The Red Winter

by Henry H. Neff

  “Good man.”

  The smee was about to reply when they both heard a sharp intake of breath. Looking down the row of boilers, Cooper saw Hazel sitting cross-legged before several inscriptions she’d drawn on the floor. Their glow illuminated not only her unseeing face, but also the contours of a wraithlike shape beside her. It shimmered like heat waves, a subtle rippling in the air, before it turned and strode through the wall.

  Cooper tried to relax, but tension gripped his shoulders like talons. He had sincere faith in his wife’s abilities. After all, Hazel Boon had been all the talk when she had been a student. She had been considered Rowan’s great Mystics prodigy until David Menlo arrived. But it was agonizing to watch her sitting nearby, her mouth agape, eyes rolled back, her body twitching and shuddering. The Hazel he loved was gone; only her flesh remained in this hot, humming room.

  The computer in his hand jolted with vibration. A message in German was flashing on its screen: Need you back here—there’s news from Blys. Leave the boiler. Spindles can fix.

  Cooper cursed silently. A digital keypad appeared on the tiny screen. He carefully typed out his response: Five minutes. Almost finished.

  The next message came almost immediately: Five minutes, but Anschutz says no more. You know how he gets.

  Anschutz might get more than he bargained for, thought Cooper grimly. Stealing over to the engineer’s body, he quickly stripped it of its uniform. The man was shorter than Cooper, but their builds were roughly equivalent. Shoving his own clothes inside his pack, he gathered their things from the room’s far corner and set them by the door. Digging through one of the pack’s front pockets, he retrieved a leather flask with a silver topper.

  “Really, William,” chided Toby from where he was sitting by the door. “Drinking at a time like this? Well, a tot can’t hurt, I suppose. Give it here, eh?”

  “You don’t want this,” said Cooper, shaking the flask to stir up any contents.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Ferrites.”

  Toby gasped. “Those treasure-destroying crawlies? Why do you have those?”

  “Because they eat through metal.”

  “And flesh.” The smee shivered. “And bone. And whatever else they can get. To think I’ve been loitering next to ferrites!”

  While the smee continued to reflect on ferrites and their unsavory reputation, Cooper returned to scanning the train schedules. A shipment of machine oil was due to depart on Track 6 in fourteen minutes. The device vibrated as a message appeared.

  Where are you? Anschutz is getting angry.

  Cooper quickly typed a response. I said five minutes. Tell him he can come and get his hands dirty.

  Are you serious?

  Yes.

  Your funeral.

  Toby has been reading over his shoulder. His whiskers bristled. “Are you mad?” he exclaimed. “The supervisor is going to come down!”

  “Only if we’re lucky,” said Cooper, glancing over at Hazel. She was breathing quickly, almost to the point of hyperventilating. Her eyes were vacant, but now and again, her face twisted into a painful grimace. Her spirit must be nearing its limits. A sharp cry escaped her lips.

  Before Cooper could go to her, he heard someone coming down the corridor. One person, making swift and angry footfalls.

  Herr Anschutz.

  Toby scuttled out of sight behind a boiler as Cooper unsheathed his kris. Its blade undulated like a serpent, its weight and balance reassuringly familiar.

  Anschutz never saw who or what ended his life. He stormed into the room, glared about for his subordinate, and stiffened as Cooper’s blade made its swift, silent entry into the base of his skull. There was very little blood. It was like turning off a switch.

  “What did we gain by that?” hissed Toby.

  “Time,” said Cooper, wiping the kris’s point. “Anschutz is a bully. Nobody’s going to pester him. Not when he’s on the warpath.”

  Sheathing his knife, Cooper hurried over to check on Hazel. Her face had relaxed and her breathing was less ragged. He wanted to take her pulse, but he was wary of touching her. Physical contact could be dangerous to those in a trance.

  The inscriptions flared suddenly as a shadowy form emerged from the wall and stepped back into Hazel’s body. With a jolt, she blinked and her mismatched eyes rolled forward to focus on her husband’s face.

  “The tunnel’s open,” she gasped. “There are guards at the station’s entrance to the Workshop, but few along the platforms. Dear Lord, I’m spent …”

  She took a moment to catch her breath. Sweat was running freely down her forehead while her entire body trembled.

