Cloak and Daggers

by Katerina Martinez

  “This?” I asked, pulling one out. “Nothing but a sweet, red apple. Want one?”

  The girls hit the deck. I tossed the apple at him, and the hunter instinctively went to snatch it out of the sky, allowing his defenses to slip just long enough for me to throw my fist into his jaw with a loud whack. The hunter staggered, toppled, and then fell flat on his ass, but I didn’t watch or gloat. I had swung my fist into his face from right to left. Now, I pulled my hand from left to right with my palm outstretched, trailing blue fire across the air.

  Three bolts of raw, magical energy came streaking toward me from three different directions, each striking the magic shield I had put up. The impact made a loud, explosive thud that vibrated my chest and shattered the nearby window. People all around us hit the floor, screaming and covering their heads with their hands.

  As I stared around the chaotic promenade from behind my glowing hand, I noticed my fingers weren’t as pale as they had been a moment ago. The disguise had dropped, but that was alright since I was clearly in the midst of at least four hunters, and I wasn’t going to be able to fight with the disguise on. It had been a pain in the ass to hold anyway. But now I was exposed, and it didn’t take more than a couple of seconds for my notoriety, as Jamie had so eloquently put it, to kick in.

  “It’s Cartwright!” a voice yelled. “Call for backup!”

  I willed a pulse of light to manifest in front of my open palm and shine in the direction of the speaker. The light hit a man half concealed behind a food cart, causing him to raise his hand to shield himself from the shine. Almost as if I had made it happen myself, a bolt of magic came streaking across the market, striking the man and the food cart and sending him—as well as a mess of hot dogs, fries, and bottles of condiments—flying.

  “Max,” Jamie called from the mouth of the market, “We’ve gotta go!”

  No truer words had ever been spoken. Four hunters, no problem. We could take them. But they had called for backup, and it wouldn’t be long before the big guns got here. I turned, helped Kim and Daliah up, and pulled them across the market, running full-pelt toward the area where Jamie was standing and readying a ball of red-orange flame.

  One hunter came rushing at me, like a football player looking to intercept a play, and grabbed Daliah’s arm. She screamed, and I turned to engage the hunter, launching myself first onto a marble bench, and then using the momentum to jump high into the air and drop-kick him in the chest. The hunter went sprawling to the floor with a loud thud. Daliah freed herself and continued to run. Nimbly, I twisted into a roll as I landed next to him, and I was up and running again in a fraction of the time it would have taken him to get up.

  The girls reached Jamie first, and he quickly started ushering them toward the street, but the growing sound of sirens and flashing lights bouncing off buildings made him second guess our escape route. Thinking about it only for an instant, he hurried the girls toward the edge of the promenade instead, which overlooked the Holt River.

  “There?” I asked as I arrived.

  “We can’t bring this heat back to Spider,” Jamie said, “The Faction knew something was up.”

  “This isn’t part of any plan, Jamie.”

  “Nope, we’re going off script, but I have an idea. You have to trust me.”

  Three hunters, two of whom were hobbling a little, were coming at us from the market while sirens and lights closed in on us from the street. Our choice was the river, or capture. “God-dammit,” I cursed. “Fine. Are you guys ready?”

  Kim nodded. “I think so.”

  Daliah didn’t seem too convinced, but she was climbing the barrier all the same. I looked over at the river beneath us, probably about forty feet, and saw the way it chuckled quietly. It was deep enough that we wouldn’t hurt ourselves, but the water was dark, and it would probably be near freezing. We wouldn’t last long in that.

  “Alright,” Jamie said, “Go!”

  No time to hesitate. I waited for the girls to jump, Kim jumping quickly, Daliah only letting herself go and falling awkwardly into the icy water, and then I went in after them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  By jumping off the promenade and into the river, we had done the one thing I hated doing the most; we were flying blind. The sewers were dark and dangerous. Things had a tendency to scuttle along pipes and swim in standing water. I had also just taken a dip in near freezing water, and all I wanted to do was go back home, take my clothes off, and have a warm shower.

