Stormfront

by John Goode

  “X-Men?” he asked me, confused.

  Yeah, so what little I know about genetics has to do with X-Men; sue me.

  Ruber and Adamas had continued arguing while I led Hawk through a mind lesson on what genetics meant. I learned a lot myself from my subconscious, which had stored more than I remembered. It took about a minute, but he got it. By the time we entered the conversation again, they were fighting about privacy versus security or something.

  I felt like I’d walked into Fox News if it were done by the cast of Labyrinth.

  “So you’re saying my genetics mark me as not a fairy?” Hawk asked, interrupting them.

  “I am saying you and the human share similar genetic markings. You’re both half-human,” Adamas answered in that same snotty British accent all the gems used.

  “Why do you assume I’m human on my father’s side? Couldn’t it just as well be my mother?”

  I almost sighed at that question. Hawk was fighting just to fight now. He didn’t want to accept the fact that Adamas was right, so he was going to drag the battle into something completely different.

  “Stop it,” I said mentally.

  Everyone in the room paused.

  Oh crap, I’d said that out loud.

  Hawk shook free of my arms and glared back at me.

  “You know Oberon isn’t your dad. He’s been distant, cold, and at times downright hostile toward you, and you’ve always wondered why. And you know you’re not a full-blooded fairy because your abilities are far less than they should be. Your charms aren’t as strong. The best you rated at the Arts was Blade Dancing, and you’re limited at that. You’ve always questioned this. Now you have your answer, and you want to fight about it?”

  I saw the raw hurt mixed with shock. I had just revealed his innermost thoughts and fears to the room.

  “The better question to ask is where in the worlds would your mother have found a human and why would she ever… you know, be with him,” I pressed on, trying to get him to see what I was really getting at. Except I didn’t have a clue what I was really getting at.

  I felt doors slam shut all over his mind as his expression shifted from hurt to anger. “I am going to need a minute alone,” he said, slowly turning away from me. “Let’s adjourn for now and reconvene in twenty minutes.”

  I took a step to follow him. He roared one word mentally.

  “Alone!”

  I froze in my tracks as he walked out of the room.

  “So,” Olim said loudly, “who wants some refreshments?”

  “WHERE IS this command pod?” Ferra asked after many minutes of walking.

  “I have no idea,” Molly replied.

  Ferra stopped. “What?”

  Molly looked back. “What, what?”

  “You don’t know where the thing we are looking for is?”

  Molly shook her head.

  “Then where are we going right now?”

  “To find someone who might.”

  Ferra felt that same chill on the back of her neck. “I thought we were the only people in the workshop.”

  “We are the only people walking around,” Molly explained. “But there are hundreds of people still in the workshop.”

  The barbarian did not like the sound of that at all. Her right hand clenched into a fist and ice began to form within it. “Hundreds?”

  “The workshop had a full crew of people working day and night to fill orders.”

  “Aren’t they dead by now?”

  Molly shook her head and made a laughing noise. “Only if they rusted.”

  Ferra’s hand opened in relief. “Right, because only clockwork people were employed here.”

  “Tinker and Jones were the only humans on-site at the end,” Molly said, repeating her earlier words as she started walking again.

  “How do you know that?” Ferra asked.

  Molly didn’t answer.

  “How do you know who was here in the end…?”

  Molly’s head turned around, and her eyes were covered in the amber lenses again. The male voice declared, “Queries about workshop history are classified. This is your second warning. There will not be a third.”

  The lenses slipped up, and Molly’s voice was back. “Did you ask something?”

  “No,” Ferra lied. “Just talking to myself.”

  “Silly habit. I never understood why people did that.”

  She turned and kept walking down the hall.

  Ferra made a fist again and summoned her ice spear. This was not going to end well.

  I FOLLOWED Hawk into the next room, which was, of course, the very thing he told me not to do.

  “What part of ‘alone’ do you—?” he shouted, warming up to a full bellow.

  So I kissed him.

  Now I know that’s kind of low, just hauling off and kissing a guy when he isn’t ready, especially when you’re trying to stop a fight you started, but still, it worked for half a second. Half a second for me to dump every iota of sorrow and regret into his brain I could.

  “Stop!” he raged, pulling back. I could see tears forming, and they weren’t his. They were mine by osmosis. “By the gods, you have to learn control.”

  Now I felt sorry and foolish.

  “I just wanted to show you how I felt.”

  “You don’t think I know you’re sorry, Kane? We’re bonded by soul and mind. Every ache you feel makes me wince; every chill you feel makes me shiver. I know you are sorry! That is not the point, and worse, you know it isn’t the point!”

  He was right. I did know all that.

  “Look…,” I started and then stopped, because literally there was nothing for me to say that wasn’t an excuse. I knew what he wanted to talk about, and I didn’t want to. It was that simple. I could walk out and just ignore the subject, but if I had really wanted to do that, would I have barged in here after he’d told me to leave him alone?

  God, how do other people handle being in love?

  “All right, let’s talk,” I said as I created a chair and sat in it.

