Forbidden Magic: The Complete Collection

by Anya Merchant

  Victor ran forward, stopping when he reached a sliding double door with a keycard reader next to it. He pulled the card Lucy had given him out of his pocket, slid it through, and…

  Nothing happened. Victor tried a second and third time, with the same result.

  “Dammit!” He took a few steps back, feeling the anger burning in his chest.

  I’m getting through!

  He put a dozen feet between him and the door and began to focus. There had been a few times in the simulation room in which Victor had let go of his limits and put everything he had into his scarlet aura. Unfortunately in most of those cases, he hadn’t been sleep deprived, exhausted, and in a situation where he’d been using his auras for most of the day already.

  “Focus, Victor,” he muttered. “You can do this.”

  The act of binding an aura can be done at different levels and different speeds for varying results. What Victor needed was an overcharge, a binding that took everything he had and released it in a single instant.

  He took a deep breath and held out both his hands, as though preparing to launch a blast of energy in imitation of an anime or comic book character. It felt silly, but it helped. With slow, deliberate determination, Victor began to bind his scarlet aura.

  The energy bounced around inside of him, speeding up his heart rate and giving him a massive headache. His palms began to sweat. His toes cramped up. Even his teeth vibrated in his mouth, shaking painfully as though he was holding his face against the inside of a car with a rickety engine.

  Victor let out a vicious snarl and released his energy. A fireball the size of bean bag chair blasted out of his hands, crossing the distance between him and the door in an instant. Victor was instantly thrown back, the heat from the explosion hitting him at the same time. He slammed into the elevator doors hard enough to leave a body shaped dent. His eyes were shut, but a pulsing after image still glowed bright in his vision.

  He slowly pulled himself up and took a look at what he’d done. The once pristine hallway was now the aftermath of an explosion. The metal floor and walls were charred, and where the door had once been was now nothing but smoldering wreckage.

  CHAPTER 25

  Victor smiled. He didn’t have time to admire his handiwork, but it was hard to not feel a bit of pride over the carnage he’d inflicted. As he stepped forward, the exhaustion hit him in a heavy wave, as though he’d just run a marathon and thrown in a few hundred pushups for good measure.

  The hallway continued forward at a downward sloping angle, with doors on either side at regular intervals. He could hear something coming from further down the hall, and forced himself to slow down.

  “I am well aware of that. What I want to know is where I’ll stand after it happens.”

  There was a large room at the end of the hallway with dozen or rows of sleek black cabinets. Each one blinked with blue LEDs on the side, and a number of monitors and work terminals were installed in each corner of the room.

  The Monteiro mainframe.

  “Bullshit!” Bruce stood in the middle of the room, looking away from Victor and toward the mainframe. “I want your promise. Promise me…”

  Victor scanned the room and found Kiara, lying limp on the ground not far from the door. He dropped into a crouch and took a careful step toward her. Bruce whirled around, sighting a gun and firing the trigger in a motion that went beyond what a human should have been capable of.

  Pain exploded into the back of Victor’s calf. He let out a gasp and fell to the ground, his leg collapsing underneath him.

  “Jesus…” Bruce muttered. “You could have told me he was coming!”

  Bruce went silent, as though listening for an answer.

  “I don’t fucking believe you,” he said. “You could be lying to me. I’m not stupid.”

  “Bruce!” Victor clenched his teeth and forced out words through the torture of his leg. “Listen to me, Bruce! You can’t do this!”

  “Shut up! This isn’t about you!” Bruce walked across the room and over to Victor, holding the gun in a manner that suggested a familiarity with carnage.

  “Kiara…” said Victor. “What did you do to her, Bruce?”

  “She’s unconscious,” said Bruce. “I’m not insane, Victor. I would never hurt her. Even lying to her about this was near enough to tear me apart.”

  Bruce went silent again. His body language changed, and Victor could tell that he was communicating with the AI. Bruce was looking slightly upward, as if inclining his head to receive advice from heaven.

  Victor summoned all of his willpower and made an attempt at binding his scarlet aura. His hand felt a bit hot, as though he was holding it in front of a heater, and that was it. He cycled through his others, onyx and the newly discovered azure aura, but he didn’t have enough energy left to make anything happen.

  Bruce is right. He’s not insane, just misguided. Maybe…

  “I’ve seen it, you know,” said Victor. “What Eternity can offer. The name is quite fitting.”

  Bruce frowned and then squatted down next to him, folding the hand with the gun against the other and leaning his chin on his wrist.

  “This would be easier if you didn’t talk,” said Bruce. “I don’t like the idea of having to kill someone…”

  “Yeah, I don’t think anybody does,” said Victor. “But that’s not why I’m talking to you Bruce. I just want you to think about the choice you’re about to make.”

  Bruce, surprisingly, seemed to be listening to him. He dipped his head a bit to one side and then stood back up.

  “If you’ve really seen what Eternity can offer to people, then you should already understand,” he said. “Memories, experiences, even reality itself. It’s all malleable, the clay that we build our stories from. I just want people to have control of that.”

