The Equilibrium of Magic

by Michael W. Layne

  She could just make out that Bradley was slumped on the floor trying to reach high enough to hit the button on the podium that would retract the plastic cylinder.

  Mona reached over, flipped up the safety lid and slammed her palm down on the red emergency release button. The cylinder and the plastic safety wall immediately retracted into the floor just as Merrick burst through the door to the lab.

  “What the hell happened down here?” he said as he ran past Mona, heading for Bradley, who was clutching his right leg and screaming in agony as his blood spurted everywhere.

  Mona heard Merrick say something that reminded her of viscous oil being poured onto dry, cracked earth as she hurried to Bradley’s side as well.

  Bradley was still screeching in pain, but the blood spurting from his leg had stopped.

  Mona and Merrick knelt beside Bradley, and Mona could see that most of Bradley’s right leg was gone.

  What was left hung by only a few shards of bone and ligament.

  Mona turned away—her stomach close to revolting and ejecting her breakfast.

  “What happened to him?” Merrick said.

  As soon as Merrick spoke, Mona knew the answer.

  “I think he had a pencil in his pocket,” she said.

  That’s what had been missing from the workbench. Out of pure reflex, while Bradley had been busy gloating about how easy it would be to test the word, he must have pocketed his wooden pencil without consciously realizing it. He essentially had placed an improvised explosive device right where his leg connected to his body.

  When Bradley had spoken the dragon word, the effects had been stronger than he had expected.

  Much stronger.

  The pencil had exploded and taken most of his leg with it.

  Bradley’s mouth hung open, and his eyes stared wildly ahead. He was in shock—neither his body nor his mind able to cope with what had just happened to him.

  “Can’t you help him more with your magic?” Mona said.

  Merrick uttered another sound that shook the room like a giant’s foot planting itself on the ground, and Bradley’s heartbeat slowed as he closed his eyes and fell into what appeared to be a tormented sleep.

  “I gave him some of the strength from Kernak the Mountain,” Merrick said. “The pain’s still there, but for a short while, he’ll be close to invulnerable and won’t be able to feel it.”

  Merrick looked at Mona directly in her eyes.

  “We need to get him to see Doc Reilly right away, but I want to talk about how this happened later,” he said, his voice bordering on yelling.

  She glanced down at where Bradley’s leg used to be and realized that no amount of healing from their on-site doctor, either magic-based or science-based, was going to fix it. She nodded and helped Merrick carry the unconscious Bradley out the lab door and over to the elevators.

  She knew that Merrick was pumped full of adrenaline and trying to deal with the situation at hand, but she couldn’t help feeling a little hurt that he had yelled at her. Bradley was the senior programmer here, and she had warned him a million times about that stupid pencil.

  This was his fault—not hers.

  As they waited for the elevator door to open, Merrick hit the wall with his fist.

  “This is pointless,” Merrick said. “Doc’s not going to be able to help him any more than I just did. We’re going to have to get him to the Earth Clan. One of their healers might be able to weave him back together. I’ve heard about them doing a lot more with a lot less.”

  The elevator door dinged and opened up as they dragged Bradley inside, and Merrick hit the button for the second floor.

  While they waited, Merrick tapped the implant in his right ear.

  “Cara, meet me at the infirmary as soon as possible,” he said. “Bradley’s been in an accident. Pretty bad. I’ll brief you when I see you. Yes, Mona’s fine.”

  Merrick took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “We need to get him stabilized and moved to the Earth Clan as soon as possible before the tissue that’s still alive dies. As soon as we get off the elevator, I’ll give him some more strength from Kernak, but I can’t do much more than that.”

  Mona nodded, and prepared to help pull Bradley’s body out of the elevator as the second floor approached.

  When the elevator dinged and the door opened, they moved Bradley as quickly as possible to the infirmary down at the end of the hall. At one point, Merrick uttered a word under his breath, and the floor shook again as if a giant’s foot had just landed upon it. Mona felt Bradley’s body suddenly relax even more.

  As they entered the suite that looked more like it belonged in a hospital wing than in a high-tech building, Merrick called out.

  “Doc! We need your help here.”

  Within minutes, Cara had joined them, and Bradley was in the hospital bed, hooked up to an intravenous drip of something that was keeping him out cold and out of pain.

  “No offense, Doc,” Merrick said, turning to the tall, lanky man in the white lab coat, “but this is way beyond your capabilities, even with the words you have at your disposal. Do what you can to stabilize him and to save as much of the bone and tissue as you can. Call me the second you think he’s stable enough to travel. Am I clear?”

  The doctor nodded and went back to tending his patient, who suddenly opened his eyes and shouted, “I am Bradley!” before going unconscious again.

  Merrick turned to Cara, then Mona. At first, his eyes were filled with the fire of rage, but in an instant, they cooled, and he gently put his hands on Mona’s shoulders.

  “I know this wasn’t your fault, but I need to understand how this happened,” he said.

  Mona told him everything—the entire time reminding herself that the language of the dragons, the power that Merrick wielded so casually at times, was a deadly force and not to be taken lightly.

