Zero Sight

by B. Justin Shier

  Call me strange, but I love shining up shoes. You start with two dirty old sacks of leather and end up with something brand spanking new. I smiled as I hosed off the caked on blood. Rei knew her boots. Most people don’t. They buy some fu-fu pair made in China with cool colors and weird laces, but if you’re working full shifts on your feet, you better learn fast. A good pair of boots should have a simple design that’s easy to clean. They should be built of high quality leather so they’ll breathe and come with the best soles you can afford. It surprised me that Rei was in the know. I’d figured her for rich and clueless, but Rei wore the same brand that I did—except she had opted for the steel-toe version. I paused to rub the welt growing above my pelvis. Maybe Maria could order me a pair on the company card. After last night, it seemed a rather reasonable school expense.

  I was finishing the buff on my own when the washer ground to a halt. All the clothes were salvageable, minus Rei’s fatigues. Military issue or not, no pair of pants was going to survive a jump through a roof. I tossed them in the trash and hung up the rest on her clothesline. I checked my watch. I still had an hour to kill before Dean Albright wanted me back. I decided to slip on my boots and jog back to IKΛM.

  +

  Visions of frosted flakes dancing through my head, I came running around the bend. IKΛM was missing most of its second story. The other two dorms were mostly rubble. Faculty and students plodded along, picking through the wreckage and recovering what they could. I sighed. Fridge Lambda was probably toast.

  I spotted Monique standing in front of IKΛM and walked over to her.

  “Hey, Cap’n. Have you been inside yet?”

  Monique gestured at IKΛM’s caved in front door. Roster and a few of the Mu guys were working on the rubble pile. His shirt off, he was flexed against a crowbar. A group of girls sat off to the side, carefully supervising the effort.

  “Try prying lower, Roster,” one of the girls shouted.

  Monique rolled her eyes.

  “Hey, nice sweatpants.”

  “They’re temporary,” I grumbled.

  Monique put her hands on her hips and looked up at what was left of the second floor. “No need to explain. None of us have much of a wardrobe now. On the bright side, I did find one of my bras.” She gestured to a nearby tree, where a pair of red C-cups was fluttering in the breeze. “Maria raided the student store. She’s handing out clothes and toiletries over by the amphitheater. There’s some oatmeal too.”

  My stomach growled. Oatmeal…yum.

  “Cool.”

  “Yep. And Dieter, from what I hear, you did us proud last night. Good work.”

  “Thanks, cap’n.” I glanced over to the smoldering trees behind IKΛM. A group of folks had cordoned off the area. Most were wearing yellow windbreakers with DEA printed on the back.

  “The Drug Enforcement Agency? Monique, what are they doing here?”

  “You don’t know? The DEA is the enforcement arm of the Department of Mana Affairs. The men and women in yellow windbreakers are fiscals. They’re like FBI agents. Now the fellow in the black fatigues…you don’t see his kind too often. He’s an alguacil. He’s probably the ICE representative for this incident.” Monique noticed the surprise look on my face. “What, didn’t you think that having both the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA was kinda redundant?”

  I scratched my head. Come to think of it, that never did make any sense. I guess I should have been making an effort to learn more about the Department—especially considering I had signed up to work for them—but networking opportunities were scarce when your taskmaster worked in the woods. So far I hadn’t met anyone from the Department besides the faculty. I went over the names Monique gave me. Fiscal sounded like the Spanish word for prosecutor. That sorta made sense. But alguacil?

  “Doesn’t alguacil mean bailiff in Spanish? What’s an officer of the court doing at a crime scene?”

  “Dieter, an alguacil isn’t an officer of just any court.”

  I stared at her blankly.

  “The Court of Inquisition, Dieter. He’s an ICE freelancer.”

  “Oh. Peachy,” I said with a gulp. The International Council on Evocation was like the United Nations of magic…except they were ruthless, not toothless. The ICE answered only to the Church. The Magi acquiesced to their will. “Didn’t they used to call those guys—”

  “Witch hunters.” Monique’s jaw tensed. “But that’s not really fair, Dieter. Alguacils are equal opportunity savages. They’ll burn anything that gets out of line.”

