An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3)

by Scott Meyer

  Todd paused while the blade again decelerated at the peak of its parabola, then sped away again.

  “You may have noticed,” Todd continued, “that it’s actually getting further away from you, not coming back to its original resting place as you would expect. That’s because the blade’s angular momentum is interacting with the earth’s rotation. It’s essentially a giant clock. At this latitude, it’ll take thirty-some hours to make a full rotation, but don’t worry, I don’t plan to make you wait that long. The other end of the blade’s path should start sawing into you in a little over fifteen hours. It’s a way you can actually see the rotation of the earth. Pretty cool, huh? I learned about it at the Exploratorium.”

  Tyler said, “You never mentioned that you had kids.”

  “I don’t. I just like the Exploratorium.”

  He spent a full swing of the pendulum just watching his prisoners. They were as still as statues, but even with his back to the chamber, Todd could follow the blade’s progress by following their eyes.

  “So,” Todd said, “before I retire to my room to watch TV and surf the Internet while we all wait for you to be sliced like deli meat, I’ll do you all one last kindness. I’ll give you back the ability to speak, so you can beg me for mercy.”

  Todd hit a button, and they felt the pressure holding their jaws shut relax. They worked their jaws around and flexed their tongues, but none of them spoke.

  Todd said, “Go on. Beg.”

  Phillip said, “Well, we’re not going to beg yet, are we? I mean, I understand that you’re going for a ‘Pit and the Pendulum’ vibe—”

  “Derivative,” Tyler interrupted. “No originality.”

  Phillip continued. “But you’ve given us too long to wait. I mean, it’s pointless to beg now. There’s still too much time. We still have hope of thinking up a way out of this. You want to hear some groveling, wait fifteen hours. If we’re still here, that’s when the pleading should kick in.”

  Todd shut them up again, then thought for a moment. He glanced at the blade as it swung up next to Tyler, then slid away. Todd nodded and said, “Good point.”

  He fiddled with his tablet for a few seconds. The blade turned violently in the middle of its path. They didn’t have long to judge the new trajectory. Gary had barely worked out that it was headed for his end of the line instead of Tyler’s when he felt the blade bite into his left leg.

  Todd made a show of carefully timing a button press, and the blade stopped moving. With his head frozen looking straight ahead, Gary could not look down, so he couldn’t directly see what had happened to his leg directly. He could see a stream of blood starting on his left side and flowing in a thick, straight line down the clean white floor.

  Todd said, “Ew, you’re bleeding. One second. I’ll fix that.”

  He poked, jabbed, and swiped his way through some screens on his tablet. He found what he was looking for and slid a single finger along the bottom of the screen. As he did so, Gary felt the force field just below his knee get tighter. Much tighter. The stream of blood slowed, and then stopped.

  “There,” Todd said. “That’s better. Don’t want you bleeding to death. Yet.”

  Todd smiled, fiddled a bit more, then said, “And we won’t be needing this anymore.” He made a few fast swiping gestures on the screen. Gary heard a quiet thud. The force field held him upright and immobile as he watched his own left shin, ankle, and foot, now no longer attached to the rest of him, slide down the steep incline of the floor, greased by a slick of his own blood as it made its way past Todd to the center of the room.

  “Now that the danger seems a little more real to you,” Todd said, “perhaps you’ll be more in the mood to beg for your lives.”

  Todd again released their mouths back into their own control. He was immediately rewarded with a high-decibel torrent of threats, insults, and high-powered obscenities. He smiled serenely, letting their anger wash over him; then he pressed the button that silenced them again.

  “I guess that means no. That’s okay. There was nothing you could say that would’ve saved you anyway. You have no chance. You’ve had no chance from the moment the quest began. The instant you materialized on that peak, this outcome became inevitable. That’s the whole point. I’ve put you through a long, irritating ordeal that can only end in failure and humiliation. Sound familiar? Sound like my training, maybe?”

