by Nazri Noor
Oh, the paper. Shocking reams of them slipping through the air, undulating in great, majestic folds like white serpents in flight, flitting from desk to desk. Books floated languorously from one corner of the library to the next, most in a kind of humdrum procession, but a few flapping their covers and pages like birds in flight.
And all around the building, on both levels of this Alexandrian structure were people just nonchalantly walking and weaving through, getting a day’s work in. People in tweed suits, a standard shirt and tie, a gothic Lolita here or there, a girl who may as well have stepped fresh off of an avant-garde runway – there clearly wasn’t a dress code here. And the craziest thing of all was that nobody seemed to give a damn about what was happening. They were sipping coffee, talking around water coolers, clacking away at their laptops, like this was normal.
I looked down at myself, at the worn patch over the knee in my jeans, at the street-weathered sneakers I was wearing to sully the gleaming wooden floor of this Lorica, as they called it. My feet looked totally pedestrian against the carpet, with its intricate woven patterns that I was one-hundred percent sure were shifting and swirling even as I watched.
“I. I can’t.”
That was all I could manage. Thea smiled kindly, then took my hand. “Can, and will, Dustin. Headquarters can be overwhelming, but you’ll get used to it in due time. This is the first step into your new life, and if you play your cards right, your new office.” She released my hand, then set off down a corridor, her heels clicking against the parquet.
Play my cards right? Did that mean what I thought it meant? I had a job here? A future?
Chapter 6
“Okay, I’m not sure what you meant by all that exactly, but was that a job offer?”
Thea’s eyes narrowed, the apples of her cheeks lifting as she suppressed a smile. “Not quite yet. There needs to be an – assessment.” She took off down the corridor.
“Wait. Where are we – ”
Thea looked over her shoulder, an impish grin on her lips. “Follow and you’ll see, Mr. Graves.” She gestured here and there at things I hardly cared about – “and there’s a drinking fountain, and the copy machines are through that door if you need them” – and I was certain that she was intentionally avoiding discussing anything that I was actually burning to learn about, like what was up with all the fires, how did the paper do that, and why the hell was that one guy wrestling a book to the ground and wrapping it in chains?
“I’ve already mentioned a few of the different departments. That’s how things work around here. Everyone has some capacity for magic, but we all have our specialties. Those who might do well in combat go to the Hands.”
“Combat?”
“Things can get dangerous, so it’s helpful to have one or two staffers who can throw fireballs on command, or maybe call a lightning strike.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. No way. No fucking way. That sounded awesome, and I knew more than anything that I wanted to be a Hand. Was that why Thea was giving me the guided tour?
“Those who have powers that would help in surveillance – say, scrying – they become Eyes. Communicators like telepaths, they become Mouths.”
I trailed along beside her, digesting every word, watching her face, looking at every corner for the camera team to burst out from behind a bookcase and yell “It’s just a prank, bro.” But no. She was serious.
I cleared my throat. “You mentioned something about Wings.” Did I sound crazy? I was sure I sounded totally crazy, but when in Rome, right?
“Oh, right. Wings. They specialize in transport. Teleporters, mostly. Some can fly.”
“Oh.” Yep. Definitely crazy. “Well, why not Feet?”
Thea’s nose wrinkled as she gave me a wry smile. “Say you had a talent for magical transport. Would you be happy being called a Foot?”
“I suppose not.” I think it was at that exact point that I knew I had snapped. I was agreeing with her, with all this talk of Wings and Hands and, for all I knew, Gizzards and Toes and Livers. She’d used a hell of a lot of capital letters in the past few minutes alone, and I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be letting up.
“The same goes for the Hounds. They’re field investigators, people who specialize in infiltration, but also in finding and seeking: literally sniffing things out. I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate being called Noses.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice surging with challenge. “Okay, well and good. You’ve got specialists for everything. Fine.” I waved a hand around us. “This place must be expensive to run, so much to account for. Who balances the books? Huh? The Numbers? The Brains?”
Thea spun on her heel and stopped, her expression oddly neutral. She blinked once. “Why, the accounting department, of course. What a strange question.”
I felt myself blush. How was I the crazy one in this situation? Before I could say anything else, Thea put her hands on her hips and looked around us.
“Ah. Looks like we’re in the right place.”
The right place, in this case, being what looked like a room that in all respects was very much like every other we had walked past. Imagine a ballroom that had been cleared of all furniture, its walls stripped of paintings, the floor bare. Just polished wood everywhere in this shiny brown box. It was quiet here, and out of the way. The last person we passed was – well, we hadn’t passed anyone yet. No one even knew we were here.
“The right place? And where is that?”
Thea cracked her knuckles. I swallowed. Nervouser and nervouser by the second.
“What you’ll understand soon, Dustin, is that the Lorica takes care of its own. When something is needed, the institution, no, this building itself provides. What I needed was sufficient space to learn more about you, to see just what kind of man was awakened when you took a knife to the heart.”
I didn’t like where this was going. I backpedaled towards the corridor, guessing if anyone would hear me if I shouted for help.
