by Kai O'Connal
“What the hell—”
And then her stomach lurched as the floor fell, and she fell with it. The walls of the tower and everyone inside was falling—everyone but one.
Kyrie saw Elijah’s feet zoom past her eyes as she plunged downward, while he stayed right where he was.
The hard part was coming up. Specifically, the hard part that was the roof. Casting the levitate spell had been stressful enough with the weird mana flow pulling and pushing at him, but the next spell was more complicated. He hoped the extra few meters he’d get from the planar gate would help.
The roof was rushing at him, and he instinctively raised his arms. Mana flowed through him—he could feel an extra surge traveling from the gate—and it left his hands and entered the roof, turning solid rock into gravel. It hurt to go through, even with Elijah’s polar clothing. The rocks peppered him everywhere, but it was far better than smashing into a solid ceiling. He endured the brief stoning, then he was clear.
Below him, the tower fell. Five meters, ten, fifteen, twenty. That was the other tricky task he’d pulled off by the gate, summoning an impressive spirit of earth and setting it to digging. The progress it had made in such a short time boggled his mind. It had finished its job with enviable timing.
Far below, the tower crashed to a halt, settling in its new home. The walls cracked, but it was in a cylinder that was not much wider than it, so it stayed upright. Through the hole in the roof he had made, Elijah could see the gate and its swirling mana.
That had been his biggest concern—that the gate would be attached to a specific point related to the earth, not tied to the tower, so that when the tower fell, it would have stayed in place. He had analyzed the gate, tried to understand its relationship to the tower, but in the end he couldn’t be sure. He could only carry out his plan and hope.
And now, here he was, hovering above the fallen tower and sunken gate. He had no doubt that Hearn and Tempest were both crumpled inside the tower. If the fall hadn’t killed them, the spirit would. Those were its orders.
Outside, the sudden collapse of the tower panicked the attackers, and the abrupt lack of leadership didn’t help. Some were retreating, others were killed by the newly emboldened defenders. Elijah caught sight of Pineapple riding around and spreading destruction with delight. Already, though, things were settling down, especially here, above the tower. Elijah felt it was safe to drift down to the ground.
He landed next to the prone form of Kyrie. The spirit of air that had carried her out had her in its grasp, invisibly holding her lying on her back in the snow. Elijah thanked the spirit before dismissing it and stood next to Kyrie, who was already standing.
“That was one of yours that brought me out?”
Elijah nodded.
“Thanks. Doesn’t mean we’re good, though.”
“You were about to stand by and let them kill me. You killed Leung. I wasn’t about to suggest that we were.”
Kyrie nodded.
“Still,” Elijah said, “I thought about it and decided it would be better—for me, for you, for the world, whatever—for you to be alive. Or at least for me to not kill you. So here we are. You can finish what Tempest wanted, or we can go our separate ways.”
“He didn’t order me to do it, so it’s not my job.” She looked at the retreating Amazonian forces. “Guess I’ll be on my way.”
She didn’t move. Neither did he.
“You’re not going to shoot me in the back as I walk away, are you?” Kyrie asked.
“No! I know—I know we’ve had our differences—not just that, I know some of the things I did didn’t—weren’t the kind of things that inspired trust, I guess, or maybe weren’t the best, but you couldn’t think …”
Elijah hated the way he sounded trying to come up with the right words, but Kyrie saved him with a wave of her hand. “It was a joke, Elijah. Relax.”
She still didn’t move.
“Guess we won’t be working together again anytime soon,” he said.
She guffawed. “Guess not.”
“But for a while there, we were pretty damn good.”
She watched the horizon, not turning to him. But finally she nodded. “For a while.”
“Okay.”
Finally she turned to him. “Did you check your messages?”
Feeling sheepish, he called up an ARO and found a few messages from Pineapple and Cao.
“Whoops. They’re wondering where I am.”
“Do they have rides?”
“Looks like it.”
