by B N Miles
Jared walked over and joined them, kicking blood and viscera off his boots. “You think he’s in there?”
“I think something important is in there,” Cassie said. “I’m guessing it’s what these guys were trying to protect.”
He grunted and looked back over his shoulder. Cassie was right— his pile of dead soldiers was noticeably smaller than Lumi’s. She gave him an almost sick, victorious smile, which he promptly ignored as he began to prod at the doorframe.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Lumi shrugged. “Should be easy to break open if we work together.”
He nodded. “And what’s beyond?”
“Who knows.” She beamed at him. “But I want to find out.”
“Stay back, Cassie,” he said, and she walked a few feet away, arms crossed.
“I can help fight, you know,” she said.
Jared shook his head. “No need.” He put a hand on Lumi’s shoulder. “Let’s wreck this shit.”
She sucked in a breath as Jared funneled magic into her. He found it so easily, like breathing. They’d worked so closely together that their magic felt like one, intertwined and intermingled, and he funneled as much power into her as he could stand.
She gathered it all, her strength and his, and forced it into the steel. It buckled once, buckled again, then crunched down in half and burst inward in a clatter of slag.
26
The door lay like a crumpled napkin inside a large, open room filled with row after row of bunkbeds.
Jared lingered inside behind Lumi, frowning at the beds. It took him a moment to recognize the space as barracks. The utilitarian footlockers, the thin, cheap blankets and mattresses, each neatly made, the total lack of any personally identifying pictures, or paintings, or anything that might suggest personality. Lumi drifted forward and Jared followed behind, eyes scanning the space for something, anything—and found it all strangely still.
“They keep the soldiers behind a door like that?” Lumi shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“This place is weird,” Cassie said, nudging a footlocker with her toe. “It’s like a military base.”
“That’s pretty much exactly what it is,” Jared said. “I mean, they have a small army, right? And a military’s worth of hardware on top of all the Human power.”
“Check this out.” Lumi gestured them forward from the far end. Jared hurried after her, passing an open bathroom door, the tile and industrial sinks suggesting it would service the entire barracks, and stopped as she tugged open a door.
The room beyond was packed full of computers, row after row of them, and each screen glowed blue, with the hunched body of a young man staring at it, typing away.
At first, nobody moved. Jared realized the men sitting behind the computer screens wore headphones, big, noise-cancelling things, and they hadn’t heard the door break in. But one of the guys sitting in the back must’ve seen the motion of the door, because he turned, a lazy smile on his face, his dark hair hanging in his eyes, probably about to say something he’d said a thousand times before when he saw Lumi, then Jared. His face quickly fell and a shout wrenched itself from his throat as he jumped to his feet.
The guy next to him noticed, and the one next to him, and Jared watched with a strange fascination as their presence rippled across the room.
Jared was about to reach for his power, when the guys closest to them bolted.
There was no hesitation. The first guy turned and sprinted for a door at the far end, followed by the next, and soon it was a stampede. They trampled each other in their efforts to get out, and Jared stared in shocked surprise. He never would have guessed that a room full of young men in a Medlar facility like this would ever be scared enough to run away at the first sign of trouble, but clearly he was wrong. He wanted to catch one of them and figure out what was happening, but more movement from the front of the room caught his attention.
One man wasn’t running. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking disgusted. Lumi drifted forward, moving between the cubes, heading toward the man. Jared followed after her, then looked back at Cassie. “Follow those guys,” he said. “But don’t go far. Make sure they’re not coming back with guns or something.”
Cassie trotted off
Lumi stopped in the center of the room, twenty feet from the guy standing up front. He wore fashionable jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a black vest over top of it. A silver chain dangled from his chest pocket. His face was puckered in annoyance, and he had dark hair, almost black, with a drawn, pale face and dark blue eyes.
“Hello, Lumi,” he said.
“Hello, Oliver.” She took one more step forward, but he held up a hand.
“Please, stay there. I know why you’re here and I’d rather not end up as slag.”
Lumi laughed. “Jared, this is my cousin, Oliver Medlar.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” Oliver gave him a wry, annoyed smile, then looked back at Lumi. “You scared my nerds.”
“What the hell is going on in here?” she asked.
“Cyber espionage,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, Lumi, did I hear you smash down that door out there?”
“What does the Medlar need with cyber espionage?”
He waved a hand. “Many things, of course, and they’re all so painfully boring.”
“You never were much interested in house affairs.”
He grunted, walked over to a desk and opened a drawer. Jared tensed, but Oliver took out a silver flask, opened it, drank some, and offered it to Lumi. She shook her head, he drank again, then tossed it back into the drawer.
“Truth is, they buried me down here with all these fucking nerds. So if you’re here to blow the place up, please let me know, so I can make my escape.”
“We’re here to stop the family from destroying the world. If it ends with this facility going up in flames, I won’t be upset.”
“Lovely.” He sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Inconvenient, but lovely.”
“Where are they keeping Wade?”
“I don’t know who you mean.”
