Even so, the woman’s half-lidded eyes are glassy, and I suspect she’s suffering from some combination of internal bleeding and shock. But I don’t have the medical expertise to deal with that; first aid classes in the DSI academy only prepare you for so much. We’ll have to get her to an ambulance or air evac copter in short order to have any chance of saving her life.
Amy sets the stretcher down next to the woman. “Think we can pick her up without causing more damage?”
“If I’m right about her ribs, I doubt it,” I say. “But we don’t have a choice in the matter. There aren’t enough paramedics and EMTs on scene for us to steal some away for repelling practice. We’ll have to take her to them. Hopefully, they can keep her stable long enough to reach a hospital.”
The woman coughs again. It sounds worse than last time.
Amy eyes me through her now dusty mask, worried. “I think we should hurry.”
I move a bloodied lock of hair off the woman’s face and lean closer, murmuring, “I don’t know if you can hear me, ma’am, but my friend and I are going to move you onto a stretcher and get you out of this hallway, okay?”
The woman’s breath catches, but I can’t tell if it’s an attempt to respond or another symptom of her injuries.
“Best I can do.” I shrug at Amy, and situate myself near the woman’s head, tucking my hands under her armpits so I can lift her. Amy takes her legs, and on a count of three, we lift the woman a few inches off the floor, move her one foot to the left, and set her down again on the stretcher. As I’m doing this, I use my knee to stabilize her head and neck to make sure I don’t worsen any spine-related injuries.
Next, Amy and I deftly strap the woman down so she can’t slip off, and then we hook both our ropes to the ends of the stretcher. Amy tests the setup to make sure everything is evenly weighted and all the strap clasps are locked tight, while I stand up and tap my mic to update Desmond and Ella.
“Heads up, guys. We’re about to give the green light to lift this woman. Be ready.”
Ella says, “We’re in position.”
I glance at Amy, who nods and steps away from the stretcher. “All right,” I say, “you’re good to go.”
Ella doesn’t respond this time. Instead, a few gentle tugs on the ropes make them taut, as our teammates above adjust themselves for the lift. A second later, the stretcher rises from the ground. The motion is jerky at first, and I wince as the woman’s legs shift under the straps, but Desmond and Ella eventually get the hang of working the ropes together, and the stretcher begins a steady, smooth ascent toward the ceiling.
When it reaches the edge of the opening, Desmond appears—Ella must be anchoring both ropes at this point, holding the woman’s full weight herself—and grabs both sides of the stretcher. Once he’s got a good grip, he looks over his shoulder and nods. The ropes relax as Ella lets go, and Desmond hauls the entire stretcher over the lip of the opening.
Relief floods my veins, and I go lax, leaning back against a cracked but intact wall. “Well, that was stressful,” I say to myself, mic switched off.
Amy grips my shoulder in commiseration, reading the exasperated look on my face, and sighs so loud the sound filters out of her mask as a distorted puff of air. We wait in silence for a few minutes, watching the “skylight” for the return of the ropes that’ll lift us out of this dim, dingy hole in the ground that, until a few hours ago, was a functioning hallway in one of Aurora’s most popular buildings.
As the minutes drag on, though, my attention falls from the hole in the ceiling to the rest of the hallway—or, the portion of hallway not caved in. I realize that there are probably other people trapped in the rubble on either side of us, who weren’t lucky enough to land in the one, eight-foot-long stretch of hall that didn’t collapse. But we don’t have the equipment to dig those people out, and if we tried anyway, we might shift whatever is holding this part of the hall up and crush ourselves.
Plus, the probability of anyone surviving tons of falling stone and steel is…
You know, I’d rather not think about the likelihood of being surrounded by corpses right now.