  CHAPTER 2

  BRADLEY KNEW that something bad had happened to him, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to care or to remember exactly what it was.

  He didn’t feel sick.

  He didn’t feel pain.

  Instead he felt strong, like stone.

  His legs were as large as a mountain.

  Maybe he was a mountain.

  His body was solid, and he felt as if he could withstand almost any onslaught other than time itself.

  Still, as much as he reveled in his newfound strength, he still knew that something was wrong.

  He focused with all his will.

  At last, he remembered who he was.

  “I am Bradley,” he heard himself say. But his words felt weak and without clarity as if traveling through a dense medium before being heard.

  After he managed to utter that single phrase, he lost himself and once again thought he was a mountain.

  A minute passed.

  More.

  An hour, maybe.

  He couldn’t tell.

  Slowly, he realized again that he was not a mountain, and that he was Bradley.

  He cracked open his eyes just enough to see. He was lying in a hospital bed, but he wasn’t in a hospital.

  He was still at Rune Corp.

  Doctor Reilly’s boney face was looking down at him, his features slowly coming into focus.

  The doctor was saying something.

  “Bradley? Can you hear me? Tell me how you’re feeling, young man.”

  “Why am I in this bed?” Bradley said. “I’ve got a lot of work to do...”

  The doctor looked sad. More than sad. Sorrowful. Bradley recognized the emotion, but he didn’t understand why the doctor was looking at him like that.

  “There was an accident. Most likely it was the pencil in your pocket that was the cause. It exploded when you were testing the new word. You sustained a very…severe injury.”

  Bradley made a fist with each hand—opened and closed them both. His hands were working fine.

  His arms felt normal as well.

  He took a
deep breath. His lungs were operational, and he wasn’t on a respirator.

  Then he tried to move his legs—first one and then the other.

  They both seemed to be working fine.

  Bradley exhaled in relief.

  What the hell was the doctor going on about? Bradley knew the doctor well enough to know that he must have been missing something—that there must be some reason for the look of pity covering the man’s face.

  Bradley raised his chin and looked down at his body. With his left hand, he pulled back the sheets as the doctor made a perfunctory attempt to stop him.

  When the sheets were pulled back all the way, Bradley stared in shock at what he saw—or rather at what he didn’t see.

  His right leg was simply not there anymore.

  He could still feel it, but it looked as if it had been erased.

  Some part of Bradley’s mind knew that panic and shock were coming, but for the time being, all he could do was stare at where his leg was supposed to be.

  “I don’t understand,” he finally said.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I tried both magic and medicine, but there just wasn’t enough left of your leg to save. Merrick’s confident that the healers at the Earth Clan can help you. My job is to get you stable enough to make the trip.”

  A piece of Bradley registered hope, but most of him simply heard the word Merrick. This was all his fault. Merrick had pushed him too hard—pestering him every day for faster results.

  And for what? Rune Corp wasn’t at war with anyone. There wasn’t any looming threat out there. In fact, this was the first time since anyone could remember that the Fire Tribe and the Earth Clan were on speaking terms with each other and that their people were getting along.

  Of course, Merrick was being given all of the credit for that little miracle, too. He was so self-entitled and proud of himself for being a Drayoom and speaking of Ohman like the old man had been his real father.

  Merrick had stumbled into the company less than a year ago, and after one little adventure with Cara, he was brought on as her second-in-command. Bradley had been with the company for years, working behind the scenes to make sure everything went smoothly on the backend.

  And what did he get for his dedication to the company?

  Nothing.

  Worse than nothing—he had been maimed.

  Even if the Earth healers could somehow restore his leg, it would not change the fact that Merrick was the one responsible for his suffering. Bradley wasn’t sure how, but Merrick would get his just rewards one day, and Bradley would be the one to serve them to him.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE HAIR ON Officer Teresa Diggs’s arm was standing on end.

  It had taken her months of working after hours and on her days off to get this far in an investigation that everyone else considered closed. When Chris Moran’s dead body had been brought back from the U.K. six months ago, it was only by accident that she had read the report from her buddy, Officer Benoit. And it was only because she had an excellent memory that she recognized Rune Corp as being the same company with which Merrick Jones had been associated.

  In addition to Chris’s, there had been a total of four other corpses, and Officer Benoit had rightfully opened an investigation into the incident. One couldn’t go off on a business trip and return with a bunch of dead bodies and not expect there to be questions.

  And yet, when Diggs had looked further into the case, she found that it had been dropped quickly and for no apparent reason.

  She asked Benoit what had happened, and at first he didn’t seem to be able to remember. But after some prodding, he told her that there was no evidence of foul play—that there had been an accident in the Highlands of Scotland while the group had been hiking on a company retreat. Moran had slipped and fallen, and the four co-workers behind him had lost their footing as well.

  They had crashed to their deaths on the rocks below.

  All the paperwork looked right, but there were a couple of things that really bugged her.

