by Jamie Davis
“We might have to wander until I get my bearings. But yeah, I think so.”
Winnie sighed. “That’s fine. Wandering in the dark is better than getting picked up by a van of Red Legs on the way. Let’s all get something to eat and drink. Then we’ll get to Artos.” She didn’t know about the rest of them, but she had to eat something. Her nausea was returning, and that meant get some food, especially if they were going to be traipsing around in the sewers. Throwing up was already easy enough.
There was a small kitchen area in the warehouse offices. They had a few basics stashed. They set up an assembly line to make sandwiches. Even Danny helped out by setting up a card table and gathering chairs. Soon, they were all eating, discussing what they could do to stop Kane’s plan for the chanters. Their ideas were thin and Winnie hoped Artos had something better than what they could conjure on their own.
With dinner finished, they gathered their few belongings and, one by one, climbed down into the sewer. Once inside, Cait and Danny pulled the heavy grate over the hole to hide their route should anyone come to the warehouse trying to find them.
Tris led the way with a simple charm light. One of the most basic charms, taught to small chanter children as soon as they could talk. It could be cast on any small object — a button, or a coin. The charm issued a surprisingly bright light given the size of her penny.
When they reached the first intersection, Tris checked a rusted metal sign on the wall with a series of arrows labeled with seemingly random letters and numbers. “I think we go this way.”
Winnie nodded. “Lead on. We trust you.”
They followed Tris down the tunnels. There was a ledge beside the main water flow at the bottom of the passage. Winnie was grateful for a place to walk out of the water. It smelled awful enough. She didn’t want to compound the experience by walking in the filthy water flowing below.
The trip took several twists. Tris had to turn them around and go backward three times after realizing they were headed the wrong way. Eventually, they arrived at a side passage with a ladder leading to a floor grate similar to the one in the warehouse.
“I’m pretty sure this is it,” Tris said.
Cait started climbing. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Winnie watched Cait push with her hands, then place a shoulder to the heavy grate. She shoved upwards with her legs against the metal rungs set in the concrete wall. With a groan from both girl and grate, she pushed until her veins were visible. The grate slid aside with the deafening clang of metal on concrete.
Cait disappeared into the opening. The group waited while she scouted for threats. After a few minutes, her face reappeared, wearing a broad smile. “This is it. Great job, Tris.”
Winnie and the others clapped Tris on the back, then they started upward, one by one, until they were all safely standing in the Menders Hall basement.
Cait pointed to a lit hallway off the main basement room. “Elevators are that way. Winnie, you should probably take the lead.”
“Agreed. Let me do the talking when we get there. Artos will have plenty of questions. Let me answer whenever I can. I’ll bring you each into the conversation as needed.”
Winnie wanted to make sure Artos stayed focused on what she wanted to do, rather than distracting them with his agenda, as he always did. Maybe they wanted the same thing. She hoped so, but with all his twisted plans and obligations in place, Winnie had no idea what he’d want to do.
Artos’s office was filled with people. There must have been twenty, all talking to Gunderson at once. From what Winnie could hear, they were all there to report a relative or friend scooped off the street by a roving Red Legs patrol and they wanted Artos to intervene on their behalf.
Winnie turned to her crew. “Stay here. I’ll see if we can skip to the front.”
It took time and effort for Winnie to worm her way to the front of the crowd, earning another nasty glance or comment whenever she nudged herself another inch forward. She finally reached the front and saw the harangued assistant up close. It was the first time she’d seen him flustered, mopping sweat from his brow with a pocket handkerchief and trying to address too many concerns all at once.
“No, I’m sorry, but Mr. Merrilyn cannot see you now. Yes, he is aware of the situation and is looking into the disappearances. Yes, he has heard of the new Red Leg patrols and has filed a formal complaint. No, I assure you, he is not ignoring the problem.”
Winnie waved then leaned as close as she could to Gunderson. “I have important information that he needs to know. Now.”
Gunderson stopped talking and looked at Winnie, processing what she’d said. Then he nodded and pointed to the door behind him.
Winnie freed herself from the crowd, squeezed behind the dapper assistant, and let herself into the office. She closed the door behind her and noticed that Artos was on the phone at the far end of the long room.
“I don’t care what you’re allowed to do or not, Senator. You and I have a longstanding arrangement and I’m calling in a favor. We need you to open a special legislative session to address the current activities of the Department of Magical Containment and locate those chanters being detained.”
Winnie waited by the door until he noticed her standing there.
He motioned her forward. She could tell by his expression that he wasn’t hearing what he wanted from the senator.
“I realize that you would be sticking your neck out. Think of the people who have disappeared. What about them? Look, do the best you can and find out where they’re being taken. I’ve verified that it isn’t the local detention centers. Call when you know something.”
Artos hung up, cursing under his breath. He looked up at Winnie with a grim half-smile.
