickey to kill him herself if it came down to it.

  “Widget,” he said cautiously. “I understand your concerns. But trust me, I know enough about Fate workings to understand what Mickey did. We just need to be patient and figure out the clues he left us, and we can resolve this without any further loss of life.”

  “I know a little about Fate workings too, Doc. But what I don’t know is what your friend actually asked Fate to do. Did he ask for how to safely dispose of the chaos fragment? Or was he focused solely on how to save his two children? Because if it’s the latter, there’s no guarantee that Fate will be looking after any of the rest of us! Fate invocation at that level always requires a sacrifice, usually a heavy one. I know he’s your friend, but I don’t relish the thought of any of our people dying just for Matt and Luke to have a clean getaway.”

  “It won’t come to that, Widget. I’m sure of it.”

  Widget studied her mentor. “St. Angel said that before the end, you would have to figure out who to apologize to, Doc. Just make sure you won’t be apologizing to me for turning me into a widow.”

  Meanwhile, at the entrance to the College…

  Once more, Electra found herself in the sub-basement of Armitage Hall that led to the Invisible College’s secret base. And once more, she faced the Japanese print of the samurai warrior (for what she assumed would be the last time) and announced her name. She had already buffed her psychic defenses as best she could, but she had no way of knowing how intuitive the print was. Consequently, this was the first time she’d ever faced it with actual fear in her heart. To her relief, her defenses held true, and her head remained attached to her shoulders. She opened the door and headed inside.

  “Welcome back,” said Carla. “I hear you missed all the excitement.”

  “Yeah, I’m heart-broken. Where are all the Admin?”

  Carla put her hand on a small snow globe on her desk which contained a tiny model of the building they were in.

  “Doc and Widget are in the gym. Bryce is in the break room with those three kids. Everyone else is scattered about the place.”

  Electra nodded a response and then made her way past the reception desk before stopping halfway and turning back to face the other woman.

  “It is Carla, right?”

  “Yeah,” she replied with a bemused expression. “I’ve probably let you in past the defense wards over a hundred times. And you’re just now interested in what my name is?”

  Electra shrugged and continued past the reception desk. Carla shook her head and then did a quick check of the building’s wards to confirm that everything was secure. When Electra had made it almost to the doorway that led to the rest of the complex, she spun around with a gun already in her hand. Without hesitation, she fired a single shot (rendered completely silent by her magic) into the back of Carla’s head.

  “Better late than never, I suppose.”

  The Break Room

  Seconds later, Bryce’s head jerked up in surprise and he practically jumped out of his chair.

  “What’s wrong?” Ethan asked nervously.

  “All of you just stay here,” Bryce ordered while running out into the hall. He was met by Doc and Widget.

  “Was that just my imagination? Or are our wards falling down?”

  “Past tense, Bryce,” Doc replied calmly. “Our wards have fallen down. Completely.”

  “But why?!?” he asked while trying to suppress his own rising panic.

  “At a guess,” Widget said archly while giving Doc an evil glare, “it was because I rather foolishly chose to tell the person I trust the least that it’s okay to betray us.”

  “What’s going on?” Matt asked while the other two boys stood behind him.

  “There’s ... a problem with the wards, boys,” Doc said evasively. “Nothing to worry about. You should stay here.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit, Doc. Whatever it is ....” Before Matt could complete that thought, an annoyed Bryce held his hand up in front of the boy’s face ... and right at the threshold of the door.

  “Amontillado!” Bryce intoned. Instantly, the doorway was replaced by a brick wall, sealing the boys in the break room. Luke was not amused by Bryce’s reference to a particularly grim Edgar Allen Poe story.

  “Oh yeah, thanks!” he yelled at the bricks. “Bricked in like Montresor! Very reassuring!”

  On the other side of the blocked passage, Bryce closed his eyes and placed his finger on his temple to send a telepathic message to the other Collegians still in the building.

  “Attention! This is Bryce Caulfield! The building is under attack by unknown parties. Those of you who have combat training, please rendezvous at the gym. Those of you who do not, I recommend you evacuate immediately.”

  He opened his eyes to see
Widget’s intense glare. With a grimace, he closed his eyes again.

  “Please be advised that Electra Dellamorte may have betrayed us to an enemy. Proceed with extreme caution if you see her.”

  Meanwhile, Doc stood in front of the entry to the gym. He too had his eyes closed, but instead of communing telepathically with his fellow Collegians, he was focused on the building itself and especially the gym.

  “Remap. Trustworthy. Labyrinth.” A wave of magical force emanated from Doc in every direction, and with a sweeping wave of his arms, the entryways to both the break room and the gym seemed to slide down the corridor away from one another at great speed. And while the door to the break room had already been bricked over, the door to the gym simply faded from view as it went.

  “Great,” said Bryce. “And I just told everyone to rendezvous at the gym which is now invisible and has been spatially relocated.”

  Doc chuckled. “Bryce, we all three know that none of the others will be joining us any time soon. It’s obvious that the Unity Blade is behind this intrusion, and even the most talented of our students are no match for Electra alone, let alone a squad of paladins. Honestly, I’ll be impressed if any of them are even able to escape successfully.”

  Then, he looked back and forth between Bryce and Widget with a sad expression.

  “Though I must say I’m disappointed that neither of you can see gym now that I’ve hidden it. The spell I cast renders it undetectable but only to people for whom simply killing Mickey St. Angel is anything other than a last option.”

  With that, he stepped past the other two Strangers, his hands already shaping into attack mudras. Bryce looked over at his wife who merely shrugged before dropping to the ground as she transformed into the shape of a large Bengal tiger.

  With a sigh, Bryce muttered an incantation of his own while pointing up at the overhead lights. There was a crackling sound before an arc of electricity jumped from the lights down to his outstretched hand and then poured over his body to form a suit of sparking electrical armor. Thus prepared, the three set off hunting for the enemies of their Order.