by LE Barbant
He could be next in their Salem witch hunt.
“Tim did nothing. If it’s an example you want, destroy me.”
Edwin nearly jumped from his seat. “No! Damn it, Willa. Never speak those words again. You’re playing the fool. Ford’s fate is all but assured, but there are those who want your blood as well. Your posture must be one of contrition. You were upset, lost, misguided. Ask for forgiveness. Fall at their feet for mercy. But you must distance yourself from the abomination. It is the only way.”
Like hell, Willa thought but kept her mouth shut.
She stood and glared at her grandfather. For a moment, she wished he had actually passed during the fight at PPG Tower.
“I too am committed, Grandfather. And if standing by my friend makes me a fool then so be it.” Willa stood and left the room, leaving her grandfather in a greater state of shock than she was in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The blue van rolled through the poorly lit Pittsburgh streets. Pausing at each stop sign for longer than necessary, its pace reflected an amateurish attempt at remaining inconspicuous.
Their efforts were in vain.
Rita, traveling across rooftops, easily kept pace with the conspicuous vehicle. Demolished homes—a mark of the town’s waning population—created gaps in her path, forcing her to the ground every hundred feet or so. But the van never left her sight for more than a heartbeat. Its slow, careful pace made it easy for her to follow.
Despite the air’s humid chill, her scales began to dry. Rita pushed the discomfort out of her mind. She knew the vehicles itinerary. Sweet relief was on its way.
As the van crossed the Homestead Grays Bridge and moved away from the city, Rita took to the water. Ice had begun to form at the river’s edge. Winter was coming early to the City of Bridges, and before long the riverways would be largely inaccessible to Rita. When that happened, she would adjust, moving to alternative methods of travel. For now, she relished the cool water against her dry skin. She paused before exiting, welcoming as much moisture as possible. Not knowing how long this would take, it paid to be prepared.
Rita picked up the van’s course only two blocks from the bridge. She followed its path as the town Homestead fell away to a small wooded area. The van pulled into a gravel driveway leading up to an old steel mill. Rita emerged from the bushes and stepped into the glow of its headlights.
Sylvia Mumford slid out of the vehicle.
Her feet dropped; the crunch of boots on loose stone echoed off the broken-down building.
Rita had spent long hours with the engineer, but that night the woman’s face was markedly different. It looked younger with a new vitality underscoring her enthusiasm. Rita prayed that the woman’s hope would not be in vain.
****
Light spilled across a corner of the abandoned mill’s dirty floor. Try as it might, the LED powered portable failed to overtake the darkness. Despite the obscure nature of the place, Rita thought it best if they kept the light to a minimum. She had scoured the mill for signs of trespassing, but her senses told her that the old building was as vacant as it appeared. Still, the predator remained on high alert. Her run-in at the police station had reminded her that her enhanced abilities were far from foolproof. As she walked the perimeter, she wondered how he had made it into the evidence locker undetected.
While Rita patrolled the building, Sylvia had gotten to work. She stood next to a dusty machine whose use Rita couldn’t begin to guess. Typing furiously on her laptop, Sylvia was as absorbed in her project here as she was in her garage workshop. A series of wires led from the small computer to the large metal frame lying prostrate on the floor.
The exoskeleton enveloped Skylar’s silent, still body. Rita tried to read her young friend’s expression. The young girl’s ability to convey nuanced emotion with only a glance amazed Rita, who’s countenance leaned toward the stoic even before her transformation. But under the glow of the portable lamp, Skylar’s face was a blank wall.
Rita shifted her weight from one webbed foot to the other. Nearly a week after her run-in with Rex, Rita’s back still burned. Sprinting across the city split opened wounds that had just begun heal. Chem’s ointment did wonders, but his prescribed bed rest was out of the question.
Tonight was a test run, and there was no way Rita was going to miss it.
The unbearable tension of hope pressed on all their minds, thickening the tension in the room.
