Shadows of Divinity

by Luke Mitchell

  Focusing on the thermal energy in the air proved an awkward feat, the metaphysical equivalent of trying to grab a box that was plenty light but simply too large to fit my arms around. As was becoming customary, though, I sat there and tried again and again, mentally toiling until I found the right mindset to make it work.

  Finally, I managed to get moving by focusing on one small patch of air at a time.

  Focus. Open channel. Drain heat from air to water. Repeat.

  With my extended senses, I could feel air densities shifting and swirling to equilibrium with each patch I drained. The faintest breeze touched my face, and a smile pulled onto my lips.

  It was slow going, and not without frustration. I was filling a leaky, seemingly bottomless hole, and I’d forgotten my shovel.

  Slowly, though, I was able to drain larger and larger patches of air. The water grew warm. Soon enough, it was actually hot. Tendrils of vapor were beginning to rise from the still surface when a voice came from the doorway.

  “It just gets stranger and stranger with you, doesn’t it?”

  Elise.

  I dropped the link to my current patch of air and retracted my senses, pleased to find my focus had barely slipped at the unexpected arrival, but unsure how to play being caught staring at a pot of water.

  Franco clearly knew about Carlisle’s abilities, if not mine, but it was entirely possible Elise knew nothing about Shaping. It didn’t seem like something one casually talked about.

  “What’s with the pot?” she asked, padding closer.

  “Oh, you know…”

  I turned to face her and lost my train of thought.

  She was wearing dark workout clothes that, while not exactly revealing, clung to her athletic form in a way that made it hard to keep my eyes from roaming. Harder than boiling a pot of water with my mind.

  “… just, uh, seeing if my glare is strong enough to boil water.”

  “Uh-huh.” She scrutinized me, then placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned over to inspect the water, which had ceased steaming now that I wasn’t pouring heat into it.

  My brain couldn’t quite seem to decide whether that was good or bad, what with the distraction of Elise’s hand on my shoulder and her dark hair brushing gently against the side of my face as she leaned.

  Either way, I had to imagine I kind of looked like a crazy person.

  “I’m not sure we’re supposed to be talking,” I stammered.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Well, you should probably figure that out then.”

  I looked up at her, hovering over me, wonderfully close.

  She showed me a smile that took my insides for a ride and tilted her head toward the pot. “Looks like your glare needs to step its game up, by the way.”

  I was scrambling for a clever reply when another voice spoke behind us.

  “Ah, children.”

  Franco.

  I sprang to my feet, perhaps a little too quickly. Carlisle was with him, as well as another man I didn’t recognize. The newcomer was short and tan and had a long, cylindrical container slung over his robed shoulder. He kicked off his sandals before stepping onto the padded floor.

  “Elise, I see you’ve met our new friend,” Franco said, his eyes fixed on me the entire time.

  “Sure have!” She waved to Carlisle and the newcomer, chipper as a bird. “Blessed morning, Carlisle. Master.”

  Master? Master of what?

  They both returned her greeting, the mysterious master coming to join us on the mat, his movements radiating discipline.

  He offered me a small, courteous nod before turning his attention to Elise. “You’re ready?”

  “Always,” she said.

  I considered the long case he carried, my thoughts drifting to the staves I’d seen in Elise’s room the previous night.

  “Haldin.” Carlisle’s voice pulled my attention away. “We need to talk.”

  I scooped up the pot of warm water and the wooden board and scooted by Elise and her master, who eyed the pot of water uncertainly, granting me a small sense of amused satisfaction. Maybe I liked having some mystery going for me too.

  Elise caught my eye and mouthed what looked like, Have fun.

  I was too conscious of Franco’s watching eyes to make any response as I went to join him and Carlisle.

  Whatever Elise’s mysterious master started to say to her was lost to me as I followed the others out of the gym. Franco led us down the hallway and into a shiny, surgically clean kitchen, complete with several pristine metallic appliances and dark marble countertops.

