Zero Sight

by B. Justin Shier

  Her own robe hanging loosely, Rei was busy pulling her long black hair into a pony. She gestured to what was left of the mage. “The man-pudding over there, was he wearing an ACT device?”

  I managed a raspy, “Yes,” before I near spit up my lungs. My throat was bone dry. I hadn’t realized it, but I’d been sucking down a lot of smoke. “Jules and I…we…we were coming back from training.”

  Rei tapped her finger against her chin. “Ah, yes, that tiny Druid was assigned as your keeper, was she not? She is to ensure that you do not drown the school in high-fructose corn syrup.”

  I frowned. That legend just wouldn’t die.

  “Would you still be Ms. Mockenstein if I could do blood?”

  “Blood?” Rei raised an eyebrow. From the few times I had seen her since Jules commandeered my life, I had learned that people generally handled Rei Bathory in one of two ways: by A) cowering or B) leering. I guess I spoke to her more casually than anyone else. “Ah! Like in that most excellent Stanley Kubrick feature, The Shining, I believe it was called.” Rei sighed. “A girl can dream. Did you know that the English term ‘bloodbath’ was inspired by a Bathory?” Another thing about Rei: it was really hard to tell when she was joking.

  We turned our attention back to the gunmen. In a fit of terror, one of the masked men had accidently stepped into a pile of napalm. He was struggling to get his pants off before the rising flames made their way through his boots.

  “That one won’t be getting far,” Rei commented. “Then there is Mr. Pudding, a third whom is burnt to death, and a forth unconscious from his wounds.” Rei frowned. “Goodness. All these fires makes therming most difficult.” She sniffed the air. Squinted. “Only two remain.”

  I rubbed at my scared palms. It was like Rei was ticking off items on a grocery list.

  “My most lethal acquaintance, I am not one to judge, but I am most curious: what did these masked men do to incur your wrath?”

  I was about to ask Rei how she had even found me when IKΛM’s fire alarm sounded in the distance. Jules must have succeeded. The alarm snapped me back into focus. “We spotted these guys running from IKΛM. Mr. Pudding, as you so nicely described him, was working on a translocation spell.”

  “That is an impossibility,” Rei said with certainty. “If the Department’s defenses were so weak, they would have been overcome long ago.”

  “That’s what Jules said too, but the proof is Mr. Pudding. I distracted him while he was forming some sort of slit in the air—that’s the result. Anyway, one of the other men kept checking his watch and telling Mr. Pudding to hurry up with the spell. I assumed that we were dealing with a bomb. I told Jules to pull the fire alarm while I created a diversion.”

  Rei stroked her chin and scanned the scene. A hundred different blazes reflected off the lines of her face. Half the lawn was covered with smoldering globs of napalm. The forest was starting to go up in earnest. Three men lay dead or dying. A fourth (sans pants) was crawling away from the flames. The two who could still stand were making a run for it.

  “Dieter, you do not paint with a fine brush,” she said quietly.

  I ignored her. My attention remained on the two men darting into the woods. They had tried to kill my friends, and I wanted nothing more right now to chase the bastards down. “Complain about my arts and crafts later, Rei. The last two are getting away.” I couldn’t wait for the looks on their faces when I—

  Rei placed her hand gently upon my shoulder. Her touch sent tingles down my spine. She cocked her head and smiled, her ivory teeth glistening in the flames. “Getting away?” she said with a laugh. “Hardly. I shall mop up here. Go fetch Albright, he’ll know what to do. Besides…” Rei pouted, her tiny fangs protruding over her lower lip. “You already hogged all the fun.”

  I watched the two men as they disappeared into the woods.

  “My first fresh game in months…it is only fair to give them a thirty second head start,” she explained. “Say what they will about you, Dieter, but you are proving most entertaining.”

  My jaw tightened. Fun? She thought this was fun? And more importantly—what were people saying about me? Did I have bad breath or something? I shook my head. Time was wasting. I clutched the cold hand on my shoulder and stared into Rei’s cold blue eyes.

  “Fine. Just don’t get dead, okay?”