“Good. They can take you somewhere safe.”
Elijah glowered a little, then a misty spirit appeared behind him. He gave it a mental command and it lifted him off the ground.
“I’m not without resources of my own,” he said.
Kyrie flashed something that was a distant relation of a smile. “Fair enough. Get out of here, then.”
“You too,” he said.
That was the last thing they said to each other.
Elijah had the spirit carry him, but not far. He had work to do. He spent a good while summoning spirits, then resting from the exertion between summonings. Cao and Pineapple found him, told him that Danvers was dead. Tango had also bought it in the fight around the tower, but Niko, Eyetooth, and Gauntlet had made it out. They’d all connect later, mourn over their dead, and find a way to enjoy the fact that they were still alive.
Elijah had a spirit of fire grow large and surround all of them, moderating its heat so they were warm but not burning. At their feet, water rolled off the snow and ice, stopping and re-freezing when it moved more than three meters from them.
The rest of the spirits Elijah summoned were working, moving earth and ice. First they piled it on top of the tower, burying it even deeper than it had been hidden before. Then they destroyed rock crests here, ridges there, and dug new furrows, changing the landscape, hopefully making it more difficult to recognize. He watched them work for eight hours, until the sun set and they left. Then he started the summoning process again so more work could be done.
Morning came, and he was starving. The ground was not nearly as transformed or smooth as he hoped it would be, but he could endure one more round of summoning. One more work shift to keep the tower out of reach, at least for a little while longer. It would be even harder to find without the map fragment, which was currently sitting in the top room of the buried tower. He hoped it would be enough, though he knew that if anyone came by in the next few days, the astral signature alone of the spirits’ activities in the area would be a dead giveaway. But for now, he had done all he could. And the rumblings from Pineapple’s stomach were becoming deafening.
Pineapple and Cao had let him work, but they were clearly curious about what had happened. He answered them as best as he could, explaining what had happened, and what Kyrie had done. And making halting guesses as to why.
“Look, professor,” Pineapple said finally. “She made her choices. People all make their own choices. You can’t blame yourself for it. It’s just what she did.” It sounded nice. But the look Cao gave him, one she’d been occasionally giving him since Chicago, and his own conscience didn’t allow him to believe it.
Eventually, they headed off in the only direction they could—north. One of the many tasks Elijah had set spirits to was finding the other Aztlán survivors, so they were able to make a direct path, and wait for the helicopters that were due to arrive.
They would go home and get paid. And then Elijah would spend at least a month somewhere where the temperature never dipped below fifteen degrees.
Celsius, that is.
EPILOGUE
Two months later
The ork with the long, flowing grey hair shook his head gently. “Reports from Antarctica are still spotty, and often contradictory,” he said. “The Aztlán expedition seems to have found something, but no one knows what it is.”
The elf on the other side of the desk from him lightly tapped her fingers on the mahogany surf
ace. “We need one of the items. Or more than one, ideally.”
“Perhaps. But be cautious—the relics seem to actively desire to not be brought together. Remember what happened in D.C..”
The elf let out a short, choppy laugh. “I remember everything that happens in D.C.”
“The question is, which relic to go after now? The map seems to be the obvious choice, since it’s what led the expedition there in the first place. But some researchers are saying that the sextant might be the better choice for this location, and possible other sites.”
“But which one can be found first? We can’t fall behind on this, not to anyone.”
“The sextant,” the ork replied promptly. “People these days barely know how use regular sextants, and this thing has them baffled. And the chaos in Denver has made the keepers not look after it too carefully.”
The elf nodded. Then her eyes grew unfocused. Her hands made a few swift motions in the air, and then she stood.
“Good news,” she said. “Our man’s been found. Time to do some recruiting.”
“Personally?”
“Yes. He should know what the stakes are, and just how much we care about this.”
