by A. A. Allsop
In spite of the small numbers, the government was obviously terrified of their potential power and would lay down severe punishments for the most minor of crimes committed by a witch. Cutters had watched a documentarty on three witches that had performed minor spells during a vacation and because they did not have a liscense for area they visited they were fined such a heavy amount, they lost their businesses. He had read about another witch inprisioned for over a year for a similar ‘crime’. All witches knew the government’s prejudices and tended to toe the line to avoid the eyes of the authorities. So, the thought that one would go this far meant that she had very little to lose and it made him feel nervous.
Cutters didn’t need to respond to Axe’s comment, nor did he need to explain the dangers they were in. The few that went bad were typically so bitter with the government that any person attached to normal society became an enemy to them.
He didn’t know why exactly she’d started targeting the camp, but at the moment her reasoning wasn’t all that important. The first priority was stopping her before she hurt anyone else. He turned to his right. “Summers, Smith,” he said. “You’ve worked a lot of witch jobs. Any idea how to take down a Rogue this powerful?” He indicated the dome.
“Wait… You think she’s doing this?” Summers asked, mouth gaping open. “Shit, that means she’d be a class-8 at least, maybe even a 9.”
“Tell us what you saw,” Smith said. “Exactly. Give me details.”
Cutters shook his head and then punched something on the side of his helmet. A video of his surroundings showed on a portion of his screen. He twirled a knob counterclockwise and it rewound. “Send clip to team,” Cutters said clearly into his comms. Instantly, the clip shared over.
The men watched in uneasy silence as Agent Fettin walked in a jerky manner toward an olive-skinned, slender figure, who was hovering slightly above the ground. Cutters couldn’t make out too many details about her, but even at this distance, he could tell she was beautiful. She wore a long black dress that billowed around her, and her jet-black hair floated around her too, like a wild tangle of leaves. Her arms, held outward on either side of her, looked toned and powerful.
Smith answered first. “How you take down a rogue depends on what type of witch she is. water witches have certain weaknesses compared to a fire witch, and so on. One who can wield an element works differently than one who can wield the weather.”
“This is the weird thing, boss,” Summers chimed in. “This one looks like she might have both mind powers and can control the weather. That in itself is weird enough on its own, but the scale is…” Instead of finishing his sentence, he merely pointed at the rust-colored dome.
“So what would you do to counter a mind witch?” Cutters asked.
Summers smiled. “That’s actually pretty simple.” He pointed at dome again. “Look at her.” He ordered the comms to rewind for them all. “She is struggling, you can tell,” he said, indicating the agent. “mind magic is tough when you try and completely control another person. It’s hard to sustain.”
“Quick version, Summers. I don’t need a lecture right now,” Cutters growled. “We need a plan.”
“Right. OK, there is no way to keep them out of your head completely. If you are going through some tough shit in your life, it’s best to stay away completely or make your peace with it fast. Every bad thought, every regret, every memory of your uncle pulling you behind the shed becomes a weapon to her. If you can’t handle that, best stay away. Far away.”
He looked at his team seriously. “If you’re insisting on going in, then noise can help you focus. Music, if you like music, sounds of waves if that’s your happy place. Whatever tickles your pickle.”
“We knew a guy,” Smith added, “who recorded all his favorite movies and would listen to them.”
“What about earplugs?” Timer asked.
Smith and Summers shook their heads. “No, silence is not what you want here. Mind witches get in your head, and they start talking to you or showing you bad shit. You need a distraction from that. Music, show tunes, whatever you can focus on that’s not that bitch’s voice reminding you of how you got some guy killed back in Life. You feel me?”
The men nodded. “Comms can go down though, and do all the time,” Summers said as Smith nodded. “You need to have a backup plan. If you don’t hear the tunes, you gotta hum them. Sing out fucking loud if you need to.”
