People want to know, "What do you do in a situation like that?" Like there's some mage's trick or training manual procedure that can stop an ambush once it's started. There is only one thing to do: fight. And that's how we have to train, or we'd all fall into that mental trap of dissociation and disbelief. We react by fighting, a knee-jerk reflex of killing, and the rest is up to Lady Luck as to who gets killed and who goes home. Your odds are poor, which is why the ambush is such a popular tactic and why Wreck Squads suffer such terrible casualty rates.
In this particular ambush, it wasn't until after I'd been hit that my mind even processed the idea of AMBUSH. And it wasn't like I said to myself, oh gee, an ambush, they must be behind an illusory wall to my right, so I'll shoot in that direction. I didn't have time to process any of that. I just burned my magazine in the direction the enemy seemed to be firing from, and hoped that I hit something important.
Other than that, I didn't know shit. I was on the floor, half-passed out from wound shock by the time it all actually dawned on me. Somebody pulled me out of there, dragged me down the hallway by my harness. I didn't know who it was. I knew it couldn’t be Peter; my half-numb mind replayed the sight of his head getting blown off enough times for that fact to sink in.
I didn't know who was dead, I didn't know who was alive, I didn't even know if it was a friend or a foe who was dragging me away. Quite frankly, I didn't have the strength to care. All I could do was concentrate on breathing in and out, and trying to stay conscious, which believe you me, is not easy when you're hit that hard.
It's like trying to stay awake during a quiet stretch of road at midnight on a twenty-hour drive. There's no drama; it's really deceptively boring, which is what makes it so deadly. Your mind starts to lose focus, and if you let your guard down for one second, one tiny little second, to rest your eyelids or check them for holes or whatever other excuse seems reasonable at the time, you're gone.
The dragging stopped and a million years or a few seconds later, somebody was calling my name, telling me to hold on. My shoulder started to feel a little itchy, and by the time I grumbled and tried to lift my arm to scratch it, the world was back in focus. My mind was wide awake, if slightly off-balance, and I felt as good as new. Almost.
It looked like my savior was Stephen Tawnborn, the living dead.
***
"Don't move too quickly, Cass," Stephen said, helping her to a seat and leaning her back against the wall. "I've patched you up, but let your body get used to the idea first."
"Who... who's with us?" Cass asked, blinking through a momentary surge of dizziness.
"Nobody. It's just us."
Cass blinked hard again and shook her head. "What? Where's... I saw something hit Dread, and Peter..."
"He's dead. They're all dead, Cass. Can you stand? We can't stay here too long."
He offered her his hand, but she shook her head, refusing his hand, refusing his words. They couldn't all be dead. Not all of them, not Dread, nothing could kill him...
"They're gone, Cass. Even Dread. He's the reason we made it out of there; he was fighting some huge thing hand-to-hand, and I pulled you past them. I guess the bad guys didn't want to risk hitting one of their own. He ran interference for us, bought us enough time for me to drag you out of there."
Cass still couldn't process it. "Were you hit?"
Stephen smiled and pointed to a bloodstained hole in his fatigues. "Already took care of it. Sorry, I had to take care of myself first; I was losing too much blood to drag you, so I had to stop for a second and..."
"Right, of course, forget it," Cass said. "Help me up."
She gave herself a moment to test her balance once she was on her feet. "Where's my vest, my harness?"
"Had to pull it off you. You were too heavy with it."
"My weapon?"
"Attached to the harness, remember? I didn't think to stop and grab it, I was hauling you out of there like crazy and hoping I wouldn't bleed out too soon."
Cass checked her thigh holster. "My sidearm?"
Stephen shrugged. "Dunno. You must've lost it during the ambush, maybe drew it and dropped it."
"Great. At least you still have yours."
She took a moment to look around, as if still trying to wrap her head around what had happened. “You’re sure about the others?” she said.
She didn’t want to believe it. She kept re-winding the scraps of sensory information that she could remember, but it was all so chaotic and jumbled.
Peter had definitely been headshot. She kept seeing that over and over. She’d been hit. So had Stephen. The volume of fire that had come at them, at that close of range… Stephen was right. She kept wanting to deny it, but it had to be true.
“Yeah. All dead,” Stephen said. “I’m sorry, Cass. I couldn’t… there was nothing I could do…”
Cass tuned him out. She suddenly felt hollow, cored out, as the impact of Stephen’s words truly hit home for her. All gone. The entire team.
The seven of them had been family. The truth of it was, Cass had felt closer to everyone on her team than she had felt to her own sister. Mike and Tara were the two newest additions, both as replacements to casualties, but even they felt like family to her.
All those years. All those hours spent training together. All those ops… she’d lost track how many. The blood and sweat and tears shed together, all while fighting off living nightmares. All gone now, wiped away with a mage’s hand.
“How did he…” she began to say.
“I don’t know. The whole thing took me completely by surprise. I’m not even sure exactly what happened. Everything went to shit and I just… saved who I could.”
“That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t talking about Polonius.”