“I hope you’re here with some good news, my dear. I’m afraid I have none.”
“You might,” Winnie said. “We found out some information about Project X.”
Winnie shared what she’d learned from Danny, and told Artos about how they had dodged the roving patrols on the way to the Mender’s Hall.
“If you can help us locate where Kane is hiding this machine of theirs, we might be able to reach it. Maybe, once there, we can destroy the thing, or at least disable it. That would set them back and hopefully stop the random detentions.”
Winnie paused to look at Artos. He was staring out the window at a darkening sky. She waited, hoping he had an inkling of where to start looking. So many lives were at stake.
“There’s a lot of maybes and hopefully,” Artos said without turning around. “If this is true, Kane’s decided to move faster towards his goal than I thought.”
The old chanter turned and walked to stand before a map of the city mounted on his office wall. He stared at it a long time before pointing.
“It has to be there, in the old steel plant. Edge of the city. Danny Barber’s father purchased the property years ago to develop new housing and retail businesses. He’s leveled and rebuilt everything but the old mill. I always thought it was odd to leave that part standing, but never bothered to investigate.”
“If that’s where we need to look, then that’s where we’ll go.” Winnie tried to sound more confident than she felt. Many things could go wrong, and there was so much they didn’t know about what they were facing.
Artos turned to face her. “Bring the rest of your crew. This will require careful planning and I think it’s best to do that here. It will allow us to coordinate our efforts and see what I can do to support you.”
Winnie found the day’s first genuine smile. They might have a chance with Artos’s support. She turned and went to retrieve the others.
The planning started with Artos sending Gunderson to fetch blueprints for the steel mill from some office downstairs. Winnie didn’t know that all magically-constructed buildings used to file a set of their plans with Menders Hall. It allowed magical healers to know what kind of magic was being used on each site should an injury occur requiring their services.
The food and blueprints appeared together and they settled into a working meal. Tris was able to point out locations where the power for any type of large equipment would need to be. Cait oversaw sketching probable locations for guards on the building’s exterior and interior. Joey looked at the drawings, trying to determine where detained chanters were kept before being taken to the infernal machine.
Winnie knew that much of what they came up with was supposition, but if felt good to be working in a positive direction. After an hour or so, they had a plan of sorts to breach the building, find the location of the machine inside, and take the steps necessary to destroy it.
Artos had the most to say about that final topic. He spent ten minutes going over Winnie’s role in killing the device, even using magic, should their mechanical sabotage fail to work.
They all went over the plan, verbally stating each person’s part one final time so that everyone knew their place. Then it was time to leave. Winnie hoped they could celebrate together at the end of this night.
That thought haunted her as they entered the elevator and headed back to the basement.
CHAPTER 43
Everyone was quiet on the ride to the Menders Hall basement. Their plan left a lot to improvisation and initiative; it had holes. They waited until closer to midnight, hoping to catch the guards unaware.
Winnie watched her friends prepare for the night. Tris and Danny were pouring over the blueprints once more to try and discern anything they’d missed upstairs. Joey and Cait were discussing their plan of attack. They would need to deal with any guards, with Joey assisting Cait however he could. He had no magic, but he could watch her back and do anything she needed done.
Winnie pondered what Artos had said, basing her part of the plan on what he knew about Project X and what he could extrapolate about the machine from Danny’s description of Kane’s conversation with his father. If Tris couldn’t find a way to kill the device mechanically, or by using her brand of magical ability, Winnie would have to confront the machine directly.
This was the most frightening part. They knew the machine drew the power of any chanter casting energy into it. It often left the chanters dead, if Director Kane’s description could be trusted. Artos surmised that if she sought out the machine’s magical component and tried retying the flows with her inversion weave, it should reverse the energy’s direction and release it to nature. That was Artos’s theory.
That she could die scared her enough. That her unborn child would perish with her elevated her sorrow to unheard of levels. Even if the child didn’t die, Winnie wondered if the machine’s magic-siphoning effects would have some impact on the baby. Her hand rested on her stomach and she turned toward where Danny was tightening his plots with Tris.
He seemed sincere, wanting to prove himself trustworthy despite their suspicions. She wondered if she should tell him about her pregnancy. Only Morgan, Tris, and Cait knew about the baby. None of them would tell Danny her secret. She hadn’t told Joey. Most boys couldn’t keep secrets and he was worse than most.
It wouldn’t be fair to tell Danny now. He didn’t need the distraction on top of everything else. It was better to clear his mind and focus. And it would keep her on-task. She didn’t want to be worrying about what he was thinking, or about a poor response to the news.
Winnie shook her head, thinking about how she had ended up as the unlikely leader in the coming fight. She’s never been one to whine why me? when bad things happened. She’d taken life’s hurdles one at a time and found her way around them. It had been that way since she was much younger and had had to take on many of the household chores and start working at the shop. Her mother’s illness had been slow to set, but once it had reached a point that she could no longer cast the charms needed in their business, Winnie had taken over without complaint. That’s who she was.
