The Magic Within: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Found Magic Book 2)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Computer, do as he says,” I replied as Lisa got groggily to her feet. I glanced at her. Blood dripped down her face from a cut on her forehead, collecting on her chin and staining the front of her shirt scarlet. My stomach sank as she took a wobbly step toward me. I hadn’t even tried to check on her. What if she’d needed help? Geez, I was a horrible friend…

  Lisa must have read the look in my face because she waved her hand and mouthed, “it’s okay.” An image of a small town that looked a little too familiar for my liking filled the left side of the monitor.

  “Is that Folsom?” Lisa asked as the camera scanned the town. Everything appeared normal, so why were they showing me this?

  “I don’t know if you’ve looked at Folsom yet,” the man who ate kittens said. “But if you haven’t, I’ll just have to do this again.” He typed something into his computer, and the elementary school in the center of town exploded into a mushroom cloud of fire and brimstone. “Hopefully, I won’t.”

  “No!” I screamed, reaching out toward the screen as tears welled in my eyes. Had he really just blown up a school to make a point?

  “I hope you caught that. Either way, I’m going to blow up another building, then another, and another until either there’s no town left or you come out here.” The man turned his back to the camera and began to disappear into the crowd of agents. “You have five minutes.”

  “I have to go out there,” I said, swallowing the rage inside me. I could go out there and save everyone. Besides, they weren’t going to hurt me right? And even if they tried, I could take care of myself. I mean sure I’d never faced that many trained soldiers at once, but I was Abby Banks, and I had magic. If I couldn’t do it, who could? Besides, even if I couldn’t get away, I was one person. Could I really be so selfish as to believe I was worth all those people in Folsom?

  “Maybe they already evacuated the town, Abby,” Lisa replied, eyes still transfixed on the screen. “All those people are assets. They wouldn’t just kill their own assets to get you, would they?” She turned to look at me, fury bubbling from her brown eyes. “That’s just bad math.”

  “It isn’t if Abby is worth more to them than all those assets. Abby brings along with her all of Gabriella’s tech. That’s worth a lot. She had the ritual for the flit locked in her vault, who knows what else is in there…” Tom must have gotten up because when I turned toward the sound of his voice, he was standing right behind us. “I’d trade a lot of people for Abby too.” He smirked and shook his head. “It’s a good plan, but it hinges on one thing.” Tom’s hands reached out and flew across the keyboard.

  “What’s that?” I asked as the lights stopped flashing, and the sirens went off. The image in the screen rumbled and split to show a giant scud missile I remembered from old war movies. Only it seemed more angry and menacing than it did in the movies.

  “It assumes you’re a good person,” Tom replied with a smirk. “You know, that you’re the kind of sap who will just give in to them because they’re willing to do a whole lot of bad.” He shook his head. “Those kinds of tactics don’t work with bad guys.”

  The hatch above the missile opened up to reveal blue sky, and a red counter appeared in the corner. The red number sixty flashed for a second before turning into a red fifty-nine.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked, glancing from the screen to Tom and back again.

  “I’m going to launch a missile into the heart of their little camp and kill them all,” Tom said with a shrug. The look on his face was so dispassionate I could scarcely believe it belonged to a person.

  “That’s crazy! You can’t kill all those people,” I reached out to try to make the computer stop the countdown when he seized my wrists.

  “Those aren’t people per se. They’re enemies who want to kill you and your whole town. Destroying them will give us time to come up with another plan.” Tom shoved me away and held up his hands as I balled mine into fists. “I don’t want to fight you, Abby. I can’t beat you in a fight, but this is the right way.”

  The screen flashed forty-five, and a chill ran down the back of my spine. Could I really let him kill all those soldiers when I could stop him? Wouldn’t being complicit make me just as bad? I shook my head as tears filled my eyes. “Please don’t do this, Tom. Please just stop. What if they blow up Folsom in retaliation?”