  Todd walked up the hill to approach Gary, taking care to avoid stepping in blood or touching the Möbius Blade, which was still hovering, motionless, just below what was left of Gary’s left leg.

  Todd came in close to Gary’s face, looking up into his eyes. “In a minute, I’m gonna go up to my desk there and have a seat,” he snarled. “Then I’ll start the blade back up. It’ll fly away, then it’ll come back, and after a couple of round-trips, it’ll take out your other leg, but this time there won’t be a tourniquet. You’ll stand here silently and watch yourself bleed to death. You, my trainer, who put most of his time and effort into teaching me fart jokes.”

  Todd lingered for a moment, savoring the look in Gary’s eyes before moving on to Phillip.

  “Then it’ll be your turn,” he said, studying Phillip’s face as if it were a word-search puzzle. “Phillip, the self-appointed conscience of the group, who damned me with judgmental opinions nobody asked for.” Todd’s expression slipped from gloating to irritation. “Hey, Phillip! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

  It was true. Phillip’s eyes were looking straight ahead at the far side of the chamber, but as soon as Todd mentioned it, his gaze snapped back to Todd.

  “Good. That’s better,” Todd said. He stepped backward to address the whole group.

  “Then, after watching you both bleed out, it’s Jimmy’s turn. Jimmy, a.k.a. Merlin, the man with the power to either save or condemn me. It didn’t seem like a hard decision. Well, deciding to make you watch the others die wasn’t a hard decision for me.”

  Todd looked at Tyler and snorted bitterly. “As for you, Tyler, I didn’t really care about you at all. You and Jeff really only got dragged into this because I wanted a couple of disposable people, but you’ve managed to make yourself a real pain in the butt with your constant criticism and nitpicking. That’s why you die last. I figured you’d appreciate the suspense, from a narrative point of . . .”

  Todd trailed off, then quickly looked at all four of his captives’ faces before shrieking, “Look at me! I’m talking to you! I’m telling you why I went to all this trouble to kill you! The least you can do is look at me!”

  Of his four captives, not one had been looking at him. Gary, Jimmy, and Tyler all seemed to be looking off to their left, while Phillip was rolling his eyes violently to the right. They all quickly looked back to Todd.

  “Good. That’s better. Anyway, so now, I’ll—dammit! Look at me!”

  They all had looked away. They all looked back as Todd demanded.

  Todd carefully studied their eyes, but it’s not possible to look multiple people in the eye at once. Every time his attention moved from one man to the next, he had the vague impression that everyone he was not looking at was also not looking at him.

  “Fine,” Todd spat. “If you want to go out acting childish, that’s your call. Go ahead. Look wherever you want. I don’t care. I suppose you think this is some sort of final act of defiance or something, but it’s pointless. Nobody will ever know about it but me. It won’t change anything. It won’t save you. I’ve got you. You’re done. Nothing can save you now.”

  Todd noticed that all four of his prisoners’ eyes seemed to roll, in unison, from left to right. Their eyes locked on him at the very instant something heavy hit him in the back of the head. He hunched his shoulders, looked down, and put his hand to his head. On the floor at his feet, he saw a filthy boot. He spun to see where the boot had come from, and he saw Martin, accompanied by Gwen and Roy. They stood
along the wall of the chamber in their road-worn, mud-spattered, soot-caked jackets and jeans.

  Martin was wearing only one boot.

  32.

  Martin, Gwen, Roy, and Brit made their way down the cliff, across the lava flow to the far side of the ravine, and along the path upstream at a much faster pace than those they were following. Not carrying an item that was designed specifically to be almost impossible to carry made it much easier.

  They came to the head of the flow, just in time to see a group of bedraggled men whom they all instantly recognized huddled together on a large, bare expanse of rock, preparing to toss some sort of hoop into a shaft of light. Martin considered calling out to them, but the constant thundering of the fire geyser would have drowned him out.

  Their friends threw the hoop, which landed flat on the ground. They looked at it for a moment; then the rock beneath them opened up and swallowed them, leaving the hoop on the surface next to a hole.