Lumi took a step forward. “Oliver. You know me. You remember what I did for this family. So please, skip the bullshit and tell me where he is.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow then let out a dramatic sigh. “They keep him on the top floor,” he said. “Right next to the ritual space. Go out there, take the elevators up, you can’t miss it. But honestly, Lumi, even you won’t be able to get far.”
Before she could respond, the facility seemed to rumble. Jared frowned and looked back toward where Cassie disappeared. “I didn’t like that,” he said.
Oliver moved. He darted for a side door, and nearly got through before Lumi reached out with a jagged shard of ice and smashed him against the wall. He gasped, pinned, and let out a groan. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Lumi said, glaring at him. “Not on purpose, anyway. Don’t give me a reason to make a mistake.”
Another rumble, this time definitely an explosion. Jared shook his head.
“That’s got to be Bea.”
“Which means the wards are down.”
Oliver perked up at that. “The wards are down? Really?”
“Really,” Lumi said. “Bea will make a good distraction. Can you get a message to her?”
Jared nodded. Now that she was inside the wards, he could text her phone. That was their primary form of communication but was meant only for emergencies.
“I’ll tell her where we’re headed,” he said. “And that Penny’s down in the basement with Jessalene.”
“Excuse me,” Oliver said. “But if you wouldn’t terribly mind, could you let me go? If the wards are down, I’d love to make a break for it.”
Lumi shot him a look then her eyes narrowed. “Wait, you couldn’t get through the wards?”
“Nothing in, nothing out.” He rolled his eyes. “So oppressive.”
“How many people are in th
is place?”
“Oh, lots and lots, and they’re all dreadful. Please, Lumi, we were friendly, maybe not friends, but nice to each other. Let me go. I’m not a threat.”
She hesitated only a moment before waving a hand. The ice melted, leaving a dark wet stain on his clothes. He brushed at himself, making a face, then gave Lumi a small bow.
“You’re a peach,” he said. “Good luck blowing this place up. I do hope you succeed. Serves the bastards right.” He turned, walked to the door, and disappeared.
Jared shook his head. “Why’d you let him go?”
“He’s useless,” she said. “Always was a dandy prick. Come on, message Bea and let’s get moving.”
Jared took out his phone, typed up a text, and sent it. They moved across the computer room back, toward where Cassie had gone, and stepped through a pair of doors that led into a hallway. More rooms branched off, and Jared saw a mess hall, a lounge-style room, a gym, and a few other amenities. He found the girls standing in front of a pack of scared-looking men in front of another large, locked steel door.
“They really don’t want you guys to escape, huh,” Jared said.
One of the men stepped forward. He was young, maybe in his early twenties, with greasy hair and an angry look on his face. “Who the hell are you people?”
“We’re not here for you,” Jared said, staring the guy down. “What’s your name?”
He gave Jared a wry smile. “I’m Computer-Worker-36704, or just 36704 to my superiors.”
Jared hesitated, glanced at Lumi, then looked back at the kid. “I’m guessing you have a name.”
“It’s Brian.”
“Alright Brian. What do you do here?”
“Tech support.” He grinned and all the other young men laughed along with him.
“I’m not sure you understand what’s happening here.” Jared took a step forward, trying to push suppress his annoyance. These young men clearly didn’t want to be here—nobody would show up for work in a locked dormitory and allow their bosses to call them by a number instead of a name. They weren’t Metas though, and he didn’t know what to make of them. He’d never heard of a Magi family using Humans as a workforce before—mostly because Humans were too dangerous, and one wrong slip could break the Accords.
The facility rumbled under him as Bea’s team attacked.
“I’m not sure you do,” Brian countered.
“My name’s Jared Bechtel, and I don’t work for the Medlar. If you’re here against your will—”
Brian laughed again, and the guys joined him. “Against my will? Listen, asshole, one afternoon two years ago I was sitting in my bedroom playing World of Warcraft when some dickhead in a black suit appeared on my bed and offered me a job. The terms were insane, and he said he had real magic, so of course I went for it.”
Jared stiffened. That would constitute breaking the Accords, but then again, maybe not. He wasn’t sure how magic itself fell into the language—only that Humans weren’t allowed to know about Metas. The Magi family kept the existence of magic a secret for their own selfish reasons but it might be possible for regular people to learn about it without breaking any rules. He’d simply never considered the possibility before.
“You’ve been here for two years?” Lumi asked.
“Been hopping around between their places for the last couple years, yeah, pretty much. It started out as a regular gig, you know, working hours, commuting to my own apartment they paid for, but last year shit changed, got more intense. They brought us all here, had us living in this piece of shit place, and called us by numbers instead of names.”
“I want to go home,” one of the guys in the back, a younger kid with puffy cheeks and big blue eyes. “I want to get out of here.”
A chorus of voices echoed the sentiment until Brian shot them an annoyed look. He turned back to Jared and spread his hands. “Look man, I don’t know what’s going on here, and I really don’t care. We want to get the fuck out of here.”
“What were you guys doing for the Medlar?” he asked.
Brian rolled his eyes. “Social media bullshit, mostly. You know, propaganda, posting shit on Facebook, on the dark web, Twitter, whatever.”
“What sort of propaganda?”
