by Landon Wark
She pushed through the crowd herself with equal vigor, standing in front of the foremost officer, a shorter man, maybe a hair taller than her. He glared at her from behind the visor of his helmet.
“We have every right to be here,” she proclaimed in English, not even daring to try her hand at the local dialect.
“This alley, private property is,” he responded in the garbled English that seemed common here and pointing at the buildings surrounding them. “You moving, must be.”
The crowd looked at each other and then at Tom standing on the stage, who was squarely fixed on Aegera. She clenched her hands around the remaining books she carried. It was time to play the leader.
“Tell us where a good place is and we’ll meet there next time.”
The officer simply stared at her before waving dismissively. "Now move.”
Aegera looked around at the assembly. They were tense and anxious. Some were new, many were those who had come back for a second taste and a handful were Adepts. If she gave in too easily they would start to think maybe they should handle the police on their own. If things started to break down there could be an altercation. She looked to Tom who didn’t seem to want to move.
“Can I offer you a book, officer?” She held up the stack to him. “I think we have enough for all of you. We can always make more.”
A thick hand slapped the books out of her hands, sending them down to the dirt in the street. There was an eruption from some of the Adepts toward the front of the crowd. The officers huddled forward towards the loud noises. Aegera called for quiet and was promptly ignored. Less ignored was the explosion that sounded in the air just above everyone’s heads a moment later. Both sides staggered back, shocked. The police were at the ready with their weapons and the potentials cleared out of the way as the Adepts elbowed past them.
“That’s enough!” Aegera shouted. She turned to the officers encroaching dangerously on the space she occupied. “We’ll move along.”
The Adepts looked at her unhappily, but dispersed as she bade them. They would make arrangements, she promised. As a final act of defiance one of the Initiates kicked one of the fallen books at the officers and said something derogatory but unintelligible. One of the officers flinched, but there was no further action from them. Within several moments there was no one left in the alley but Aegera and Tom.
The first shadows of dawn were creeping into the street sending the dregs of the night scurrying away from their perches and haunts. As he walked home from the embarrassment that had been the end of the meeting Yuri Hennigar tried to shrug his coat upward so that the turned up collar gave his face some shelter from the damp, cold breeze. The effect was not as warming as he would have hoped, but it was better than nothing. If he could remember to do it he would have to work with the other Adepts to create a wind deflector for his face. To hell with these minus twenty degree days. By the time they were done a man could walk down the street naked and not feel a lick of it.
Or teleport himself to Tahiti at sundown.
Yuri snorted. He was not under any of the illusions that the Westerners were. For whatever reason they seemed to think that everything would be sunshine and roses as soon as the entire Earth had learned the sorcery they were trying to pass off. What this McAllister that the woman spoke of like he was the Pope didn't seem to realize was exactly how crowded Tahiti would get if everyone was shooting off to Tahiti every night.
It was a typically Western view of the world. Overly rosy, completely short-sighted and oblivious to any of the realities of human nature.
Yuri pursed his lips as another gust of wind blasted into him.
His honeymoon period with the Adepts was fast approaching its end. The wonder and excitement he had felt had bloomed into hope, but that hope had been blunted, running into the same wall over and over again. Witchcraft and sorcery was amazing, but at its core it was power, a new one, but in reality no different than the first spear or rifle. Whoever wielded it was powerful, maybe the most powerful person on the planet, but at the end of the day they were still just a person. And a person was not anything without will.
Humanity would be perfect if it weren't for that pesky human nature.
Yuri pulled out the small key ring he kept in his right pocket, pulling his phone out of the opposite side. As his fingers flicked automatically through his keys he opened the remote camera app and spooled through the two cameras he had positioned in the apartment. The red border of the kitchen camera indicated motion inside, but as he glanced at the image he recognized the shape inside. She was waiting up for him, as always.
The lock on the security door was like a rabbit's foot kept in a gambler's pocket. Maybe it worked and maybe it didn't, but it made the user feel a little more secure. Like maybe there was some sort of artifact from God's own closet that could bend the laws of probability for him.
Yuri smiled at the idea as he fit the key into the lock. Locks would need a major overhaul as well.
As usual there were a couple of people in the stairs. Maybe selling drugs, maybe selling sex. Both? Both. Only a few weeks prior he might have thought about circling around to the back and using the rickety rungs of the fire escape. Now he didn't care so much. He had the power now. And eventually he would deal with them.
There were other things to deal with first.
Living in a slum because of your connections had a way of grating on a man. Especially when there was no explanation given. In the Han dynasty they would kill your parents, your brothers and sisters and your children. While not foolish enough to believe he had it worse, there was something... elegant about the finality of it. Hell, even in the old days they would throw your family in the gulag with you. These days they just slapped the names on a list and left you to starve in a glorious capitalist ghetto.
He opened the ratty apartment door and turned on the bare lightbulb hanging over the entrance. He crossed the mottled floor into the kitchen where she sat, huddled over a steaming teacup like an old beggar woman.
"I'm home, ma," Yuri said as he pulled the still-hot kettle from the stove and a cup from the door-less cupboard.