  Everyone had purchased one-way tickets. And in Officer Diggs’s experience, this alone was cause for suspicion. Businesses always bought round-trip, unless they weren’t planning on coming back. She also couldn’t find mention of the incident in any of the local Scottish papers that posted online editions.

  She found it difficult to believe that the death of five tourists wouldn’t count as news in the small towns that were local to that area.

  Diggs wasn’t exactly sure about what she had been looking for all of these months, or even why she had been looking. She suspected it was because she had never really trusted Merrick or his flaky girlfriend.

  Maybe it was just because it was in Diggs’s nature to figure things out—to investigate them.

  Either way, Chris had been the last of the dead employees that she had followed up on in detail, and today, in the airport, she was tracking down her last lead.

  If she didn’t find anything here, she’d have to give up and go back to geocaching in her free time.

  She opened her hand and looked at the locker key that had been found in Moran’s jeans. Overlooked or not cared about for whatever reason, Benoit hadn’t even made note of it. But just a few days ago, Diggs had decided to go through the evidence on her own just in case something had been missed, and there it was.

  After that, it hadn’t taken long at all to figure out where the key was from, and now here she was—ready to open the locker. Even though she was one of the good guys and had not done anything wrong, she still felt a sense of apprehension as she stood, waiting to turn the key.

  A scene from some bad mafia movie kept playing itself out in her head. In the scene, undercover agents had been staking out an airport locker for weeks, waiting for someone to come along and open it. As soon as the suspect opened the locker, the cops swarmed the guy and confiscated a satchel full of cocaine and money that the suspect had not even known was there.

  Officer Diggs took a deep breath and turned the key.

  The locker swung open with a squeak.

  Inside, she saw a partially crumpled gym bag.

  Suddenly, her brain contemplated the worst. What if the bag contained a bomb?

  She had some training with explosives, but not enough.

  Screw it, she thought, as she reached in and pulled out the bag with her hand.

  No explosion.

  No one jumped out to arrest her either.

  She just shut the locker and walked away.

  No one noticed her or cared as she made her way through the crowd. She was used to that, blending in with people and not standing out in a group. That was one of the reasons she had become a cop in the first place—to help her overcome her innate shyness and to give her a little bit of a social spine, but sometimes being invisible was a benefit.

  If you asked any of her fellow cops, none would guess that the short, pudgy Officer Diggs with her close-cropped, sometimes spiky black hair had ever had a problem with shyness. In the bullpen, she was often seen as the clown of the group, making people laugh, even when it wasn’t appropriate to do so. At the same time, when working on an investigation, she was known for her lack of humor until after the case was closed.

  As she made her way to the airport exit, a cold breeze passed by her and sent a chill up her spine. The thought that she must have just walked under a vent flashed in her mind and then disappeared as quickly as it had emerged.

  Tamping down her curiosity to see what was in the bag, Diggs walked out of the airport and headed directly for her car. Within minutes, she was on the airport toll road, and after another twenty minutes, she finally made it home.

  As she walked through the underground parking lot, she tried to stay calm, but she had a feeling about whatever was in the bag and hoped that it would finally shed some light on the investigation. After all, it was not normal behavior to leave a gym bag in a locker right before leaving for a business trip.

  Once safely inside her place, she s
et the bag on her small round dining table, then went back to double-check that her front door was secure.

  She sat down and stared at the bag. She knew that whatever she was about to find would not be admissible as evidence, but she also knew that if it was important enough, there were ways around the rules.

  She took a deep breath, unzipped the bag, and saw a neatly folded set of men’s clothing.

  A pair of jeans. A sweater. A T-shirt. Socks. Running shoes. A full change of clothes.

  Being that it was the middle of summer, Diggs mentally filed away the fact that the types of clothing were consistent with the weather at the time of year when Chris Moran and his co-workers had traveled.

  She gently removed the pieces of clothing and set them on the table next to the bag.

  She also removed a half dozen protein bars—peanut butter flavored.

  And then she saw the locked black box.

  It was a little bigger than a softball and was made of the same black plastic from which gun cases were often fabricated. The lock had four digits to it, and they were set to 0-0-0-0.

  Diggs tried to contain her excitement. Now she just had to figure out how to get into the box. From what she had learned about Chris Moran, he was a geek in the truest sense of the word. A programmer by education, he was also a gamer, into Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer.

  And the rock band, Rush, of course.

  Diggs moved the digits to read 2-1-1-2, the name of one of Rush’s most famous albums.

  Nothing.

  She tried 1-2-3-4. Just in case. Still nothing.

  6-9-6-9. Nada.

  She knew that this could take forever. She checked her notes on Moran. Tried his birthday. The last four of his social security number. The first four of his social.

  Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  As she attempted each of the number combinations, she marked them down on a notepad.

  She slapped the top of the table with her open palm in frustration.

  And then she had an idea.

  What was the exact day that Chris got on a plane, heading to his death, unbeknownst to him?

  She quickly checked her copy of the case file and found the exact day of Chris’s flight. She moved the dial to read 1-5-1-4. She tried the lock, and this time was rewarded with a click and the lid of the box gently opening.