The Returned

by Bishop O'Connell

  “Mommy,” Fiona said, “you’re keeping me up past my bedtime.”

  “I guess I am,” Caitlin said. “I just miss you, sweetie.”

  “You’ll be home soon,” Fiona said.

  Caitlin couldn’t help but smile. “I guess you better get to bed, then. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

  “Night, Mommy. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Fiona passed the phone to Mallory. Caitlin said her good-byes, then passed the phone to Edward to do the same. When he ended the call, he shook his head.

  “You were right,” he said. “The impact Fiona is having is amazing.” He took her hand, and they started walking back to the hotel. “What were you thinking? I saw your face. Something came to you.”

  Caitlin nodded. “Yeah, I think I know who’s behind this.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  At just after midnight, Wraith stood outside the base, wrapped in both her cloaking equation and the false aura the now-activated charm produced. A few feet away, the quantum information of the massive ward drifted through the air like a river. The charm hanging from her neck was warm against her skin, under which her heart pounded. In the end, she’d decided to step through the ward at its edge. That way if her charm didn’t work, she could bolt and stride out of the area. In case it had some sort of tracker in it, she’d head straight for the Order compound that she’d destroyed last year. Hopefully that would throw anyone off her trail if they chased after her.

  What if it didn’t? Was she ready to throw down against them? What if they captured her? Could she escape again? Who’d look out for Caitlin and Edward?

  Stop stalling, she told herself. Just do it already.

  Closing her eyes, she drew in a series of slow, deep breaths to calm herself. She could do this. Her charm was sound. She’d gone over it repeatedly, and besides that, Fritz didn’t make shoddy stuff.

  She opened her eyes and started walking forward. As she passed through the ward, it was like stepping through cobwebs. She tried to brush away strands that weren’t really there, at least not physically. Moments later, she was through, and the sense of being covered in wispy spider webs passed. She stopped and listened for the alarms or the sounds of cars heading her way.

  Nothing.

  Even the sentries at the gate didn’t budge; they just continued their conversation. Glancing down, she saw her cloaking equation was still in place and the charm was still running. Something was off though. The metal against her skin was growing warmer, and when she looked at her modified quantum information, she could see it deteriorating at the edges. It had never occurred to her that the ward might eat away at the quantum information. The equation was holding, replacing the parts that were failing, but the rate of replacement wasn’t quite as fast as the degradation. Doing some quick math in her head, she figured it would last another hour, two at the most.

  No time for sightseeing, then, she thought and lowered her goggles. Nothing stood out right away to her, but she headed further into the base. Not quite running, but almost.

  She passed by what looked like a residential neighborhood—she assumed it was for the families of people stationed here—and dismissed it as an unlikely place to start. A few cars drove by, but her cloaking equation kept her hidden. Farther in she saw some large buildings to her left that looked like they might house offices. Crossing the street, carefully so as not to get hit by a car that couldn’t see her, she headed that way. As she neared it, something to her left, in the corner of her eye, drew her attention. When she turned, she saw faintly glowing yellow tendrils drifting above some trees.

  That seemed like a better place to start, so she followed the road. There were large sections of woods to each side of her, broken only by plain-looking buildings. The road turned left into a large parking lot and continued as a dirt road straight ahead. Past the parking lot, through the trees behind it, she could see the yellow glow of magic coming from a squat gray building. She checked her phone and saw that even this little stroll had eaten up fifteen minutes.

  She broke into a full-out run, crossing the asphalt and heading into the trees. The small section of trees, not even worth calling woods, reminded her of Kansas and the area around the Order compound. She pushed that thought aside and focused on her feet. The last thing she needed was to trip and twist her ankle.

  When she cleared the trees, she stood less than fifteen feet from the building, the back of it from the looks of it. It was a gray concrete cube with only a couple of windows—all dark—at the highest level; she wasn’t sure, but it looked like it had three floors. Circling the building, she came to a dirt road and a modest parking lot with three black SUVs and a dark gray van in it. The hoods were cold, so they’d been there awhile. Maybe they kept them there and used their own cars or just something that didn’t scream “Fed” when not on the clock.

  She turned her attention to the building and looked it over. It was leaking yellow wisps of magic that hung in the air like smoke. The quantum information read like a shopping list of wards and protections. Carefully, she approached the front door, then smiled. It had a magnetic card swipe door lock but no magical protection. Whatever the source of the leaking magic was, it was inside. The number men must’ve figured their superawesome ward around the base was enough to trust the interior to mundane protections. The problem with that notion—which they thankfully didn’t realize—was that electronics of any kind worked with just the most basic kind of data: binary code. This pad, for example, didn’t really analyze the card you swiped to get in. It just sent that information to a computer that checked it and sent back a simple “yes” to let you in or a “no” to stay locked.