He kissed her dry, straw-like hair as he walked over to the counter and ladled a single spoonful into his mug.
She was a tough woman, his old mom. Even the past few years hadn't been enough to break her. Women like her didn't break, they just got worn down... eroded. Tapping the last drops of tea off the spoon he had to look again to make sure she hadn't fallen asleep at the table.
"You're out too long." Her words answered his question for him. "It's just like with your brother."
At first it had been rare, her mentioning him, but lately whenever Yuri started stretching his wings for a little more independence his sibling came up all the time. Like a cautionary tale for little boys who don't obey their mothers. And he had begun to form calluses wherever she had rubbed him with the stories.
If only she knew where he had been. But, he had decided it was better that she didn't know. Best she didn't have any supernatural worries to pile on top of her mundane ones.
"I've been looking," he said.
"Pah!" she replied. "We all know where that fool ended up. Some cell in a prison somewhere."
"I'm not looking for him," Yuri said. He didn't exactly know why he was explaining his intentions to her. Maybe he was asking permission. Maybe he wanted approval that would never be forthcoming. She blamed herself, he had come to realize a short while ago. And whatever stupid pride she still had would never let her hold anyone else liable. A mother was the world to her boy, in blame and in praise.
"Then who?"
"The ones responsible, ma."
His mother laughed into her tea. The throaty crackle of an old woman.
"And you what? Kill the judge? Kill the lawyers? For prosecuting a boy stupid enough to smuggle that trash?"
Maybe he thought.
"And then your brother is going to come home?"
"If we tear down the prisons," Yuri s
aid.
"Who is 'we'?"
He shook his head. "Forget it, ma. I don't expect you to understand."
"You think I don't understand? That I don't want the men who threw Christoph away to feel even a small bit of this?" She motioned to paint peeling off the walls. "But what are you going to do? Throw your life away trying to drag some remorse out of them. You can't eat remorse, Yuri."
Yuri whispered one of the words that the woman, Aegera or whatever she wished to be called, had given to him and felt the temperature of the tea in his hand drop by a few degrees.
"Yeah, ma. I know."
Jonah sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, eyes staring out between his fingers at the books surrounding him. They were not his usual blue notebooks, the ones he wrote down the words that came to him through the hours of study he had put in at the house, now a continent away. Those were still present, but shoved away into a corner. He found he had less and less use for them as time dragged by. These were all black.
They were all the important things. Things that worked. They were all he thought about and they were all that were important to him since that night at the old house.
That night had shaken Jonah McAllister down to the marrow of his bones, to the septum of his heart and the stem of his brain. It chilled him, kept him awake at night, haunted him whenever he tried to sit down and think. And whether he would admit to it or not it was worming its way into his work. Because he didn’t understand it, and what was more he didn’t think he ever could.
He had been reading almost constantly since, fighting to find some way to understand. That detective, the one with burns and scars all over his face, had followed him down farther than reason or sanity would allow. Had he even been allowed to cross the borders and jurisdictions that should have bound him? And how had the house been set ablaze if the police were watching it?
He hung his head lower.
He had let it happen.
And he sure as hell was not going to allow it to happen again. Even if Sandy (he couldn't bring himself to call her by her nom-de-guerre) was right and people didn't want to see that there was a new world opening up before them. Even if it meant that things got a little worse at first.
Jonah shook his head and reached for the coffee pot on the nightstand. His own thoughts seemed ancient as they echoed in his head.
Maybe we need to be more than mortals.
He sighed. With any luck he could have a few dozen Acolytes soon. They would do a far better job determining the direction this thing would take than he had so far. And he could simply recede into the background. Showing the world that anything was indeed possible and then fading into the background to work out new procedures and words was having a great deal of appeal since what had happened at the house. He was no leader, not fit to determine the right and the wrong about this power.
I can't change human nature.
Nevertheless, Sand—Aegera expected it of him and, because of that he felt like he was on a track, speeding towards something that was both horrific and rousing at the same time. He could see it coming, but he could do nothing to prevent disaster. Just lower his head and hope.
At times he was certain that he was having a never ending series of panic attacks, so fast was his heart pounding.
A sudden wash of dizziness and nausea swept into him as he sat looking over the disastrous apartment with its black books and half eaten food.
He certainly didn’t feel like anything more than mortal.
Scrum
It was late. The bleary eyed, sore-soled variety of late. That special blend of physical and mental exhaustion that produces an uncertainty that there is anything other than a wound down body and a shrouded mind. That hunted animal feeling that causes a breakdown in civility.
Aegera could feel it in the waitress clearing away the coffee cups from the table. Her eyes were rimmed in black and her fingers fumbled for a cloth to wipe away the stains left by the only other people in the café at that hour. Most likely she was a student, or someone who usually worked the day shift, cast into the abyss of night.
As the waitress walked away Aegera slipped an unreasonably large tip onto the table.
Tom sat across from her in the booth and two of the more talented Adepts: Uri and Pietro she thought their names were (she had a hard time keeping names straight anymore), had pulled a pair of chairs up to the front end of the table at which they sat. Each eyed the amount of money she had placed on the table skeptically.