  But, here we were, and while I may have been wet, cold, and even though my clothes were plastered to my body like film, Jamie had pulled me out of the water, and the touch of his hand had been warm and soothing. Soon that warmth had rippled into my chest, my arms… my thighs. I noticed Jamie’s hands were still pulsing slightly, giving off a soft, red-orange light. This was his magic at work, warming my aching body.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking around. “Is everyone okay?”

  Kim nodded. “A little cold, but I’m okay.”

  “M-me too,” Daliah said, stuttering slightly.

  “Here,” Jamie said, resting a hand on each of the girl’s shoulders. “Don’t use your own magic; let me warm you.”

  While Jamie helped make sure our defectors didn’t succumb to hypothermia, I took a good look around. We had climbed onto a curved platform set into the concrete wall on one side of the river. It had been barely large enough for us to stand on without piling into each other, but after opening the first unlocked gate and going through into the mouth of the sewers, we were at least protected from the rain and concealed from view—unless they knew where to look.

  The Holt River sloshed along behind me, its icy surface now getting peppered by falling rain. I could hear the sirens from here. Three, maybe four vehicles had responded. In a couple of minutes, a VTOL aircraft, like the one we had stolen from the Faction, would probably be deployed to scour the river itself while two-man teams searched every sewer grating from Downtown to Oldtown.

  We would have to hurry.

  “Let’s do this,” I said, turning to face the others. We walked a few steps deeper into the tunnel and toward a locked gate. Spider, can you hear me? I asked into my mind.

  Loud and clear, boss. How was the water?

  Amazing. All I need is a good book and a cocktail, and I could sit here all day, but since I can’t have either of those things, how about you unlock the gate in front of us?

  In an instant, the locking mechanism bleeped and unlocked with a thunk. Jamie, hearing the sound, approached the gate and pushed it open. Its rusty hinges screeched, but the gate gave way, opening the passage into the sewers. With a quick thumbs-up to me, he ushered Kim and Daliah into the dark.

  We’re probably going to lose you, I said in my mind, the Faction knows I’m here, so they’ll try and throw magical interference fields up to prevent us from speaking.

  Understood. I’m unlocking every gate between you and the extraction point. You’ll have maybe ten minutes before someone finds the glitch and locks the doors again.

  If they lock the doors, we’ll have to blast our way through.

  Please don’t. Those sewers haven’t been used in years; we have no idea what condition the walls are in. Unless you want those tunnels to be your tomb, you’d better move quickly, quietly, and without resorting to magical detonations.

  Alright. See you on the other side, Spider.

  Inside, there was an overpowering scent of rust and wet stone, and another musky aroma akin to that of dirty, sweaty socks. Once upon a time there would have been functioning lights glowing from the walls of the tunnel itself, but this particular tunnel, like most that ran along its concrete channel, had sat abandoned for years. New Seattle’s waste disposal systems were so efficient, so good at recycling raw sewage into a backup energy source, that these tunnels no longer needed to be used to deal with waste; they were only used to drain water out of the streets and into the river in times of flood.

  Seeing as the weather in New Seattle
was artificial, the tunnels would be completely devoid of water and people, allowing us to move quickly through the maze and toward our exit without risking any lives. I headed to the front of the pack, manifesting a radiant glow from out of my right hand to give us light. Not much of it, maybe six or seven feet, but enough for us to see where we were going.

  “Spider says he’s unlocked the gates for us,” I said to Jamie, who fell in line behind me. Kim and Daliah followed closely behind him.

  “Good,” he said. “What are the odds that we’ll be spotted by surveillance cameras?”

  “I don’t know. First, they have to know we’re in here, then they have to mobilize the manpower to start staring at monitors. Spider says we have ten minutes, but I think we have more like fifteen to get to our exit.”

  A tense silence pushed its way between us. “They were watching, weren’t they?” Jamie asked.