“Weird shit, about how monsters and magic are real, and it’s coming soon. I asked that drunk dickhead back there about it once, and he only smiled and said that the world was changing soon and they were trying to prepare people for it, but I don’t know. We posted some pretty wild shit and I’m not sure anyone believed it.”
Jared looked at Lumi and she seemed troubled. As far as he could tell, that was a direct violation of the Accords—unless they didn’t tell the truth.
“What sort of monsters?”
“Cryptids, you know, Chupacabra, Yeti, that sort of shit.” Brian laughed, shaking his head. “And the magic was even worse. A bunch of, like, Satanist bullshit, as if Satanists use magic. Satanists don’t even believe in Satan, let alone magic.”
Jared nodded slowly, understanding blooming. They posted information about monsters and magic—but wrong information. Still, if the goal was to prepare people for when the Accords broke, that made a kind of sideways sense. Get them used to the idea of other forms of life among them, get them used to the idea of spells and magic, and then when the real thing appeared, it might not be so horrible.
“We’ll get you guys out of here,” Jared said. “But we need your help first.”
Brian snorted. “Of course you do.”
“We’re looking for someone. He would’ve been brought in recently—”
“We don’t leave this place,” Brian said. “So unless he’s been in and out of here, I don’t know where they’d keep him.”
“What about the guy that watched over you, Oliver. Where did he stay?”
“Upper floors, with the rest of the family.”
Jared hesitated. “Family?”
“Medlar, you know, you already said their name.” Brian looked impatient. “They’re on the upper floors. Old man’s up there, too.”
“Old man?”
“Yeah, some old, crusty asshole that Oliver practically bowed to whenever he came into the room, which was only twice, but still. Old dude set everyone on edge, he had this look in his eyes like he wanted to murder you just for fun.”
Jared saw the disturbed, uncertain look in Lumi’s eyes. She paced away, hands behind her back.
“The family lives on the top floor then? Do you know anything else?”
“I know I want to go home,” Brian said. “We all do.”
“Okay then. Everyone, get away from that door and shut your eyes.
“Shut our eyes? What the hell?”
Jared grinned at him. “Trust me. You don’t want to see this.”
Cassie herded the group into the far corner of the hallway and made sure they didn’t peek as Jared gathered his power and smashed through the steel framed doorway. It lay bent and smoking a few feet inside a large, open lobby-like hall.
“Holy shit,” Brian said when it was done. “How’d you do that?”
“I eat my spinach.” He took a deep breath and looked around. He couldn’t spare Cassie or Lumi for this. “You need to get out of here. Can you lead the others?”
Brian gave her a skeptical look then shrugged. “Whatever, man.”
He waved at the group as Brian led them through the door and into the lobby without a backwards glance. They followed him in a tight pack, looking scared and uncertain as another explosion rocked the facility, and more gunfire cracked.
Jared stood with Lumi and Cassie, and the two women watched him carefully.
“Not ideal,” he said softly.
“No, not ideal,” Lumi answered. “But we know where we need to go.”
“To the top.”
She nodded once. “That old man. I’m pretty sure it’s Terence Medlar.”
Jared let out a breath. He was afraid of that. Terence Medlar was the second in command of the M
edlar family. He was a dinosaur, but ruthless, smart, and powerful. He was a huge player in international politics, and allegedly responsible for several major war crimes.
In short, he was a real fucking prick.
“Lead the way then,” he said.
She grunted and stepped into the lobby. It was open, with a cluster of couches and chairs in the center. She hesitated, then walked toward a bank of elevators and hit the up button.
Jared was skeptical, but the elevator arrived, and when she hit the button for the top floor, the doors shut and the elevator began to climb.
Cassie huddled close to him. Lumi looked concerned and annoyed but didn’t speak. Jared knew this wasn’t going to end well. Too much had gone wrong already, and they’d become too scattered and stretched too thin. He had no clue if the others were okay, if they were alive or dead, and what was going to become of them at the end of all this.
But none of it mattered. He had to keep telling himself that. They were doing this for a reason, something bigger than him or any of them. As much as he wanted to keep his girls with him always, he didn’t control them, and he couldn’t make their decisions for them. If Nikki wanted to disappear and fight alone, she could do whatever she damn well pleased—and the same went for the others.
Even if it drove him crazy with worry, that was love. That was real love: trusting that his partners would make the right decisions, and even if they didn’t, letting them go down that wrong path anyway, and being there, ready to pick them up off the ground, ready to protect them if needed.
He reached out on impulse and took Cassie’s hand. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. Then he reached out and took Lumi’s. She gave him a single nod and stepped closer, pressing her flank against his.
The doors reached the top floor, dinged once, and slid open to reveal what looked like a corporate waiting room.
27
Jared stepped forward and skirted around a bank of chairs. Cassie and Lumi followed, and he could tell they were as surprised as he was. Ahead of them, a large desk sat in front of a single door.
An old woman sat behind the desk. Her white hair sat on her head like a poof of cotton. She wore a dark suit, freshly pressed, and her skin was wrinkled and creased. Her eyes were bright blue, and she frowned at Jared from behind a pair of enormous glasses that made her look like an arachnid.