by Jamie Davis
Taylor scowled and said, “Who’s the ‘mundane?’ Me? I prefer ‘tech witch’ if you don’t mind. That word is so…”
“Mundane?” Quinn quipped, then laughed. “We appreciate you, I promise. You deserve a better title to describe your place on our team.”
Taylor smiled and turned to look at Miranda.
“Hey, I meant no offense. It’s what we call non-magical people. You have demonstrated you’re way more capable than most humans would be.”
“So what does this have to do with Clark? Does it mean he’s wrong in what he’s doing?” Quinn asked. “He doesn’t want this new dark age you’re warning us about any more than you do.”
Miranda shook her head. “No, he’s working toward the same purpose, although he’s on a parallel path. I only wanted to point out that his way isn’t the only way. I like what he’s done so far. He’s shown he’s flexible with the way he’s training you. I think he understands a change is afoot; that something new is coming, at least deep down.”
“So,” Quinn began, “we’re here to represent nature’s new counter to a resurgence of evil, manifesting now using magic and technology together. We just have to find out where they are. They took the VR rigs with them. We have to assume they are going to use them again to send out more slayers.”
Taylor snapped her fingers. “Maybe we should have started looking at that from the beginning.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow in question.
“Think about it, Quinn. If they’re still using the VR rigs to assassinate people or commit other crimes, that means they have to be connected to the web somehow. I’m convinced they’re using the interconnectivity of everything electronic to help transmit them to their target’s vicinity, so we might be able to track them down.”
When neither Quinn or Miranda said anything, Taylor reached over and picked up the crude VR headset on which she’d been working. “This uses the scrapped tech we recovered from the VirSync storerooms. It came from the same source as their existing tech. That means they use related components. All I have to do is figure out which ones and I should be able to localize their presence when they’re plugged in.”
Miranda waited a few seconds, then she said, “What are you waiting for? Start searching.”
“Uh, yeah,” Taylor said. “The bad news is, I have to wait until they’re using the VR system again. Until then, there won’t be anything to detect.”
Quinn nodded. “So we need to draw them out. That shouldn’t be too hard.”
Clark’s voice came from behind them. “Draw who out?”
Quinn spun, startled. Clark always came and went in silence. She said, “The slayers. Taylor thinks she can find the new VirSync location but needs to wait until they’re using the VR tech again. That means we need to set up a trap for them. Unless you found them while you were gone this morning?”
Clark shook his head. “No, I had to meet with someone I’d offered protection to over the years. They laid low after the other attacks happened, but they need to come out of hiding to prepare for an upcoming event that’s happening soon.”
Clark’s brow furrowed with worry as he said it, something Quinn didn’t miss. “And you’re not happy with that decision. What’s the big deal, maybe we can use this to lay our trap for the slayers.”
“We may not have to,” Clark said. “I think this is what they were working for the whole time. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”
“What is this big event, Clark?” Miranda asked. “I don’t remember hearing about anything supernatural happening soon.”
“You wouldn’t have heard about this. It was kept on a strict need-to-know basis. There’s going to be a major fae summit held here in Baltimore in a week or so. I thought it would have been called off given the attacks in the area. Apparently, I was wrong.”
“A fae summit,” Miranda said. “With all the fae leaders in one place?”
Clark nodded.
“If Myles and the demons he’s working with succeed in taking out the fae leadership,” Miranda mused, “it would leave a huge void in the supernatural world. It would be nearly impossible to recover from a blow like that. The fae would retreat from the world again, taking their magic with them. The void would allow the netherworlders to enter and fill that space. The last time that happened was after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Dark Ages acquired that name for a reason.”
Now that it had been explained to her, Quinn knew what Miranda meant. “We have to stop them, Clark, and that means I need to train harder and work on a way to counter them on their own turf. We have to get the VR rig up and running and find out where VirSync is operating sooner rather than later.”
“The tech witch is on it,” Taylor said, grinning. “I can multitask with the best of them. If they turn their system on again, I’ll know it. I’ll make sure your rig is ready to go when we need it.”
Quinn hoped Taylor was right because right now, the hacker held their only hope of finding and countering VirSync before the summit.
Chapter Eight
It was two more days before Taylor picked up a ping on her searches for technology related to the discarded VirSync gear they’d found in the storeroom. She announced her success with a loud whoop from the dining room, followed by a shouted, “Got ’em!”
Quinn and Clark were in the basement training when they heard Taylor’s shout. Quinn rose from the mat, rubbing her shoulder and happy for a break in the current drill. She’d started to get better and even managed to get past Clark’s formidable defenses on a few occasions. Still, those small victories were few and far between.
Clark tossed her a towel from the peg by the stairs. “That sounds promising. I was beginning to think her claims were all hype.”
“I never doubted her, though I was getting anxious that she might be trying to do too much. She’s barely gotten any sleep in forty-eight hours.”
“Let’s see what she’s discovered.”
Clark started up the stairs with Quinn right behind him.