“Oh. What did you mean?”
“Dread,” Cass said. “How did he...”
Stephen looked down. “It’s like I said, Cass. I didn’t see much. Everything was chaos. Something big jumped him. A conjuration of some kind that I didn’t recognize… humanoid, a little bigger than him, if you can believe that anything’s bigger than him.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to joke. I know he meant a lot to you.”
“They all meant a lot to me.”
There it was, spoken out loud. Speaking the words in the past tense seemed to make it all slam home, and now she felt truly empty, like the center of her being had fallen out of her to drop into a bottomless pit.
She couldn’t afford to get sucked into a tar pit of despair. Not now. Not in the middle of it all. But she couldn’t help saying one more thing to Stephen. After as awful as she’d been to him, he’d still stepped into the line of fire, more than once, to save the team. To save her.
“You meant a lot to me,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that shit to you earlier. About being a V… Revived Individual.”
He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Forget it. Cass… if I could’ve switched places with any of them…”
“I know.”
A flood of emotions began to overwhelm her, and she shoved back against it with everything she had. There wasn’t any time for this. Mourning the others, mourning Dread, thinking about what might have been with him, all of that was a luxury she couldn’t afford right now.
She slammed her palms against the wall. Again. Again. She couldn’t afford grief. Grief would paralyze her. There were still lethal threats all around her, and she needed to survive.
For revenge. Revenge against Polonius, that rotting dead psychopath, for taking everything away from her.
Hate. She needed hate right now. Hate would get her moving. And so she slammed her palms against the wall again, again, crushing the grief, firing up her anger, shoving aside every thought of what she’d lost so that only the rage remained.
Finally, there was nothing that was soft left inside of her and only steel remained. She clenched her hands into fists, looking down at them, and then nodded. “Okay. Okay. Fuck this guy.”
“
We’re taking Polonius?”
“We’re ending Polonius.”
“I’m with you, Cass.”
Cass looked at him, still feeling like shit for the way she’d treated him since his return. At least she had someone with her to stand against all this madness.
She gave herself one last moment to collect herself before nodding. "All right. Let's move... Stephen, wrong way."
Stephen shook his head. "No, Cass, it's this way. Polonius is pulling some Trick; I can feel exactly where he is now, come on."
"What are you, nuts?” she said.
“You said you wanted to take him.”
“Not head on, Stephen.”
“But he’s right there!”
“Stephen, we can't hope to take on a Maestro with one dinky handgun between the two of us! We’ve got to get to the roof!"
"Cass, we can't walk away from this guy! Not after what he's done!"
"Oh, we're not,” Cass said. “Believe me, we're definitely not walking away. Two of those rucksacks on the roof are full of plastic explosives; we spread them out, rig them up, rappel down to the ground, and blow them. The top floors cave in and collapse the rest of the building and we crush that crazy motherfucker under a million tons of concrete."
Stephen paused, shook his head. "Revival Technologies will never let you do that. Not destroy their own building."
"Yeah? Well, fuck them. We're here, they're out there, so let's go."
"Can't let you do that, Cass," he said.
She looked down and his laser sight was on her chest.
Cass froze. She didn’t want to believe it. Not now. Not after she’d lost everything and Stephen was all she had left. Not after he'd done so much so right, but the pistol was pointed at her and there was no denying it.
"Don't do this, Stephen,” she said. “Not now. Not after all those things you said..."
"Don't have a choice. Come on."
"What do you mean, you don’t have a choice? Is it Revival Tech? Do they have some sort of implant on you, some way they can shut you down unless you..."
"It's not Revival Technologies. Come on. This way."
Cass risked balking for another second. "You're not going to shoot me. You wouldn't have healed me just to turn around and kill me."
Stephen's face was blank, ice, lifeless. "I won't kill you, Cass, you're right. But I will shoot you. Shoot out your kneecaps and drag you if you won't come quietly."
Cass looked into his eyes and saw nothing. All of his previous concern, the regret at not being able to save the others, the heartfelt loyalty to her and the team, all had vanished without a trace. Now, his eyes were a doll's eyes, a shark's eyes, a corpse's eyes.
And with that, all her soft feelings toward him were gone as well.
"All right,” she said. “Where are we going, Vive Job?"
Stephen winced at the word. "To see the Maestro."
Polonius
It seemed fitting, in this house of resurrection, to use their own people against them. People harbor such hatred in their hearts, ready to turn on each other for the slightest insult, real or imagined. It was appropriate to bring back the first squad sent against me, and pit them against these new transgressors.
Yes, send your best against me. I will shatter them and use the pieces to create my own army.
Had they forgotten, my enemies, that we were the ones who made Revival possible in the first place?
They had been floundering in the dark, Adjani and his gang of fools, creating so much sound and fury, accomplishing nothing. It was only when my dark goddess and I combined our talents… my mastery of the arcane, her mastery of death… that their desperate attempts to restore the dead found some traction at last.
