Trey pushed the door open first. Wielding the modified bracelet like it was the Green Lantern Power Ring, he thrust his fist out and prepared to breach the doorway. Johnny mimicked his buddy’s stance, and the two burst through the door, pointing their bracelets into the darkness of the hallway beyond.
As stupid as they looked, their preparedness paid off when a suited thug with a squat automatic rifle spotted them. Both blasts took him on the chest before he could raise the barrel of the gun, sending him flying back against the wall with a thud and a clatter as his weapon skittered across the floor. Another thug stepped around the corner at the far side of the floor, looked down at his teammate, then looked up just in time to take a hit from the bracelets that caught him on the chin. His head snapped backwards, and he crumpled where he stood, his gun hitting the floor with another rattling echo.
I winced at the sound. We were making enough noise that it would be impossible for more guards not to notice us. We all stood unmoving, holding our breath and scanning the hallway until we were sure no other thugs were going to jump out at us.
“Badass,” said Johnny, turning the bracelet up to look at it. “I’ve gotta get me one of these when we’re done here.”
“You’re not keeping that one,” Karyn said. “I expect to get it back after this.”
The look on Johnny’s face said he didn’t think much of Karyn’s odds of taking it off him physically. I didn’t think he could be stupid enough to challenge Karyn despite everything he knew about her abilities, but Johnny and ‘intelligence’ seemed to be about as related as fourth cousins twice removed.
“The lab should be up there,” I said, pointing down the hall. “Let’s move.”
We made it halfway towards the double doors in the center of the hallway before Montgomery’s second personal bodyguard stepped out with gun in hand. His eyes narrowed when he saw us, and he very calmly opened his suit jacket to slide the gun back into its holster. For a second I thought he was going to surrender, but then he splayed his hands out by his sides, bolts of electricity arcing out towards the wall and ceiling in a show of strength.
Trey and Johnny moved quickly, fists rising in unison as they let loose twin blasts of energy. The bodyguard swept his hands out towards them, filling the hallway with wild blue lightning that formed a snapping and hissing barrier. The kinetic blasts dissipated against the shield. Johnny and Trey quickly fired again. This impact was just as easily consumed by the electric shield.
“Can you hold him off?” I shouted.
“Not for long,” Trey grunted. “Trang gave us a pretty big hit of energy, but this is running me down really fast.”
The bodyguard leaned forward, body heaving when he tried to walk forward against the steady barrage of energy being flung at him. Trey and Johnny had begun alternating blasts, trying to keep up a continuous flow in order to prevent him from charging forward during a break. It was hard to see in the ever shifting light of the two magical energies being flung back and forth, but I was fairly certain the bodyguard was straining hard to keep up his defenses. Runnels of sweat glistened on his forehead, his teeth shining blue-white where his lips were parted in an unheard grunt. The bodyguard’s power didn’t seem innate, so I assumed he was working from a finite pool just as Trey and Johnny were. The question was whose power would run out first. I thought about adding a bit of my own energy into the mix, but after what had happened downstairs, I wasn’t entirely sure I could keep from killing my own team.
“I’m almost out of juice,” Johnny cried while a tongue of electric energy whipped past his kinetic blast to lash at his shin.
He swore and fell sideways, clutching his injured leg with one hand while thrusting his fighting hand out for another attack. The blast that came out was significantly more powerful than those before. The second it left his hand, rocketing down the hallway, Johnny’s arm fell to the floor. I knew a spent magic user when I saw one, and Johnny had pushed as deep into his limits as he could without killing himself in the process.
The bodyguard roared and flared his shield, easily absorbing the blast without harm to himself. Trey had stopped casting his own force blasts, most likely down to the last of his energy.
The bodyguard took advantage of the lull to stalk forward.
I glanced at the door behind us, but it wasn’t really an option. There was no retreat and regrouping. If I didn’t press forward, I’d have Trang hunting me down. Maybe I wouldn’t die that night, but I doubted I’d last more than a few days on the run. It was fight or die trying, and the only way forward was through the human battery about to fry us like bugs in a zapper.
A battlecry sounded from behind the bodyguard. The hallway reverberated with the sound of gunfire. Bullets whizzed down the hall, ricocheting off metal doorways and thunking into the walls around us. I dropped to the floor, trying to minimize my profile against the onslaught. Trey threw up a hasty shield, but it crumbled almost immediately. With everyone else tapped, I had no choice but to cast a barrier of my own, praying to every god under and above the sun that it wouldn’t spin out of control somehow. It didn’t stop the bullets that barreled into it, but it did slow them enough that they fell to the floor in lazy arcs, clattering to the ground around us. Through it all, I heard Karyn’s voice muttering through a drawn out incantation.
When the noise stopped, I looked up to see Montgomery’s bodyguard still standing. He’d turned to face his attacker, and with a flick of his finger, he sent a bolt of electricity snaking down the hall towards Chase’s stunned face. The bolt made contact with the barrel of the rifle Chase must have picked up from the fallen guard, causing him to cry out in pain as he flung the weapon away from himself. He fell to his knees clutching burnt hands to his chest, completely open to the next attack.