The suit had consumed every waking moment of the tiny Mumford family unit, which Rita had become a part of. They accepted her largely because she had accepted them. They were the island of misfit toys, turning the world’s rejection into home. Understanding the incredible possibilities of the suit, Skylar’s mom had removed her from school and filed all of the necessary paperwork to register as a homeschool student. Skylar’s learning had become primarily experimental in the most literal way.
While much of the original design remained intact, Sylvia had given it a full rundown, testing every piece. In lieu of its former helmet, Skylar wore a metal band around her head with wires flowing out from it in every direction. The strange headset had something to do with the suit’s new controls—Sylvia called it a neural-prosthetic interface—but beyond that it was a mystery to the artist. Rita knew that the Mumfords had been tweaking the design for years but conforming the headset to the refurbished suit was uncharted territory. To Rita, it looked like a tiara fashioned for a steampunk princess.
“Come on, mom. Hurry it up.”
Sylvia kept her head down. With her right hand still typing, she raised her left index finger. “Just a second…and…done!”
The suit emitted a faint whirring sound. Lights blinked on and off across Skylar’s metal crown, casting Skylar’s face in a greenish hue. Rita’s heart beat faster. She had risked her life for this moment, but the scars on her back would be a small price to pay compared to the freedom the suit promised.
Rita watched from the shadows as Sylvia knelt beside her daughter. The engineer placed a hand across Skylar’s face. Her touch was gentle, like a mother with a newborn. “Ok, it’s just like we practiced. We’ll start with some basic arm movements first. Try to visualize your left arm. Picture lifting it just a few inches off the ground. Can you give that a try?”
Skylar smiled. “No problem.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, then opened them wide. She tilted her head slightly to the side and stared at her arm and the steel exoskeleton surrounding it. The girl was a life-sized Erector Set, willing herself to come to life.
But nothing happened.
Rita held her breath.
Skylar closed her eyes and repeated the process. An eternity later, a small tear trickled down her face.
“Why isn’t it working?” Her voice echoed throughout the cavernous mill, the sound grating on Rita’s ears.
You can do it, Skylar.
Sylvia wiped at the tear. “It’s OK. You’re asking your brain to control a foreign entity, a new body. It takes some time to build the neural pathways needed to make sense of the command. Don’t worry, the brain is amazing, it just needs to learn. For this to work, you need to build millions of new synaptic connections.”
“What kind of connections?” the girl asked, her brow knitted in concern.
“Synapses. Never mind that. Just keep visualizing your arm. You’ll get there.”
Skylar set her jaw and returned to work. She was resolute. The minutes turned to hours without apparent progress. Sylvia moved back to her computer, checking and rechecking the software.
Rita crept from her place in the shadows and squatted next to the young woman.
“I can’t do this.” The metal wrapped around her represented her best hope for freedom, a dream so close to becoming a reality. But the steel frame refused to obey, its impotence leaving Skylar the same.
She was broken for the second time.
Rita gave the suit a once over then met Skylar’s pained stare. “Maybe you’re right.”
“What?” The girl’s eyes narrowed.
Rita looked up at Sylvia, then back to the girl. “I went through all this work, retrieving a military grade suit just so you can walk again, and you can’t even lift your arm. Almost got myself blown up in the process.” Rita’s gurgling voice spread over the incapacitated girl. “I should have just gotten you a new wheelchair and saved myself the trouble.”
Skylar’s eyes opened wide. “Screw you,” she spat.
“Language,” Sylvia said, without taking her eyes off her computer screen.
Under her breath, Skylar whispered, “I’m gonna get this thing to work, and then I’m gonna kick your ass.”
Rita smiled, her lipless face revealing a set of small pointed teeth. “Come on then, princess. Show me.”
Skylar closed her eyes. The muscles in her temple twitched as the girl clenched her jaw. After a moment of dreadful silence, a faint hissing sound, like the noise an office chair makes when you depress the lever, escaped from the suit.