“OK.” Cutters twisted his mouth, thoughtful. “What about a weather witch? How do you fight one of those?” He glanced nervously at the sandy dome where the agent would be struggling on the other side. They were running out of time.
Summers shook his head, but Smith frowned. “I’ve only encountered weather magic once. There, a whole coven was conjuring a dome like this, but it was the size of a small house. This… this is massive. People in the biz call it the path of power. Their influence is higher in it.”
“Good news is,” Summers said, “the path rarely can be changed or moved, and when they are concentrating all their efforts on it, their energy is focused and they become vulnerable.”
“The other good thing is,” Smith added, “that witches of this power usually put all their energy into the biggest display possible. Their destruction power is huge, but they are not good with close combat. They are unprepared for direct strikes. Most of their power is spent keeping their enemies far away from them, so when they do get close, they have a hell of a time fighting back.”
Smith weighed in, shaking a finger at Summers. “Some set traps though. We’ll have to watch out for that.”
Summers nodded. “True. We’ll wanna plan for that.”
“How?”
“Split into two groups. Each group has a field seismograph and gravity reader ,” Summers answered.
“It’ll cause a small quake?” Cutters asked, feeling skeptical.
“No,” Smith answered, “but the needle will go haywire when you are close to a trap. Someone in the biz learned that by accident and it’s been in our field ready gear ever since.”
“How do we take out a witch this powerful?” Fleet asked. “When we get close enough, I mean.”
“Witches are like any human species. You knock them out, they go down. They can block most bullets easily enough, though, and many can send the bullets back at you, so guns are not a good idea. But if you can get close enough to hit them with a baton or even punch them, they go down just like you or I would.”
Cutters nodded. “OK. Summers, Axe, you are with me on Alpha team. Smith, Fleet, and Timer are on Team Beta. Beta will grab the FBAI Agent. Alpha takes down the witch.”
“Boss, we gotta be careful,” Summers interrupted. “There is a theory that there are maybe .01 percent of witches who have more than one affinity like this one.”
“How does that help us?” Cutters asked impatiently.
“Because…” Summers paused, looking at Smith’s darkening face. “The theory states that if a witch has more than one affinity, they will have them in groups of threes… I only see two.”
“Meaning,” Cutters said, “she might have a trick up her sleeve.”
The men were trained for stealth attacks. They wore desert-camo suits, and the comms could be switched to a closed circuit to prevent signals from drawing unwanted attention to themselves. Unfortunately, none of that mattered. The instant the last man moved through the translucent wall, the wall vanished, and they were hit full force by the storm.
“She knows!” one of the men shouted.
Cutters started running to the right—his team was taking that direction, while Beta swung left—but not at full speed. “We don’t know that,” Cutters shouted, “but assume the worst.”
He held out his seismograph but was having trouble reading it as he was running and the wind was whipping his hand around. He cursed. He was playing cowboy. Slowing his pace, he yelled at his comms to adjust for better arm control. His suit grew heavier and steadier as he made his way toward the witch an
d the jerking form of Agent Fettin. She had not made much progress, but the start of the winds did not seem to be affecting her. Cutters wondered if she was still in the tunnel-like force field. He couldn’t tell from this far away.
He could see the red sparks from his teams’ feet and back and knew they had all employed their boosters. It sacrificed stealth, but visibility was low and it was likely that the witch knew exactly where they all were already, so stealth was no longer the game plan. He barked an order and music started blaring into his comms.
Just in case she couldn’t tell where they were with their brain waves or whatever the friggin’ hell this bitch was using to control the agent, he indicated that they walk in a line to hide the light of their blasters a little. They were all but honing becans guiding her exactly where to point her lightning fingers, or whatever her witch powers ended up being. Summers took the lead with the seismograph and Cutters was Summers’ eyes, with a hand on Summers’ shoulder directing him forward. Axe followed in the rear, gun ready.
Someone from Beta cursed over the comms, and Cutters yelled for them to report. “There are so many fucking traps. We can’t go two feet without hitting another one. We might have to double back if we want to reach her today.”