  I nodded. “They must have been tipped off. It’s the only way this could have happened.”

  “Do you think they knew you’d be here?”

  I shook my head. “If they had, they’d have brought bigger guns and better trained agents.”

  Unless they didn’t have anyone better to send.

  On the Faction’s list of already defected personnel were three of their top agents. Abel Rios was the Faction’s top Magical Investigator, a man whose mind and powers of deduction were as sharp as razor wire. Spider was the Faction’s quickest and most skilled Watcher, whose hacking abilities allowed him to be everywhere and see everything as it occurred. And me, well, I was once the Faction’s best Hunter, so what did that leave them with?

  Tom, Dick, and Harry up there, that’s who.

  “You ready to light the way?” I asked

  Jamie pulled his wet sleeve up and flicked his wrist, causing his magic to flare up. With a single act of concentration, a cone of light suddenly shot out of it in all directions, striking the walls to get their diameter, and then crawling along them, deeper into the darkness until all that was left was a soft, glow. Then it was gone. Jamie stared into the darkness, his eyes deep in thought. “Straight ahead, then we make a right.”

  I nodded. “Take the rear. Kim, Daliah, you walk between us.”

  We fell into our positions, and I started walking, holding my hand up to maximize the radiance. This part of the tunnel was tall enough for us to walk comfortably. Running along the floor was an indented channel where water would funnel through. We could have walked side by side, but I wanted to make sure our defectors were between us, just in case something went wrong.

  On the cracked walls I saw air vents, overflow lines painted high up, and even signs directing workers around. To my left, passing a sideways access tunnel, I thought I could hear dripping water, and maybe even voices—voices floating down from the street above. Occasionally, Jamie’s watch would give out a pulse of green light that would crawl along the walls of the tunnel, and then zip right or left, showing us the way.

  I followed it like a rat following the pied piper, and every time I reached a dry, rusted gate, I prayed that when I pushed, the gate would give without protest. The gates opened, but they all shrieked loudly into the dark, their screams filling the tunnels for miles, I feared. Every time the gates screamed, I would feel my heart leap into my throat and pulse wildly until we were through, and the worst of it would be over for another minute or two. Spider had estimated we had ten minutes or so to get to our exit; by my count we had already been in the tunnel for about seven, but down here each minute seemed to last an hour. All I wanted to do was get out and get everyone back safely.

  As I continued to walk along the tunnel, hurrying our pace now, I started noticing that the light from my hand was becoming less and less necessary thanks to a slowly growing luminescence hiding just behind another right turn. That was the tunnel leading to our exit point. I wasn’t so much hurrying now as I was running with the others in tow, desperate to get out of the dark, feeling a phantom hand wrap itself around my throat and squeeze tightly. Was I claustrophobic? I didn’t think I was, hadn’t ever really thought about it until now, but was I?

  I made the right turn, saw the gate up ahead, and ran toward it. Fixing my eyes on the handle and ignoring the circle of light at the end of the tunnel that marked freedom, I focused entirely on hitting the door hard and fast, so I wouldn’t have to spend another second down here. But when I pushed on the handle and put my shoulder’s weight against the gate, it wouldn’t budge.

  I stared at it, wondering why it hadn’t opened, and tried it again.

  “Shit,” I said, and the tunnel took my voice and threw it back in a mocking echo. “Locked.”

  “Locked?” Jamie asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “What I’m talking about is that the gate is locked. It won’t open.”

  Jamie tried the gate handle, but came to the same conclusion. “Dammit!” he cursed, holding onto the gate and staring at the light. “How can it be locked?”

  Spider, I said in my mind, can you hear me? Spider? Spider!

  “Did we go over our time?” Kim asked.

  Jamie checked his watch. “No,” he said, “We still have another fifty-eight seconds.”

  “So, someone must have locked it early,” Daliah put in, “Maybe someone caught on quicker than you had anticipated.”