“Not so fast.” Thea tutted, then held a hand out towards the corridor. A shimmering wall of brilliant light lanced across the gap, blocking my only path to escape, but also blocking out the sound from the rest of the building.
“What the – Thea, what are you doing?” First that shit about getting stabbed in the heart, now this? I took a running start and rammed the barrier with my shoulder. Bad idea. The thing was as solid as a brick wall. I bounced off and crashed to the floor, crumpled into a winded heap.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” Thea said, cracking the last of her fingers. The rings festooning her hands gleamed in the light, huge jewels reflecting the fires suspended in the ceiling. No, wait, they were glowing, of their own accord. Great. Just great. I scrambled to my feet.
“Our talents are awakened in times of great stress, Mr. Graves,” she said, her tone so business-like that I almost forgot that she was probably planning to kill me. “It seems that your murder wasn’t enough to squeeze it out of you. Shame, considering the swell of power we sensed when you died.” She held up one hand, her fingers spread loosely. “We’ll just have to give the process a little nudge.” The space between her palm and her fingers filled with specks of illumination, a hazy radiance that only stopped glowing so intensely when it formed into something dully solid. It was a sphere, made out of searing yellow light.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is, Mr. Graves?”
“A fireball.”
Thea laughed. “Not at all. It’s a globe of light.”
“Oh. Phew.”
“That explodes on impact.” She tossed the ball upward lightly, then caught it in the same hand. “Better start running.”
“Fuck.”
She hurled the sphere straight for my chest. I rolled across the floor. The ball of light struck the ground, exploding the parquet into a shower of wooden tiles and splinters. Oh, so they were like arcane grenades. Awesome. Just great.
“What the hell are
you doing?” I beat feet. “That’s going to cost a ton to repair,” I added, then mentally scolded myself for even thinking to say it out loud. Know-it-all little Dustin with his middling experience in this or that trade, all his books, who thought he was so smart but still got abducted in a park, sacrificed to some dark god, then marked for murder by a psycho in a white pantsuit. I was angry, at myself, at Thea, at the Lorica, at everything.
I heaved a huge breath, then ran, breaking into a sprint for the far side of the room, then cursing how I’d misjudged the size of it. Reaching the other wall seemed to take forever – it’d make sense for me to have my back to it at least, so I could have one side of me protected, anticipate her next move – which was when I realized that I’d been running for too long.
The room was stretching itself to accommodate Thea’s needs. Well. That was convenient. Another sphere sailed past my head, narrowly missing and piercing the nearby wall, cratering the perfect wood with a hideous bang.
“Well done, Mr. Graves! Wouldn’t do well to have you dead.”
I could hear the laughter in Thea’s voice. Was this a game to her? I kept running. Why would these people go through the trouble of rescuing, then healing me if all they wanted was to kill me in the end? Was I the prey in some insane rich person’s idea of a safari?
The room stopped stretching, quickly enough that the wall came up short just in my face. I slammed painfully into the wood.
“Ooh,” Thea called out, sympathetic. “You all right there, Mr. Graves?”
I tasted blood, possibly split my lip. “How the hell do you think I’m doing?” I yelled. I whipped around, furious, spitting blood and saliva, some of it catching on my complimentary regulation Lorica white T-shirt. “Why are you doing this to me? I don’t know what you want from me but I’m. Not. Magical. I don’t know shit about your Hands and awakenings and your Veils and – ”
Both of Thea’s hands were held up now, one to either side of her, her fingers relaxed and loose. And she was smiling. Motes of light gathered around her hands, drifting into the spaces between her fingers until they coalesced into milky white solidity. Two spheres. This time, she didn’t even have to throw. Thea spread her fingers, releasing the orbs. They floated in midair for the span of a second, then, like a pair of missiles, flew screaming in my direction.
My jaw dropped as the two globes of light headed straight for my head. I looked around – nowhere to go, nowhere to hide – and cursed, knowing that I was seconds away from having my skull and my brains completely exploded. Hah. Joke’s on them, I thought. The cleaning bill was going to be atrocious.
With nowhere else to focus, I set my eyes on the ground. At least I wouldn’t have to look when the spheres hit home and popped my head like a grape. It was then that I noticed my shadow on the ground, looking somehow darker than I’d ever seen it. Inviting, almost, and so black that it looked like a hole in reality, or at the very least, an actual hole in the ground.
What the hell, right? Best I could hope for was that Thea didn’t anticipate me ducking. And that’s exactly what I did, hitting the ground in some fervent hope that her grenades would miss. I threw myself into my own shadow, falling to my knees.
And kept falling, and falling, and falling.
Chapter 7
You wouldn’t think that darkness has a texture, but when there’s enough dark, it closes in around you like a thick, black fog. It was soft, wherever I was. It would have been almost comforting, if it wasn’t so cold.
I had fallen into my shadow, somehow, or at least that’s what the Lorica’s bizarre architecture was making me think. That was it. This was another one of their tricks, possibly even a part of Thea’s test. I was getting more and more pissed by the second.
Whirling around in the pitch-black, I searched for the right direction to protest, to shout something clever, but everywhere looked the same. Just darkness, and more darkness. Seconds passed, and I thought my eyes would finally adjust to the gloom, but nothing.