“Affirmative, double back. What do the traps do?”
“Doubling back. And not sure, Boss. Haven’t triggered one yet but you can bet it does something nasty.”
Cutters was impressed. This witch was smart. She covered all her blind spots. They, themselves, had to stop every twenty feet or so when the seismograph went crazy, scooting around to avoid the bad spots. Cutters was a little curious what the traps would do, but not curious enough to make him want to set one off to see. He marked the spot in his comms, and the other team did the same. It was disconcerting to see the map lighting up with so many red x’s.
They made it level to Agent Fettin in about five minutes, though it felt like an hour. Cutters pulled his gun and fired at her. Instantly, her jerky movements stopped, her head snapped sideways, and she toppled to the ground.
A scream of rage sounded in Cutters’ mind that dropped him to his knees. He clutched his helmet. It was agony. He could see the computer screen going crazy. The wind picked up and he tilted sideways.
As he struggled to his feet, Cutters felt an unpleasant tingle in his spine and on instinct, threw himself to the side. A sharp crack sounded. The spot he had just vacated was charred black where the lightning struck it. My god, Cutters thought numbly, she really did have friggin’ lightening fingers.
Harsh whispering slid into his mind in a language he did not recognize. A pressure filled his head, so intense he felt like he was going to vomit. It was like the time he went deep-sea diving, and his equipment had malfunctioned. The pressure felt like a giant was squishing his brain into jelly.
Judging by the choked cries all around him, the rest of his team was experiencing this too. This was nothing like Summers and Smith had described. They made it seem like they would be attacked with bad memories or something, but this was like she was trying to squeeze their brains until they popped. Cutters’ eyesight was starting to get blurry. Through hazy vision, he could see his team on the ground—Axe, helmet up and vomiting—while in the distance the other team closed in from the far side. She was only attacking his team!
He needed to distract the witch. His arms felt like Jell-O, but he managed to grab his gun and fire in her direction. The witch easily deflected the shots, but they did their job. Cutters felt the pressure release instantly, and he and his men got back up on their feet, wobbling slightly. They all started firing in earnest, effectively drawing the attention away from the other team closing in.
Cutters grinned behind his helmet. Things were starting to look up—until she caught him so off guard, it nearly cost him. The witch stopped the wind so suddenly and so completely that their suits overcorrected and they are all thrown back, slamming hard against the earth. The boosters then auto-corrected and threw everyone forward. Cutters fired automatically, just barely missing his leg as he toppled forward.
He slapped his helmet, turning off the boosters, and rolled sideways again as he felt the tingle in his spine rising back up. Shit, he thought. He wasn’t far enough from the lightning strike, and before he heard the loud crack, he was flying through the air.
He landed near the unconscious agent with a thump. It took him a few moments to catch his breath. He looked at Fettin, and in a different part of his brain that was not planning his next attack, he wondered vaguely if she would be pissed at him for shooting her in the head with a salt-pellet round. They did hurt like a mother. Pushing himself away from the crumbled woman, he darted closer to the witch.
Cutters stumbled a little as he got up. It was, ironically, this moment of clumsiness that saved him. When he tripped, he kicked up a rock in front of him and the rock was blasted back at him, hitting his helmet’s shield and cracking it slightly. His arms pin-wheeled as he tried to stop his forward momentum toward the trap the rock had triggered, but he was going too fast. The world slowed as he watched himself fall—in a detached sort of way—toward the cleverly placed trap.
He had a sudden moment of clarity, however, and his brain kicked into high gear. Slapping his helmet, he shouted, “Left boosters!” His suit obeyed, but a split second too late. His body jerked to the right at the same moment his left shoulder grazed the trap. A violent blast hit the left side of his body, and he went spinning away to the right. With the force of a hurricane, he slammed into the ground.