  This alguacil was short, stalky, and built like a Big Ten running back. A deep scar ran from below his collar to up behind his right ear. He was talking with two men in yellow DEA jackets. I squinted. I could have sworn I’d seen the two of them before.

  Walking in front of me, a girl from Mu said, “Hiya, pinky.”

  “Looks better on me than it would on you, fat ass.”

  “Mature, Resnick,” Monique quibbled.

  I only had forty minutes before I had to meet Albright, so I thanked Monique and hustled over to the aid station. As I waited in the queue, I couldn’t help but hear the whispers. They kept causing my Sight to flare up. The more people there were staring at me, the more difficult it became. While I worked on finding my happy place, Roger, a chubby kid I knew from Iota, wandered over and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Good work, Resnick. You sure saved our butts last night.” Even more eyes on me. Great. “And I never believed any of that stuff people were saying about you, either.” He leaned in close. “But, dude, I wouldn’t go around wearing stuff like that, you’re gonna start other types of rumors.”

  I smiled meekly. Roger was a nice guy, but capital-A awkward.

  “Hola, Dieter,” Maria said, waving.

  “Hey baby, you got what I need?”

  Maria examined my sweats and giggled. “I’m guessing you want another pair?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Maria handed me a new set of Elliot brand sweats along with a fresh toiletry set. I would have stopped to chat, but I had to get moving. Maria shouted, “Good work last night!” as I ran off to change.

  Chapter 22

  DISTRUST

  Central was abuzz with activity when I arrived. Two men from the Department where checking ID’s at the entrance. They looked my battered frame up and down before clearing me. I hustled up to the third floor and was greeted by a very harried Betty Strouse. She was struggling to manage the bank of blinking red lights in front of her.

  “Oh, Mr. Resnick,” she said over the incessant ringing, “Dean Albright is in his office. Go right on in, dear.” Then she went right back to the phones. “Yes, Mrs. Carter, your son is fine …Yes, all the students are fine …No, none of the students were drained …”

  I shuddered. Panicky parents were the eleventh plague.

  Dean Albright was behind his desk talking to someone on the phone. From the look on his face, it wasn’t a pleasure call. Albright motioned for me to sit down. His desk was piled high with papers, and a map had been hastily thrown up across one of the walls. It was covered in red, white, and blue thumbtacks. The white ones were grouped in nearly straight lines stretching North and South across the continent. One of them marked the location of Elliot College. I didn’t have to guess at what they were. They were the leynodes of North America; we were expected to memorize their locations in Magic Theory I.

  Leynodes are turbulent intersections where converging flows of mana slow to a crawl. Even the Imperiti are attracted to them. Cities are almost always built on top of them. That vibrant energy you feel when you visit the Big Apple? It isn’t just because of the hustle and bustle. The ground is literally buzzing with the churning mana below. But where are the leynodes’ precise locations? The best tip is to head to the nearest cathedral. Places of worship are usually constructed right on top of them. That explains why when a new religion comes to power, they knock down the old holy places and replace them with their own. For the last two thousand years, the C
atholic Church has made it their business to plant their flag atop as many of these nodes as possible. They’ve been so successful that if you want a halfway good map of the ley network, all you have to do is plot down all the Catholics' cathedrals and start connecting the dots.

  I scratched the stubble on my chin. The ley network explained the white pins, but what about the others? The blue ones occupied the majority of the East Coast, some of the Midwest, and all of Canada. The red ones swooped down from Oregon, deep into Mexico, and all the way across Texas. But it got even stranger. Most of Florida, and every single Mississippi River State, didn’t bear a single colored pin.

  The dean delivered an “I agree” into the receiver and snuck over to his car-priced coffee machine. He kicked out two cups of joe, and I accepted one gratefully. Albright finished his conversation with, “I’ll get right on it, sir,” and leaned back in his chair.

  “That didn’t sound fun, sir.”

