The Reluctant Assassin Boxset

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  Vin and Portia jumped to either side of Priyanka and added their faez-imbued strength, which lifted the door a little faster.

  "Hurry, the ceiling is closing," said Skylar, who couldn't seem to figure out what her hands should be doing.

  Despite the rapidly deteriorating events, Instructor O'Keefe was staring at the floor.

  "Those gears below us aren't moving the ceiling. They're moving something else," she said.

  Zayn was about to ask what it might be when Keelan cried out. Four massive tentacles with an almost translucent purple skin had poked from the muck. The long limbs undulated towards Skylar and Keelan, who were standing closest to the pit.

  Keelan sent a fire bolt at the nearest tentacle. It barely singed the tough, gnarly hide. Zayn joined his cousin, along with O'Keefe and Skylar, battling the creature in the sewage pit with spells, but the elemental blasts did little to stop it. Each impact only darkened the translucence momentarily, as if the creature had absorbed the blow.

  Zayn spared a glance to see how high the door had been lifted, and a tentacle moved under a force bolt and slammed him in the stomach, throwing him across the room. The impact stunned the air from his chest, leaving him gasping.

  With the odds in the creature's favor, it used the tentacle it had just freed up to trip Skylar onto her back. The creature was about to slam another one onto the fallen second year, when Instructor O'Keefe gave a primal scream, something that sounded like it would have been appropriate in her ancestors' time on the Scottish Highlands.

  "Buaidh no Bàs!"

  The gray-haired Scottish instructor materialized a ghostly hammer and slammed it into the nearest tentacle, knocking it backwards. She hit a second before the first could recover, driving forward with such furiousness that Zayn wasn't sure how the tentacles didn't explode from the impact.

  While O'Keefe battled the creature in the pit, Zayn caught his breath enough to stand. Priyanka had the door to a height of a few feet, but when Zayn scrambled over expecting to see a room on the other side, all he found was a long corridor the same height as the door.

  "You're not lifting a door, but a ceiling," shouted Zayn.

  "What?" asked Priyanka.

  "It's like a huge block of stone at least fifty feet long," he said. "It's more like a tunnel with a collapsible ceiling."

  "That explains why it's so heavy. Can you get down it?" asked Priyanka, straining from the effort. Her lips were purple from squeezing.

  "I can."

  "Then go," she grunted.

  Zayn grabbed his cousin. "You go first. No arguing."

  Keelan hesitated, but Zayn patted him on the shoulder, reminding him of his wound. He was the least able to help hold the door for the others.

  The ceiling had lowered to less than half the height of the room. They didn't have time to get everyone out.

  "Skylar, you go behind him," said Zayn, pushing his petite teammate.

  She lowered onto her hands and feet, scrambling after Keelan. Zayn didn't bother watching, he was already tapping Vin on the shoulder.

  "You next, let me take your place."

  Vin followed, pulling himself along on his belly like a lizard without back legs. The ceiling sunk until Zayn had to duck his head to the right.

  "What do we do about the creature?" asked Zayn.

  If O'Keefe stopped fighting it, the creature would be able to attack the people holding the door.

  "Don't worry about that," said Priyanka. "Just get to the next room."

  Portia took that as her cue, and she followed Vin, putting more strain on Zayn's arms as he supported the door. They were no longer lifting it, but holding it in place.

  "You go now," said Priyanka.

  "Who will hold the door for you?" asked Zayn.

  "I said go now," she repeated. "You promised to listen."

  "But—"

  She kicked him in the shin. "Hurry."

  Zayn dropped to his knees. The ceiling was making Priyanka crouch to hold the door. He crawled through the low space, banging his back against the ceiling, as Priyanka couldn't hold the door much higher.

  The whole time through the crawl space, Zayn kept thinking about if one of the tentacles got through O'Keefe's defenses, then Priyanka would drop the massive stone on him, turning him to pulp. He scrambled faster, banging the back of his head on the ceiling trying to hurry.