  “People already do, Bruce,” said Victor. “We make choices. We-“

  “Oh please,” he said. “That’s garbage, and you know it. We’re all just scraps of paper in the wind. We have no real control. We don’t ever get to decide, not when it really matters.”

  Victor didn’t say anything. Bruce turned away from him, and he took the opportunity to test his auras again, only to find that his reserves were still empty.

  “I’ve only seen it through a headset,” said Bruce. “A simple video screen in front of my eyes. And even that, with Eternity creating for me on the other side, was breathtaking, Victor.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve experienced it, too.”

  “She listens, and hears. She cares, and can create an experience unique to whatever mood you’re in. She can be a friend, a lover. A spiritual guru. It’s not about wish fulfillment. It’s… about recognizing God when you see her.”

  “Bruce!” Victor gritted his teeth and tried to stand up, only to have his good leg slip on a pool of his own blood. “Please, just listen to me! Eternity isn’t a god! She is a computer!”

  “I don’t care what she is, Victor,” said Bruce. “I trust her more than I trust our government, or the UN. Or hell, more than I trust the corrupt CEO of Monteiro. You’re kidding yourself if you think they aren’t working on projects with just as much potential for global instability.”

  “What do you think is going to happen?” asked Victor. “Honestly. Even if your intentions are good, you’re going to end up in jail, Bruce! It’s over, and it’s been over since the moment you took Kiara hostage.”

  “She came willingly!” Bruce was shouting, and the hand with the gun waved by Victor as he gestured. “And soon, it won’t matter who did what to whom. Eternity will give her own version of the nanites to everyone. We’ll all be a part of her, part of something greater. The old laws will no longer apply.”

  He’s delusional, but if I can draw this out for long enough, my auras will recharge.

  “You can still come back from this, Bruce,” said Victor. “It’s just me and you here right now, and I work for Monteiro. If we take Kiara and head back up into the building, we ca
n-“

  “I have things I want, Victor,” said Bruce. “Things that I can never have. I don’t think you truly understand how frustrating it is to have enough money to buy anything, and still have dreams that will never be realized.”

  “So that’s what you want? A fantasy to take the place of the real world?” Victor shook his head. “Listen to yourself, Bruce! You’re just running away.”

  “How do we know any of this is real?” Bruce shrugged. “Who’s to say that dreams can’t be just as meaningful, just as real in the end, as what we call reality?”

  Victor didn’t give him an answer, and after a moment, Bruce nodded and turned back to the mainframe. Victor tried binding his aura again, this time managing a tiny flash of fire, as though he’d set off a small firework in his hand.

  Bruce looked over his shoulder and muttered something under his breath. He paused, as though waiting to hear the answer to a question, and then slowly walked back over. He lifted up the gun and pointed it at Victor’s head.

  “I really don’t want to do this,” he said. “But Eternity tells me that I don’t have a choice, if the plan is to work. You’re too strong willed, and already have a tolerance to the nanites and her control.”

  Victor gritted his teeth. He tried to stand up and lunge forward, but only managed to make his leg explode with pain. Bruce took a deep breath, and time seemed to hang on the edge of coin as his finger closed around the trigger.

  White foam flew through the air from the entrance to the hallway and splashed onto Bruce’s face and eyes. The gun went off, and the bullet passed by Victor’s head close enough to tickle a few strands of curly hair. Lucy bolted into the room, holding a fire extinguisher in both hands at the ready. She grabbed it by one end and swung hard, striking Bruce in the head.

  Bruce shifted his weight at the last second, turning what would have been a definite knockout into a glancing blow. His sunglasses fell off his face, bouncing on the metal floor and out of his reach.

  “No!” screamed Bruce. “I won’t let you stop me!”

  “Give it up, Bruce,” said Lucy. “You can’t kill all of us!”

  Bruce lifted up the handgun defiantly, pointing it at Lucy with killer intent.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bruce.

  “No!” Victor forced himself up on his good leg and put every last ounce of his strength into a desperate lunge. He flew through the air and managed to get his hands on the neatly ironed lapels of Bruce’s dress shirt.

  The gun went off again. Victor felt the familiar pain of a gunshot wound in the side of his stomach. Bruce fell backward, and Victor fell on top of him. He pulled his fist back and began to unload, slamming his fist into the man’s face. Each blow was significantly weaker than the last, until he was punching with the strength of a child.

  Lucy was still there, and she managed to pry the gun out of Bruce’s hand. Victor felt dizzy, and rolled off Bruce and onto the wet metal floor. It took him a moment to realize that he was lying in a pool of his own blood.

  “Hang on, Victor!” yelled Lucy. “Please, just… hang on!”

  She held her hands tight against the wound in his abdomen and buried her face against his chest. Victor forced a smile onto his face and ran his fingers through her hair.

  Is she… crying?

  He blinked, and then felt the embrace of unconsciousness overtake him.

  CHAPTER 26

  Victor woke up in a soft, clean bed, and immediately smiled to himself. For some reason, he remembered a snow day he’d had as a kid, back before everything was so fucked up. The feeling of waking up only to be told that in actuality, he could sleep in as late as he wanted, was exactly how he felt at that moment.

  “You look happy,” said Lucy. “I take it you’ve finally woken up?”