  Rei batted her lashes and cupped her cheek with her hand.

  “Okie-dokie, Dieter. I’ll try to not let the bad men get me.”

  Rei rolled her eyes and flashed off into the woods.

  I took a deep breath and coughed up more soot. I wondered if all vampires were cocky assholes. Wheezing, I struck out in direction of the faculty lodge. I set an aggressive pace and stretched out my stride. I needed to cover the quarter mile to the faculty lodge as quickly as possible, but the smoke had done its work. My lungs were burning in protest, and my legs were already protesting the lack of oxygen.

  By the time I sprinted past IKΛM, it looked like the evacuation was almost complete. Fire drills were taken seriously at Elliot. You never knew what someone else might have cooked up, and you definitely didn’t want to hang around to find out. Monique was organizing the effort with Iota’s leader, Susan Collins. Susan had just returned to classes last week. It looked like the replacement arm was settling into its new digs nicely. I caught Dante’s attention as I passed. He patted Monique on the shoulder and set off after me. His lanky strides made short work of the distance.

  “Yours?” he asked, gesturing to the fire.

  “Yea,” I huffed. “Did Jules fill you in?”

  “Yea. We’re evacuating all the buildings. She said you two saw an ACT device on one of them?”

  I nodded.

  “Son of a gun…so it’s the same guys? How’d ya figure they managed to pull this off?”

  It was a good question. The outside world could prove to be a dangerous place for a Conscious human, but behind their magical defenses, the Magi were quite powerful. Elliot was not your average campus. Sure, you couldn’t see the weaponry, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Eliot was built on a leynode, a point where two or more leylines intersect. The magic community coveted leynodes. Nodes enhance the power of magic. They turn your standard mage into a 300lb gorilla. In the past, churches, temples, and fortresses were all built atop leynodes. A node granted tremendous defensive advantages. Fortification specialists could set up near-permanent wards that fed off the endless supply of mana. More than a dozen such wards protected Elliot College. There were counters for hexes and curses, shrouds to distract attention, and primed offensive volleys. Elliot was regarded as the crème de la crème of such nodes, the magical equivalent of Fort Knox. That anyone uninvited could even manage to cross the campus threshold was astonishing. Heck, the whole point of sending upperclassmen to escort freshmen was they couldn’t get onto campus without talismans (aka, their student ID cards). Last year, two students tried to breach Elliot’s threshold without their ID cards. They left their ID cards at the train station and ran for Elliot’s gates…the faculty tracked them down two weeks later on a freighter bound for China. They had decided to open up a noodle shop together—in Beijing. How had these gunmen managed to breech Elliot’s defenses? It was a very good question.

  “We worry about that later,” I huffed. “Let’s get to the dean first.”

  +

  The faculty lived in an old colonial governor's hunting lodge. The thick wood-walled cabin predated the Declaration of Independence by a mile. I once told Jules that it blew my mind that a building that old was still standing. She scoffed. Said her dresser drawers back in Ireland were older. Said everything in America was brand spankin’ new.

  Stupid Europeans.

  Dante and I arrived at the entrance and he swiped his ID. Only captains and their lieutenants were granted access to the lodge. Dante was my direct superior, but it really didn’t matter much. No one really pulled rank unless there was a crisis…although he did order me to stop complaining about
his snoring.

  Once inside, Dante told me to watch the door, and he moved swiftly up the stairs to rouse the faculty. It was my first time inside their lodge. Finally able to catch my breath, I spent a few seconds marveling at this real deal log cabin. A large hearth sat in the center of the room. It crackled with the last of the evening’s embers. The first floor had a cool communal setup. There were books all over the walls (interesting reading if you knew Sanskrit or Aramaic) and lots of comfortable looking leather couches and chairs. A huge picnic-style dining table sat off to the side. To the left was a kitchen full of brand new commercial grade stainless-steel appliances. I was slipping back to my days working in the kitchen, envying their setup, when I noticed an open carton of milk sitting out on the counter. I bit the side of my cheek. Wasting food really bugged me. Crisis or not, there was no point letting the milk spoil. I walked over to put it back in the fridge.

