by K. Gorman
“More like a tablet computer. With really complicated programming. Built by aliens.”
In the dim, Mieshka raised an eyebrow. He really hadn’t rehearsed this speech.
“I thought you were the alien.”
“That’s dependant on point of view,” he said.
Mieshka closed her eyes and leaned back. The chair creaked under her.
“So, the crystal transfers into me, and I get a shit-load of power that can maybe find the other crystals?”
“That’s the idea.”
“A human engine without a removable crystal, then?”
“Yes. I guess you got that bit. It’ll offload a lot of power into you, so I want to teach you the basics of using it beforehand. Remember when you made fire before? Now, you’ll learn how to put it out.”
A fire the size of a teacup lapped into his hand. Cradled in his palm, the flames left dances of retinal burn in the background. Heat sunk into her face.
“Put it out,” he said. “Focus.”
She felt through her link and dampered it with a thought.
“Good,” he said. “And again.”
The fire reappeared, bigger and hotter. It was blue this time. She didn’t get it on her first try.
“Go for the base first. That’s what firefighters do.”
She did. It piddled out.
“Good,” he said again. He smiled.
“How am I doing that?”
“With your mind. Psychic sense. Like everything, it needs exercise to become strong. In lieu of that, knowledge can help.”
The air prickled around her; the tingling from the transfer extended up her arm. She didn’t trust that smile.
“Again,” he said.
The room roared. It wasn’t dark anymore. Heat beat into her, choked her throat. Mieshka forced herself to stay in her chair, staring as the flames brushed the ceiling. Not an inch of the room was bare. She couldn’t see the walls anymore. Even Aiden was on fire, though he didn’t seem to mind.
Well, at least her hair was dry.
Aiden turned his head back to the computer screen. How he could see it in the blaze, she didn’t know.
“Sometimes it helps to move about,” he said.
She stood. Fire licked at her knees. It didn’t hurt. It reminded her of the Phoenix’s fire. The transfer mark buzzed into her bones. Which magic was she channelling, Aiden’s or the engine’s?
It didn’t matter. Letting go of the thought, she walked into the fire.
Go for the base, she thought.
She did.
All thoughts of the Phoenix disappeared as she worked. It took a long time to put it all out. The room grew steadily darker, until only a tealight of a flame wobbled by her feet.
She stepped on it.
“Programming’s just about uploaded,” Aiden said. He hadn’t turned around. “You ready?”
Stifling a yawn, she nodded. It was quiet all around. She sat back down and squirmed. Somehow, she’d managed to get a bruise on her butt.
Her cell phone rang. She pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and raised an eyebrow at the Caller ID.
“Why are you calling me?”
Aiden looked over sharply. “My office phone?”
As he took it from her hand, it stopped ringing. Mieshka sat up nervously as he shifted through the Caller ID. A second later, a text rolled in. She craned her neck to look at the screen.
SOLDIERS.
Aiden said something she didn’t understand. It didn’t sound nice. He leaned over the engine’s console, fingers flying over the keys. Soon, an image of the stairwell popped into view. They were just in time to see Jo fly past and disappear down the next flight. An instant later, the picture was full of armed men.
“Well, shit,” Aiden said.
CHAPTER 11
Somehow, seeing them on camera made it surreal. There hadn’t been any sound from outside.
“Any other way out?” Mieshka said.
“No. The whole room is reinforced with steel, though.”
“Steel and an angry Fire Mage?” A nervous laugh fluttered out of her.
Aiden didn’t reply. He stared at the screen. There was a hollow look to his face. Mieshka swallowed the next laugh. Magic hadn’t helped the other two Mages.
“Keep an eye out. They have a new-world illusionist, but they’d need something more to take me out.”
Illusionist? Mieshka nodded, staring at the soldiers. Their faces were hard to see under their helmets.