  When he reached the other side, he thought he'd be able to climb out and hold the ceiling up so Priyanka and O'Keefe could escape, but the passage didn't exit at the floor. When he slipped out, he fell fifteen feet, barely getting his feet beneath him for a teeth-jarring impact.

  As soon as he landed, he tried to scramble up the slick wall, but it was like trying to climb ice. The others were pawing at the wall as well. But even if he could get up the wall, there was nowhere to stand and hold the way for Priyanka.

  Moments later, the gap that he'd just crawled through slammed shut. The huge blocks of stone impacting shook him, but not as much as the realization that Priyanka and O'Keefe were unlikely to survive.

  Zayn slammed his fist into the wall. "Dammit."

  Portia summed up how everyone was feeling when in a low and quiet voice she said, "Mierda, no."

  "There was another way to escape, right?" asked Vin, his face white with anguish.

  "You were there, man. You know the answer," said Keelan, who had tears in his eyes.

  Almost so quiet Zayn didn't hear, Vin said, "This isn't a heist."

  "What do we do now?" asked Skylar, and suddenly everyone was looking at him. Every bit of him wanted to curl into a ball and forget that Instructor O'Keefe and Priyanka had been crushed into pulp, but they needed him if they weren't going to meet a similar fate.

  He looked to each of them. They were shaken to the core. They'd volunteered to help Priyanka, not complete the mission without her. The lights in their eyes had dimmed as they were in shock. He was in shock, he could feel the way his senses were condensed around him as if they were saving energy. He had to get them going again, thinking, acting. Otherwise they were going to die.

  Zayn put his hand on Vin's shoulder. "It's still a heist. We didn't come here to give up, no matter what we think might have happened to Priyanka and O'Keefe. They've survived worst I'm sure. We shouldn't assume that they're dead. We need to keep going forward, one problem at a time."

  The unnatural stillness that had claimed them cracked a little. They made slight nods of the head, an acknowledgement. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

  "We have to figure out where we are," he said, surveying their new room. "Tell me what you see."

  "I see generators," said Keelan, nodding towards the huge machines in the middle of the room that were humming although they had no obvious wires or power supplies.

  "It's a high ceiling," said Skylar. "And those columns don't look like they'll go into the floor, so we probably don't have to worry about getting squished in here."

  "Good," said Zayn. "What else?"

  Portia had her head tilted. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She had blood running from the side of her head from the battle with the tentacles, but she didn't look too wounded.

  I hear someone walking, she signaled.

  Zayn signaled back, asking, Where?

  Portia pointed towards the opposite side of the room.

  Zayn motioned to the others, asking if they saw any exits.

  There were lots of shaking heads in response. He was about to motion for them to hide behind a generator when he saw a glass guardian marching from behind a column. It was a man-sized creature with an exterior of glass and a shiny metal skeleton inside. Ruby eyes glowed with murderous intent.

  As soon as Zayn laid his eyes on the creature, his stomach twisted into a knot. He knew exactly what it was and why things had gotten worse.

  "Actually," Portia said out loud, "I see five of them."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Bastille, April 2015

  A frightful game of ta
g

  "Don't shoot!" yelled Zayn when he saw his teammates readying their spells. He held his arms up before them.

  The five glass guardians had spread out in an arc, closing the distance as Zayn and his teammates stood against the wall.

  "Don't shoot?" asked Skylar.

  "If you break the glass you'll release a deadly gas that will kill us all," said Zayn. "We have to get past them."

  "What the ever-loving hell do we do then?" asked Vin.

  "We run," said Zayn, flinging himself to the right as a guardian surged forward.

  There was a mad scramble as everyone took off in separate directions. Keelan leapt directly over the nearest guardian in a front flip, then jumped over a generator. Vin pirouetted between the gap of two guardians, while Skylar and Portia crisscrossed, confusing their pursuers.

  Zayn ducked under the arm of a guardian, sliding to get away. He faez-sprinted to the other end of the room, but there was no exit.