Briefly I thought about calling out to Thea, but then quickly reconsidered the stupidity of making myself known to someone who wanted me dead not five minutes ago. Still. What else was I supposed to do?
“Haha. Super funny. Game’s over, Thea.”
Yet even my voice sounded leaden in my ears, like the shadows were swallowing it up. The words were heavy, hanging in the air just long enough for me to register that I spoke them, then thumping dully to the ground, as if they had gone both unheard and unspoken.
Maybe this wasn’t a test at all. Maybe it was a trap, and Thea meant to keep me here for whatever sick purpose she and her people had. Magic, and the Veil, and all that other nonsense. I didn’t want anything to do with it, not anymore. And the thought of her keeping me against my will shouldn’t have caused me to panic as much as it did, but the worry was gnawing at my insides. Where was I? How the hell was I going to get out?
I groped around in the darkness, finding nothing to hold on to but just more of this unseen black. It was getting harder to breathe, the air around me thinner, colder as I waited. No, that wouldn’t do at all. I’d have to get a move on, I knew. Pick a direction and head down it. Better than waiting there and freezing, or worse, suffocating.
I still had no real grasp on my bearings, no concept of up or down, but at least my feet were taking me in what I could only assume was the same way: forward. And finally it felt like I was making some kind of progress, if only visually. I could almost see in front of me, but it was less a matter of light being introduced to my surroundings. It was more as if the darkness were receding, its intensity going softer. But that offered little relief, because I could still hear – something.
Rather, several somethings. I knew I wasn’t imagining the sound of things shifting just beyond my peripheral vision, of the shadows melding and uncoiling as I walked. The blackness still terrified me, but somehow, here in the cold, unbreathable pocket I’d found myself, there was something almost comforting. It was like being under the watchful eye of a teacher who also happened to be a known terror. You knew you were safe, more or less, but you also knew that you were in no way in the clear, that things could still go horribly wrong if you took one false step.
That’s what I kept waiting for as I moved, as I kept heading for what I could only assume was not a light, but, again, an absence of shadow.
“Finally.”
Again the word dropped to the floor like a stone. I tried not to berate myself for wanting to say something this time, but come on. Who was I talking to, anyway? And if I ever made it out of this hell tunnel, Thea would still be waiting at the end to try and kill me.
But that was when the dimness grew thicker. Smokier. And I knew that it didn’t make sense, but it was also more – violent, somehow.
I wasn’t alone.
I broke into a run, speeding down the tunnel, my eyes glued on the tiny pinprick of light I could only assume represented my freedom. I didn’t dare look behind me, or even to either side of me, but I became acutely aware of deliberate movements from things on the edge of sight. They seemed like tendrils, strange organic forms that shifted from tentacles into hands, then claws, then talons. I didn’t look, didn’t wait to find out. Just kept running.
And the hardness of breathing, that never went away. It pressed on my lungs, this dark, unknowable presence squeezing against my chest. The more I ran, the more dramatic the expanse of air that was sucked out of me. Just seconds more, I knew, and I wouldn’t be able to breathe at all.
I made it just in time.
My muscles screaming, I made one last, decisive step. The shadows ripped apart, fraying at the seams at the exact spot that my foot struck the ground. The universe exploded into a burst of radiance, a dazzling panorama that made my eyeballs ache.
Gradually the light faded, and I saw that I was somewhere familiar. I recognized it as the exact same room I’d been stuck in with Thea, only that I was several feet away from where I’d attempted to duck. The far wall was pockmarked and
shattered, the floor a mess of splinters.
It was as if the shadows had peeled away, taking me from that dark place back to my own reality, where Valero and Heinsite Park and that one really good burger place existed, where Thea and her grenades were still waiting to obliterate me. I tumbled to the ground, sprawled across the floor, the sweat cold against my back. I looked over my shoulder. The dark chamber was gone. Thea stood there, staring at me with huge eyes that, at first, were filled with confusion, but slowly widened with awe.
“That was splendid, Mr. Graves,” she said, clasping her hands together. I watched her fingers, still wary. No more motes of light, as far as I could tell, and no further intent to produce those explosive orbs she could throw so well.
I thrust my finger at the space behind me where the black tunnel had been, then pointed one accusing finger at her chest, barely able to collect my thoughts, much less my words. I sputtered, coughed, then took in the hugest gulp of air my lungs could muster.
“What the hell was that? Where the hell was I?”
Thea blinked at me, the surprise on her face genuine. “You mean you don’t know?”
I slammed one ineffectual fist on the ground. It didn’t work as well as I thought at emphasizing my anger, and only did so much as to drain more air and strength out of my body.
“Enough with the riddles, Thea. Enough with playing dumb. Where was I? What was that black room I was stuck in?”
She spread her hands and shrugged. “That wasn’t a room, Mr. Graves. Those were shadows. You walked through them.” She clapped her hands together once, her fingers squeezing each other tight, like a girl hardly able to contain her glee. “I knew attacking you was the right thing to do. You just needed a nudge. That was all.”