To get my mind off the poor victims of this horrific attack, I study what’s left of the building: the cracked stone, the shattered plaster coating the floors and walls with dust, a random wooden door—to a room that no longer exists—lying on the floor, totally intact beyond a few scratches and dings, and the twisted metal beams jutting out…
I pull away from the wall, and before I even realize what I’m doing, walk across to the corner of the hall, where a steel beam pierced through the ceiling and impaled the floor. The beam is a foot thick, and it must’ve been just far enough from the epicenter of the explosion to avoid completely melting down. The edges are distorted from the extreme heat, but not enough, not quite enough, to hide the black markings running down the middle. Organized markings. Like writing.
A style of writing that I recognize.
“Cal?” Amy calls over the com. “What’s wrong?”
“Get over here,” I snap back, my voice a dark and deadly shade of anger. “Get over here. Now.”
Amy hesitantly approaches. “The hell’s wrong with you?”
Ella chimes in over the feed, “You two okay down there? What’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” Amy says. “Cal suddenly…” She trails off as she comes to stand beside me, as the glare from the flashlight on my mask illuminates the damning evidence that has me shaking in barely restrained fury. Her dark eyes take in the markings and the meaning behind them, and she whispers, “Holy shit.”
Ella picks up again. “Amy? Cal? Tell me what’s happening down there.”
“Nothing’s happening,” I spit out. “It’s already happened. And we completely fucking failed to stop it.” I smack my gloved palm against the blackened wards running down the length of the steel beam. “It wasn’t a bomb that blew up the convention center. It was magic.”
Chapter Three
The task room chatter dies in a hush when my team enters. Five agents sit around the long, rectangular table, the sum of what DSI can spare from search and rescue to help Team Riker unravel the mystery behind what Commissioner Bollinger is now calling “a supernatural terror attack.”
Naomi Sing, Master of Blades, and newly minted elite captain, rises from her chair when Amy, Ella, Desmond, and I file inside, all of us freshly dressed in our usual uniforms, now laundered, hair still damp from the decontamination showers.
Ella waves her hand at Naomi, a signal for the woman to sit down again; we don’t have time to waste on respectful decorum, not when there are dozens dead at the hands of unknown supernatural agents.
The death toll is thirty-six—and rising. The injured already number over one hundred.
Naomi sits down again, nestled in the middle of her teammates, most of whom are newly promoted from lower-level teams. I don’t know any of their names yet, but they look like an interesting group. A set of redheaded identical twin men, sporting mischievous smirks. A black woman, about thirty-five, wearing large, round glasses, who wouldn’t look out of place at the podium in a senior research seminar. And a Chinese man, maybe five years my senior, with a hard, calculating stare that hints his specialty is something like “combat strategy.”
I greet them all with a single nod as I take a spot at the table so I don’t break the quiet of the room with a weak hello. Instead, I let Ella, standing in for Riker, take the wheel on opening the dialogue. Which she does with a curt, “All right. Let’s get started, everyone.” Because Ella is used to Riker’s absence by this point. As the most senior of all the elite captains, Riker is frequently pulled away from his real duty, leading our team, for administrative crap.
Ella rolls her chair around to the head of the table, grabbing the wireless keyboard for the screen on the wall as she comes to a stop. She logs in, clicks into the case file directory, and opens the one at the top of the list, created six hours ago: Wellington Attack. Someone has already gone t
hrough the trouble of typing up a lengthy overview of the case, but most of it is general info about the damage to the building, expected casualty counts, and the numerous organizations that showed up as first responders. There are only two lines at the end that mention the real problem: that the attack was carried out by magic practitioners unknown, and the motivations of these practitioners are as mysterious as their identities.
Ella taps idly on the keyboard as she reviews the case file herself, before she addresses the room. “I don’t guess I need to tell you all why we’re here, so I’ll cut to the chase. We need to find and apprehend the practitioners who destroyed the Wellington Center as soon as possible. No matter how many there are. No matter how powerful they are. No matter if they are human practitioners…or something else. No matter if they are still in this city or halfway across the world. We must find them, and we must bring them to justice. There is no alternative. Clear?”
Naomi dips her chin in deference to Ella’s seniority. “Yes, ma’am. My team is ready. What should we do, and when should we start?”