Karyn moved before I had a chance to cut my shield and cast an attack spell. She lunged forward, knife in hand. I couldn’t believe how fast she crossed the distance in those stupid boots of hers, but before the bodyguard could lash out at Chase again, she was in the air, my folding knife now glowing with magic energy before she slammed it into the bodyguard’s back.
The guard screamed in agony, pawing at Karyn. She’d thrust the blade down into the hollow of his neck, her other arm wrapped around him while he thrashed and tried to buck her. Lightning shot wildly from his fingertips, flashing everywhere in his attempt to zap Karyn. She held on for another few seconds before a bolt caught her in the torso. Her body spasmed. Unable to hold onto the bodyguard any longer, she fell to the ground in a twitching heap. The bodyguard turned to face her, lifting his hand limply before crashing down next to her.
As with Chen back at the Night Market, the body began to smolder and crumble. Karyn must have amped up the power in her enchantment, because this time the body and clothing were reduced to nothingness in a matter of seconds.
“Help me over to Chase,” Karyn said softly when I knelt by her side.
I hoisted her upwards, slipping a hand around her waist to help her hobble to where Chase writhed in agony. Karyn stepped away from me, moving on trembling legs until she’d lowered herself to his level. She took hold of his wrists to reveal badly singed hands, palms blackened and oozing from burst burn blisters. Chase whimpered softly while rocking back and forth, eyes wide with shock.
“Can you help him?” I asked Karyn.
“Leave him with me,” she said. “Get Montgomery.”
I wanted to stay by Chase’s side, to collect him and drag him down to the car so we could drive as far away from this nightmare as possible, but I knew that wasn’t really an option. With both of Montgomery’s bodyguards down, I had the slimmest window of opportunity to go after her. For all I knew, she was running out a back exit while I delayed. Putting my faith in Karyn and the oath she’d sworn earlier that night, I ran towards the doors of Montgomery’s lab, shouting for Trey and Johnny to follow.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hurtling through the double doors in the center of the hallway, I found myself
in a medium sized room that had been served as a transition area between the outside world and the lab we’d been searching for. Instead of office chairs and conference tables, there were benches and cubby holes. A rack on one wall held crisp white suits like the kind technicians used to prevent contaminants from entering the ultra-clean environment required to work with open electronics.
A makeshift airlock had been installed over the next door, the sibilant swoosh of an industrial strength air filter hissing all around us when I slipped though rubberized canvas flaps dangling over the entrance. The energy I’d seen pulsing at the center of the building was palpable here. By the looks on their faces, even Johnny and Trey were feeling it. Big magic was being worked on the other side of the door. Big enough to make me consider turning tail and running the other way.
I hesitated before the entrance to the lab, turning to address my now powerless backup in case they were experiencing similar urges.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I said. “Montgomery is incredibly dangerous. I won’t be able to protect you if I’m fighting her.”
“We’re as good as dead if we don’t get that machine locked down for Trang to pick up,” Trey said. “Plus it wouldn’t feel right. I’m no coward. I said I’d help you, so I’m going in there no matter what’s waiting.”
I nodded grimly and placed my hand on the door lever. There was no window in the door, so I cracked it a hair to get a peek at the room beyond. A blast of frigid air slapped me in the face, making me shiver so violently I had to jerk my hand from the door handle to keep from rattling it uncontrollably.
The lab was vaguely identifiable as a much larger version of the room we were in. All the office furniture had been removed and replaced with what looked like millions of dollars of high tech machinery. Cables had been strung up to long bundled ribbons that ran the length of the ceiling, connecting to unseen servers and power sources in some other part of the building. Specialized tools and diagnostic machines sat on wheeled plastic trays, metal and plastic instruments lined up neatly like a surgeon’s equipment before an operation. The mole we’d tracked from Vector Zero sat with his back to us. Lines of code streamed by on the monitor in front of him. He wore a heavy winter jacket over his clean suit, and he rubbed his hands together at frequent intervals in an attempt to warm them.
The center of the room was dominated by a black paneled obelisk the size of an industrial walk-in refrigerator. A door was open on one side of it, freezing cold air pouring forth like a portal from the top of Mt. Everest. Montgomery stood at this doorway, eschewing the white bunny-suit for a thick velvet robe intricately embroidered with golden thread. Hands out in front of her, eyes closed in focus, she was completely absorbed in the effort of maintaining the azure stream of magic being fed into the surprisingly small cluster of wires and silicon within the machine.
“The chip temperature has stabilized at one point three Kelvin,” the Vector Zero mole shouted over the hum and whir of all the equipment in the room. “I can’t get it any colder with the door open.”
“Leave the rest to me,” Montgomery said. “I’m going to begin the final phase. You are to remain absolutely silent unless there’s a problem. Understood?”
Her assistant shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, not taking his eyes off the readout on his display when he returned a simple “Understood.”
“You two subdue the techie,” I whispered to Trey and Johnny. “Don’t kill him. Just knock him out or something.”
“We’re both out of juice,” Trey whispered back. “What if he’s got a gun or something?”
I had to fight to keep the volume of my voice from climbing along with my rising panic. “Figure it out. Grab him and tie him up with cables or something. Or would you rather take care of Montgomery?”
