by Charley Case
She had completely stopped using clothing to express herself out of fear.
Mila’s brows lowered in anger. Fuck those judgmental pricks. They had stolen something from her because they didn’t want to feel uncomfortable talking to a girl who had the audacity to dress the way she wanted. They had taken advantage of a young woman who was just trying to figure out who she was.
Not anymore. She was the master of her own destiny.
A smile crept onto her lips. She was going to take Danica shopping as soon as she got home.
“You’re right,” Mila said, crossing her arms. “It was my issue. Missy can dress however she wants.”
“So, you’re all good with her now?” Remmy looked up with a smile.
“Oh, no. She’s still insufferable, but I now know that blaming the way she dresses has nothing to do with how I feel about her. That’s another issue altogether.” Mila narrowed her eyes. “How did you know I needed to hear that?”
“I went through the same thing back in my thirties. Conformed to a “higher standard” so I would be taken seriously. It took me nearly fifteen more years to understand that I was taken seriously because I was the best at what I did. No one in my tribe can hold a candle to my moves.” She laughed. “Can you believe I was too scared to get naked in front of others until I was forty?”
“I’m going to be honest. I can’t imagine a shy Remmy. Like, at all. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen your ass more than my own over the last year.”
Remmy laughed and shook her shoulders at Mila in a suggestive way. “You gotta be proud of what you’ve got, and if you’re not, you have to figure out how to love yourself enough to get there.”
“Damn, Remmy. When did you get so wise?”
She shrugged. “You learn a lot in forty-eight years. Sometimes listening to your elders is a good thing.”
Mila laughed. “I always forget you’re older than me.”
“It’s my youthful complexion.”
“Yeah. It is.” Mila laughed.
The bell over the door rang, and Carl and his team walked in, scanning the cafe for Mila.
Mila waved her arm over her head to get the group’s attention. They picked their way between the tables with care not to knock into anyone with the large black duffel bags each of them carried.
Mila stood to meet them and gave each a quick hug. She then pointed out Remmy to the group. “Guys, this is my good friend, Remmy. Remmy, this is Carl, Tina, Howard, and Jenny. I assume Nick is on his way?”
“He said he would be here in about five minutes.” Carl checked his watch.
“You guys want a coffee or something?” Mila waved a hand at her half-empty cup on the table. “It’s really good.”
“I could go for one,” Howard admitted as he licked his lips.
“Me too,” Tina added.
Carl pulled out a fifty from his wallet and handed it to Tina. “Why don’t you get to-go cups for all of us. I’m sure Nick will want one too.”
Carl and Jenny took a seat as the other two went up to the counter to place the order. He stowed his bag under his chair and leaned in as Jenny pulled out a tablet and powered it on.
“Okay, what’s the sitrep?” Carl asked.
Mila gave a quick recap of what had happened since her nightmare that morning and ended with them escaping the factory.
“What’s the address of the factory?” Jenny asked, tablet at the ready.
Remmy pulled out her phone and opened the map app, found the building quickly, and showed it to the elf woman. Jenny entered the info. A few seconds later, she laid the tablet down on the table so they could all see it.
Mila was surprised when a set of blueprints for the factory loaded. “How the hell do you have blueprints for this place?”
“Most buildings’ blueprints are out there for the taking. You just have to know where to look and how to get in when you find them.” Jenny nodded with a wink to make her pink ponytail bounce.
“Can you point out where the targets were gathered?” Carl was all business.
Jenny sobered up and made notes on the screen as Mila told them what she could.
“The place was pretty big, though, so they might have more in another section of the building.”
Carl considered then shook his head. “Doubtful. While it is a large building, it’s relatively small for a factory. Most of the space is just this one large area, with a few administration areas, like where you ran into the thralls. The whole building is roughly fifty by a hundred meters, not a lot of room to withdraw if things go badly. You said there were old machines blocking off parts of the building?”
“Well, I don't know that they were set up to block anything. I think they were just left to rot where they had been installed along the walls. We could use them for cover, though; those things were solid steel. The center area was open, though.”
“We have to be careful of the wards,” Remmy said out of the blue.
Mila blinked in surprise. “What wards?”
“You didn't see em? They were all over the outside. Most of them were disguised as graffiti, but I saw a couple that would make teleporting in impossible.”
Carl sighed. “You do like the hard missions, don’t you, Mila?”
She smiled. “I wouldn’t need your help if they were easy.”
“Fair point.”
“Hey, Nick’s here.” Tina informed them as she came over to the table with a drink carrier full of white paper coffee cups.
“Okay, we can assess the situation better onsite. You ready?”
Mila nodded, then leaned over to Remmy. “Hey, can I borrow some money?”
Remmy didn't even ask her what it was for, just nodded and handed over the much-diminished roll of cash.
Two minutes later, Mila came out of the cafe and jogged across the street to the waiting white sprinter van, a pound of the delicious coffee beans in her hand. She decided Finn deserved a treat after all the work he was putting in for Penny.