Ella clicks into the end of the case overview and starts typing additions while answering the captain. “And that’s where things get complicated, unfortunately. The actual ‘doing’ part. The disaster zone will be crawling with civilian emergency responders for weeks, if not months, which means we’ll have to navigate around them in order to investigate the scene. And since the scene itself will be in constant flux, as the responders dig people out of the rubble and what not, finding viable evidence will be a difficult task.
“Look, to be frank, this is going to be a shit show, no matter how we handle it. Especially when the feds show up to assist in the cleanup efforts. No one’s going to want us on scene, looking for witchcraft and wizardry, while there are still victims trapped in the rubble. But we have to do it. As well as we can. As fast as we can.”
She scrolls down the case file to the assignments section and drafts a new set of orders. “Naomi, since your team was rotated off search and rescue after the early shift, I want you all at the convention center this evening, scouring the hallway and surrounding areas for anything my team might have missed. We were preoccupied with other tasks while on the ground, so we likely missed clues that would have otherwise stuck out at a normal crime scene.”
By preoccupied, Ella means that we were busy ferrying injured people out of the disaster area. The businesswoman was only the first. We found nine other people buried in the rubble, most of them critically injured, and carrying them off to the waiting ambulances and air evac copters sucked up most of our shift at the scene before we were rotated out with another group of agents. We stayed behind for an extra half hour after that, combing that hallway for any more clues, but we were exhausted by that point, and almost suffocating in those masks. We had to pull out—or, rather, Riker phoned Ella, and after she explained the situation, he demanded we pull out for the sake of our health.
Health has kind of been a big concern for my team since we were all hospitalized for serious injuries post-Primrose battle.
After a pause to make sure Naomi understands the full breadth of this awful scenario, Ella continues, “Report back in the morning with whatever you discover. Unless it’s urgent. If you find anything time sensitive, please call me right away, and my team will convene immediately to assist.” Ella leans back in her chair and interlaces her fingers, surveying all the pensive faces in the room. “Any questions?”
A chorus of “No, ma’am” encircles the table, and Ella says, “Dismissed.”
Naomi’s team exits the task room, while my team lingers behind. As soon as the last agent pulls the door shut behind her, Desmond’s upright posture melts into a slump, and Amy rolls her chair back two feet so she can swing her legs up onto the table, like she’s lounging at a resort.
As for me, I fold my arms on the table and drop my head on top of them, a makeshift pillow, as if I’m a tired elementary school student who’s just returned from a spirited kickball game during recess. But I can’t help it. Every muscle in my body aches, my joints are stiff, and my chest feels constricted, like I can’t quite get enough air. The result of too many hours in that damn mask.
Ella, to her merit, pretends she isn’t bone tired and maintains an authoritative position in her chair. But her gaze relaxes from strict and serious to understanding as she watches us all practically collapse. “Okay,” she says, “so I was planning to have us stay past dinner to do some preliminary research, but judging from the way you all look like you’re about to pass out, I’m guessing that’s a bad idea, if I want you in tiptop shape for the heavy lifting tomorrow. So would anyone be particularly bothered if we hold off on said research?”
Amy lets out a wide yawn and gives Ella a thumbs-up.
Desmond rubs his heavy eyes and replies, “That would be much appreciated.”
“All right,” Ella says. “We’ll meet up here again at six o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, do the research, then pick up from wherever Naomi’s team leaves off and ramp up the investigation by pursuing any leads. Questions, concerns, or comments before we hit the sack?”
Amy raises her hand. “Can I bum a ride off you? My car’s in the shop.”
Ella sighs. “Is that all?”
Amy raises an eyebrow. “Can we stop for burgers on the way?”
Ella groans, logs out of her account with a few clicks on the keyboard, rises from her chair, and storms out of the task room without another word.
Amy asks, “Was it something I said?”
“I believe your nonchalant attitude in the face of tragedy annoyed her,” Desmond answers.