  “That was difficult,” she confessed. “The farther my spirit went, the more it wanted to come back. The pain is rather excruciating. I almost gave up.”

  Cooper kissed her dampened forehead. “But you didn’t.”

  She noticed Anschutz’s body by the door. “What? Who in the bloody hell is that?”

  “A supervisor,” said Cooper, scrolling through the train schedules. “This train should work. We’ve got five minutes to get them aboard.”

  “Who’s boarding what train?” she asked, clearly puzzled.

  There was no time to explain. After telling Toby to become something even smaller, he asked Hazel if she could fade. Fading was a type of illusion that required little energy and could be very useful under the right circumstances. It didn’t work in bright light or if the caster needed to move quickly. And it was useless if someone had already spotted you. But for sneaking through the shadows, fading was just the thing.

  “Of course I can fade,” said Hazel indignantly. “Any Third Year can fade.”

  “Good,” said Cooper, showing her the map on his device’s screen. “I want you and Toby to sneak into Tunnel Eleven, go a hundred yards, and wait for me. Got it?”

  She nodded. “What are you doing?”

  He hooked a thumb at the bodies. “Buying time. With any luck, we’ll be in the Workshop before anyone realizes there are intruders. Hurry now. If I’m not there in ten minutes, go on without me and make contact with the asset. I’ll catch up if I can.”

  Toby was already waiting by the door, a tiny gray mouse no bigger than a toddler’s thumb. Rising, Hazel erased the floor inscriptions and shouldered her pack. Giving Cooper a peck, she promptly faded from view. In the dim red light of the boiler room, she was practically translucent. A moment later, she slipped out the door with Toby running beside her.

  Cooper checked the opening at the base of Anschutz’s skull. Tearing a strip of cloth from the supervisor’s shirt hem, he wrapped the wound so that it wouldn’t leak. Arranging the bodies side by side, Cooper leaned one against each shoulder so he could lift them together. With a grunt, he stood, balancing them like two sacks of grain before slipping out the door.

  He walked steadily, shifting his burdens slightly, his attention fixed on the corridor ahead and the vast, octagonal cavern beyond. There was no need to be quiet. The depot echoed with droning loudspeakers, idling engines, and the barking of goblins as Spindlefingers scurried about in greasy overalls.

  It was mostly goblins on the depot floor, doing the work, driving the cargo loaders, and seeing to the massive trains idling on the tracks, their engines sending up clouds of vapor that obscured the distant roof. Along the far wall, past a yard of unused train cars, were the freight elevators they had ridden down from Verilius.

  As he’d done when they entered the depot, Cooper disguised himself as a Spindlefinger. In his mind’s eye, he was long-armed and potbellied with a broad back that bent beneath its load. He wasn’t carrying bodies but two barrels of machine oil to add to a shipment scheduled to leave on Track 6.

  When he was a Rowan student, William Cooper had been marked as a future Agent in only his Second Year. His athleticism, analytic capabilities, and temperament were ideally suited for the role. When graduation loomed, it was common knowledge that Cooper had received offers from every prominent field office,
as well as the elite Vanguard. But almost no one knew about the offer he’d very nearly accepted. It had come from Annika Kraken, the new Head of Mystics, who had wanted to hire him as an Instructor of Advanced Illusion. Cooper was, she maintained, the most gifted phantasmal she’d ever taught.

  He didn’t take the job, of course. He elected to become a field Agent and would soon earn a place among the Red Branch. But Cooper never lost his talent or affinity for illusion. Indeed, it went hand and glove with his profession. Illusion was all about conviction. The best practitioners truly believed that whatever they were seeing, hearing, smelling, and experiencing was real—at least in some corner of their minds. Conviction strengthened the effect. In Cooper’s mind, he was not a Rowan Agent hiding behind an illusory guise; he was a Spindlefinger goblin who was rushing to load two final casks of oil.