Elijah had wanted to go someplace warm, but he really was not a beach resort type of person. He settled on Casablanca. It was warm, filled with casinos and food, and enough relics flowing in from the desert to give him something to look at when he felt like it. And there were beaches available in case he decided that’s what he wanted. There were rumblings about war to the south, which was perhaps a little unnerving, but what would Casablanca be without rumblings of war? It was part of the atmosphere.
He’d been spending many nights at the Blue Parrot. He’d bought two white dinner jackets to wear in rotation, since he liked the look. He usually played baccarat, switching to blackjack when he felt like dealing with longer odds. On hot nights, he’d play over at the Mabrook, which had a more westernized, fully air-conditioned feel, but when he could stand it, he liked the more open-air feeling of the Blue Parrot. Why come to the desert if you weren’t going to enjoy the desert air?
He’d been on a good run lately, so he decided to put it at risk playing blackjack. Starling, the dwarf antiques dealer he’d chatted with a lot since he’d been there, was out meeting prospective sellers, but a retired gunrunner named Stoli was there. Elijah liked playing with Stoli—he usually had good stories to tell, and he bought a round for the table every time he won something. The stories and the alcohol both kept him from spending too much time in his own head, which was good. He didn’t think of the past, he stayed away from the Matrix, and when old friends or runner acquaintances called him, he didn’t answer.
Stoli nodded as he approached, his short, steel-grey hair bobbing as he did. “Professor,” he said.
“Evening,” Elijah said. He’d never introduced himself to anyone in Casablanca as any sort of teacher, and he never talked about teaching or working at a university, but somehow, inevitably, the nickname stuck. “How are the cards tonight?”
“Elusive. I think Nabila decided to use one of those decks with no aces.”
The dealer smiled politely at Stoli’s remark, then dealt cards to Elijah at his nod.
Ace-five. Stoli snorted.
“There’s an ace,” he said. “Right where you don’t want it.”
Elijah shrugged and didn’t hesitate to ask for a hit when the time came. He got an eight. Stoli snorted again.
“Did I tell you about the time in Osaka when we unloaded a crate of missile launchers away from the docks, only to find we were in a cove that a detachment of Red Samurai was fond of keeping an eye on?”
“Your point?”
“Sometimes trying to avoid trouble just finds you more.”
Elijah smiled. Then he hit again. Another five, for a total of nineteen. Which turned out to be good enough for a win when the dealer settled on eighteen.
“Those Red Samurai didn’t end up stopping you, did they?” Elijah said.
“Nope. We just ended up having to sell a few of those missile launchers as used instead of new.”
Grinning, Elijah played a few more hands, and pretty much broke even when he felt the atmosphere around him change. At first he thought it was because someone was pulling together some serious mana, but then he reconsidered, especially when he saw Stoli’s face. Someone, it seemed, had just walked into the room, and that someone was right behind Elijah.
He turned to see a tall, sharp-featured elf in a business suit taking off her sunglasses. He knew that face, especially those intense, electric eyes, immediately. He had no idea what she was doing here.
“Elijah Tish. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Starling says to tell you hello.”
Elijah had guessed the dwarf had Draco Foundation connections. He should have been more careful. “The pleasure’s mine, Ms. Daviar.”
“May I?”
He nodded, and she sat next to him. Cards flew from the dealer’s hand. Daviar had a smooth queen-king. Elijah had a five-six, while the dealer had a six showing.
“I’ll be direct,” Daviar said. “I understand you’ve been on vacation for the past two months. Are you ready to start working again?”
“That’s direct, all right. What do you want?”
“I want to give you a chance to continue the work you started in Antarctica.”
Elijah looked at his cards, then at the dealer’s cards.
“Double down,” he said.
He’d play this hand, then retire somewhere to hash out the details of what Nadja Daviar was asking him to do. He’d worry about the implications of getting caught up in something so high level that Daviar herself would reach out to him. He’d wonder if maybe he should stay out of this entirely, given the way things had gone in Antarctica.
But he still knew exactly what he’d choose to do in the end.
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