  James was bustling about in an apron that read Kiss the Cook in big, red letters under a set of matching red lips.

  I would have laughed if Franco and Carlisle hadn’t looked so serious.

  “Hey, Haldin!” James said. “Let me take those for you.”

  He took the pot and cutting board without comment, as if it was perfectly natural I’d simply be walking around with them.

  I joined Carlisle and Franco at the wooden dining table, my stomach rumbling at the alluring scent of frying bacon and the sweet undercurrent of hot griddlecakes.

  My mouth began to water.

  “We’ve decided we should move sooner than later,” Carlisle said.

  That got my attention. “How soon?”

  “Tonight,” Franco said. “We’ll have everything we need by then. Every day we wait past tonight is just another chance for them to notice someone’s been digging.”

  My shock must’ve shown, because Carlisle did something very un-Carlisle-like and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Eat,” he said as James lowered a sizeable tray of griddlecakes and bacon onto the table. “Then we’ll talk about it.”

  I nodded dumbly.

  Tonight.

  Ice crept through me.

  All my training, all my resolve, and yet this fight hadn’t truly felt real until that moment. Tonight, though… Tonight, Carlisle and I would venture into the lair of a very real, very dangerous monster.

  Suddenly I didn’t feel so hungry.

  That must’ve shown too, because James almost looked apologetic when he set utensils and an empty plate down in front of me.

  “Get ‘em while they’re hot.”

  18

  Wrong Side

  Whether the holo plans we’d seen had been totally complete or not, they at least hadn’t lied about one thing. For a biotech research lab, the Vantage compound sure looked a lot like a military fortress.

  Carlisle and I lay in a cold, dark ditch a hundred yards west of the perimeter wall, watching the guards patrolling along the top.

  “Ready?” came Carlisle’s voice in my mind.

  “Ready.”

  It wasn’t just a reflexive response.

  Before we’d left, Carlisle had taken his last crack at trying to convince me I still had a chance to walk away from this fight. The flight over had been for what nerves remained. And there’d been plenty of them.

  But now, huddled in the dirt next to my partner in vigilante crime, it was finally time to act.

  Carlisle planted his hands, preparing to spring. “Just as we planned, then. Wait here until the ascent is clear.”

  And with that, he leapt forward and took off for the wall, moving faster than I’d ever seen a human move.

  I’d known he was going to use his abilities to bolster his speed. Expecting it, though, didn’t keep my jaw from dropping. It was preternatural. He covered the hundred yards in a blur, gathered himself, jumped a full thirty feet in the air, and caught onto the outside edge of the perimeter wall, agile as any acrobat.

  I could only gape as he hung there patiently, waiting for the next guard to pass.

  Clearly, I still had a lot to learn about my abilities.

  I raised my sidearm—one of the fancy compact pulse guns Legion specters sometimes used for covert ops—to watch more closely through the sight’s connection with the equally fancy microelectronic lenses Franco had lent me, thanking Alpha fo
r the hundredth time Franco had seen to outfit us with his impressive resources.

  The guards we’d observed on the wall so far had all been as well armed and armored as Sanctuary patrolmen, their movements organized, disciplined. They weren’t screwing around here.

  Carlisle waited until the approaching guard passed, then deftly vaulted over the lip of the wall and applied a stun baton to the man’s neck. The guard went rigid with the shock, then slackened as the baton sedative began taking effect. Carlisle caught him before he crumpled to the ground, checked his surroundings once more, and flashed me a thumbs up.

  I killed the scope feed in my lenses with two upward blinks and checked to make sure the grappling module was still properly fitted to my gun.

  Time to move.

  If I had any complaint about our gear, it was that I felt a little vulnerable, what with all the big guns around here and nothing but James’ comparatively flimsy armor skin for protection. But at least I was able to move fast.

  I covered the stretch between the ditch and the wall at a dead sprint—which is to say, moving about half as fast as Carlisle had. At the wall’s base, I took careful aim and fired.