  “Assets, Mr. Resnick, must always be covered.” Albright gave me a tired smile and took a sip from his mug. I couldn’t help but notice the fat bags camped out under his eyes and the smattering of blood on his shirt.

  “You don’t look so good, dean.”

  He waved his hand, dismissing the thought. “I’ll be alright, son, but thank you for the concern. We really dodged a bullet last night. We owe you and Adept Nelson a huge debt of gratitude. If you hadn’t been on your game…”

  I leaned forward in my seat. It seemed like Albright had the wrong idea. “Sir, Jules and I just stumbled into those soldiers. If Rei and Dante hadn’t been around, we’d have both been toast. And it was Monique and that Susan Collins girl who thought to evacuate all the dorms. And how about you, sir? You managed that frameshift under fire.”

  Albright looked grave. He turned to look out his window.

  “Initiate, none of the faculty cast that spell.”

  “But—”

  “Didn’t you think it odd that the explosives went off the instant the frameshift ended? Following a shift, a mage’s Ki is left unbalanced. His spellcasting ability is stymied. Initiate, the goal of that shift was to snare us like hogs and send us off to slaughter.”

  My eyes widened. That could mean only one thing.

  “There was another mage.”

  “Exactly. A mage talented enough penetrate all of Elliot’s defenses and distort space and time.”

  “Sir…” I fidgeted in my seat. “Automatic weapons? Hit squads? Explosives? I’m feeling a bit out of the loop, here. What the hell is going on?”

  Dean Albright nodded. “All in good time, initiate. But first things first. I want to hear everything that happened from the top. Jules and Dante have already been debriefed. Give me your version of events.”

  I sank down into my chair. It was standard procedure, but I didn’t care to relive it. I told Albright how Jules and I had been leaving the forest after I messed up the spell. I described the six men we saw, how I had made the diversion, how Jules managed to set off the fire alarm, and how Rei showed up to handle the two men who escaped. I told him how Dante and I went for help and found Simon’s body, and how Rei had arrived in the nick of time. He nodded as I spoke, took some notes, and asked a bunch of questions about the ACT device Jules and I had seen. Then he followed up with questions about the gunmen. Did their Spanish have an accent? Did it look like someone was in charge? I didn’t think I was of much help. The last night was a blur.

  Finishing up, Albright kicked back from his desk and checked his watch.

  “Good enough. They should be here soon anyway.”

  “Who, sir?”

  “The DEA reps.”

  Before I could ask why, the phone rang and Albright told Ms. Strouse to have everyone sent to the conference room. As he put on his jacket, he turned to me. “Initiate, I’m sorry that we’ve been keeping you all in the dark, but there was good reason for it. We’ll bring you up to speed now, I promise.”

  We walked down the hall into Elliot’s boardroom. At the table sat all of Lambda (minus Fukimura and Rei) and two men from the DEA. I gulped. It was the same two from the hospital, and they had brought a friend. It was the man in the black fatigues.

  Jules waved. “Conas atá tú, Dieter?”

  “Tá mé go maith,” I replied.

  Jules looked mortified. She was trying to teach me Gaelic as part of the Grand Dieter Improvement Project, but right now I was feeling a bit scatterbrained. I must have murdered the reply. I took my seat and sagged. I really needed to grab some sleep. One of the two investigators was fumbling with the projector screen as Ms. Strouse went around the table offering coffee and tea. The investigator looked at Albright and shrugged.

  “Wrong adapter. Do you have a memory stick?” he asked.

  “You know, John,” the second DEA man said with a smirk, “scrying pools may not be able to run PowerPoint, but they don’t crash either.“

  As Albright went over to help, I took the moment to check out the alguacil. His face was a weatherworn map of a life spent outdoors, but like with Albright, I couldn’t figure his age. His compact build had none of the girth men often piled on with the years, but his eyes looked older. He still had all of his hair, and he wore it in a precise cut that screamed military. The scar stretching from the alguacil’s collar to his ear was his most pronounced feature. You only got scars like that when a wound didn’t heal right. (You know, like when you have floss for stitches and whisky for antibiotics.) I pondered out a few scenarios. None of them were nice. And the guy felt wrong too. I willed open my Sight but couldn’t sense an aura. That baffled me. Even animals had auras. (Sure, it was mostly hungry-hungry-hungry, sex-sex-sex, but there was always something for me to read.) Jules had stated unequivocally that every living creature produced an aura. It’s a natural byproduct of their emotions. Figuring I was messing up, I decided to probe deeper. I flexed my Sight, sacrificing my hearing and smell. I pushed so hard that my normal vision began to break down, leaving only dark outlines behind. I figured if I couldn’t see this man’s aura, I could at least take a peek at his Ki.