We were the ones to create the procedures. Even with our help, Adjani’s people still needed machines and technology and a team of experts to make their miracle happen. But with the new powers granted to me by my resurrection, it became an easy matter to Revive the dead without assistance.
Once they were Revived, I was able to control them. It was the last thing my Isis taught me, before I made my journey into the night lands beyond the Styx. Control over the dead. Once those forbidden mysteries were unlocked, it became clear that mastery over the dead meant mastery over the Revived.
You see, they are still dead, those who have been Revived. That is the great secret that the worm Adjani and his corporate masters are so desperate to keep hidden from the world.
Their expensive miracle is a lie. A sham. A trick of the light. It never worked, and it never will.
This is why I needed one of my enemy alive. This is why I took such pains to direct them to where I needed them to be. This is why I walked them into my trap.
This body that has been returned, that I now inhabit, is failing me. I can feel it coming apart by slow degrees. Adjani’s abilities are imperfect, his miracle is imperfect, and so my resurrection is imperfect. Every Revived person slowly comes apart, like meat that has already gone spoiled.
But there is a solution. One that has been dreamt about and yearned for by mages and Maestros for ages. An impossible Trick, one so difficult that even the greatest of my order has never been able to master it, one so elusive that those same masters doubted if their fantasies of making it come true were even possible.
As I have said, my powers have grown exponentially since my return. As Osiris returned as more, so have I. The greatest of the Maestros are like children compared to me. All of the unknown mysteries are now revealed.
The impossible solution is now possible. To take another’s body as one’s own.
Possession, is the old term for it, but that is a crude word, a throwback to ancient beliefs in demons and Satan. I will tear the very soul out of my new vessel and take it as my own.
I had wanted the big man they call Dread, but the fortunes of war are fickle. The rune trap with the steel rods had held him in place, exactly as planned, but the clever little rats managed to figure out a way to wriggle out of the trap, and he was denied to me.
Very well. The one called Cass will have to do.
Her body will allow me to complete my destiny. This is how I know I’m not mad. Not deluded. I truly am a god returned.
Impossible, you say. For others. But no longer for me.
However, I will need her intact.
This is why I needed my confederate. I found one in he who knew what it meant to come back from Beyond. Stephen, they call him. He has felt the same things I have felt, has seen the same things I have seen.
I whispered to him, quietly at first, as my Isis whispered to me in death. I showed him what was possible. I showed him the truth. I showed him who I truly am. What I intend to bring to the world.
The crude animals cowering outside this building are fools to fear me. They should fear each other, fear themselves, the way that they hate, the way that they vacillate. They know not who they are, what they want, what is right.
I know. I am Wisdom, I am Power, I am Ultimate Authority, and this is why they fear me. My certainty makes them terrified, turns them to rash actions against me, when such power and clarity could be theirs.
When my vision of the new world comes to pass…. I will bring order. I will bring peace. Those who obey, I will lift on high. Those who defy me must kneel… or fall.
All the heathens must do to achieve enlightenment, is worship me.
They are a prideful people, though, and I will have to drag them to their knees, as they will not fall prostrate on their own. Very well. It shall be done.
All this I whispered to Stephen, my confederate, this dead man returned. My mastery over him is complete. There was no way for him to resist. He was always destined to be my acolyte, from the moment of his re-birth.
He has done well. First to insure Dread did not die from the steel rune trap, next when he tried to convince the others to abandon him. If he had succeeded, the ambush I had set up on the twenty-second floor would have killed the rest and I could have possessed Dr
ead’s body at my leisure.
It was not Stephen’s fault that the rats figured a way out of the maze. And he did well at the ambush, dragging Cass away and preserving her life so that I would have a new body to inhabit.
Bring her to me, my son. Your salvation, and mine, awaits.
***
"Who'd you hit us with, Stephen? Where'd you get the guns and heavy enough ammo to punch through our body armor?"
Stephen paused as they walked down the last few stairs to the landing for the twenty-first floor. He waved towards the nearby door with his handgun. "Just g-g-g..."
His lips tripped over the word, and his head tilted a little to the left, as if he were working a kink out of his neck. It was over in an instant. "Just go."
"You all right there, Stephen?" Cass asked. "Is a wire getting crossed? Maybe that turtleneck is a little too tight."
Stephen stopped his self-conscious hand halfway up to his neck. "Knock it off, Cass."
"No, really. Is there a big steel bolt sticking out of your neck there, or..."
He moved with blinding speed, shoving Cass backward to crash into the concrete wall of the stairwell. She almost came back at him, snarling, but his pistol was up in her face, holding her back like an invisible hand.
"Go on, do it!" she screamed. "Do it, you rotting motherfucker! Pull the trigger!"
"Shut up!" Stephen shouted back, tiny muscles quivering in his face in rage. "You shut up! I saved your ass, you ungrateful piece of shit! That last op with the Slashers, you were torn to pieces, and I stopped to save you, and that's what got me killed! I didn’t ask to come back, I didn’t want…"
He stopped himself, glared at her, finally shook his head.
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 13