A minute later, two non-uniformed men came down the stairs. The taller man led. He had the same former-soldier look Mieshka had come to recognize. His frame was slimmer than Buck’s, but filled out with muscle, hair shaved close and starting to recede from his forehead. His nose was long and narrow.
The smaller one followed in his wake, wearing slacks and a white button-up shirt. He had glasses, and looked down at where he stepped. He hugged a black box in front of him.
Aiden upgraded his swearing: “Fuck.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a prison box. Used to transport dangerous magic users. Takes magic and makes it null. Who the fuck brought that over?”
Mieshka watched the two men. “Which one do you think is the illusionist?”
Aiden typed something into the console. A second later, the smaller man was outlined in red.
They both leaned back in the chairs, watching the soldiers.
“Plan?” she said.
“Mine got shot to hell. We should have transferred last night.”
Mieshka considered that for a moment.
“Why didn’t we?”
“Thought the programming was more important. If the city wasn’t fully protected… Also thought you needed more time to… adjust.”
She stared at the soldiers on the screen. Well, now it was a moot point.
“Are we stuck here?”
“Kind of. Yeah. This was designed like a panic room.” Aiden glanced around the dim, concrete walls. “Times like this I wish I were an Earth Mage.”
“Can they get in?”
“Eventually. If they’ve brought explosives. Faster, if they’ve got some old-world shit.” He didn’t seem tense. Or worried. Maybe there had been no time for that. Things happened all at once. It never rained, it poured.
Mieshka couldn’t relate. No matter what the situation, she always managed to find time to fit in a worry or two. Aiden pulled himself closer to the screen. His smile had returned, though it had little joy. After a few commands, the video feet minimized to a quarter of the screen.
“You can’t burn a hole in the floor?” she asked.
“Solid steel, and a lot of concrete after that. They’d get in first. But,” he said, fingers clicking over the keys, “since I won’t need a shield much longer, we can redirect some energy. Did I mention that this engine was made from a ship?”
“You did.”
“So was the door. It was an armed ship.”
He clicked another command, and they watched the screen. On the feed, a beam of light struck five men—including the box-carrier.
Four soldiers fell. The box absorbed the light.
“Cheater,” Aiden said. They watched as the box-carrier moved toward the camera. There was a clunk at the door.
A second later, the video feed went blank.
Aiden’s chair scuttled back as he stood. Mieshka stood too, uncertainly. She looked between him and the door. Her hand was shaking now.
“Mieshka,” Aiden spoke slowly, calmly. Mieshka’s calm vanished quickly in the gloom. “Go stand by the wall. In the corner.”
Another clunk against the door. She hurried to obey, her knees suddenly weak beneath her.
Aiden stood up, flexing his fingers. Symbols crawled to life on his skin, waiting to be used. This is how Mages fought, she thought. Symbols building on symbols until the right or wrong sentence is made.
He stared at the door, suddenly still.
“Explosives, I think,” he said, after a few sec
onds. The scratching stopped. “Watch ou—”
Whoom!
The wall shuddered. Dust rained down from the ceiling. Some of it landed in Mieshka’s hair.
“—out,” Aiden finished.
There was more scratching at the door. A snap of fire flitted over Aiden’s hand. Mieshka fidgeted, her back pressing against the wall.
“I can’t win against that thing,” he said. His voice had a drag to it, like his recent sleep pattern had caught up to him. “If you get through this, go to the ship, transfer, and find Roger.”
She swallowed at the ‘if’ in his sentence. “And burn all in my path, right?”
“Right.”
The scratching stopped.
It took them five more Whoom!s to get in.
Chunks exploded into the room. Light streamed in, illuminating the smoke and dust that rose from what had once been the doorframe. The sound shook her chest. The floor beneath her shuddered.
Fire blossomed in the midst of it all, roaring into the sudden gap. It twisted over itself, many-coloured. She saw Aiden bracing himself against the console, an arm outstretched, skin glittering with the symbols as they chased up his arm.
There was a yelp of pain above the roar. And another.