  You might be shaking your head, thinking, Dieter, dude, you just took out four members of a raiding party by setting a state park on fire, but you’re worried about a carton of milk spoiling. What gives, man? Fair enough, but I’d spent my childhood stealing ketchup packets to fill in the gaps of my food pyramid. That has an effect. As I picked up the carton, my nose pricked. A mixture of sweet, sour, and rust filled the air.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “The sun isn’t even out yet and this day is already crap.”

  I rounded the counter quietly. It was going to be bad, I just knew it.

  Little life preservers floated atop the red and white puddle spreading across the linoleum floor. It was Professor Simons. He was dressed in his PJs, a bowl of O’s in one hand, and a spoon in the other. I noted the gaping hole in the back of his head and stifled a gag. The side effect must have worn off—now I wished I could have the crazy back.

  I knelt down to examine the body. I was considering whether to even bother checking his pulse when I heard a muffled thud from upstairs.

  “Shit,” I cursed. The bad guys were still here.

  I scrambled behind the counter. It blocked the view from the main stairwell, but did they know I was down here? Wood did a good job absorbing sound…maybe they hadn’t heard my blabbering. I paused to think. Should I try and make a run for it? Go for help before I got caught too? Or should I rush up there?

  I bit my lip. “Damn it,” I muttered. This was freaking ridiculous. I didn’t even know what the hell is going on here. I kinda regretted not picking up one of the masked men’s guns…not that I could use one. Despite my father’s love of them, I had never learned how to fire a gun. Now explosives on the other hand…

  I turned my attention back to Dante. The pipe vs. tall man incident should have taught me some sort of lesson, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t one for the indirect approach. Besides, these guys didn’t seem to show a preference for live-and-let-live. I didn’t want to have to break-in a new roommate. If I was going to save Dante, I needed to act fast. I rushed through my options. The main stairwell was a no-no. They would definitely be covering that. I needed another route.

  The place was old, built back in the day they had servants, and servants never used main stairwells. The butler sloshing down the stairs with a chamber pot was just so unbecoming.

  I crept to the back of the kitchen.

  There it was: the rear stairwell.

  First things first, I told myself. I huddled down close to the floor and closed my eyes.

  The first rule of basic defensive magic is fortify-or-fry. Fortifications resonate with attacks to deflate them. That means they’re type specific. Mages don’t get to cast God Mode and repel every type of attack. They have to guess what’s coming or counter faster than the incoming volley. Which fortification to pick was easy. Poor Professor Simons made the decision for me. Anti-K it was. A kinetic defense is worthless against things like explosions, mental attacks, or lasers but perfect—in theory—for stopping bullets. I drew up mana from the leyline and tried to picture a set of body armor. (It wasn’t hard, I’m eighteen and male.) The transmutation formed in my mind, I placed my right hand on my chest and charmed my robe.

  At my basic skill level, a fortification spell would hold for about ten minutes. Dunkin McWilliams, our defensive magic professor, said a competent battlemage could shift fortifications in under a second. Both Sheila and Roster excelled in these forms of magic, and Roster had been helping me in exchange for some biochemistry tutoring. I had a long way to go to go before I was switching fortifications on the fly, but Professor McWilliams did say I made one rock solid anti-kinetic charm. No surprise, really. Kinetic modulation had been the basis of my very first cast. I smiled. With the anti-kinetic charm in place, all I had to do was make sure I didn’t get shot in the face.

  Thankfully, the stairwell was pitch dark. I prayed none of the steps would squeak, and started up to the second floor. I eased my way up the final steps, took a deep breath, and peered down the hall. A man with another AK-forty something was standing guard at the main stairwell. My gut lurched. No matter how good my anti-kinetic charm was I didn’t want to test it out against an assault rifle.