Miranda stood behind Taylor when the pair arrived, leaning over her back, staring at the center screen arrayed in front of her. She pointed at the center screen. “What’s that?”
Taylor beamed. “That is a ping from a tracking bot I created. It found a nearly identical electronic serial number to one of the components in the VR rig I created. Someone fired it up for about five minutes yesterday, then shut it back down. I can’t tell you exactly when. My bot is just reading device logs on local servers. I’d need to be a lot closer to the network they’re on to be able to track it in real-time, but I know the area it came from.”
Clark walked over to join Miranda behind Taylor. Quinn followed.
The hunter pointed at the blinking dot on the map on the screen to the right. “That’s in the middle of downtown. There are dozens of places they could be hiding there. Can you localize it?”
“Maybe.” Taylor’s fingers tapped on the keyboard, and the map zoomed in to an area just a few city blocks wide. The pulsing red circle now filled the whole display. A few seconds after zooming in, though, the red ring began to shrink, and finally, it hovered over a single building.
Taylor tapped the screen. “That’s where they are.”
Clark shook his head. “That building has to be at least twenty stories tall. There have to be more than a dozen businesses in there.”
Taylor frowned, probably because she’d expected congratulations. “I can narrow it down for you a little. They’d need a pretty large broadband connection to handle what they’re doing, especially if they’re planning on sending out more than one slayer at a time.”
She tapped a few more commands in and glanced at the first screen where a standard web search window had opened. She clicked on one of the results before Quinn could read it, and soon two windows opened. They each showed some sort of online control panel.
“What’s that?” Quinn asked.
“I’m in both the phone and cable company’s maintenance s
ystems. They should tell me which accounts in that building are using the most data in, and more importantly, out.”
“And?” Clark asked.
“There are three companies using the kind of bandwidth I’d expect to see from the VirSync VR system.” Taylor studied the list that popped up. After scanning the screen for a few seconds, she pointed at the first company listed. “This one is a media advertising firm that probably uploads large video files on a regular basis for clients. They’d use a lot of bandwidth. The next one is a cyber-security firm. They also need a big pipe to move tons of data.”
Her finger tapped the last entry on the list. “This has to be it. What does a small brokerage firm need all that raw cyber power for? They deal in stock trades that consist of small packets of data. Sure, there are a lot of them, but there’s no way that accounts for this kind of usage. Plus, there’s been a spike in data in the last few weeks. If I’m right, that’s the one.”
Quinn leaned forward. “Handon Services, LLC. I’ve never heard of them.”
“Me either,” Miranda replied. “It sort of makes them a great cover. Maybe Myles Hickman and the cult behind VirSync created shell companies to move to when needed. They’d be a perfect way to provide cover for what they’re doing.”
“We have to scout them to be sure,” Clark said. “I’ll go tonight.”
“I’m going, too,” Quinn interjected.
Clark started to shake his head, then stopped himself. “Fine, but listen to me and do as I say. This is a recon mission. We just need to verify they’re there. Once that’s done, we can decide what to do next.”
“Why don’t we attack while we’re there?” Quinn asked.
“Because there are only two of us. We have no idea how many people they have there to protect their operation. If it’s them, we need to even the odds before we confront them directly. It’ll be risky enough to expose the fact that we’re on to their location. It might just make them bug out again. Then we’d be back to square one.”
Quinn’s shoulders sagged with disappointment. She wanted to get some payback from the people who’d killed all the candidates and left their bodies to rot back in that cavern.
“Quinn, go get a shower and some rest. We’re not leaving until nearly midnight. I want you fresh and with your wits about you tonight.”
Quinn nodded and headed for the bathroom upstairs. Her mind drifted back to what had happened in the cavern, and she wondered what new part of the cult’s evil plot await their arrival tonight. She’d find out soon enough.
When she woke up from her nap hours after dark, it surprised her. Clark’s incessant drills and training regimen had clearly taken a lot out of her. Her excitement about their mission, coupled with feeling refreshed from the shower and nap, bounced her out of bed to get dressed.
When she came downstairs to get something to eat, it took her a few seconds to locate everyone.
Taylor spotted her first, her head popping up from behind the trio of computer monitors in the dining room. “Hey, Clark went out earlier and picked up pizza. It’s in the fridge.”
“Cool, I’m starving. Anything new on tonight’s target?”
“Nope. I’ve tried to find out more about what the brokerage company does, but there isn’t much information out there about them or the people who work there.”
Quinn nodded and glanced into the next room. Clark sat on the old sofa there in the den. He had his sword out and ran a stone across the blade in slow even strokes, sharpening an edge that was probably already as sharp as it ever needed to be.
“Can’t that thing already split a hair if needed?”
Clark looked up and smiled. “Of course, but maintaining the tools of your trade is never a bad idea. You should sharpen your Bowie, too. Sit down. I’ll show you how to do it.”
“I need to get something to eat. I’ll be right back.”
“Go ahead,” Clark said. “I’ll move in there to the table while you heat something up.”