In answer, something skittered across the floor, clacking and clunking as it tripped over debris. The prison box. Its sides were black. Dead black. As it came to rest, a single character glowed to life.
“Watch out—” Much like Aiden’s, her cry came too late. She watched as the fire began to move slower. Sluggishly. Aiden looked mildly confused, his hand moving through the air as if trying to feel something.
Then his eyes found the box.
“Oh, fu—” He began to burn.
She huddled to the wall, watching as first his hand caught. Then the rest of him was slowly eaten by fire.
Oddly, he didn’t seem to be in pain. Flaming, he turned his hand around and watched it burn. For all the world, he looked like he was casually checking his nails. Then he was gone, and the rest of the fire went with him.
The room became oddly quiet, smoke drifting up. The box was silent, too. A symbol still glowed on its top side, pulsing slightly.
The monitor flickered with its data, graphs briefly spiking. She watched the spike edge to the left, bit by bit. Had the engine noticed the fight? Or was it too busy keeping the shield alive?
The light flickered. She looked up in time to see armed men jump over the hazy remains of the wall, guns leading the way.
Mieshka clung to the wall, pretending not to exist. They converged on the engine. Maybe they wouldn’t see her.
She felt something brush the edge of her consciousness. For a moment, she caught an image in her mind. A dragon, its scales a burnt copper colour, tail curled around its lying form. Its eyes focused on her. The air around it hummed, vibrating through her mind. Exhaustion folded over her like a coat. The transfer glowed warm on her hand.
Just as she thought that, the illusionist picked his way into the room. He was a smallish man, lacking the muscle of the soldiers around him. He didn’t hold a gun, but a small, slender, black box. It was about the size and shape of her father’s TV remote, and emitted a familiar beep. The man lifted his gaze, looking around the edges of the room until he came to her.
“Careful, she’s magic.”
Suddenly, she had a lot of guns pointed at her. She cringed closer to the wall.
“Why didn’t it take her too, then?” The taller man stepped out of the smoke. The operator cleared his throat. He was nervous, she realized.
“The prison box only holds one.”
The taller man sneered. “A pity. Is she dangerous?”
As the operator turned back to the detector, she let out a slow breath.
“It’s not telling me.”
Must be the same brand as Aiden’s.
“What do you mean, it’s not telling you? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know!”
The taller man looked her over, the sneer still on his face. He gestured at the soldiers.
“You two, seize her.”
She gritted her teeth as they came toward her, all too aware of the guns still trained on her. Go to the ship, he’d said. How the fuck was she supposed to do that?
She flinched as they grabbed her, staggered as they forced her from the wall and held her between them, each man twisting an arm behind her back.
She trembled in their grip. The sneering man walked over. He hadn’t pointed the gun at her yet, but he didn’t need to. Everyone else had.
“What’s your name?”
She had to look up to see his face as he got closer. The men holding her had bent her forward slightly.
“Meese.” She winced as the soldiers’ grip tightened on her. The man’s smile grew a tiny bit.
“Meese, huh? My boy here says you have magic. But I think you would have used it by now, if you could have, don’t you?”
Though the transfer on her hand still glowed, she didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. With that many guns on her, she didn’t dare. She’d already found out how trigger-happy people could be when ‘magic’ was mentioned. And this time, she didn’t think Aiden would be there to burn the bullet.
“Take her to the car. We’ll transport her the traditional way, since our prison box is full. Guylian, I don’t think we need an illusion this time. He was the last one.”
She saw the operator nod, though his eyes narrowed on her.
The sneering man turned and, as he walked away, put his gun back in the hip holster.
The men shoved Mieshka forward. As they passed the engine, she saw soldiers gathered around it. It didn’t seem as massive and mysterious now, with the light on it. The depthless glassy surface was now covered with a grey layer of dust.
One soldier had opened part of it and had bent over, reaching inside. Orange light shone over his face, matching the colour on her hand. Mieshka heard a metallic clunk, and the screen went dark.