  A quick glance around told her there were no sentries, but she did spot a few cameras; another measure easy to beat. She tossed the same video loop equation at the cameras that she’d used at the mental hospital and watched it feed into the lenses. Once the coast was clear, she wove another equation, this one very simple, and fed it to the swipe pad. There was a click as the magnetic lock disengaged.

  Slowly, and checking for additional security—both magical and mundane—she pulled open the door and stepped inside. The door locked in place behind her with a click.

  She was standing in an entryway; a wide hallway, painted in a boring cream color, went straight for maybe twenty feet, then came to a T. As she walked to the intersection, she spotted more cameras, which she quickly handled the same way as the ones outside. There were no motion detectors, laser nets, or anything fancy like that. She was sort of disappointed. Part of her had expected this to be all spy movie‒like. Then she reminded herself not to jinx her good luck. That was also when she noticed there was absolutely no signage inside the building. There was a large, wood-framed directory, but it was blank.

  She flipped a mental coin, which came up heads, and took the hallway to the right. There were fluorescent lights on a low setting, so she could see, but clearly no one was home. Which was exactly what she’d hoped for.

  The hallway turned again, and she realized it probably made a square, following the perimeter of the building, and if she followed it, she’d arrive back where she started. At the corner she found her first sign. It was on a door and read Stairs. She sighed. It was probably too much to expect one to read Secret Information Depository. That meant checking every room. She decided to start on the first floor and work her way up. There were doors on each side of the hall, evenly spaced apart, with small windows in them. She glanced in one and felt her blood run cold.

  Inside, barely illuminated from the faint light in the hall, she saw what looked like a hospital room. An adjustable bed, replete with all kinds of machines, sat inside an intricate circle that had been etched into the floor tiles. Swallowing back her fear, she checked another door, and another. They were all the same—except for the one at the very back of the building.

  The door was locked, but she easily popped it. She pushed the door open and stepped inside as a chill ran d
own her spine. There was no bed or medical equipment in this room. Just a bare floor, but where the circle should be, it looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it and not stopped till they hit the foundation of the building. She turned slowly and looked over the walls. The paint in this room was just a shade darker than outside; it had been painted recently. Stepping closer, she could see the cinder blocks that made up the walls had been replaced in huge sections, the replacements not quite sitting flush with the older blocks.

  “So I really was here,” she whispered. “The memory was real.” She could almost see her friends and Nightstick standing around the hospital bed again, fighting to protect her. Her eyes drifted down to where the previous Four had fallen.

  Guilt started to rise, but anger beat it back. Whoever he’d been, he might still be alive if they hadn’t tried to get into her head. Looking around the room, she wondered how many others had been here or in the other rooms. She wanted nothing more than to finish what she’d started, then level the entire building. But she reminded herself why she was here and that she was burning what little time she had. Reluctantly, she left the room and headed for the stairs. The first floor was probably nothing but those ritual rooms. That was when she remembered the windows. They’d all been on the top floor. If there were offices here, that was probably where they’d be.

  As quickly and quietly as she could, she hoofed it up to the third floor. It was laid out similarly to the first, but in the center of the building was what looked like a lunch room or something. It had sofas, chairs, a large TV, and a couple of fridges. It was tempting to rot the food, but she reminded herself again about the ticking clock. There were fewer doors on the outside wall on this floor, but they all had signs on them. They each bore a single number from 1 to 7. The 2, 3, and 4 shared one wall, the next three the opposite. The back wall was marked 1 and nothing else.

  “Start with the boss,” she whispered and went to inspect the door.

  This time she did find some magical wards on the door, and they were pretty good. From what she could tell though, they were just typical alarm and attack wards. Try to break in, and an alarm goes off, then you get a lightning bolt up your ass or something. Luckily, she didn’t need to break in. She returned to the break room, closed the door, wove a formulation together, and draped it over the door. Normally, making a door-door—one that she could use to travel—from a mundane door took a long time. But because the doorways she wanted to connect were so close, it took her only a few minutes. When it was done, she opened the door and saw instead of the break room on the other side, a simple, sparsely decorated office. She stepped in and closed the door behind her, but she made sure to leave the connection in case she needed to make a quick escape. She might be able to tie the door to the office to another door somewhere else, but if it was off the base, it would probably trip the superward. With that in mind, she decided against it.

  The office was large and almost empty, which just made it feel bigger. There was a bookshelf, but it held only a few books. They were all military manuals of one kind or another. There were some pictures on the walls of the base and various jets. It was probably the military equal to the generic art in motel rooms. There was, however, a locked file cabinet and a desk with a computer on it.

  “Suckers,” she said through a smile as she looked at the computer.

  Cracking that would be the easy part, so she started with the file cabinet. It was heavy steel, locked tight with a dial combination lock. Looking it over, she saw it was wrapped in wards. Each was woven into the next in an intricate and—she had to admit—impressive design. Like a lot of wards though, it wasn’t protected against hacking. It occurred to her then that maybe she was unique in her ability to see quantum information. Once she had the equation of the wards, it was easy enough to splice her own formula into it and bypass them. It didn’t deactivate the wards—it just made it so they wouldn’t trip. The dial lock was almost insultingly simple. A quick look at its information told her the combination.