Winnie would do what had to be done. People were dying because of how they were born. If she failed in this quest, her mother would survive near-death in the hospital only to be harvested like an animal to slaughter. Thinking about it sent chills down her spine.
Winnie shrugged away the shivers, leaned back against the wall, and sat with her eyes closed, trying to clear her mind. Soon, she was sleeping, and for the moment, her woes were behind her.
CHAPTER 44
Victor drove down Baltimore’s moonlit boulevards toward an unfamiliar section of town. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have left at this hour of the evening. But the message had come from the Department. Director Kane requested his presence, alongside his protégée, Morgan Bennett. He glanced at Morgan in the passenger seat of his unmarked car. He was still unsure why she’d been invited. It made him uneasy that Director Kane might be aware of their inappropriate relationship.
He had a great deal of affection for Morgan. He might call it love, if he believed in such things. They had a mutual respect for the law. A necessary ruse to gain information about a dangerous charm runner and her crew had blossomed into something much greater. Now, he could barely remember a time without her, or was perhaps unwilling to try.
Morgan looked splendid in her Red Legs cadet uniform. She was proud to earn her rank as full officer. In another six weeks, she would be helping him rid the city of illegal magic and its demonic influence on law-abiding citizens. Victor was proud of her transformation from uninformed college student to enthusiastic informant and colleague. It gave him hope that other young people could change, too — that there was hope for this oft-corrupted world.
Morgan caught his glance and smiled. She was unsure of herself, too. This would be her first meeting with the Director in person. Victor remembered how he’d felt on the first audience with the man who had single-handedly brought magic under government control. He laid a hand on hers where it rested on her leg, and felt her stiffen at the contact, then relax.
He’d detected apprehension, or perhaps anxiety, in her throughout the last week or so. She was uncomfortable discussing it and Victor didn’t press the issue. At first, he thought she was pulling away from him and their intimate encounters. She told him not to be silly, she was just dealing with something from home. He didn’t want to pry, but offered to help if she shared her problem. Again, she said it was nothing.
Now they were traveling in silence to the industrial area of the city that had recently seen a resurgence of retail businesses and residential lofts. But with only an address and instructions upon arrival, their final destination was a mystery.
“Morgan, would you read the email I forwarded you again? We’re getting close and I don’t want to make any mistakes. Security precautions around the Director are stringent and I don’t wish to embarrass either of us by making an error.”
“Sure,” she said, tapping to bring up the email on her phone. “It says to ‘proceed to 8701 Eastern Avenue and turn into the gated lot. Once there, stay in the vehicle with the interior light on so that all occupants are visible to guards at the gate. Present identification for yourself and Cadet Bennett, then await instructions.’”
He reached into her tunic pocket and pulled out her departmental identification. It looked like his, though he kept his in a leather wallet designed to hold both the ID and his badge. She didn’t have her badge yet and had no need to keep the items together.
“We’re almost there, I think. Can you read the numbers on your side of the street?”
Morgan peered out the passenger window. “We’re in the 8500 block. Even numbers are on my side of the street, so our building should be on your side.”
“Remember to stand at attention when we get out of the car. March just behind me and slightly to the right. Follow my lead. Speak only when spoken to b
y the Director. Otherwise, it’s best to observe in silence.”
“Right, women should be seen and not heard, is that it?”
“No. Cadets should be seen and not heard. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of time to talk on the drive home.”
Buildings on the driver’s side were all part of some large industrial complex. There were tall fences, topped with coils of razor wire between the building — much more secure than a typical manufacturing facility could possibly need. There was an opening in the sidewalk between two buildings and a parking lot with a large gate. This had to be it.
Victor pulled up to the gate, stopped, put the car in park, then reached down and switched on the interior lights. He pulled out his identification, holding out his hand for Morgan’s as well. He looked around, though it was hard to see in the darkness outside with the lights on inside. He was startled by a tap on the driver’s window. He jumped, embarrassed, then lowered his window.
“This is a secure location, open to authorized personnel only. Please show me your identification or you will be detained.” The man’s voice was accompanied by a bright flashlight beam slicing the darkness to shine in his eyes.
Victor handed over his ID and waited. A moment later, a hand reached back into view, returning the documents, and the blinding light finally left his eyes.
“Proceed through the gate and drive straight ahead until you see lot Five A on your right. Park in a designated visitor’s spot and exit your vehicle. You will be met there. Leave your interior light on until you turn off the car. Do not stray from the vicinity of the vehicle until your escort arrives. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Proceed.”
The shadowy shape stepped back from the car and disappeared into the shadows. The gate slid open and out of the way. Victor slid the car into gear and pulled forward, keeping his speed constant and low to avoid any misunderstandings.