  Your Ki is an amorphous ball of mana swirling around your core. Normally, the haze of your aura shrouds it, but Jules had managed to show me hers. She had meditated for a straight hour to clear her mind of emotions, and with her aura suppressed, she had told me to activate my Sight. Time swept by without me knowing. Thirty minutes later, Jules slapped me out of my stupor. She accused me of spending the past half-hour ogling her boobs. I didn’t want to offend Jules (or her respectable bosom), but it was her Ki that I’d found so fantastic. It was like the Milky Way on a cold, clear night. I got lost in it. I wanted to get lost in it. But that certainly wasn’t the case now…

  As the alguacil’s form slipped away the little bugger took shape. My smile melted faster than it formed. There was something wrong with this man’s Ki. A sleek black spindle was jabbing deep into its core. It raked through the swirling mana. Sheared it. Broke its flow. My head throbbed from the exertion, but I wanted to know more. Careful to maintain my focus, I traced the single black spindle up towards his neck. I didn’t understand what I was seeing; but I knew something other was there, something that most definitely didn’t belong. And then I found the its source. A bundle of thin black spindles clung tightly to his neck. Tiny little spider legs. Crackling. Twisting. Twitching. Their motions were like fracturing ice. They chilled me to my core.

  The image distorted as the outline of the alguacil’s hand rose to scratch his nose. The man made a subtle gesture in my direction, and before I even knew it was happening, I tumbled backwards onto the floor. My normal vision returned, dancing full of stars. Red-faced, I disentangled myself from the chair.

  “Sorry. I, um, slipped,” I said to the circle of stares.

  The alguacil was biting back a smile.

  I frowned back at him.

  “Totally uninsurable,” Jules remarked to Monique.

  Dean Albright cleared his throat. “Let’s get started, shall we?”
/>   Catching his drift, I found my chair.

  “First off, everything said in this room is confidential. As per DOMA Code 925, talking to any unauthorized personnel about these proceedings is grounds for dismissal from this institute and imprisonment. Second, I have asked Mr. Masterson to take this from the top. Some of you know the score, but others…others are still trying to find their feet.”

  If I could have turned any redder I would have.

  “Right, then.” The man named Masterson stood up to start his presentation. With a click of the keyboard, an image of North America overlaid with the ley network appeared onscreen. So Masterson knew keyboard shortcuts. That placed him somewhere between 20 and 50 years old. “My name is Agent John Masterson, and this is my weft-partner, Ralph Collins.” I sat up in my chair. Weft? As in weft-pair? “Some of you may know Ralph’s daughter, Susan Collins. She is Iota squad’s current captain. And last, but not least, the dour looking man over there is Gaston Spinoza of the Alguacil.”

  Gaston Spinoza of the Alguacil nodded, dourly.

  “As most of you know, the North American Ley Network is a complex set of channels filled to the brim with mana. These channels prefer to travel in straight lines, but various geological formations influence their paths. Let’s break down the big ones.” Agent Masterson fumbled for his laser pointer. “First, there’s the Great Eastern Flow, which rises out the Gulf of Mexico near Tallahassee, runs northward through Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City—passes below the ground where we stand—and then on to Boston proper where it returns to the ocean floor. Second, we have the Great Mississippi Flow. This flow starts off as two branches near Chicago and Minneapolis, which then merge into one near St. Louis. Nice power center there; love to visit it some day. The flow then chases straight down the Mississippi through Memphis, Jackson, and New Orleans where it dives into the Gulf.