  Gwen, Brit, Martin, and Roy picked their way from island to island as quickly as they could without falling into the lava. They were about halfway to the hole when the shining metal hoop leapt into the air and streaked into the hole that had swallowed their friends.

  They double-timed it across the lava flow, but even at twice their cautious pace they weren’t moving that fast. It seemed to take forever to reach the side of the hole. When they looked down into it, they were puzzled by the sight of a polished white surface.

  “We need to find out what’s going on down there,” Brit said.

  “Yeah,” Roy agreed, “but I wouldn’t want to just stick my head in there. There’s no way to tell what might happen.”

  Gwen said, “Agreed. It would be pretty foolish to just run up and stick our heads in that hole without taking any precautions. I guess it’s a good thing Martin’s already done exactly that. What do you see, Martin?”

  Martin was lying on his belly, neck deep in the hole. He surfaced and turned back to report to the others.

  “It’s them! Some of them, at least. I definitely saw Phillip, Tyler, Gary, and Jimmy. I think Phillip might have seen me, but I’m not sure.”

  Roy asked, “Where’s Jeff?”

  Martin said, “Well, there’s a fifth guy there. His back was to me, but I don’t think it’s Jeff. It doesn’t look like Jeff, and whoever it is, he’s got the guys lined up and is yelling at them about something. Also, that Hula-Hoop thing is whooshing around back and forth for some reason.”

  Gwen, Brit, and Roy looked at each other, puzzled, then dove to the ground to join Martin. They all hung their heads down into the hole for a few seconds, then pulled their heads out to discuss what they’d seen.

  Roy said, “Yeah, that’s not Jeff.”

  Martin asked, “Did you see Gary’s leg?”

  “What’s left of it, you mean?” Brit said. “It was hard to miss. The trail of blood sort of drew the eye.”

  Gwen muttered, “He’s gonna kill them, whoever he is. We have to get down there.”

  Brit said, “We can’t just jump in. We need a plan.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Gwen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Brit sputtered. “I haven’t had any time to come up with a plan. I need a minute to think. Roy?”

  Roy shook his head. “No, I don’t know. I’m an engineer. Most of the job is taking your time and thinking things through. Gwen?”

  Gwen said, “I’m a designer. Same thing. This is no good. We’re all used to planning ahead.”

  They looked at each other, their expressions dripping with desperation. Finally, Brit sighed and said, “Martin, what do we do?”

  Martin said, “Right. We jump in the hole.”

  “What?”

  “Carefully,” Martin said. “Sort of hang down and land on your feet. There’s a room behind where they’re standing. Did you see it?”

  The others nodded, so Martin continued. “There is a computer on a table in that room. I figure whoever that guy is, he made all this. Brit, you’re as clever as Roy, and you’re better with computers, so you drop in first and sneak around to the left, try to get to that room. If you can access that computer, you might be able to transport us all out of here, or at least get our powers back. We’ll drop in after you, cut right, and draw his attention away from you.”

  Brit said, “What if he sees me?”

  Martin barely thought before saying, “Run to the left. Draw his attention. We’ll drop in, sneak around to the right, and get to the computer.”

  Brit asked, “What if he sees all of us?”

  Martin said, “He can’t look in two directions at once.”

  Gwen said, “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t think! Act!” Martin interrupted. “Time’s a wasting.”

  Brit sat up and hung her legs into the hole but paused before she lowered herself in. She looked at Martin and asked, “Can I think while I’m acting?”

  Martin said, “I don’t recommend it. Just slows you down. In you go! We’re right behind you.”

  Brit hung down by her hands. Her feet were still at least four feet from the floor. She studied the curve of the floor, let go of the rim, and dropped onto all fours. She made more noise than she would have liked, but the awful little man in the awful, ill-fitting clothes was too busy ranting and raving to hear. She glanced up to the others to let them know she was all right; then she immediately started sneaking around to her left.

