by Ramy Vance
With one last wave goodbye, she climbed into the limo, which took her to a small airport where a sleek private jet waited. The logo on the plane’s side was one Abby had never seen before.
Abby slept through most of the plane ride. She had tried to stay awake, but anxiety and sleepiness had gotten the best of her. She had managed to keep her eyes open for the first few minutes as the plane ascended through the clouds.
The takeoff wasn’t something she would easily forget. It was, after all, her first plane ride.
When the plane landed, the limo driver woke her up and ushered her to another limo. Abby slept in the backseat. The blurred white lights of the city around her had lulled her back into slumber. She’d slept curled in a ball, hugging her knees tightly, crying softly.
By the time Abby had arrived at the glass skyscraper, she was as rested as she could possibly have been. Though it hadn’t changed the fact that she still felt exhausted. It was as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over her shoulders. A slight, yet noticeable, weight.
The limo driver guided Abby up the glass stairs to the entrance of the building. A guard stood at the door—a young man with a smooth, easily likable face. Abby only noticed it in passing as he opened the door and motioned for her to follow.
Here, the driver said goodbye and returned to his limo, leaving Abby with more questions than answers. Myrddin hadn’t explained much at the funeral. The extent of their conversation had revolved around the prospect of revenge. Which was all it had taken to sign her up.
Now, as Abby entered the building, she wished she’d asked more questions. Not that she would have known where to start. The tragedy on the farm seemed like a distant memory, a story someone had told her a long time ago. She hardly felt involved at all.
She glanced up as she crossed the threshold. The lobby was a sprawling, nearly empty space. There were no desks or tables or decorations, yet the room buzzed with energy.
People on floating glass platforms zipped back and forth in the air above Abby. It was hard to tell what they were doing, but it gave the whole building the feel of an elongated glass beehive encased in a cathedral.
“What is this place?” Abby asked, still staring bewildered at the scene above.
The guard chuckled as he beckoned for Abby to follow him. “This is Myrddin’s HQ,” he explained. “It’s his home away from home, you could say. Most of Myrddin’s plans are concocted here. Thus, the business. Takes a lot of people to see if stuff will work.”
“Is Myrddin here?”
The guard approached an elevator and extended his hand. A glowing pad on the wall registered his palm print, and the elevator door opened. “No one really knows unless Myrddin wants them to know,” the guard answered. “Grunts like me hardly ever know. And I like to keep it that way. If Myrddin wants to see me, that probably means I’ve screwed something up.”
Abby and the guard entered the elevator, which was also made of glass. They ascended, and she watched as level after level whizzed past her. She lost count eventually, but she hoped she’d get a chance to see each level up close. The brief glimpses had piqued her interest.
Finally, the elevator stopped, and the door opened. This level was not made of glass.
The guard exited the elevator, and Abby followed, trying to keep up with his long gait. She couldn’t quite match his speed. It didn’t help that she was distracted by all the doors lining the walls. Loud explosions echoed from behind some of them. “How come this floor ain’t transparent?” Abby asked.
The guard turned a corner. “Necessity. This is mostly a research and development wing. There’s a series of magical charms placed on the floor to keep people from being able to see in. You never know who is a spy. Or who they’re spying for.”
Abby did a double-take at the word “magic.” She waited for the guard to offer a clarification, but when he remained silent, she assumed his joke had gone too far. She wasn’t stupid. “Magic, huh? Don’t try to kid a kidder.”
The guard tossed a look over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Miss, but you don’t seem like that much of a kidder.”
“My way of saying I ain’t stupid. Nothing about this is anything like a card show. How come you think I’d fall for a sad sack lie like that?”
“No lie about it. Just safety protocols. You have magical clearance to see this floor. When I say clearance, it’s a—”
Abby stopped and interrupted the guard. “All right, you just hold on there a second. There’s that word again. What exactly are you trying to say when you say magic?”
The guard chuckled again. “When I say magic, I mean just that. Magic. Spells. Wizardry. Witchcraft in some situations. The kind of stuff you read about in fantasy books. This whole place is magical.”
Abby was starting to get annoyed. She didn’t take kindly to being treated like a child, and only children still believed in magic. That was on par with the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. But orcs were also on the list of other magical creatures.
And Abby had definitely seen an orc.
The guard had walked off again, and Abby jogged to catch up with him. “It’s usually hard to wrap your head around at first,” the guard went on. “I didn’t believe any of it when I got assigned here. Trust me, it only takes a couple of hours. You feel kinda stupid trying not to believe at that point. But you got eyes. You’ll get the picture eventually.”
The guard stopped in front of a door and knocked twice.
From inside came the shuffling of chairs and a loud crash. Once the noise settled, a voice shouted, “Come in, come in. But close the door fast.”
The guard smiled politely at Abby. “This is where I’ll leave you. Have a good day.”
The voice from behind the door shouted, “If you’re going to come in, come in already!”
Abby opened the door and stepped inside.
A goblin was hunched over a steel workbench. He turned to face Abby as she came in, his spectacles nearly falling off of his hooked nose as his batlike ears twitched. “Oh, it’s you, Ms. Crookins,” he chirped as he leapt off of his chair and ran toward Abby.