  The pulse gun’s magnetic accelerator hummed, and the grappling bolt blurred noiselessly upward and dug into the permacrete with a tiny thud. I flipped on the external coiling motor and held on tight, using my feet to skitter up the wall as the motor whisked me upward with a faint electric whir.

  From the walkway atop the wall, Carlisle reached a hand down. I killed the motor, clasped his hand, and scrambled over the wall to hunker down in the walkway while I disengaged the grappling bolt and reeled it back in.

  Carlisle removed one of the unconscious guard’s gloves, and I held the exposed hand up so he could scan the man’s fingerprints with his palmlight.

  I was glancing around for promising dark corners to hide our sleeping friend when Carlisle scooped the guard up and tossed him over the wall.

  I jerked up to the edge. “What the grop are you—Oh.”

  On the other side of the wall, the guard wasn’t falling to his death, but rather drifting gently to the ground on Carlisle’s telekinetic ride.

  “Sweet Alpha, man. A little warning next time?”

  Carlisle tilted his head in concession and pointed to the stairwell halfway down our section of wall. I set my weapon to stun rounds and set off beside him at a crouching jog.

  We paused near the stairwell. Carlisle dialed his cloak out, went vacant for a second, then dialed it back in and shook his head. “Two guards down there. Over the wall, it is.”

  He waited for my affirmative, peered over the lip of the inner edge, and lightly hopped off the wall to the compound below. He would slow his descent, I knew, but it was still kind of alarming to watch.

  I hooked the grappling bolt into the wall, waiting for his signal. Too long. There must be a guard hovering nearby, or maybe—

  Scud.

  Or maybe my cloak was dialed too close for me to communicate with Carlisle below.

  As soon as I dialed it out, his voice came to me. “Ah, good. I was worried I was going to have to come back up there.”

  “Yeah… Sorry. Still getting used to telepath comms.”

  “Better to be safe. Get ready.”

  As foolish as I felt, he had a point. If a Seeker or any of the raknoth—say, Alton Parker—happened to be nearby, all it would take was one careless slip-up to bring the entire facility down on us.

  “Go,” came Carlisle’s voice.

  I vaulted the wall, grappling module gripped tight, and descended to join him on the ground.

  We stuck to the shadows behind a stack of shipping crates, waiting for a clear approach to one of the unobtrusive side doors we’d identified as an ideal entry point to the research facility—sufficiently removed from both the heavy security of the front entrance and the residential activity at the back of the complex.

  A few guards walked by on patrol. In the distance, a skimlift was moving racks of shiny canisters onto a heavy transport. Other than that, things were as quiet as we’d hoped they’d be in the dead of night.

  The patrol passed, and we darted across the yard, sticking to the shadows as much as possible. We pulled up beneath the security camera posted above our target door. Carlisle planted a little routing chip on its housing and keyed his earpiece as he sank back into the shadows beside me. “We’re ready, James.”

  “Right,” James’ voice crackled in my right ear, “just a second, guys.”

  I activated my lenses’ zoom and kept my weapon at the ready, watching the distant guards on the wall, as we waited for James to get in and loop the feeds of the nearest cameras. Beside me, Carlisle readied the fingerprint scans we’d procured from the guard on his palmlight.

  Above, one of the distant guards turned down the section of wall near us and began marching closer. I tapped Carlisle’s shoulder, and he extinguished his palmlight.

  “James?” he said, his voice low and calm. “The sooner the better.”

  I trained my weapon on the approaching guard, grip tight.

  “Almooossst…” James said. “Crap. Almost there!”

  My heart was hammering. Even shrouded as we were, the guard was probably close enough to see us now. All he had to do was look this way.

  I rested my finger on the trigger.

  Too long. It was taking too long. I had to take the shot.

  “Got it!” James said. “Go!”

  Carlisle pressed his palmlight to the access panel, which flashed green after a moment’s hesitation. The door slid open, and we hurried inside.