“What attitude?” Amy says dully, sliding her feet off the table. “I don’t have enough energy left to give anyone lip right now. And, really, can’t I at least pretend I’m not traumatized after digging through corpse-filled piles of—?”
A piercing scream echoes down the hall.
Ella.
We’re up and out the door in two seconds flat, barreling down the hallway. As we turn the corner onto the main hall, revealing the rows of captain’s offices on either side, we spy Ella, standing half in, half out of Riker’s office. She’s clutching her right hand to her chest, her face contorted in pain.
Amy reaches her first. “Ella, are you okay? What happened?”
Desmond and I come up behind her, vying for a good view of the room, but whatever spooked Ella isn’t immediately apparent. The office looks the same way it normally does. A big wooden desk. Awkwardly bright overhead lighting. Stacks of paperwork, now neat and organized thanks to Ella’s efforts at helping Riker overcome his recent depression and its associated untidiness. A couple chairs, empty. And a side table with a glass of water and some cups on it.
Nothing in the room screams danger.
Amy grasps Ella’s shoulder. “Hey, talk to me.”
Ella, breathing hard, eyes wide with fright, slowly unfurls her hand from its death grip, revealing a bloody mess seeping through the glove. “I just…just…” she stammers. “I wasn’t expecting that. I went to pick up Nick’s mail, since he’s been in meetings all day, and it attacked me.”
Desmond pushes past Ella and Amy, into the room, drawing one of his guns from its holster. “What attacked you? Where is it?”
“That’s the problem.” Ella examines her damaged hand, crimson streams now running down her wrist. “I don’t know what exactly hurt me. I reached down to grab the stack of envelopes, and it was like one of them bit me.”
Desmond glances over his shoulder, brows furrowed. “An envelope bit you?”
Fingers trembling, Ella tugs off her glove. The skin on her palm is so badly torn it’ll need stitches. “Unless there’s an invisible monster or a practitioner under a veil hiding in the room somewhere, then yeah, one of the envelopes bit my hand.”
Amy takes hold of Ella’s injured hand and studies it closely, murmuring, “You should go to the infirmary. It could have been some spring-loaded trap or…”
“What
?” Ella asks.
“Poison,” I say. “You could have been struck with a sharp piece of metal or plastic coated with poison.”
Ella tugs her hand out of Amy’s. “I’ll head straight to the infirmary. You three figure out what the hell happened. I’ll call you as soon as the doctor has a look at me.” She skirts by me and rushes off to the elevators at the end of the hall, disappearing into the first one that opens after she smacks the down button.
“Do you think one of us should follow her?” I ask. “What if she passes out in the elevator or something?”
Amy bites her lip. “I’ll go. You back up Desmond with the…booby-trapped letter or whatever. I’ll round back as soon as I’m sure Ella’s all right. If you need help in the meantime, well, we’re in the DSI building. If you shout loud enough, I’m sure somebody will come running to assist.” She sprints off into the stairwell next to the elevators, the heavy door clanging shut behind her.
“Well,” I mutter, “that’s comforting.” I draw one of my own handguns and turn to Desmond, who’s still standing in the middle of the room, searching for signs of our apparent foe among the detritus in Riker’s inbox tray. I slip into the room behind him, inspecting the desk myself. But all I spot are white business envelopes, a few manila folders typical of analyst reports, and…and one light green decorative envelope, greeting card size, like you’d buy in a Hallmark store.
I tug Desmond’s sleeve. “The green one. You see it?”
“Indeed.” Desmond scowls at the green envelope. “Not the sort of letter the captain would normally receive at his work address. Too festive for our serious leader, I think. Let’s take a closer look at it.” He glances at me. “Without touching it, of course.”
“Do you have anything we can move it with, like…ah ha!” I saunter up to the side of the desk opposite the inbox and snatch a letter opener from a ceramic cup filled with assorted pens and markers. “Let’s see if we can pull it out of the pile without making physical contact.”
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 59