“Sorry,” Trey mumbled. “You’re right. We’ll take care of it.”
This was it. I felt like garbage from having used so much of my energy, but it was now or never. Montgomery was as distracted as she was going to be. Even at my best, she was too strong for me to face directly. In my current state, I’d be lucky if I didn’t get incinerated the second I stepped into the room.
Not giving myself another second to let doubt drag me down, I burst into the room and unleashed the strongest kinetic blast I could muster. It crashed into Montgomery, rocking her forward into the bowels of the computer housing. She twisted as she fell, struggling to maintain her connection to the glowing microprocessor at the center of the quantum computer. The force should have knocked her clean through the other side of the metal housing, but she seemed unfazed besides the look of mild surprise at having nearly been interrupted mid-spell.
“Backstabbing bitch,” she hissed, flinging one arm out towards me.
I cast a shield without thinking, recoiling instinctively as a wave of electric energy surged towards me. What had been strong enough to block the attacks from Montgomery’s bodyguards might as well have been tissue paper beneath the strength of Montgomery’s own power. My body twitched and jerked as the voltage crumbled my shield and connected with my skin. Every muscle clenched at the same time, freezing me in place with arms splayed out and fingers twisted into ragged claws. A low and wretched moan escaped my lips. The acrid smell of burning hair fouled the air around me.
All at once, the spasms were cut short. My legs gave out and I felt myself crashing to the floor. I lashed out for something to break my fall, my wildly flailing hand connecting with one of the tool-laden carts. It clattered to the ground in front of me, temporarily blocking Montgomery and the computer from sight. My head cracked hard on the floor when I landed, starlight bursting in my vision while I attempted to recover my breath and minimize my profile behind the fallen cart.
Blinking the whorls of light from my vision, I shook my head and risked a look through the slats of the cart. Montgomery had regained her feet, but rather than come after me, she continued feeding energy into the computer. Her eyes blazed with cold fury. I knew she’d bring her full power to bear on me the second she completed her spell. That she’d given her focus right back to the computer showed just how little she thought of me.
I had seconds at best to make my move before she did.
Fire was out of the question. It would destroy the computer and nullify my deal with Trang. Since my kinetic blast hadn’t done much more than annoy her the first time, I didn’t exactly have a lot of aggressive magic left in my arsenal.
A quick glance to the side showed Trey and Johnny finishing up with the Vector Zero techie. They’d bound his hands and feet with lengths of brightly colored computer cables and were in the process of dragging him from the room. Montgomery didn’t appear concerned by the loss of her assistant, now working feverishly to complete the spell that would turn the quantum processor into the most powerful computer on earth. Her face was a mask of obsessive concentration. Performing a casting this complex would require her to put every fiber of her being into the work, manipulating energy on such a fine level that even the slightest interruption could potentially end in disaster for all of us.
There was only one thing I could think to try. I pushed myself up over the cart, sitting on my heels while I called up the reverse shield spell I’d used earlier. My magic still felt frenetic and unpredictable. Ragged where it should have been clean. It fought against my efforts to shape it, flaring brightly before finally slipping into place around Montgomery and the processor at the heart of the machine. The second it was locked where I wanted it, I began condensing the barrier. The spell resisted me at first, threatening to dissolve into nothingness. Fighting past the pain and exhaustion, past the fear and revulsion at what I was about to do, I drew it ever tighter around Montgomery. The race to complete our spells had begun. If she finished before me, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind she’d shatter my containment field as easily as she’d broken through my first attempt at self-defense.
“You stupid child!” she shouted as the spell collapsed inward on itself, forcing her to hu
g the microprocessor in order to maintain her connection. “If you interrupt me now, you’ll destroy us all. Work for me, Alex. Aid me now, and I will reward you a million times over. If you don’t care for money, I offer you power. I will teach you everything I know!”
I’ll admit, I thought about it. I’d long ago given up the desire for mentorship from someone with Montgomery’s experience and knowledge. Under her tutelage, I could become so much more than I was. Too many mages sought only their own advancement. They cared nothing for the world around them. With the kind of power Montgomery was offering me, I could effect real change. I could fight against those like the vampire Eskola and his empire of death and greed.
But not on these terms. Not with the threat of danger still looming over my friends. Montgomery might be able to offer me protection from Trang, but I didn’t believe she’d look after Chase or Karyn. Even if she did agree to safeguard them, I’d never be able to trust she wouldn’t simply wait until I was too engrossed in my work for her to find a way to kill them off. The kind of apprenticeship she offered didn’t exactly allow for much of a personal life. In exchange for knowledge, I’d most likely live as something only slightly better than a slave. I would be completely beholden to her, even if she went as far as setting me against those I cared about most.
The temptation lasted only a fraction of a second before I redoubled my efforts to crush her beneath my spell. I was too focused on maintaining my fragile grasp on the casting to acknowledge the sickening shame I felt over killing her. Inch by inch, I collapsed the field of energy, drawing it around her like a bodybag.
The edge of the spell touched the gleaming microprocessor at the heart of the computer and the world went sideways.
Black Market (Black Records Book 2) Page 28