She backed away instinctively, bumping into the closed door behind her. “Oh, hi,” she managed to murmur as the goblin thrust his hand at her.
He peered over his spectacles, “I’m Creon…and please, please excuse the mess. I’ve been at it for days without a break. I kept telling myself, I’ll clean up before Ms. Crookins gets here, I must make sure to make this place tidy. But you must know how it gets to be in the middle of your thoughts when the idea is just rushing at you, and you have to get it down on paper.”
Abby grunted a noncommittal reply as she stared at the goblin. She couldn’t register what was standing in front of her. Same as when she had seen the orcs. The only real difference was that Creon didn’t appear to want to kill her.
Quite the opposite. Creon seemed positively delighted to see her.
As Creon walked around Abby, the four-foot goblin looked her up and down. “You’re much younger than I thought you’d be,” Creon finally said. “From your work, at least. Your programming. We have geezers here who could hardly touch your code on their best days.”
“Oh…thanks,” Abby murmured.
She managed to move away from the door, and she studied the room. Creon had been exaggerating about how messy the place was. The workroom was not neat by any standard. But it was much cleaner than Abby’s.
Creon returned to his workbench and started tossing gears and rivets to the ground. “I imagine all this is a lot to take in,” he called over his shoulder. “You aren’t one of Myrddin’s recruits from Middang3ard VR, are you?”
“’Fraid I don’t know what it is you’re talking about.”
“That’s what I figured. First time seeing a magical creature before?”
“No. I’ve seen orcs before. Once.”
Abby suppressed the image of an orc towering over her dead father. She pushed it deep down to a place she hoped to forget.
Creon turn
ed back and smiled sadly at Abby. “I am sorry to hear about that,” he whispered. “Let’s turn our minds to other business. Come, I’m to be giving you a tour. To show you the kind of facilities that you’ll be allowed to work in.”
The goblin jumped down from his workbench and waddled to a steel double door on the other side of the room.
Abby still clung to the wall, staring at Creon. She wasn’t frightened of the goblin. Not exactly. She was frightened of everything the goblin represented. A world outside of the one she knew and understood. One filled with a source of power she had no understanding of.
Creon tapped on the double door, then spun around and pushed up his spectacles. “Come now, we got a little bit to see before we get down to work,” he exclaimed.
Abby pulled herself away from the wall, glancing at the contents of Creon’s worktable as she walked past. The table was filled with mechanical tech. Even if the goblin was magical, it seemed he was much more interested in the mechanical.
Abby, still as confused as she’d been on her arrival, now joined Creon at the double doors and asked, “Are you, uh, magical?”
Creon smiled crookedly, which was surprisingly charming. “Oh, of course,” he replied. “Different kind of magic than an elf or a gnome, or human, of course. It’s not the sort of thing you can see on the surface for most goblins.”
He raised his hands and spread out his spindly fingers. “You see, the magic is all in these elegant digits,” he explained. “Dwarves might lay claim to smelting and smith work, but us goblins are unrivaled in tinkering. Something that I’ve heard you have an exceptional hand at.”
Abby was growing less and less wary of the goblin. She nodded and allowed herself a smile. “I guess you could say that,” she admitted. “Don’t have a lot to go comparing myself to, though. But I do make what I got to work with usually work. More or less.”
“Modesty as well as skill. You’re going to go far here. Come, let me introduce you to the rest of my workspace.”
Chapter Ten
The double doors opened up to what appeared to be a giant metalworking facility. It was the largest working area Abby had ever seen before. Nowhere near the size of her barn, the scale of the area was closer to that of her family’s wheat fields.
Creon waved his hand, and two transparent platforms zoomed over to them. He stepped onto one, prompting Abby to climb aboard her own. The platforms rose, and she stared skyward, surprised that the facility also used up nearly all of its vertical space.
How is there so much room for this? She had only descended a couple of floors on the elevator, but this room appeared to be almost the entire height of the glass skyscraper.
Creon pointed at the right side of the facility. “We’ll start over here,” he droned. “This is the T.E.M., or Technology-Enhancing Magic laboratory. I figure this is a good place to start since you don’t have much experience with magic.”
The two platforms rose higher and headed to a door Creon indicated. The lab was encased with glass, much like the rest of the building.
As they arrived, a glass door slid open, and Creon stepped off his floating platform, appearing to walk on air. Merely an optical illusion, though. The floors were made of glass as well. Abby, against her better judgment, also stepped off the platform, thanking God that there was solid glass under her feet.
Creon ambled through the lab, rattling off the different projects they were working on. Abby hardly heard a word. Not for lack of paying attention but because she was thoroughly entranced by everything around her.
An elvish scientist was wielding a fireball while another ran scans on it. A third came over and placed a visor on the elf, who smiled before splitting the fireball into hundreds of smaller balls.
At another station, a group of gnomish scientists wrestled with a yeti who was growing, shrinking, then growing again, at an alarmingly fast rate. A dwarfish scientist rushed into the room with a fire extinguisher just as the yeti’s fur burst into flames. After the smoke and jets from the fur extinguisher disappeared, the yeti was left sitting in the middle of the station, hairless and laughing hysterically.