  “Merciful Alpha,” I hissed once the door was closed behind us and we were alone in the entryway.

  That had been too close.

  “I got you guys!” James said, sounding more confident now. “Okay, so now you need to—Oh crap.”

  Carlisle lifted his head like he’d sensed something and stared somewhere down the hall the entryway led to. I carefully dialed out my cloak and reached out with my extended senses.

  Several minds were approaching. Three—no, four—of them.

  “Incoming,” James said. “Four guys. Unarmored. Two lightly armed. Can you hide?”

  “Not really,” Carlisle said quietly. He glanced at me. “I suppose we’re somewhat in need of directions anyway.”

  I could hear the voices now, drawing closer.

  “Uh, you mean you wanna—”

  “Ask these goodfellows for directions,” Carlisle said. “Exactly. Get ready.”

  “Oh boy,” came James’ voice.

  I leveled my weapon at the entrance to the hallway beyond and waited, forcing a few deep breaths. Carlisle stood at ease ahead, stun baton loosely concealed behind his forearm.

  Skilled and scary as he was in action, I still couldn’t believe Carlisle had declined to bring a gun, insisting his body and mind were the only weapons he needed—and, apparently, a stun baton for good measure. Personally, I wished he would’ve brought a real weapon. But I wasn’t the master Shaper here.

  Either way, I was damn glad for the reassuring weight of a gun in my hand as the voices reached the intersection.

  They were making quite the racket as they strolled into view, the first of the pack vigorously animated in his description of just how badly the attractive woman—my word, not his—from the tavern last night had been begging for his beardsplitter.

  They froze when they saw us.

  Then Mr. Chivalrous broke the spell and went for his holstered sidearm. I shifted my aim to him and squeezed the trigger with pleasure.

  The magnetic accelerator hummed, the pulse gun gave its strange recoil, and Mr. Chivalrous went rigid as the stunner found its mark on his chest.

  His three companions came to life as he crumpled. Carlisle telekinetically yanked one of them past him and toward me as if in offering, then he dashed forward to meet the other two.

  My opponent did an admirable job of catching his balance, considering he had no way of und
erstanding what had just happened. He groped for his sidearm and drew. I caught his hand and directed the weapon away from me, pivoting in to deliver an elbow strike to the side of his head.

  He stumbled with the blow. I pressed the advantage, twisting his gun free and clubbing the back of his head with it. He hit the ground with a thud and didn’t get back up.

  I spun, nerves humming, ready to assist Carlisle.

  But he was already dragging his two limp opponents back into the entryway, where they wouldn’t be as immediately visible.

  “Well done,” he said, glancing at the guard I’d taken down. “Any trouble?”

  “All good.” I didn’t sound as shaken as I felt.

  All the drills and sims in the world apparently couldn’t quite capture the real thing.

  “Good work, guys,” James’ voice crackled through the comms.

  I gathered myself and dragged Mr. Chivalrous back into the entryway by his limp legs. Carlisle was crouched over the guy I’d taken out, prodding at him experimentally. The guy gave a disgruntled moan.

  I felt slightly guilty, watching the man’s feeble attempt to rouse. We might be doing the right thing here, but that didn’t make me feel any better about beating up on guards.

  “Asking for directions?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Carlisle said, closing his eyes and placing a hand to the man’s forehead.

  The poor guy gave a shudder, and I suppressed one of my own as I realized what Carlisle was doing—sifting through the man’s memories for what we needed instead of bothering to talk it out of him.

  Quickly enough, Carlisle appeared to find what he was looking for. His eyes drifted open, and the Vantage guy slumped back into sleep or unconsciousness.

  “I think Franco was right about the extra floor.”

  “How do you know?”

  He laid the guy gently down. “This man’s recall of the facility is nearly crystal clear. Impressively so. Except near the lifts at the bottom floor. There, his memories are muddled, like they’ve been tampered with.”

  “Sounds like it’s worth checking out.”

  Especially since we’d already been leaning toward heading down first anyway.