  “They might. I’m willing to take that risk.” He looked over his shoulder at Lisa who was watching the numbers tick down, thoughts flitting across her eyes so fast that it was like watching NASCAR in fast forward. “Especially since my daughter is out.”

  “I can’t take that risk. I might be able to live with you killing all those soldiers. I could justify it to myself that they are bad guys and deserve what they get. But, and this is a big but, I can’t risk an entire town full of innocent people when all I have to do to save them is surrender.” I took a step toward him, and he backed away from the computer hands raised in capitulation.

  “Well, let’s hope you figure out how to disable what I’ve done before we run out of time. Then, when you fail, you can thank me for saving us.” Tom took another step back and made a sweeping gesture with his hands. It seemed… odd. Did he really think I wouldn’t be able to figure out my mother’s computer system?

  I ignored the strange premonition in the back of my head as the screen hit thirty, and the old guy with the detonator appeared in front of the camera. He wasn’t smiling this time either.

  “Tick tock, Abigail,” he said, running his thumb over the screen of his hand held.

  I stopped. Maybe they’d be safer if I let Tom destroy them all. But what if they retaliated? Could I take that chance? I sighed, I still had time to turn off the timer and get out there before my five minutes were up.

  “What sort of guarantee do you have they’ll do anything they say?” Lisa asked, sidling up in front of me and sitting next to the panel Tom had used to start the missile’s launch sequence. She gave me a weak smile. “This is how it will play out. You’ll go down there, and they’ll blow up the town anyway, or do something a million times worse. That’s how these guys work. You know this to be true, Abby.”

  “Why do I feel like you’re channeling the emperor?” I asked and Lisa looked at me like I was a crazy person. “Like from Star Wars?” I added before I remembered she had never seen the movies. “Never mind. Computer, stop the countdown.”

  “Permission denied,” my mother’s sugar-sweet tone said, bristling over the speaker in front of me like she was telling me to use a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.

  “Um… why?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief.

  “Missile controls can only be activated and deactivated manually. It is a safety mechanism to keep accidents from happening by misunderstanding a spoken command,” the computer told me.

  I resisted the urge to punch the computer in its electronic face, and instead, put my hands on the keyboard and shut my eyes. For once in my stupid life, my hands knew what to do. They flew across the controls in record time, pausing the countdown at the three second mark.

  “Congratulations, Abby, you’ve killed us all,” Tom said as I turned toward him.

  “Tom, those guys are just doing their jobs. We can’t just kill them all. They have families, people counting on them. We can’t just slaughter them for that…” The words had barely finished leaving my mouth when the man on the screen appeared again.

  “Maybe you didn’t see my first demonstration, Abigail. Let’s just do another one right now to make sure. I bet this one will hit a little closer to home.” He pressed something on his handheld. An explosion rocked a tiny subdivision of Folsom, turning the street of two-story McMansions into a pile of twisted rubble and flaming debris.

  “My parents!” Lisa let loose a scream as she shoved me aside. I stumbled over my own feet and fell as Lisa’s face turned cold and dark. I looked up at the screen and my stomach fell. She was right. That was the street Lisa lived on. Had t
hey done that on purpose? If so, why? Was their plan to get Lisa to convince me to give myself up?

  I got to my feet, and as I was reaching out to comfort Lisa, she slapped me across the face. “You killed them, Abby.” Her eyes were filled with murder as she shoved me, hard. “You let them do this because you couldn’t kill the people trying to kill us? Seriously? Are you broken in the head?”

  Lisa screamed, a short stuttered howl of frustration, and pressed a command into the keyboard before I could react.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as the counter hit zero, and the missile lifted into the air. I watched, too stunned to say anything as the camp outside the door to Gabriella’s compound was enveloped in a fireball that made the attack on Folsom look like a party favor. Lisa had just killed them all.

  I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring, but when I turned back to Lisa, she didn’t look at all horrified by what she had done. Instead, she was glaring at me so hard I was pretty sure I didn’t have words to properly describe the way it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up because that was just the tip of the iceberg.