“Hi, Nick. Okay, let’s go.” She climbed into the back of the van with the rest of them.
Chapter Eighteen
Mila watched through the van’s windshield as Howard casually strolled past the factory and glanced at the large brick structure. When he had passed the building, he crossed the street. His long orc legs ate up the distance quickly as he headed down a side street in order to circle back to the van.
Remmy had been right about the graffiti. The entire bottom ten feet of the faded white bricks had been covered in some extremely impressive street art. After watching Penny create several wards for the condo, Mila could now pick out several similar sigils pained between the more elaborate murals.
While they waited for Howard to return, the team changed from their street clothes into their black tactical gear, strapping wands and guns where they needed to. The number of flying elbows and knees as four people changed clothes in the back of a van prompted Mila and Remmy to move into the front seat. As she looked over her shoulder from the passenger seat into the back, Mila could see that the team was nearly dressed and kitted out.
Something about the view made her eyes water. She blinked a few times as she tried to determine what was so odd about the angle.
“Is the back of this van larger on the inside than it should be?”
Where the cabin connected to the storage space, filled with racks of equipment and a small desk built into the walls, the view seemed warped, almost like looking at an object through a glass of water. The whole image was there, but the proportions didn’t make sense to her brain.
“Yeah.” Tina strapped her pistol to her thigh. “We use these things for long-term surveillance. Having five people crammed into a regular van for days on end wouldn’t work out for anyone. We can crank up the effect and add a second room with cots and a toilet, but it amplifies the distortion effect and makes using the side doors impossible. If you’re not used to it, the effect can make you pretty sick.”
“That’s so cool!” Remmy’s
grin nearly touched her ears.
“Pretty useful, but dangerous if done improperly.”
The side door slid open and the huge form of Howard jumped in and closed the door behind him. He had already changed into his black pants and shirt before he had left, but he pulled off the brown Carhartt and began strapping his utility harness over his shoulders while he reported what he found.
“It’s a powerful set of wards. Blocks all teleporting in or out of the building unless authorized. Additionally, there’s a ward that will set off a pretty nasty series of traps if we try and enter the building, although that one looks like it’s one way.”
“We didn’t set anything off when we ran out of the second-floor side door,” Mila confirmed.
Howard nodded, strapping his pistol to his thigh. “On top of all that, there are alarms attached to all the wards that will instantly alert whoever’s in the building.”
“Any good news?” Carl asked, his face sour.
“Actually, yeah. It’s a powerful series of wards, but in its power, there’s a flaw. Each ward supports the ones around it. It’s like a scaffold; each part supports the others to create a strong structure, but at the same time, if you remove one piece, the whole thing comes tumbling down.”
Mila snorted a laugh. “So, all we have to do is set it off, and then we don't have to worry about setting it off?”
“Pretty much.” Howard chuckled.
Mila bit her lip and looked out the passenger side window trying to think of a way inside. They had parked close to the mouth of an alley between two rows of businesses with apartments on top. The whole city was set up that way for the most part. San Francisco had run out of land years ago, so they had built up instead of out. Everywhere you looked, as much housing and commerce had been crammed into every nook and cranny as they feasibly could. That meant that there was a lot of trash for a given area.
As she stared into the alley, Mila saw that there were several dumpsters full to the top with garbage bags from the apartments above and loose scraps of food from the restaurant on the ground floor. In the warm spring, air all that garbage was a perfect breeding ground for flies. A black cloud of the things swarmed in and out of the dumpster as they searched for food and places to lay their eggs.
Mila’s eyebrow rose as the beginnings of a plan formed in her mind.
“How big would something have to be to set off the wards?” Mila looked at Howard. “I assume they don’t want them going off every time a rat strolls in.”
“True,” the orc said, scratching at his chin as he did the math in his head. Even with a concealment spell, Howard’s Orcish features were slightly too large, so it took a second to fully stroke his large chin. “If I had to guess, I would say anything bigger than a cat would be enough.”
“Perfect!” Nick threw his hands up in victory. “I’ll just shift into my weasel form and slip in to take a quick look.”
Howard shook his head in the negative. “Wouldn’t work. You’d set those things off no matter how small you make yourself. There’s a ward specifically to look for magical potential in the creatures. You might be the size of a weasel, but your aura would give you away in a second.”
“What about a whole bunch of little lifeforms all at once?” Mila lofted one brow.
“That would work, but they would have to be packed together pretty tightly.”
“We still need to get a lay of the land inside there,” Carl interjected. “Would I be able to send a bubble drone in?”
Howard shook his head.
Carl frowned. “Figures.”
“I think I have something, but I don’t know how well it’ll work,” Mila said with a half-smile. “I can ask one of those flies to go take a look for us.”
She pointed at the fly-encrusted dumpster.
Carl’s eyes narrowed. “You can do that?”