  Upon seeing Cooper, the foreman grunted and pointed irritably at a flashing light above Tunnel 6. Hurrying up a mechanized platform, Cooper lowered the engineers and their computers into a cargo hold, propping them amid the crates and barrels. Once he had placed the devices in their owner’s hands, he climbed back down the platform. As he descended, the foreman blew a whistle and waved to another goblin up by the engine. A horn sounded, lights on the train flashed, and its cars sealed shut. As the train rolled toward the tunnel, the attending Spindlefingers ran alongside, catching hold of side rails and shimmying down its length until they disappeared within a compartment beneath a central car. Spindlefingers traveled with their trains.

  But not this Spindlefinger. Cooper trotted along for a few meters but stopped as he passed a stack of crates. Walking around them, he reversed course and made his unhurried way toward Track 11. Halfway there, he stopped to buckle his imaginary shoe on the platform between Tracks 8 and 9. As he did so, he casually splashed his flask of ferrites on the tracks and underside of the nearest engine. The tiny organisms were suspended in an oily liquid but would activate once they came in contact with the metal. Within a day or two, they would have eaten through sheet metal, rails, cables, pinions, and a host of other mechanical necessities. In a perfect world, trains would break down en route and disrupt vital shipments or supply lines. Rising, Cooper continued on his way. When he passed behind a mound of coal, he promptly faded and slipped unseen into Tunnel 11.

  Hazel and Toby were right where he’d asked them to wait. Once he reached them, the smee changed into a sturdy mule and Cooper helped Hazel onto his back.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “I stowed the engineers on a train bound for Vrusk. Even if their computers are tracked, it’ll be hours before anyone can confirm what happened to them. Hopefully that gives us a little time. And some ferrites might have found their way onto some trains and tracks.”

  “Sabotage!” cried the smee, with something like relish.

  “A little here, a little there,” said Cooper, before catching sight of Hazel’s frown. “What’s the matter?”

  “I wish we hadn’t had to kill those men,” she said quietly.

  “So do I,” said Cooper. “But we’re on a DarkMatter Operation that could save thousands of lives. I’m not wasting winks over those two. The Workshop built Prusias’s dreadnoughts and pinlegs. Their creatures attacked Rowan and killed our friends. Their creatures killed Richter. They’re not innocent civilians, Hazel.”

  She pursed her lips. “You’re right. I know you are. I’ve just … never seen someone killed in cold blood before.”

  Cooper looked hard at both of his companions. “We’re spies in enemy territory. If we’re caught, we’ll be interrogated and executed. If danger threatens, our first option is to hide. If we’re discovered, I’ll neutralize the threat. If I need your help, I expect you to give everything you have. Understood?”

  Hazel and Toby nodded. Tightening the straps of his pack, Cooper turned and started a brisk pace.

  The tunnel’s grade was steep but perfectly consistent. Its rails hummed with electric current but were not dangerous to touch. The walls were bare, smooth rock with fluorescent lights every fifty meters. Every hundred meters, emergency alcoves were cut into the rock so workers could take shelter from approaching trains.

  Cooper registered these facts and a hundred others as he jogged along. He no longer needed to think about such things; he just did them out of habit. His brain was constantly observing, processing data, and planning contingencies. The most challenging operations rarely went according to plan. The best Agents were able to assess, adapt, and improvise when circumstances changed. It was what separated the good from the great. Antonio de Lorca had been a genius at improvisation—a born guerilla who had passed his knowledge down to his protégé.

  He focused on his first objective: to find and activate an undercover asset. This part of the plan had worried him from the onset. Years before, the asset in question had volunteered for psychnosis, an obscure discipline that many viewed with skepticism. In theory, the practice enabled one to implant an agenda within the subject’s subconscious using a combination of mystics and psychological techniques. If successful, the effects were impossible to detect; the asset had no memory of the experience, bore no trace of enchantment, and would pass any lie detector. The asset did not become a robot or act suddenly out of character, but gravitated slowly toward beliefs and actions that aligned with the implanted instructions. The process was so subtle, so gradual that its critics questioned whether it actually worked.

  Richter was a believer. We’ll see if she was right.

  They’d only been running twenty minutes when the tunnel started rumbling behind them. Workshop trains traveled very fast. There was an alcove ahead. He had to act quickly.

