Magic's Divide

by Serena Lindahl

  Magic’s Divide

  Magitech Series Book Two

  Serena Lindahl

  ©2018 Serena Lindahl

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying or recording without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Internet Entry - written by an Eastern Territory Techie:

  Technology and Magic are always at odds. Since the dawn of written records, humans have been born talentless, magical, or possessing an innate ability to create and manipulate technology. The clear division between techs and mages started the bloodiest wars in human history, especially in the continent of North America where attempts at Integration failed. The worst of these wars, coined the Great Civil War, happened in 1820-1824. This four-year war pitted relatives and neighbors against each other. Realizing they risked killing their entire citizenship, the leaders reached an uneasy truce. Mages accepted ownership of the Western half of the country; the Techies did similarly in the East. The separation weakened the territories. 100 years after the Great Civil War, lower Asia threatened the northern continent. The territories agreed to provide a unified front to the world and created a government comprised of representatives from both sides. The Eastern Territory enacted a law which requires all mages who wish to live within their boundaries to register with the National Identification Services. The law causes dissent between the territories. However, neither faction wants a repeat of the civil war which killed many of their ancestors and caused environmental stress on each side.

  Rarely, a child can manipulate and create tech while also possessing the abilities of a mage. Most techie devices short circuit or malfunction in the presence of magic. Most mages cannot comprehend the complexity of even simple electronics. The children born with tech and magic, dubbed Magitechs, can combine technical skill and magical ability. However, because technology and magic are in opposition, it is commonly believed that the internal struggle causes insanity and madness, typically in the first two decades of life. All Magitechs must register as a mage in the Eastern Territory.

  Prologue

  The dream started the same. The night was black, and the road wound like a strip of ribbon into the darkness. The car’s headlights formed twin points of light. Eden’s boyfriend, Jonathan, slapped his hands on the steering wheel in time to the music. His rich, techie father had loaned him the car for the evening, and they’d slipped out to a party.

  Eden rested her head against the seat. The wine she drank earlier made her sleepy and languid. Jon drove towards Lookout Point. He wanted to fool around. She didn’t have the heart to deny him although she had tired of his fervent pawing and sloppy kisses long ago. They had been dating a couple years, and Eden guessed she would eventually get used to it. He was her first, and she hoped he would improve with practice.

  Jon revved the engine, and Eden turned to him. She wanted to urge him to drive slower, but the wine made her numb, and she couldn’t muster the energy. She opened the window, hoping the fresh air would clear her head. Moving her arm up and down with the breeze, she enjoyed the alien experience of riding in a car. It wasn’t a common experience for a poor mundane.

  Suddenly, Jon cursed loudly, his eyes widening with fright. Eden looked ahead. In the dream, the image was fuzzy. Something unidentifiable stood in the middle of the road. Jon slammed on the brakes, and the vehicle swerved toward the ditch, bouncing off the guardrail. The car flipped, and Eden watched the scenery pass by in slow motion. After that, it was just pain and fire, although she didn’t feel the heat. Light seared her eyelids and pain consumed her, but not the fire.

  The dream shifted, adopting the change it had taken in the last week. Eden’s dreaming self now stood a short distance from the wreckage while the car rolled over and over down the embankment. The skinny girl crawled out of the broken window. Her right arm was twisted and mangled; blood dripped to the ground, and her hair swarmed like an angry black cloud around her head. Jon slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious.

  The dream shifted again, and Eden guessed imagination was overtaking memory. Her younger version, oblivious to the blood streaming down her body, thrust her uninjured arm through the fire. She pulled the teenage boy from the car with one hand and dragged him from the wreckage. Her body collapsed a short distance from the pile of metal as flames poured over the vehicle.