  17

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Lisa screamed, shoving me so hard I had to take a couple steps back to avoid falling on my butt. “Why are you so damn stupid?”

  “Lisa, I just didn’t want people to die,” I replied, swallowing the bile rising in my throat.

  A horrible guttural sound that reminded me of a wounded hyena ripped out of her mouth as she turned back toward the computer. Her hands flew across the interfaces as maps and locations sprang up on the screen. “You have all this power at your fingertips, and you’re too weak or too stupid or both to use it to stop those people,” Lisa snarled, still not looking at me. “This could have all been avoided if you’d just done what needed to be done days ago.” Tears dripped down her cheeks and spattered on the panel, leaving a glistening trail under her fingers.

  The sad thing was, I knew she was right. This is what Donovan had been trying to tell me. He had called me a killer and told me to just go in and slaughter everyone. Still, I’d refused to acknowledge what it would actually take to win against a force like the Agency. The closer I got to routing the Agency, the harder it became to make myself carry through with their plan. I kept looking at all those people, and no matter how bad they were, I just kept thinking that Gabriella was worse, that despite everything they did, there had to be a good reason for the way they acted.

  I kept thinking that maybe we’d all be screwed without them to stop people like Gabriella, that maybe they were ratcheting up because they had to do it. What if I destroyed them and something worse came along, something the Agency could have stopped? Could I really be responsible for killing all those people and then find out they were the good guys after all?

  “Lisa, I know you’re upset.” I reached out toward her. She whirled, smacking my hand away as red rectangles appeared over what must have been fifty spots on the map. The screen to the left of me lit up to reveal a silo filled to the brim with missiles. How had Gabriella gotten a hold of so many? I shook away the thought, now wasn’t the time.

  “I am upset,” she snarled. “Those bastards just killed my parents.” She jerked a thumb at Tom. “He doesn’t count.”

  “Lisa, calm down.” The screen began flashing as the boxes seemed to lock on. Wait, were they targeting those spots? Was Lisa going to fire all those missiles? “You can’t just kill everyone. It’s not right. It’s not what heroes do.”

  “Abby, you’re not a hero.” Lisa tried to shove me again, but this time I caught her hand by the wrist and held her there so she couldn’t move. “You’re just some stupid girl who is in over her head.” Lisa shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I thought we were friends…”

  “We are friends, Lisa. That’s why—”

  “That’s why you let them abduct me and use me as bait?” she asked, and the words leapt from her throat like a pouncing jungle cat and landed straight on my heart, claws first. She spun back to the mainframe, but before she could type anything, I grabbed her by the shoulders and flung her away from the keyboard. She hit the chair with a loud thwap and fell, striking the ground so hard it made my stomach do a little flip flop.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, rushing toward her, worried I’d hurt her. “But I can’t let you kill all those people. They can’t all be bad, and besides…”

  Lisa shoved me away and stood on her own, one hand using the toppled chair for balance. Murder filled her features as she reached up and stroked her left temple with one hand. She looked at her fingertips, and the blood on them seemed to incite her even more.

  “I don’t care, Abby. I don’t care if I have to kill a million innocent people to stop them. They murdered my parents. They killed your mom. They are the source of all that’s wrong with the world, Abby. You may be too weak to do what’s needed to stop them.” She took a menacing step toward me, her hands clenched into fists. “But I am not.”

  “Fortunately for the world, I’m not going to let you kill anyone,” I said, my jaw set in determination as I moved between her and the computer chair. “You can’t beat me, not here, not now, Lisa.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re Abby Banks, wonder-girl.” She laughed, a hoarse gaudy sound that rankled along my flesh. “Too bad you forgot one teensy weensy little thing, Abby.”

  A twinge of worry made my heart start pumping a little faster. “What’s that,” I asked, glancing from her to Tom. He shrugged. He had backed up as far away from us as possible.