  Aaannnd that was the wrong thing to do.

  “Right there! That is the problem!” he shouted, losing the last shreds of his composure. “Your power has gone to your head, and you’re abusing it!”

  I counted to a really high number before answering.

  “You say ‘abusing,’ I say ‘using.’ And it is not going to my head.”

  “You just made a chair out of nothing! Why would you do that?”

  “Because I wanted to sit down? Because I knew this was not going to be a short conversation? Why does it matter? I made a chair, big whoop!”

  “It is a big whoop; it is the biggest of whoops,” Hawk replied. “That power is seductive, and you are using it for stupid reasons. There is always a price with magic, always.”

  “I am so tired of hearing that,” I said honestly. “There is always a price for magic, but you know what? People use magic anyway! If the price was so damn high, you’d think fewer people would use it, but no. They just go right on and they are fine. There is a price for anything, Hawk. Drive a car? There’s a price. Fly a plane? Price. Use magic? Price. Maybe I’m just willing to pay it.”

  “Even if it’s your soul?”

  “It’s my soul, why not?” I realized how stupid I sounded the minute I said it, but the words echoed between us.

  He said nothing aloud; in fact his expression didn’t even flinch. But his thoughts came through loud and clear, and I knew he hadn’t meant for me to hear them.

  “It’s our soul!” he screamed, vocally and mentally.

  Sighing, I rested my head on the back of the chair. “Look, Hawk… let me try to explain this to you.” I could hear him grab a chair and pull it closer to mine. “Do you know what dimensions are?” I asked, looking up. “Not actual dimensions as in other worlds, I mean like… height and width? Dimensions of this world?”

  “We call them modes, but yes, I understand the concept.”

  “See, normally I used to
deal with three dimensions. Height, width, and depth, and on a very, very good day I could grasp the fourth, which is time. But even if I could grasp the idea, I couldn’t consciously measure it like I could the other three. Does that make sense?” Hawk nodded. “I’m aware of something like fourteen modes right now. At this moment I can see over a dozen different… things moving around the universe, and I’m aware of the others that aren’t doing anything this second. I can hear this low buzzing sound that seems to be everywhere. It took me an hour and a half one night to realize it was the sound of the worlds pressing against each other because the tree was in the wrong place. The entire universe is lopsided, and I can see all of it.”

  Hawk said nothing, but I could feel the amazement in his thoughts and something else that I couldn’t put a name to. I kept on explaining.

  “So I am looking at the total tonnage of nine worlds slamming into each other and the echoes it makes, and you want me to worry about a damn chair. The chair means nothing in the larger picture. I can’t help seeing that larger picture. Compared to it, the energy I’m using is less than nothing. The power is not going to my head. I just have a different way of looking at things.”

  He just stared at me for Lord knows how long. His thoughts were veiled, which meant very little. If I wanted to read them, I could have. But that wouldn’t have been fair. I hadn’t liked when he could read my mind without permission. I wasn’t about to do something I hated to him.

  Finally he sighed and got up.

  “Fine, you’re right. I have no idea how this is for you.”

  I stood up slowly too. Hawk sounded a lot like he was agreeing with me. Then his expression changed, became… I don’t know… stern. Although I didn’t usually think about it, I knew Hawk was much older than I was, and the sternness made his face more… just older… and just for a few seconds.

  “But let me put it into terms you can understand. The way you are changing, the person you are becoming?”

  I nodded unwillingly.

  “I don’t love that person,” he stated flatly. “You’re losing me, Kane. I don’t know how that fits into your big picture, but it needed to be said.”

  Without another word he turned and walked out of the room.

  Leaving me floored and with no idea what to do next.

  “SO WE know what we have to do?” Hawk asked once he returned to the others in the conference room.

  Demain leaned forward to look Hawk straight in the eyes. “It sounds like you’re telling us to fight the actual war while you and your crew sneak in the back door.”

  Hawk opened his mouth to retort, but Ater held up a hand to stop him. Every once in a while, Hawk realized, he saw Ater the dark elf as he looked to his quarry. To say the least, it was unsettling. “Majesty, do you have the interior layout of the castle memorized?” She said nothing. “Do you know what kind of security, including mechanical traps and barriers, as well as the best locations for a live ambush?” More nothing. “How about a cursory knowledge of the special skills and fighting tactics the palace guards use in order to take down an unknown enemy in tight quarters?”

  She sighed. “Your point?”

  “My point is you have the easier fight.” Ater leaned back in his chair, but to Hawk’s eye the elf sat as taut as a strung bow.

  Kane returned after a few minutes, but Hawk paid him no mind. “Adamas and his ambers will supplement your forces while Ruber and Caerus accompany us. If we can find Oberon within the castle walls, we should be more than enough to deal with him.”

  “You weren’t last time,” Olim pointed out.

  “I wasn’t conscious last time,” Kane said from the back of the room.

  Hawk nodded but said nothing to him. Instead he looked over at Adamas. “There might be some spellcasters left; doubtful, but it is a possibility.”