Skylar’s arm lifted an inch from the ground.
Sylvia didn’t even try to correct her daughter’s joy-filled cursing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The depression residing in his bones since returning to the states never quite left. But Tim had been able to moderate the discontent with twilight raids on the dealers, thieves, and rapists of Pittsburgh’s backstreets. Since his body had been transformed by science and magic, it had been necessary to carefully time his nighttime assaults on the underbelly of the Steel City—always aware of the clock ticking in his blood stream. Tim had become obsessed with learning how long his strength would last. He chalked it up to the diligent self-examination of body and mind that he had learned in the fields of combat. Coming down from the serum’s power and slipping into a fit depression was a brutal combination—one he didn’t look forward to.
As hours slipped away he became a better candidate for a nursing home than for a harrowing escape from the wizards’ compound. If ever breakout was on the table, that time had passed. But he knew that Elijah wouldn’t leave him and Willa in captivity. The historian’s nature couldn’t stomach it. Heroism was in the man’s blood, even if he didn’t know it yet. But Tim had seen misplaced chivalry bring down teams stronger than theirs. The right decision would be to leave Ford to the devices of the wizards, but Elijah would do neither the right nor the logical thing. Branton’s intelligence couldn’t be denied, but loyalty directed him, not strategic rationality.
The click of the deadbolt drew Tim from his thoughts of depression and power. He knew she would return, but he hadn’t assumed it would be so soon.
“Nice robe, Hermione,” he said to the familiar girl casting a shadow into the room. “Shouldn’t you be wearing something from the Gap?”
The girl laughed. “The Gap? Really? 1997 called and they want their fashion sense back.”
Tim couldn’t help but grunt his own laugh in response, though his ribs ached with the effort. “Yeah, I haven’t gotten my copy of Vogue since I’ve been in lockup.” He ran his hands across his red cutoff flannel shirt.
She crossed the room and sat in a simple straight-backed wooden chair, the only other piece of furniture in the room. “These aren’t so bad,” she said, flapping the folds of the robe. “Almost like a Snuggie.”
Tim inched himself out of a laying position and leaned against the wall. “They make you wear that thing to school?”
“Funny,” she said. “And you should be honored. We only wear these for special occasions.”
“Better than my prom date’s dress, I guess.” Tim winked. “Kelly Balinski. I wonder where she is now. If that girl could only see how far I’ve come.”
The wizard looked down. “Never went to prom. As you can imagine, this lifestyle takes certain sacrifices.”
“Don’t worry, Hermione, you didn’t miss much. And God bless the guy you might have gone with. I can only imagine how you’d react if he got a little frisky after the big dance.”
It was her turn to laugh. Her body shook with the giggles. It made the wizard look like any other high school kid. But then Tim remembered she was a part of the group that held him. He enjoyed the banter, but also hoped she would reveal some things about his captors. “Must suck living under their rules, I guess.”
She glanced at the door and then back at him. “Can’t be worse than Blackbow’s rules.”
She knew him better than he expected. He liked the girl, but he had to be careful. The wizards were shrewd, and it could be a fatal mistake to assume her motives were altruistic. He tread cautiously. “Yeah. You’ve got that right. We all have a code. And you’ve chosen yours. Membership implies complicity.”
“Quite a vocab word for a college drop out.” She winked back at him. “Just because we wear the same robes doesn’t mean we share a brain. Some of us want to see change.”
“Make the Guild great again?” Tim raised his eyebrows, which took some effort.
“You can be a reformer without being a douchebag. We think that the Guild is good. Tradition is good. What we stand for is good. But there’s room for improvement, that’s all. Like you…” The girl’s voice trailed off.
“What about me?” Tim held his breath.
“Nothing.”
“No, Hermione, you don’t start that sort of shit and just stop.” Tim tried to use the right amount of force in his voice to indicate the gravity without driving her away.