  “I trust Spider’s guesses more than I do most people’s fact-drawn conclusions,” I said, trying hard to hide the slight wobble in my voice, but what other explanation was there? Knowing Spider, he was already working on a way to get the door unlocked, but he wouldn’t have wanted to risk anyone tracing the source of his connection and finding him, so he would be slow.

  “No way,” Jamie said, drawing his arm back like a pitcher about to toss a curve-ball across a field. “We did not come all this way to be stopped by a locked gate. Get behind me!”

  His hand blazed with red-orange light. He knew the risk of using explosive magic within the tunnels, but I couldn’t help noticing my own desperation mirrored in his eyes, that same urge to want to leave the tunnels as quickly as possible. Still, we couldn’t risk it. I leapt in front of Jamie and put my hands up in front of him.

  “No,” I said, “We can’t.”

  “They’ll catch us,” Jamie said.

  “We just have to find another way out.”

  Jamie lowered his hand, and the light burning from inside of him guttered and died like a fire suddenly choked of oxygen.

  “Wait,” Kim said, looking around. “Can you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I asked.

  She shushed me, then walked back a few paces, careful not to make many sounds of her own. I watched her and waited, my head tilting to the side as I strained to listen for what she was hearing. Then her eyes widened, and I walked briskly toward her, head now angling up to match the movement of her own.

  There was a manhole up there, tiny pinpricks of light shining through into the sewers below. I could hear the hissing of cars as they rolled along the wet road, the honking of horns, but very few voices. In fact, no voices; there were only cars up there, and by the sounds of things, they weren’t moving quickly.

  “Jamie,” I said, “Where does that manhole let out?”

  Jamie approached, checking his watch. Daliah followed. “Quiet street just outside of downtown,” he said, “but there’s no clear walking path to our extraction point from there, we’d have to detour at least two city blocks on foot with the Faction hunting for us.”

  “Those things don’t have electronic locks, do they?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Alright,” I said, “Then we go up, and we’ll take our chances.”

  The girls nodded their heads, and I took that as all the encouragement I needed to start on my way up the iron rung ladder embedded into the wall. When I reached the top, I tentatively pushed the manhole cover up, gritting my teeth against the weight, to get a peek at street level. It was wet up here, but not so wet that it would cause a pro
blem for us getting up. There were a lot of cars, and while they were all stopped—gridlock, it looked like—if anyone thought to call the authorities after seeing four civilians exit the sewers, we were screwed.

  I set the manhole cover back down—that thing was heavy—and glanced at Jamie and the others. “I’m going to lift this thing,” I said, “then I’m going to go through. From there we go south. We run, and we don’t stop until we reach the burger place at the end of the second block, then we pull a right, and we keep running. Nobody gets lost, nobody lags behind, understood?”

  Kim, Daliah, and Jamie all nodded at me from the semi-darkness below. I took a breath, raised my arm toward the manhole cover, and brought magic into the world. It was like flexing a muscle, really, just a concentration of will accompanied by a rush of adrenaline and chest-tingling vibrations. My hand then blazed with soft, blue light, and the cover began to lift up and slid across the street, allowing light to flood into the sewers like the moment after an eclipse.

  I was up first, but instead of running, I helped Kim and Daliah up and got them moving along the path I had set out for them. Curious eyes watched us from behind wet windshields, but I didn’t pay them any mind. I couldn’t. Instead, I concentrated on making sure we were all out of the sewers and on our way to the extraction point as quickly as possible.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We had barely touched down when the message came through that Charles Armstrong wanted to see us right away.

  This wasn’t my first rodeo. I understood well the concept of debriefing, and more importantly, I knew when one was necessary. That Charles wanted to speak to us after we returned from our mission wasn’t strange, but the urgency of the message was. He hadn’t needed to tell us to report to him as soon as we landed; we were going to do that anyway.

  “You know your father better than I do,” I said to Jamie as we walked along the brightly lit halls of the Order of Prometheus’ HQ. “Do you think something’s up?”