  I went over my options again. I could go all out and conduit a simple explosion from the ground floor. That would take the gunman out easily, but probably eliminate half the second floor in the process. That didn’t seem like such a great idea. This was a rescue mission, not a group barbeque. A directed energy attack was another option. I needed a direct line of sight for that, like when the tall man had when he electrocuted Rei. The problem with that plan was I was on the second floor of a building. The manaflow of a leyline is tied to the surface of the Earth. My ability to attract mana decreased exponentially as I moved away from it. I would have to expend a tremendous amount of energy to attract the mana I needed. That would take lots of time and leave me exhausted. Now, if I thought that the dude was a lone gunman, I might have considered it, but what were the chances of that?

  And why not just use some mana from my reserves? True, mages have their own internal reserves of mana, but I’d learned that my own internal reserves were pitifully small. At Elliot, I was a pen light in an ocean of lighthouses. My talents rested in attracting and conduiting large quantities of mana, not storing it. Big conduit. Tiny battery. Jules insisted that it’s the motion of the ocean that counts—but Jules is a terrible liar.

  I rolled through more options:

  If I were Monique, I would convince the fool to fall down the stairs.

  If I were Dante, I would…

  I scratched my chin. That just might work. There was even a certain symmetry to it. By training me, Dante (assuming he was still breathing) would save his own rear. And as my inspiration to learn the trick, Dr. Simons was about to get his revenge. I went over the transmutation in my head. It had taken Dante three weeks of Polimag lectures to teach me it properly. (It was a great illusion if you didn’t want to stick around for the last few minutes of class.) I just needed to combine Dante’s spell with a type of entrapment field I knew all too well. Now, Dante’s spells were never easy. He had a quirky way of thinking. Forming the conduit took me a full minute of focus.

  With Dante’s transmutation prepped, one question remained: If I were a gunman, where would I aim?

  What a freaking question.

  My nerves were no good, and I wasn’t going to be able to keep the conduit stable much longer. I closed my eyes and tried to stop the shaking. I told myself that he probably had really bad aim. I told myself that if I screwed it up, I wouldn’t have much time to spend regretting it anyway. I took another deep breath, hoped it wouldn’t be my last, screamed, “Fuck it!” and swung into the hallway.

  The gunman was well trained. There was no fumbling. He had his rifle trained on me in an instant. A round already chambered, he fired a single shot at my chest.

  It came so damn fast. My hand outstretched, the round thwapped right into me. My body shuddered to a halt, but the gunman didn’t waste time. He followed with a triple-tap. The window behind me shattered as the bu
llets punched through my torso.

  Heart racing and adrenalin pumping, I screamed, grabbed him by the jacket, and threw him down the stairs. By the time the gunman realized what was happening, he was already colliding into the landing. He should have wondered why the first round didn’t break the glass. He should have noticed the blur to his right as the real me continued down the hall. Mine was shoddy cast, but staring down the scope of a rifle had given him tunnel vision. I looked back at my dummy. Me 2.0 was losing its cohesion, and my own hands were gradually re-appearing.

  My chest heaving from the effort, I leaned against the wall. I had bested the bastard, but I felt no satisfaction. In all likelihood, the guy who taught me that trick was dead. I needed to do whatever it was I planned to do next—and fast. Catching my breath, I rushed down the stairs. From the thug’s belt I swiped his supply of twisty ties and hogtied him good. Next, I grabbed the cylindrical grenades from his shoulder. I recognized the make. They used to have a bunch of disarmed ones at the army surplus store back home. They were called flash grenades. Big bang. Little hurt. Ideal for rescuing hostages. I grabbed his rifle next. The weight of the weapon surprised me. Pretending to know what the hell I was doing, I checked the bolt and safety. Red meant ‘on’ if I remembered correctly. I didn’t dare check the bullets in the clip. I had no idea how to get it back on. Gun at the ready, I hustled back up the stairs. I needed to hide somewhere and plan my next move, but on the top step I ran smack into nothing.

  The nothing crunched off my forehead and swore.

  “Damn it, Dante,” I said, rubbing my noggin’, “I thought you were dead!”

  “Shhh!” he whispered. His invisible hand grabbed hold of my shoulder, and the world around me drained of its color. I could see him now. He had drawn me under his shroud. His lower lip was dripping blood.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “I, uh, didn’t see you.” Way to go Captain Obvious. I smacked my own head.