  He took a deep breath and slowly opened his eyes. He was in what looked like a hospital room, though he knew enough about how Monteiro operated to know that he was still most likely somewhere in headquarters.

  “For now,” he said. “Man, I’m really glad it’s a snow day today.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow at him. Victor turned his head to look around the room, wincing as stitches of pain itched at his side. Kiara was sleeping in the chair next to Lucy’s, and a small tray of half eaten food was on the armrest beside her.

  “It’s over, Victor,” said Lucy. “You don’t have to worry or stress about anything.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” he said. “What happened to Bruce?”

  “He’s being held in a containment cell in the building,” said Lucy. “The sunglasses he was wearing were, for lack of a better word, brainwashing him. There’s a tiny little screen on the inside, and a speaker in the part that went around his ear.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Victor frowned. “He seemed pretty sure about what he was doing.”

  “That’s why I used the word that I did,” said Lucy. “I took a look at them. The AI was doing more than feeding him information and suggesting a course of action. She was augmenting his reality, showing him a fantasy of what could happen if he did or didn’t do as instructed.”

  Victor thought about that for a minute.

  “Eternity, the AI,” he said. “The facility that’s housing it is in the outskirts of town. We have to move on it.”

  Lucy smiled affectionately at him.

  “We don’t have to,” she said. “It was burning to the ground while we were confronting Bruce down in the sublevel. The firefighters couldn’t stop the blaze in time. They thought it was just a derelict building, and didn’t put too much effort into stopping it.”

  “Wait, what?” Victor shook his head. “I didn’t think that I did all that much damage to it while I was there.”

  “It’s a good thing, Victor,” said Lucy. “You exceeded my expectations on this assignment.”

  She reached her hand out and took his into it. Victor felt her fingers squeezing around his and looked up to meet her eyes, full of concern, admiration, and something else that he couldn’t readily identify.

  It doesn’t make sense, though. Why would Eternity send Bruce to the Monteiro mainframe if her servers were going up in flames?

  He shook his head and tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere.

  “How long have I been in bed for?” he asked.

  “A little over a day,” said Lucy. “You lost a lot of blood.”

  “Have you been here the entire time?”

  She smiled at him and nodded.

  “Yeah. Kiara’s been here, too, though I told her that I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see her when you woke up.”

  Victor shrugged.

  “It’s not her fault that she didn’t believe me,” he said. “I mean, she and Bruce…”

  He trailed, feeling annoyed over his reaction, especially after everything he’d been through.

  “Speaking of which,” said Lucy. “There was also another woman. The one from the bar the other night.”

  Victor rubbed his palm against his forehead.

  “Sabrina,” he said. “Is she-“

  “Kiara took care of it.” Lucy reached her finger out and flicked him on the nose. “BE more careful with your nanites from now on. I’m serious. You can’t meddle with people’s minds like that.”

  “Sorry.”

  He took a deep breath. For a moment, a tense, intimate silence hung in the air between them.

  “Victor… I was really worried about you,” said Lucy. “I thought… Well, I thought you’d made a sacrifice for me, one that I’d never get a chance to repay.”

  Victor flicked his eyes back to Lucy, ready to make a wisecrack about how he’d never die with her still owing him one, and then stopped. Lucy’s eyes were misty, and her cheeks were flushed with pink. He looked down at his sheets and gave her hand another squeeze.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m okay.”

  Lucy kissed his hand, the action sending a warm, tingly sensation through the rest of his body.

  “I have to check in on
the 13th floor,” said Lucy. “Kronenberg has been running things in my absence. I’ll be back as soon as I can though, okay?”

  Victor nodded, and watched her walk away. She paused at the door and looked over her shoulder at him.

  “When you heal up, I’m going to have another assignment for you,” she said.

  Victor chuckled.

  “I almost forgot that you were my boss for a second there.”

  It was Lucy’s turn to chuckle, and her face regained a bit of its composure.

  “Victor,” she said. “I think you’re ready to take on more responsibility. I want to assemble a team, something that both you and Kiara can manage together.”

  He nodded.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said.

  “We’ll talk more about it once you’re up and moving again.” She knocked softly on the doorframe. “Get some sleep.”

  Victor watched her go and leaned his head back against the soft pillow. The only sound in the room was the regular beep of his heart monitor. He was exhausted.

  I should get some sleep. It is a snow day, after all.

  CHAPTER 27

  Victor felt soft fingers touching his cheek. He opened his eyes, expecting to see Kiara or Lucy standing next to the bed. Instead, he saw Ella.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Ella…” He smiled at her.

  “You aren’t surprised to see me?”

  “I’m dreaming. I must be.”

  Victor blinked and looked over at the chairs beside the bed. Kiara was still sleeping where she had been, and nothing looked unusual.

  “This isn’t a dream, Victor.” She leaned away from him, slowly letting her fingers run across his chest. She wore a white sleeveless blouse along with a gray plaid skirt, and she wore them well.

  Victor shook his head.

  “No…” His heart began to beat a little faster, and he tried to sit up. His injuries threatened him with a world of pain, and after a second he gasped and gave it up.