  “You need to take her down now, before she kills you,” Donovan said in my ear, his voice so sure and confident that I almost believed him. But this was Lisa…

  “Pay attention to me,” Lisa growled, spittle flying from her lips as she reached out and grabbed me by the throat so fast I couldn’t even react. Her hand tightened, cutting off my air as something robotic glinted in her eyes for a second.

  I threw my hand up instinctively, slamming my palm into her chest and knocking her backward. Her nails scraped at my flesh leaving burning claw marks on my skin as she tore free of my neck. “What the hell, Lisa?”

  She shook her head, her black hair falling down over her face, shielding it from view. “See, I told you guys I figured out how the flit worked. What the problem was. Well, I also added a little patch to my own brain. I wasn’t sure if it’d work, but I used the uplink in my brain to access the flit’s mind…” She curled one hand into a fist. “Let’s just say you’re not quite so special anymore, Abby.”

  I was too stunned to move as she came at me, her fist lashing through the air beside my face. I think she could have hit me if she had wanted to do so because I didn’t move. I was too shocked to even defend myself, so I was glad she hadn’t hit me. With speed like that, it would have knocked me flat on my butt.

  She opened her hand and flicked my ear. “You can’t beat me, Abby. I’m faster and smarter and all around better than you. I’m not sure what they stuffed in your head, but I have the knowledge from everyone the flit has ever entered in mine.”

  I punched her. She must not have expected it because my blow slammed into her face. The feel of her nose breaking beneath my fist made my gut twist into a knot. The spray of her blood across my shirt as I lunged, throwing my knee into her midsection made me want to gag. Lisa was my friend, but unfortunately, she’d lost it.

  She countered my next blow, swinging her arm around to block my elbow. The force of it rattled down my arm, shaking me. How could she have recovered so quickly? That should have hurt her… only it didn’t seem like it had. Why didn’t she care?

  Her fist slammed into my cheek before I could ask her. I fell, the taste of blood filling my mouth. I barely managed to roll out of the way as her foot slammed down on the ground next to me. I scrambled to my feet as her knee whooshed by my nose. It didn’t hit me, but it threw me off balance. I stumbled backward before dropping into a fighting stance a couple meters from her.

  Lisa wasn’t look
ing at me anymore. She had her hands on the keyboard, but as she typed, the whole thing shut down. She let out a cry of frustration as I tackled her from behind, driving my shoulder into the small of her back.

  Our impact against the panel should have stunned her, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She drove her elbow into my side without even a backward glance. The breath shot from my lungs as she whirled, grabbing me by my arm and flinging me across the room like last night’s garbage. I hit the ground hard, skidding to a stop on the metal floor in a way that left my skin crying out in agony. I got to my hands and knees, blood dripping from the corner of my mouth and tried to will the suddenly blurry world back into focus.

  “Access denied. Access denied…” the voice of Gabriella’s holographic form said as Lisa tried to make the computer work. “Flit presence detected. Access revoked. If you believe this is an error, please input a ticket and someone will be able to assist your shortly.” The computer screen winked off, leaving a faint hum in the air as Lisa turned toward me and glared a hole into my chest.

  “Abby, give me access again,” she snapped. Her footsteps echoed in the tiny room, reverberating in my brain like a gong. I shut my eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in my head, and got to my feet. The room swayed when I reopened my eyes, but I ignored it.

  “Not happening, Lisa. You just need to calm down. Think this through—”

  She slapped me so hard my teeth rattled in my head. I staggered backward as she hit me again, knocking me to the ground. My head bounced off the metal with a sickening crack, and the world went dark around the edges. Her weight settled on my chest, pinning me to the floor with her knee.

  “I’m going to repeat myself one time. Give me back access.” Lisa’s voice was hard and angry. Good. If she’d been calm, it would have been way scarier because she was coldly logical, and well, angry people don’t usually think straight. If she was angry, maybe I could take advantage of it.