  “Ignis!”

  Yellow flames engulfed the tunnel behind them, racing up the walls to meet at the ceiling. Slamming his shoulder into Toby, Cooper steered the panicked smee toward a nearby safety alcove. From behind came the deafening blare of an emergency horn. Someone aboard the speeding train had seen the flames and was trying to brake, giving them a few precious seconds.

  Snatching Hazel off Toby’s back, Cooper pulled her into the alcove as the smee blinked back into a mouse. They pressed themselves flat as the train screeched past them in a great whoosh of hot wind. Its cars were three feet away, a blur of metal and lights that slowed to a groaning halt.

  Down the tunnel, Cooper heard human voices, anxious and impatient. An engineer was shouting to the Spindlefingers in the goblins’ own tongue.

  “What’s he saying?” Cooper whispered to Toby. As smees utilized many disguises, they spoke any number of languages.

  “He wants the goblins to check for damage,” squeaked the mouse.

  Already, Cooper could hear the patter of small boots and the jingling of tools as Spindlefingers fanned out along and beneath the train. Tapping Hazel, Cooper mouthed the word fade.

  The two blended out of sight just as a lanky goblin squeezed past the alcove, shining a flashlight along the train’s undercarriage and muttering to himself. Cooper waited several seconds before poking his head out. To his left, the goblin was making his way down the cars. To his right, the train’s lights were illuminating clouds of water vapor and silhouetting a distant goblin. He turned quickly to his companions.

  “There’s a compartment up ahead where the Spindlefingers ride. We could sneak aboard and take the train right into the Workshop station. Better cover.”

  Hazel looked anxious. “What about the goblins?”

  “I’ll handle it. Now or never.”

  Hazel and Toby nodded. Squeezing his pack against his chest, Cooper slid out into the narrow opening and led the others down the line of cars. The train was vibrating, hissing now and again as steam shot from exhaust valves.

  Thirty feet later, he saw the Spindlefingers’ compartment. It was built into the bottom of the central car, a virtual crawl space with a hard bench and several large tool cases. The compartment was empty.

  Cooper pointed Hazel and Toby to the far end, crawling through the
narrow opening and wishing for the millionth time he wasn’t quite so tall. The space was cramped and stank of grease and goblin, but it would do. Once they had squeezed into the corner, Cooper stacked several toolboxes as a buffer between them and the goblins that would soon return.

  “Keep still and quiet,” he whispered. “They may not notice us.”

  Hazel faded as Toby became a beetle. Folding his legs up so that his knees touched his chin, Cooper went absolutely still and imagined he was the compartment’s bulkhead.

  The Spindlefingers returned in ones and twos, climbing nimbly into the compartment and sliding down its bench. A few sniffed once or twice and looked puzzled, but a horn blared and the floor hummed as though a surge of electric current had been restored. Two more Spindlefingers clambered aboard even as the train started to move. The stumbled into their fellows, triggering squeaks and snarls as they jostled for seats. One barked at the Spindlefinger nearest Cooper, gesturing that he should scoot farther down. The goblin shrugged, hooking a thumb at the heavy toolboxes and illusory wall. Cursing him, they slid the grating shut and squeezed in as best they could.

  As the train accelerated, Cooper counted their blessings. Arriving via train was far preferable to emerging from a tunnel on foot. Illusions were less effective when viewed through a camera’s cold, objective lens. And the Workshop’s cameras were probably attuned to pick up heat signatures—signatures that might be rather conspicuous sneaking out of a decommissioned train tunnel. Trains meant busy crews and lots of noise and activity. Cooper had made do with far less.

  It took less than seven minutes to complete the journey. While the tunnel lights zipped past, the Spindlefingers played a game with cards fashioned from copper disks. There were jeers and hoots and money trading hands. At one point, Cooper’s neighbor actually elbowed him in his excitement. But Cooper didn’t move and the elated goblin didn’t notice anything amiss.

  As the train slowed, the Spindlefingers packed away their game and stared straight ahead in anticipation of their arrival. Their dull, unblinking expressions reminded Cooper of commuters he used to pickpocket as a boy on the London Underground. That world seemed something from a dream.