For a full thirty seconds, his vision swam, and his brain couldn’t make his arms open. Finally, his vision stopped shaking, and he could push himself up, unsteadily. He winced at the searing pain on the left side of his body. A warm, wet trickling flowed down his left shoulder, and because it screamed in protest when he pushed himself up, he guessed he had torn something.
As he rose, he grabbed a fistful of dirt and sand and threw it at the spot. A rusty cloud appeared in the air just like the dome and tunnel had appeared in the storm. Cutters was pelted with the larger pellets of sand he had thrown into the trap, but because there were enough fine fragments of sand that did not trigger the trap, it effectively outlined the invisible edges. Cutters grinned and darted around it. He moved a little slower, throwing sand in front of his path and skirting around a few traps, shouting for his men to do the same.
Now that he was close to the young witch, he could see she was quite beautiful. Her shiny black hair still whipped around her as though she were still in a wild storm. She still hovered over the ground, her eyes closed in concentration. She had olive-toned arms raised above her, and her black ankle-length dress whipped around her as violently as her hair.
Cutters leveled his gun at her face, then felt something change. The witch had her eyes closed, but a strange itch in his brain told him she had shifted her attention to him, specifically. This time, a voice sounded in his mind, though from a distance, and slowly grew louder. The increase in volume, however, did not help him understand her any more than when it first started. It was almost as if she weren’t speaking directly to him, like he was just overhearing her speaking to someone else.
He pulled the trigger, but a sudden shift in the ground threw off the shot. She screamed, and he knew he had grazed her. Her feet hit the ground and she stumbled down, her hair and dress falling limp, but the rumbling continued. She opened her eyes and looked at him.
She smiled.
Cutters cursed and raised his gun to fire again, doing a sweep with the automatic weapon to compensate for the rumbling in the earth, but with a lazy flick of her hand, the bullets flew back at him and continued in an arc toward his men. “Get down!” he yelled.
He stopped shooting and backed up as the ground began to churn and then rise. Again, he didn’t move fast enough. Cutters fell and tumbled over and over as the ground in front of him rose ten feet into the air. He looked wildly for the agent, but her body was thrown to the side, past where he could see.<
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Cutters gained some footing and stopped spinning. He got up and moved away from where the ground was still rising.
“She must have an earth affinity,” someone said. “Watch out for flying debr—”
The voice stopped mid-sentence as the biggest creature Cutters had ever seen in his AfterLife spiraled out of the rising ground, blasting rocks and dirt as it slammed its head through the surface.
“Holy…” someone said through the comms, and Cutters booked it.
“land snakes don’t get that big!” Fleet cried.
“That can’t be a Land—” Timers started.
“What does it matter what it is freaking called?” Cutters barked, nearly out of breath. “She’s controlling it. Aim for the eyes! Smith, Timer, try to draw it away from the witch. Keep your distance as much as possible. We don’t know its strike range!”
The roar of gunfire filled the air, and Cutters turned to add his own. The snake’s massive, milky-white body curled protectively around the witch, but not before Cutters saw the smirk on her beautiful face. The snake hissed and spat and the sound resonated like thunder in the clear, calm sky. It might have sent shivers down a rookie’s spine, but as unnerving as the snake’s size was, Cutters stood steady. He was trained to kill these things. The witch might have thought she had an advantage on them, but he was in his element.
The snake lashed out, barely missing Fleet and Timer, who both cursed loudly into their comms and rolled expertly out of the way, sweeping their guns in an upward arc at the creature. It jerked violently, and Cutters wondered if they could get the snake to do the job of crippling the witch for them. The witch must have had the same line of thought because when the snake hissed in pain and rage, it unraveled itself away from her.
“Finish it off!” Cutters yelled, aiming his own automatic weapon at the thrashing face of the snake. “Boxer missiles,” he ordered, which were named for their expensive cost, short range of power, and precise ability to destroy something. With him and his men so close to the creature, Cutters really didn’t want to be taken out with the snake.