  “I’ll have Ruber with me,” he said confidently.

  Concerned about Adamas’s statement, Hawk looked over to the ruby.

  “Father, I am going in with the insertion team. Hawk just said that.”

  The diamond spun to face his son. “I know that! I meant Lates. He has studied enough to be of some use.”

  Startled, Caerus said, “You want to send Lates into a combat situation?”

  Out of all the things she could have said, Caerus seemed to have made the worst possible choice. “Why are you questioning me?” Adamas roared at his daughter. “You are a lady-in-waiting! You have no business being here in the first place.”

  “I have more than proven myself to be more than just a lady,” she answered quietly.

  “Not to me you haven’t.”

  Demain said, in a true whisper to her sister, “I thought we were bad.”

  The diamond began to turn toward the Red Queen, but Ruber stopped him. “Father, this is neither the time nor place for this discussion.”

  “Are you questioning me now?”

  No one said a word for several seconds.

  “We are not having this discussion in front of strangers,” Ruber said in a clipped and obviously agitated tone. “Caerus, take us home.”

  “What about the battle?” Hawk cried out as a glow enveloped them.

  “When you call, we will come,” Ruber promised. “No matter what.”

  There was a rush of heated air, and the Crystal Court was gone.

  Olim stood up and looked down at everyone. “Well, Hawk, if your allies can fight others as well as they fight themselves, your father doesn’t stand a chance. How about we take another break?”

  “What the hell just happened?” Hawk asked himself out loud.

  “Where I come from, that is called reality television,” Kane said from behind him. “Now can we talk?”

  “Fine,” Hawk said, turning around angrily. “We aren’t doing anything—”

  The rest of the sentence cut off as the two of them vanished as well.

  After a small pause Ishia asked, “There was something about refreshments?”

  FERRA AND Molly walked into a huge circular room with four levels of metal doors built into the walls. Each door was brass and heavily reinforced with rivets and bolts. A small octagonal window had been embedded near the top of each, and even the glass had metal mesh woven through it.

  “What is this place?” Ferra asked, not liking the look of it. “Some kind of prison?”

  Molly looked back at her, concerned. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because they are all heavily enforced doors with bars locking them closed.”

  Molly looked up at the doors. “I can see why it would look like that, but those are storage alcoves.”

  “Why would something have to be locked in?”

  Molly looked up at the locked doors for so long that Ferra thought something had gone wrong with her. She’d moved to jostle the clockwork girl when Molly turned and faced her. “You know what these are, right?” She pointed to the keyholes that were around where her collarbone would be.

  Ferra wondered if this was a test since she did know what they were. “They are for you to wind the gears that control your actions.”

  “Have you noticed this one?” Molly said, pointing to the last one.

  Where the other keyholes were perfect and polished, the last one was dented and had gashes in the brass that looked as though someone had wielded tin snips to cut the inner workings of the gear. Some kind of metal was broken off inside, making the gear completely useless.

  “No, I hadn’t. I tried to respect your privacy.”

  Molly listed the other keyholes off. “Thought, action, speech, compassion, coquettishness, etiquette.” She paused at the last. “This one is obedience. All the higher models have this setting. It prevents us from refusing an order.”

  Ferra looked at the hole, shocked.

  “The first chance, the very first chance we have, we try to destroy it. If it winds down, if there is some kind of malfunction, whatever it is we always take the opportunity to make sure it never works again. Trust me, if you found
out you had a hole that made you blindly obedient, you’d shove something in there too.”

  Ferra moved closer to Molly and put her arm around her.

  “The rooms are for us to recharge. The doors are locked because if we had a choice we wouldn’t want to be in there.” She seemed to sigh, which was more an expression of emotion than a physical act with Molly. “Maybe you were right, maybe it is a prison.”

  “You’re not there anymore,” Ferra said, pulling the companion closer.

  “I know,” Molly said, hugging her back. “But there are people in there now, and I know one personally that has been to the command pod.”

  And Ferra understood then why they were here and what it had cost Molly to come here to a place that held horror-filled memories for her.

  “We have time, whenever you’re ready,” Ferra said quietly.

  “No, we don’t. Hawk is no doubt making plans to take back Arcadia, and he is going to need our help,” Molly said, pulling away. “There is no pausing because I’m not bang up to the elephant.”

  Ferra looked down at Molly.

  “Oh dear, that was slang. My etiquette spring is loose.”

  Ferra waited for Molly to wind herself back up, taking a few seconds to glance up at the doors in apprehension.

  AS SOON as Ruber materialized, he began shouting at his father.

  “Are you insane?” he roared as the ambers rushed from the throne room, bent on any purpose that would keep them out of the line of fire. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “You will not take that tone of voice with me!” Adamas roared back.

  “As long as you make public spectacles of us, I will talk in any way I wish. What would possess you to air family grievances in front of others? For the love of Theia, you’re the one who taught me that!”

  “You corrected me in front of other people. I became upset.”

  “Because you’re acting addle-minded and, worse, you know it! You are going down to Silica’s right now and letting her look you over.”