A much larger third station held two human scientists, one holding a wand and the other wearing a Kevlar vest. The wand-wielding human held up his hand and counted down to zero before blasting the other man, who went flying across the station, eventually landing in a pile of pillows.
Creon stopped at a more serene station where a handful of scientists walked around, working quietly. “This is where we’ve been working on the HUDs.” Creon waved a hand at the room. “It was our first foray into using technology to improve how one uses magic.”
Abby stood on her tiptoes to see what the scientists were doing. “And what exactly is this magic? I ain’t ever seen anything like this.”
“It’s because humans have been cut off from magic for years. You don’t show it often. Thus, the HUDs. These allow humans to use magic. Though there are a number of loopholes. Nothing you’ll need to worry about. Just thought you might be interested.”
“I am. It’s fascinating. Got anymore?”
Creon rewarded Abby with his warm, crooked smile. “Of course, follow me.”
He led Abby back to the floating platforms, and they soared to the left side of the room. “This is our M.E.T. or Magic-Enhancing Technology lab—the reverse of the other side. Here we try to find ways to improve technology through magic.”
After they disembarked from their platforms, Creon led Abby through the lab, indicating different stations where scientists tinkered with ancient tomes, fusing them to generators.
At one station, a scientist tossed what appeared to be a grenade. The device detonated, and a horde of mini dragons burst from the center of the explosion.
Creon stopped in front of one station and peered through the glass. A scientist wearing an augmented-reality suit was running through a projection of the world. “This is a revamp of the tech we used for our VR recruiting program.” Creon grinned proudly. “A personal pet project of my own. It has its own problems, though.”
Abby was almost too engrossed in the activity around her to respond. Then she blinked. “Wait, this all seems like good work. I’d be tickled pink if I could cobble up something like this.”
“Oh, the problem isn’t with the tech. The VR program only brings a certain kind of recruit to us. Take yourself, for instance. Amazing creative skills and brains. But you don’t play videogames. We almost missed out on you entirely. Now come, we have one more lab to see.”
They hopped aboard their floating platforms and headed for the lab in the middle of the facility where Creon led Abby through a laboratory, empty save for a variety of equipment.
“Which one is this?” Abby asked.
Creon sat in a floating glass chair. “This, my dear, is our lab.”
Abby spun around, unable to believe that these were going to be her working conditions. She barely knew what any of the equipment was. How did they think she would be able to keep up with what the other scientists were developing? All she had ever made were her drones.
Creon pointed at a worktable that had just shimmered into existence. Abby’s three drones rested on the table. “Granted, if you need anything to work, all you have to do is let me know. We can requisition it, and it’ll most likely be here within the day.”
Abby sat in the glass chair behind her. This was all a lot to take in. She still couldn’t believe she was going to be working in this lab.
Creon hit a button on his chair, and both their seats floated to the workbench that held Abby’s drones. “Myrddin informed me of your work. I know that the originals are still at the farm helping your family. But I took the liberty of looking at their schematics and reconstructed your creations here.”
Abby stood and approached the new drones. Well, new was a stretch. Creon had created exact replicas, down to the dings and dents her own drones had received in the fight on the farm.
They were also perfect replicas. “Thanks. Muc
h appreciated.”
Creon bent and pulled something from under the table. “And, as a welcome present, I cobbled something together for you.” The goblin held three glowing tubes.
Abby recognized the tubes instantly. They were the length and shape of the lithium batteries she used to power her drones.
Creon handed Abby the tubes. “These are some reverse-engineered batteries. You won’t have to worry about charging those drones for the next two hundred years or so. My way of saying welcome to the team.”
Abby could hardly contain her excitement. She wanted to drop the batteries into her drones immediately. “Do you mind if I put these in? No one’s ever given me something like this before.”
“Please do. I’d love to see how they work.”
Abby went to the Gertrude replica and flipped it over. She pulled out the battery rig she had created and replaced it with the one Creon had given her. A jolt of energy ran through the drone, and it blinked to life, rising into the air and spinning in a circle before obediently floating above the other drones.
Creon came up behind Abby, circling her to get a better look at the drone’s performance. “Seems to be working about right.”
Abby turned Gertrude off, and the drone returned to the bench. “And you’re saying this, all this here, is where I get to work?” she asked. “Not often something like this comes without a catch.”
“The only catch is that your work and your skills will be implemented to help defeat the Dark One.”
Abby’s eyes darkened at the sound of the Dark One’s name. “The wizard…Myrddin. He told me I’d get a chance to avenge my father.”
Creon fidgeted, then looked away as he drifted over to a computer console. “And you will. What you will help create here will avenge your father. But as for the front line, you’re not trained, and I highly doubt the front line is for one like you.”
So that was the catch. Abby could see it now. She’d spend all of her day behind glass walls while the weapons she worked on would be used to burn the Dark One away. Which wasn’t what she had wanted. Abby’s finger was the one that deserved to be on the trigger.