  "Anyone see a way out of here?" he asked.

  Shouts of "no" came from various points of the room. It was easy to keep ahead of the guardians—they ran slightly faster than a normal human—but there was no time to rest. Within a few minutes Zayn realized the room had no visible exit, and it was impossible to stop long enough to examine the walls for secret doors.

  "We can't keep this up forever," said Keelan, who looked slower than the others. He rested by a column before slipping away from two guardians. His shoulder injury was still plaguing him.

  "This is the suckiest game of tag ever," said Skylar. "No home base."

  "Ideas," shouted Zayn. "We need ideas on how to stop them without breaking the glass."

  "We can use Skylar's rope to lasso them like banditos," said Portia.

  Skylar, who was perched momentarily on a generator, looked down to the rope hanging around her shoulder and chest. "It's unbreakable too."

  She pulled the rope off and threw one end of the line to Vin, who was sprinting past. Though no one really planned it, they weaved in and out of each other, wrapping the glass guardians into the rope then cinching them together. It was like fighting with a bull, but they managed to get the five of them wrapped together, but no one could get close enough to tie them off, so they had to keep them at the center of the two ends.

  The glass guardians tugged on the rope, but couldn't unentangle themselves. They surged to one side or the other, but Skylar and Vin kept them centered.

  "Don't squeeze too tightly," said Zayn. "We don't want the glass to break."

  While they held the guardians, the rest of the group searched the room, but even after an hour of thorough examination, they could find no exit, or even how the glass guardians had gotten into the room.

  "What do we do now?" asked Keelan, who had dark rings around his eyes. "It's like there's no way in or out."

  "There has to be, right?" asked Portia.

  "I wish we could just make a portal out of here," said Skylar. "This whole thing is screwed."

  Mention of the portal reminded Zayn about the Tether. He touched the circular amulet against his chest.

  "Actually, I do have a way out," he said, pulling the obsidian amulet from beneath his shirt.

  "What?" came their incredulous replies.

  "The item I got from Pennywhistle for winning the challenge. It's called a Tether. A one-time get out of jail free card. If we all group up, and you hold onto me, I can activate it and we'll return to the Honeycomb portal."

  "Great balls of fire," said Vin. "That is a get out of jail free card."

  They shared glances, looking from one to the other. Their foreheads were knotted, lips pursed together.

  "If we leave, then the virus will wreck our world," said Portia.

  "And if we stay, we're probably going to die," said Vin.

  The decision weighed on them. Only the sound of the guardians clinking together made any intrusion.

  "I almost wish you didn't have the Tether so I didn't have to make that decision," said Skylar, frowning.

  Everyone nodded.

  "If Priyanka was here, this wouldn't even be a decision," said Keelan, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

  "No, it wouldn't," said Portia softly.

  Zayn's heart ached with the temptation to leave this behind. He wouldn't even be affected by the virus, and might even benefit given the massive changes to society that would occur. It made him sick to his stomach that he was even considering it. But how could they keep going? They had no idea what they were doing.

  "What do you want to do? Leave or stay?" he asked. "I think it has to be unanimous."

  "I want to stay," said Portia, with tears in her eyes. She looked away. "But I also want to go. I won't have magic anymore, but at least I'll be alive."

  Everyone made nods of approval. He could see it in their eyes that they wanted to go. Zayn wanted to go, even though part of him was screaming inside that they should stay. He felt a collective acknowledgement of how screwed their situation was. A seductive relief crept in, knowing that soon he'd be free of this untenable situation.

  Then he caught his cousin's eye. Keelan looked like he was wavering between the two choices. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, acknowledging how mad their situation was.

  "It's not really a heist if we all die, right?" asked Vin with a snort.

  His deadpan delivery brought a chortle to Zayn's lips, which revealed a smile on Vin's lips. Then the chuckle turned to laughter. The others caught it immediately, as if they'd been holding their breath for far too long and could finally get air. The laughter rolled through them, until they were bent at the waist with tears in their eyes.