“It’s not like I can’t afford it,” she muttered.
“We should bring her into the fold,” Yuri said with his implacable accent. “She looks… smart.”
Aegera sighed. “Jonah’s holding off on recruits for the time being. We need more trainers. We need more Acolytes.”
It was partly a lie. The decision had been as much hers as it had been his. Until they could do something about the disturbing trend of instructional videos showing up online she had decided to put a lid on new Initiates coming in. She just wished Jonah had seemed a little more committal about it, retreating back into his rooms with his usual mutterings.
Yuri scoffed. “Tell me; when do we get to meet the elusive Jonah McAllister? None of us Adepts have ever seen him. Some are saying he is nothing more than a fairy tale.”
Aegera’s hand clenched.
“Whoa.” Tom placed a hand clad in a black fingerless glove on the table. “There is one thing you never do in front of Aggie, and that's question the Big Mick. Besides, I’ve seen him. He’s real enough... after a fashion.”
There was a look in Yuri’s eye that betrayed an instant distrust in Tom. It was the familiar macho distrust that any highschooler would know by heart. Some caught it worse than others, but it almost always ended up wasting everyone's time.
“What is he planning to do about the police?” Yuri scoffed. “We can’t just let them push us out of the way forever. We will have to confront them eventually.”
“We don’t have to confront them,” Pietro asked in his calm, Italian laced English. “What we need is to enrol some of the government. If they become one of us then—”
“We're not an elitist organization,” Aegera cut in. “If some of the... patriarchs want in, fine, but I'm not going to court any of them.”
"It's oligarchs, but—I mean—don't call them that," Tom said.
“The question remains: what are we going to do?” Pietro sighed.
"I—" Aegera tucked a lock of icy hair behind her ear. Flames danced in front of her as she thought about the consequences of having the attention of the authorities, or worse, actively challenging them. "We're not ready for anything like what you're talking about. We have to..." She swallowed. "Just keep doing what we're doing."
“And why should we listen to you?” Yuri said, loud enough that, were there anyone else in the café they would have had no trouble hearing. “You say... let me try to get the high and mighty tone correct: Anything is possible. But, do you really mean it? Or do you mean: Anything is possible as long as it doesn't piss off the assholes in charge?”
Pietro looked down at the table, flipping his fork over sheepishly. "He's not wrong. You've been here for months. You know what things are like. Unless you're purposefully not seeing it."
"I..." Her voice trailed off as she dropped her eyes to the table. She suddenly felt grotesque "I know what happens when you piss off the wrong assholes. And it's best that we just stay the course."
Yuri scoffed. "And I've seen what happens when you waste your life waiting."
"You're not in charge here, Yuri," Aegera’s voice became low and threatening in the dimness of the café.
"And neither are you," the man replied. "You've abdicated to the assholes."
"You're still going to take orders from me."
She had to believe that even Tom was a little unnerved by what she was saying, but the very idea that someone could be so ungrateful caused her ire to rise and her immense sense of disgust, though long since
buried, to rise to the surface once again.
“Because your knowledge flows through me. And if you step out of line—” She glared at him. “You’re going to wind up learning it the hard way.”
She cringed as the sentence came out of her. It was a ham-fisted threat coming from a woman who was uncertain of exactly how she was supposed to keep anyone in line. It had been much easier back at the house. They had all known each other, lived together.
Yuri drummed his fingers on the table. He looked unimpressed by her threat, but surprised that she had said it. It was clear that he cared no more for lectures from a woman wearing eyeliner than from a man wearing it. Behind his eyes a calculation was running. He leaned across the table as he spoke.
His head bobbed quickly, perhaps nodding. “I have been threatened by much more powerful people than you. You tell the Great Jonah McAllister that I would trade all of his secrets for one night when my mother could sleep without worrying about where she would wake up in the morning, or if they would wake up in the morning. I would trade his secrets and I would trade my life. And if he is not willing to stick his own neck out, then there are those who would.”
Yuri shoved his chair away from the booth and stormed out of the café, disturbing the bells above the door violently as the exhausted waitress stared after him.
There were a few moments of quiet. Aegera took an angry sip from the new cup of coffee that had arrived and allowed a thin moment of satisfaction from the look on the waitress’s face as she cleared away the tip.
“He is right,” Tom said after she had gone. “We want people who need something to believe in. They need something to believe in because they have problems bigger than themselves. Food, shelter, all that stuff we can make out of thin air. But justice…”
Reactivity
Within the basement of the apartment complex that had been purchased by an organization called Acolyte Inc., beyond the large, post-Soviet boiler there was a door. It opened up onto what had once been a supply closet, but upon opening the door one would find that the back of the closet was gone, replaced by a man-sized, sphere-shaped void in the ground that lay beyond the outer wall of the building itself. This was followed by another void, slightly below, but joined against the boundary of the first. Beyond that was another and then another, each sinking slightly farther into the Earth, carefully avoiding sewers and cabling using maps that had since been posted haphazardly on the wall of the early spheres. Along the way the edges of each sphere became less jagged and more direct in their descent until a ladder had to be used to descend through the last several holes.