Quinn returned to the kitchen and got herself a few slices of pizza. She popped them in the microwave and went down to the basement, where Clark kept their small stash of edged weapons. She retrieved her knife and returned to the kitchen just in time to get her hot pizza from the microwave.
She sat down, setting the Bowie knife in its sheath beside her plate. She picked up a slice of pizza, folded it in half New York-style, and started in on it. It was delicious.
Between bites, she slid the knife in Clark’s direction.
He laughed and pushed it back to her. “I’m not sharpening it for you. It’s not my blade. Finish your dinner, and I’ll show you what to do. This is as important as all the training we’ve done downstairs. I should have started you on it sooner, but I got distracted by trying to break through the barrier that kept you from progressing.”
Quinn wolfed down the remaining pizza and took the dish to the sink before returning to the table. Clark had laid a sharpening stone identical to his on the table next to her sheathed knife. It was about eight inches long and two inches wide.
He also took a small plastic squeeze bottle with a narrow conical tip from the bag on the floor beside his chair. He squirted a small dot of liquid on Quinn’s stone and capped the bottle.
“What’s that?”
“Honing oil,” Clark replied. “It helps lubricate the blade as you work on the edge. Now take out your knife and move the stone over in front of you.”
Quinn pulled the Bowie from the sheath and reached for the stone to pick it up.
“No, leave the stone on the table. Just slide it over in front of you with the narrow side closest to you.”
“You picked yours up,” Quinn argued.
“Yes, but my blade is longer than yours. Leaving the stone on the table will help you maintain the proper angle for an optimal edge. I’ll put mine down to show you what I mean.”
Quinn watched as Clark demonstrated what he wanted her to do. Soon she pushed the blade across the stone in long smooth motions, concentrating on keeping the edge at the right angle. As she did, she saw a sort of silver glow around the point where the knife met the stone.
“Hey, there’s some sort of… I don’t know, like a light coming from the knife.”
Clark smiled. “That’s good. I wasn’t sure if you would see anything or not. It tells me that we don’t have to rely on the VR for all your training. A hunter’s blade is important. It’s almost a physical extension of you. What you’re seeing is the blade’s blessed magic sort of telling you the best angle and speed to use to get the perfect edge.”
Quinn focused on the faint light coming from her blade and tried to keep it constant as she moved the edge over the stone. She noticed that tiny shifts in her angle of attack caused the light to dim or brighten based on what she did. She started working on getting the brightest, most consistent glow she could from the blade as she worked.
Across the table from her, Clark nodded. He picked up his stone and returned to working on his sword.
When Taylor came in sometime later, Quinn had no idea how long she’d been sitting there with the stone and blade. She’d reached some sort of Zen state working the edge of her knife. She barely looked up at her friend to acknowledge her presence. If she took her eyes off the Bowie, the glow faded.
“I wondered what the two of you were up to in here. All I could hear was that strange scraping sound. Now I see you both in some sort of trance over your sharp and pointy things.”
Quinn sighed and lifted her blade up from the stone. She put the knife down beside the sheath and raised her hands over her head to stretch. “It is kind of relaxing to sit here and do this, I’m not going to lie.”
“That reminds me,” Taylor said, turning to Clark. “When do I get my sword. I’m thinking something like the one the Witcher carries strapped to his back.”
“First, no one carries a sword that way. There’s no way you can draw a long-bladed weapon from its sheath when it’s on your back without bending the blade. Th
e angle doesn’t work.”
“And second?”
“Second, no, you don’t get a sword.”
“Why not? I need to be able to defend myself. Remember what happened in the cavern?”
“You’re not a hunter. A sword is a hunter’s weapon.”
“Quinn’s a hunter, and she doesn’t have a sword,” Taylor countered.
“Quinn chose her blade when she went through training at VirSync. It seems to have imprinted on her. I’ve tried sword drills with her, but it hasn’t taken yet. It might be something she has to learn once you get that VR rig working.”
“All right, so no sword. How about a big shiny knife like hers? It’s not a sword, so I can have one, right?”
Clark stifled a low groan, which brought a smile to Quinn’s face. Taylor could be a force of nature when she wanted something.
“Fine. You want a knife, try this.” Clark reached into his ever-present leather jacket and unclipped something. He pulled it out and tossed it in Taylor’s direction.
The girl caught it and held it up. It was a narrow-bladed knife in a leather sheath five or maybe six total inches long. The metal from the blade stretched back and became a rounded handle. There were quarter-inch holes bored in the exposed steel. Quinn had never seen a knife like it.
“What the hell is this tiny thing? This will be next to useless in a fight.”
“It’s not useless. It’s a throwing knife. You have no business getting close enough to use a real knife. Learn to use that, and I’ll get you a few more like it. There’s a target set up on the wall downstairs.”
Taylor drew the shiny steel knife from its sheath and brandished it. “A throwing knife; that’s pretty cool. I need to go look up videos on how to use one.”
The girl left the room to get back on her computer, and Clark sighed. A satisfied smile crossed his face. “I thought she’d ask me to train her to use it.”
Quinn chuckled. “You should be glad she has the internet to learn from.”