  She pulled open the top drawer and found half a dozen or so thick folders. Picking one at random, she opened it and read over the contents. The first thing she learned was the group’s real name. They were called the Legion of Solomon.

  Interesting, she thought to herself and scanned over the pages. It was a personnel file, detailing the military career of Five, or Wallace Montesquie, as his parents called him.

  “Montesquie?” Wraith whispered. “No wonder you go by Five.”

  She skimmed over several pages. He was a chief petty officer in the navy, and his team specialty was divination magic. It made sense to presume each member had his own specialty. She replaced the file, being sure to put it back in exactly the same spot, and flipped through the others until she found the file for Ovation, a.k.a. Four, a.k.a. backstabbing bastard. Turns out the backstabbing bastard’s name was actually Robert Collins, and he was a specialist in the army. Her anger started to rise, but when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, the charm around her neck brushed her skin. It was getting hotter.

  “I need more time,” she said under her breath.

  Time, unfortunately, was something she hadn’t quite figured out how to manipulate yet, but she was working on it. Instead she decided to go old-school spy. She started taking pictures with her phone, making sure the flash was off and the exposure setting was high. It took her several minutes to get through all seven files, or as much of them as she thought relevant. She didn’t really need the detailed history of them all. But she did photograph Ovation’s entire file.

  Tucking her phone away, after confirming she’d spent thirty-six minutes so far, she replaced the files, closed the drawer, and set the dial back to where it had been when she found it. Lastly she returned the ward back to its previous state, carefully pulling her modification out.

  As she sat down at the desk, it occurred to her that if she turned on the computer monitor, the light of it would be visible out the window, even with the blinds closed.

  Then she smiled and wove together an interface from the quantum information around her. Since it was magic, no one but her would see it; unless of course someone was walking by and had goggles like hers or some other means of seeing magic. Keeping the monitor turned off, she powered up the computer.

  About four centuries later, it booted up. The swirling numbers and symbols formed into a virtual door in the middle of the room.

  “Awesome,” she said and walked to stand in front of the door. Now, this was what hacking was supposed to be. The fact she was using magic, for lack of a better word, to crack into technology struck her as more than a little cool.

  She examined the door and saw a keypad in the center of it. Navigating a computer system wasn’t dissimilar from navigating a building. Certain keys would unlock certain doors, which would give you access to other doors, and so on. The computer code was looking for a particular key, which she didn’t have. However, unlike mundane hackers, she could see the information behind the code. Reaching out, she wove together an equation that would tell the system she was God. Not literally, of course, just in terms of her access. Numbers flipped by on the number pad, and the door opened. She knew that it was normal for a system to log activity, but part of her access key equation also flipped the switch in the program that told the system it had already been notified of the Almighty logging in, so there was no need to do it again.

  “It’s all just switches,” she said as the door opened.

  The virtual image of the door slid to her, and the information shifted as it formed into a virtual office. Unlike the real office she stood in, its walls were nothing but bookshelves. She didn’t bother opening any files directly. Instead she looked for specific patterns of information that fit what she was looking for: anything associated with the Legion. This limited her search exponentially. Turns out there was very little stored on this local machine, which was about what she expected. She drew up another door in the middle of the office to access the comp
uter network and stepped through.

  She flew down virtual highways of data streams. The massive artery had countless exits that led to cities and neighborhoods of varying size. Ignoring the smaller ones, she followed the dataflow to its source, and she found herself in the center of a city. All of its buildings had an ancient Greek feel to them, and it took her a second to realize why it looked so familiar.

  “Themyscira,” she said, smiling broadly.

  Geek would be so proud that she made the center data hub appear virtually as Wonder Woman’s home. The upside, of course, was she knew where the temples were, which was probably where the most sensitive data was stored. The city around her dropped below the floor as she “flew” to the top level of the tallest building.

  She stepped through the pillars and under the massive rotunda. Apparently unable to make a comic book visual representation here, there were only clusters of data—quantum equations—floating in the air. And there were a lot of them, like stars-in-the-night-sky lot of them.

  The charm was now almost uncomfortably hot against her skin. She was running short on time, and there was no way she could search through all this data fast enough, even using pattern recognition.

  “I’m such an idiot,” she said when the solution came to her.

  She didn’t need to search through everything; she just needed to see whatever One had been accessing. After getting his military service number, she used it to cross-reference the access logs to find the relevant files. This resulted in 347 clusters.

  “That’s more like it,” she said as she scanned over them.

  She refined the list further by eliminating anything One had accessed more than two years ago. That might exclude something useful, but she had to start somewhere.

  Down to 217 results.

  The charm was now getting uncomfortable.

  “No time to read through them,” she said and started copying the data.