  When they finally recovered, Zayn asked, "We're staying, right?"

  "We're probably idiots, but count me in," said Skylar.

  "Completely loco," said Portia.

  "Yep," said Keelan, nodding.

  Zayn shook his head, part in relief, part not quite comprehending.

  "Good. We're staying. For now anyway. We can always decide again later. But we're not doing anything until we can deal with these fine see-through gentlemen, and how to get out of here."

  Portia crept near the knot of guardians. "If they're moving throughout the Bastille, and we can't find the doors, they must have a way to signal to them to let them through." She tapped on her chin. "Maybe I can figure out what's sending that signal."

  The stocky young woman pulled a drawstring velvet bag from her hip pouch, dumping out a few small shiny gray hunks of what appeared to be quartz. She made arcane gestures over the rocks with her other hand, whispering a spell into them, finally squeezing her hand closed. When she finished, she opened her hand, revealing a palm full of gray dust, and blew it towards the nearest glass guardian.

  The dust sparkled through the air, landing on the glass creatures. At first the dust did nothing, but then like magnets pulling in iron fillings, the light material slid across the glass skin, collecting around the ruby eyes.

  "The signal is in the eyes," said Portia, then added, "The dust is for finding communication bugs. I figured it'd work for this."

  "Great job," said Zayn, a kernel of hope forming in his chest. "Now we just have to get one of those eyes from a guardian without breaking it. Anyone know any other spells we can use?"

  Vin snapped his fingers. "I know one that can fill a room with a hard foam. Maybe we can encase them in it and then pry a ruby loose." Then his head dipped. "But I don't have the materials for it. I'd need a jar of glycerin, which I definitely don't have."

  "I do," said Skylar, producing a small jar. "It's a skin moisturizer, but it's filled with glycerin. Will this work?"

  "Yes!"

  "Why are you carrying skin moisturizer?" asked Keelan.

  "Supple hands are nimble hands," said Skylar, waggling her fingers.

  Zayn took Vin's place so he could perform his spell. He set the jar of face cream on the ground next to the guardians. When he finished the spell, a whitish foam cylinder appeared from the jar
like those black snake fireworks they bought at the roadside tents outside of Varna. Except the foam grew exponentially in size and volume. Vin coaxed the foam towards the guardians, and it filled in around their legs. Within a minute, the foam had covered their lower halves and was climbing around their shoulders. The glass guardians fought against the foam, jerking and clawing at it, but eventually it filled in around them, holding them in place. When the spell was finished, a massive lump of white foam with two ropes sticking out the sides sat in the middle of the floor.

  "Let's dig out a section so we can get to the eyes," said Zayn.

  "Go for the eyes, Boo," said Skylar softly.

  "What?" asked Zayn.

  "Nothing," she said with a wry smile.

  The foam was hard, but they chipped away at it with their knives. Within ten minutes, they had the head of a guardian sticking from the foam block.

  "Think we can remove it without breaking the glass?" asked Vin, tugging gently on the right ruby eye.

  "Only one way to find out," said Zayn. "Just do it slowly and carefully."

  They were crowded around Vin, everyone except for Keelan, who sat against one of the columns resting. They'd been so busy Zayn had forgotten to see if there was anything to do about his cousin's wound.

  As Vin stuck the tip of his dagger beneath the edge of the ruby, he put his hand on the foam for support. When the previously hard foam sunk beneath his weight, he said, "Oh no."

  There was a moment of recognition, before the foam exploded around them. Zayn didn't think he was that close, or that the guardians could move that fast, but suddenly one of them clamped its hand around his wrist. His first reaction was to yank away, but then he remembered the deadly gas inside.

  As a cloud of foam dust fell around them. Zayn witnessed the damage. Everyone but Keelan had been grabbed by a glass guardian. Without the ends of the rope being pulled taut, they easily slipped their bonds, patiently tugging them towards the far wall.

  "What do we do?" asked Skylar, gently tugging against the hands of the glass guardian.