“I can, but I don’t know how well it will be able to report what it sees. My magic seems to enhance an insect’s intelligence while I talk to it, but it only goes so far. Plus, it’s a fly, not exactly the brightest of insects. They’re basically instinct machines.”
Carl looked to the rest of the group. “Can anyone think of a reason not to try it?”
Everyone shook their heads in the negative.
“Go for it.” Carl took a seat on the small swivel chair at the desk. “How long do you think it will take?”
“I have no idea.”
Mila turned back around, settled into her seat, and focused on the cloud of flies. Not really knowing how to get one particular fly’s attention, especially from a distance, she decided to use a little magic to try and focus down on one individual and bring it over to the van so she could explain what she needed from it. She just needed to get its attention.
Not knowing what she was doing but having a basic idea in her head to try, she gathered a tiny portion of magic in her mind. With the drop of power acting as a communication node, she sent out another, even smaller portion of magic so as not to overwhelm the little insect’s primitive mind.
Through the focused drop she held in her mind, she could feel the second wisp of power shoot out away from her, crossing the short distance in a flash to slam into a particularly large specimen.
Mila gasped as she could see and hear what the fly experienced. She opened her eyes and felt a moment of vertigo as she saw two images at once. The double vision wasn’t too bad until she turned her head and her brain suddenly couldn’t process the two views at the same time. Bile rose to the back of her throat. She quickly closed her eyes so she could deal with only one image.
Her stomach settled, and she focused on the odd experience.
She realized the fly hadn’t moved since the connection was made, and she wondered if she had somehow broken its mind. She thought about how freaky it would be to see herself through the fly’s eyes. She let out a squeak as the fly spun around to face the van.
“Are you okay?” Remmy put her hand on Mila's arm.
Mila nodded and smiled. “This is so freaky. I think I just possessed a fly. Hang on, let me try something.”
She sent her will through the connection and made the fly shoot forward, then turn in a circle, followed by a barrel roll.
She laughed with giddy excitement. “This is crazy! I have complete control of this thing. I’m going to take it inside and scope things out.”
“Wait,” Howard warned. “How much magic did you put into that fly?”
“Barely any at all. Not even enough to make a spark.”
“First, that’s fucking impressive,” the orc said in his deep monotone. “Second, you’re probably good to pass through the wards.”
“Probably?”
“Ninety-nine percent. More actually,” he amended. “Every animal has at least a small bit of magic in them, so the wards would account for that.”
“Okay. I’m off.”
Mila willed the insect to fly across the road, then began scouting the outside of the building, looking for anything they might have missed.
The warped vision of the fly’s prismatic eyes was not nearly as hard to comprehend as Mila had thought. She guessed most of the vision processing was being done by the fly, and she was getting more of an integrated view than the actual view. It was the only thing that made sense to her. She had seen demonstrations of what flies see at the museum. Looking through the little prismatic spyglass at the display had given her an instant headache, but this wasn’t so bad.
A lap around the building wen far quicker than she thought possible, but the little fly could really move when she gave it a direction. Flies were quick, but Mila realized that this one was not doing its normal haphazard ducks and dodges that flies did to keep themselves from being too predictable and have a bird snatch them out of the air. Mila gave the haphazard flight pattern a shot, just for realism, and almost puked. It looked like she would just have to be a predictable fly.
After checking the ground level, she shot up to the roof to see if there were any nasty
tricks up there, but it looked clear.
Not having any more reasons to stall, she found a broken window among the panes of glass that wrapped all the way around the top of the building. With a deep breath and the hope that she wasn’t going to set off the wards, she shot through the opening and into the relative darkness of the factory.
From close to the ceiling, the wide angle of the fly’s perspective made the interior look huge.
“Hand me a tablet and a pen.” Mila held out a hand but kept her eyes closed. “Actually, pull up the blueprints. I’ll mark everything on there.”
A tablet and stylus were placed in her hand. She put them in her lap while she flew to one corner of the building and looked down so she could memorize a small section of the machinery layout. She opened her eyes and began to mark everything on the image of the blueprints.
Mila quickly realized that she didn’t have to memorize the layout, just use her double vision to focus from one to the other, and fill out each part of the layout.
She found the Rougarou pack in the center of the building. They were quiet, most of them taking naps in big piles of black fur and talons. She did a quick count and marked that spot on the blueprint with a sixty-seven.
The storeroom where they had run into the thralls had been cleared of its shelves. Those huge metal monstrosities had been pushed flat against the walls. The more than three hundred thralls now stood in a large, tight-packed circle in the middle of the room.
Mila marked it all down, including the several doors that had been welded shut either by the previous tenants or Azoth’s people.
She realized she was stalling again, not wanting to see how bad off Victoria was.
Mila steeled herself and flew over to the last section of the factory to take an accounting.
Chapter Nineteen
Mila’s fly closed in on two figures in a cleared-out section of the factory floor. She directed the fly to get close enough that she could hear, but not so close that it would be noticed. She ended up about ten feet above and behind Yaminah’s left shoulder as she faced the bound Valkyrie.