The magician’s eyebrow twitched. Tim knew it was a tell but couldn’t be sure just what it was telling. More than anything, he wanted to trust the kid. She glanced around the room, then closed her eyes.
“You will never understand the Guild from the outside.”
Tim cleared his throat. “Try. You’re on the inside are you not?”
The girl passed a smile laced with sadness across the room, stood, and left Tim Ford’s prison.
Anger rose in his stomach.
“If you’re here you’re a part of this. You can’t wear that robe and wash your hands of the Guild’s actions. We all make our own choices.”
But the door remained closed. His words went unheard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“There has to be another way.”
The heat exacerbated the cramped living room’s claustrophobic nature. Despite the fact that it was bordering on freezing outside, the thermostat was easily set in the mid-seventies. The house’s old furnace worked double time to keep the temperature high, an uncomfortable overcompensation.
“Don’t be a damned fool, Elijah. There’s no reasoning with these people.” Professor Mallory Crane sat in his faded armchair. He scowled as he stirred his tea. “Twelve centuries of inbred logic have addled their minds. They think they’re gods dealing out justice as they see fit, all in the name of order. But it’s not justice. It's cruelty. If they haven’t killed your friends yet, then it’s only a matter of time.”
Elijah loosened his tie, stood, and paced the room. Days of the same conversation and they hadn’t made much progress. Elijah tried every avenue, but Crane was adamant: If they didn’t do something soon, the Guild would execute Willa and Tim.
And there was no guarantee that they’d stop there.
Elijah had spent so much time thinking about it that he could almost understand the Guild’s line of reasoning. The kind of magic that the Guild wielded had to stay out of human affairs. If it became polluted through use in petty, utilitarian matters, it would become dangerous. Willa crossed every Guild boundary by combining her magic with Chem’s science. And Tim was the result.
It was not unlike arguments that had raged within academia for the last two hundred years. Hardliners fought to keep the sciences, history included, pure. As soon as a researcher bent to the will of political or corporate pressure, their results would be twisted, biased, and unscientific.
Abominations.
Elijah was sympathetic to this view. He had seen first-hand the dangers of invested research. He himself crossed the line in his
work with Alarawn Industries, a disaster with dire consequences for him and the city.
But if the world’s brightest minds locked themselves away in ivory towers, then their lifelong pursuit of knowledge would worm its way into ever more obscure and meaningless corners. Cutting oneself off from the world, even in the name of objectivity, was a recipe for madness.
And in the case of the Guild, that madness required the death of his friends.
The sound of the front door opening stopped his pacing. Elijah balled his fists, ready for an attack. But instead of an army of invading wizards, a well-dressed man with an expensive haircut walked through the doorway.
“Don’t shoot. I come in peace.”
Rhett held up his hands in mock surrender as he entered the living room and took Elijah’s seat. He always seemed comfortable, regardless of his surroundings, but today the look of self-assurance dripped off his face. He was obviously pleased with himself.
Elijah opted against sitting in the remaining vacant seat. Instead, he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
“So, was it a success?”
Rhett crossed his legs at the knee and smiled. “Did you ever doubt me? Crane’s friend was quite forthcoming once we…built a level of trust.” His smile widened. “About thirty minutes north of the city, there’s an old farm that’s being converted into a large campus for one of those ‘mega-church’ things. Our friends at the Guild have taken up residence there. It's only temporary; apparently, they don’t have a permanent lair. Once they’ve resolved their issue with Tim and Willa, they’ll go their separate ways.”
Elijah perked up at the last part. “But it’s not yet resolved? That means Tim and Willa are still alive. Maybe they won’t kill them after all.”
Crane sighed loudly. “It’s a mere formality, a pretense of due process. It’s how they retain the illusion of propriety—while undertaking murder and madness. But, if they haven’t yet left the area, then there’s still a chance that your friends can be saved.”