The link guttered out like a candle.
Lyarne was defenseless.
As they neared the detector, the beeping straightened into one long, straight sound. She met the illusionist’s eyes briefly before the guards led her away.
***
There was no Underground.
There couldn’t possibly be an Underground. The city couldn’t stand on hollowed ground. A few tunnels, Robin could believe. But an entire underground city?
Hell no.
Why would they lie to her? And where was Meese?
Lockers slammed around her. Footsteps and squeaking shoes and the chatter of post-school drama. Muggy air wilted her hair. A few painkillers had taken the edge off her headache. She’d started carrying them around after she met Meese. She hoped the headaches were a growing thing.
But now she knew Meese was magic. The timing was a bit too coincidental.
Why would they lie to her? What reason could they possibly have? Was Meese’s power a lie, too? Robin hadn’t actually seen her magic. Meese claimed she had to be near someone with magic.
Huh. Another thin coincidence.
She cornered Chris at his locker.
“Take me Underground,” she said.
“What?”
Pain pounded her head.
“Take me Underground.”
“Why?” His backpack rested on his knee. She’d caught him pulling his MP3 player out.
“Because I said so. I want to see it.”
If it exists.
Come to think of it, Meese had said the Fire Mage’s ship was underground, too. Conveniently out of Robin’s reach.
She ran a hand over her head. Clammy skin caught on the hair.
“No,” he said.
Hah.
“Why not? You took Meese.”
“Meese is different.”
“What’s so different? I’m her best friend.”
He stuffed his backpack into the locker. Guess he wasn’t doing homework tonight.
“Meese had already been there. Why do you want to go down?”
“Because, if it existed, I would know about it. This is my city.”
Chris had turned his face away from her. “You don’t believe us?”
“Why are you lying to me? What have I done? What happened?”
He turned back, though he didn’t look up. His lip looked better. He’d cleaned off the blood.
“That’s the whole point of the Underground. So people like you don’t know about it.”
What was he on about?
“People like me? What the fuck does that mean?”
He shut his locker.
“You’re Lyarnese.”
Understanding hit. Both Chris and Meese were refugees.
Chris walked down the hall.
“Wait!” Robin jogged ahead of him, cutting him off. “The Underground can’t possibly exist. It wouldn’t bear the weight.”
“You’re an engineer now, are you?”
Robin bit back a retort. Chris walked fast. He was trying to lose her.
“I’ve known Meese for two months. I don’t understand why she’d suddenly gang up with you, change her personality, and lie to me. Is this some sort of joke? I need to know.”
He stopped suddenly. Her sneaker jumped on the linoleum. Outside light cut through the rain-streaked windows. His bad eye was toward her. Purple mottled inside the skin.
“You’re actually upset, aren’t you?” He swallowed. She watched his Adam’s apple bob. Then, his voice grew quiet. “I’ve known Meese for two days,” he said. “Already, I’m not sure if she’s capable of lying. True lying, you know?”
Robin felt cold. He made sense. Her swarm of thoughts lost its venom.
“So the Underground is real?”
“It is. Don’t tell everyone.” His voice had grown quiet.
Her mind spun.
“Would you take me?”
He turned to her.
“Please? I want to know.”
“Okay.”
They left school and walked toward a nearby residential area she had never been to before.
It was raining.
***
Buck ducked under a low doorway. Old, dusty wood bent beneath his boots. The flashlight skipped over the place. Sections of it were roped off with posh, velvet ribbon. If the signs were to be believed, this place had been a museum before it had been buried. One of the oldest houses in the oldest district of Lyarne.
The scene was meant to resemble a Victorian dining room. The windows were shuttered. Likely with plywood on the outside, as per usual Underground fair. Kitschy porcelain dishes lay broken among the debris on the floor. A chair had been overturned. Cracks spider-webbed through the china cabinet’s glass.
It reminded him of domestic abuse.