  She concentrated on being quiet, trying deliberately not to get caught up in whatever that lunatic who had Phillip and the others was saying. She definitely heard him tell Tyler that it had been a toss-up whether to kill him or Jeff, which made her breath catch. She didn’t know Jeff well, but she felt bad for him, and terrible for the others who did know him well, especially Roy, who seemed to value him very much.

  She heard the others dropping to the floor behind her. She had moved nearly a quarter of the way around the perimeter of the room and dared go no farther without some kind of distraction. She looked at Phillip. He hadn’t moved—she suspected he couldn’t move—but his eyes were locked on her. She gave Phillip her most reassuring fake smile, then looked to the rest of her team. Predictably, Martin was out in front with Gwen and then Roy behind him. She briefly wondered if Roy had heard what the lunatic had said about Jeff, and the look on his face told her he had. Martin was slowly approaching the stranger. Martin looked puzzled. He was probably trying to think of the best way to draw the man’s attention.

  Whoever he was, the man who had their friends was oblivious. He was far too engrossed in bellowing to care what was going on around him.

  “Fine,” the man said. “If you want to go out acting childish, that’s your call. Go ahead. Look wherever you want. I don’t care. I suppose you think this is some sort of final act of defiance or something, but it’s pointless. Nobody will ever know about it but me. It won’t change anything. It won’t save you. I’ve got you. You’re done. Nothing can save you now.”

  We didn’t come all this way just to watch them die. We have to do something, Brit thought, and we have to do it now.

  Brit detected motion, turned, and saw that Martin had removed his left boot and hurled it at the stranger. The boot struck him in the back of the head. He staggered forward, more startled than stunned. He shook his head to regain his senses, looked down to see what had hit him, and then turned to see where it had come from.

  Before the stranger could recover from the shock, Martin chose to go on the attack. “Who the hell are you,” Martin asked, “and what do you think you’re doing?”

  The stranger mumbled, “I’m sorry?” The interruption had clearly thrown him.

  Martin didn’t back down. “I didn’t ask if you were sorry. I asked who you are and what you think you’re doing. Now come on. Out with it. Chop chop.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.

  The str
anger looked around, stammering. Martin briefly made eye contact with Brit and tilted his head toward the computer. She remembered why she was there and resumed sneaking around the perimeter of the room. She took even more care to be silent now. Despite Martin’s assurances, she knew that it was possible for the lunatic to see both Martin and her, and since they had no powers, they’d probably be at his mercy. Surprise was the only advantage they had, and Martin was using it to the best of his abilities.

  “I’m Todd,” the stranger stammered. “Who are you?”

  “Don’t change the subject, Todd.” Martin said “Todd” as if it were an insult. “You’ve told us who you are; now explain what you’re doing to those men.”

  They all knew that Martin couldn’t keep this up forever. This Todd person would eventually remember that he had the advantage. Remembering what he was doing to “those men” brought it all back to him. His demeanor changed from quiet bewilderment to amused arrogance.

  Todd sneered at Martin and said, “I am killing them. I am Todd, and I am killing these men. That answers both of your questions, doesn’t it?”

  Martin said, “Yes, Todd, it does.”

  “Well, good. I would ask who you are, but I already know. I did a little recon in Leadchurch when I was planning all this, so I know that you’re Phillip’s little pal Marvin.”

  “Martin,” Martin corrected.

  Todd said, “I don’t care. The old guy is Roy, who will probably be pretty mad when he hears what I did to his surrogate-son figure Jeff.” Todd inhaled deeply as he looked at Gwen. “Of course, I remember you quite well, Gwen.”

  Gwen said, “Yeah, we’ve seen how well you remember me.”

  Todd looked confused for a second, then said, “Oh, the roadhouse! You saw that. You aren’t offended, are you? Come on. That just means I thought you were hot.”

  “Those things you made were nothing like me,” Gwen said.

  “That’s how I saw you.”

  “Stop it!” Gwen shouted. “Stop seeing me that way!”