  As an observer, Eden watched the girl cradle her boyfriend and her mangled arm. She didn’t cry; she just stared at the destruction with shock painted on her features. Then, she tilted her head to the sky and screamed so shrilly it shattered the night. The car exploded in a fireball of flame and smoke. In the distance, Eden could see someone standing in the trees. The young girl wasn’t aware of him. His form hid under the boughs of the pines, his face shrouded by the darkness. When the lights of another car highlighted the road above them and shouts filled the air, he turned and ran. For a split second before he disappeared, he glanced toward Eden. He didn't look at the girl in the dream, but the Eden who stood at the edge of the clearing observing the entire scene. Fear pierced her heart like a knife.

  Chapter One

  Eden

  “I’m finally going crazy,” Eden murmured, staring down into the milky froth capping her cup. The tinny drone of the easy-listening music, the fizz of the coffee machine, and the conversations of others sharing the small shop conspired to steal her confession. Her best friend had years of experience deciphering her mumbling, however.

  “What’s going on?” Izzy asked, her characteristic sarcasm absent. Izzy rarely enjoyed time away from her two young children. The unfortunate side effect of her dull existence was seeing every aspect of her friend's life as an adventure.

  Eden shrugged. Momentary desperation had made her whisper the words, but she had difficulty explaining. She'd hallucinated before. This time, though, the hallucinations showed no signs of fading. “I swear something is following me around. When I’m walking home after work, I sense something behind me.”

  Izzy’s blue eyes widened. “Something or someone? Do you have a stalker? Maybe someone who works the same shift as you at the factory?”

  Eden shook her head, soft waves of dark hair falling into her face. “I thought about that, but my coworkers have families or live in the dorms. No one pays me any attention. Besides, I’m not stalking material.” Eden wrinkled her pert nose
as she sipped the delicious brew. On her wages, she never had the money for real coffee. Izzy treated her occasionally in exchange for babysitting.

  Izzy waved away her insecurity, the marriage band on her left hand glinting in the artificial light. “How many times do I need to say this, Eden? Just because you’re handicapped doesn’t mean you aren’t still gorgeous. I would kill for hair and skin like yours.”

  “You know I hate that word,” Eden argued, ignoring her best friend’s compliments. Her accident had taken half of a limb and a fair measure of self-esteem.

  “Fine. Disfigured, deformed, one-armed?” Izzy giggled at her and Eden threw her cloth napkin across the table with her good arm. The other hung useless at her right side, severed a couple inches above the elbow. Izzy didn’t indulge her pity parties, one reason they remained best friends. Eden pushed everyone else away. Most of the time, she didn’t let her body dictate her mood, but sometimes it became too much.

  Despite only having one full-sized arm, Eden was employed. Not all mundanes could claim that luxury. She worked hard to rent a one-room studio apartment in the old part of town instead of living in the dorm rooms provided for employees by the factory. Also, her adoptive father had left her with a small inheritance she monitored scrupulously. Owning an individual living space was more important to her than anything else. It was the main reason she only indulged in real coffee when Izzy paid. Her deformity, as Izzy called it, didn’t negatively affect many other aspects of her life, except dating. A one-armed woman turned people off.

  “Anyway,” Eden returned the conversation to her hallucinations. “I don’t think it’s a stalker. I said thing because it might be a…” Eden shook her head, attempting to prevent strands of her hair from dipping into her coffee cup. Her best friend leaned across the table, the smell of her expensive rose shampoo mingling with the delectable scent of roasted beans.

  “What?” she whispered conspiratorially.

  “It’s not a person. I keep seeing a huge black dog.”

  Izzy’s eyes narrowed. “Is it a familiar? Is a mage trailing you?”

  Eden froze. Her eyes darted around the coffee shop, trying to determine if anyone had overheard them. She mimicked Izzy’s gesture and leaned across the table, nose to nose with her friend. “Shh, someone will hear you. Why would a mage be in the Eastern Territory, Izzy? And why would one follow me? This is as rural as the East gets, but it’s still the East. Mages don’t live here, they’d be too noticeable. The mages who migrate to the East settle in the big cities and work for the tech companies.”

  Izzy shrugged, but Eden knew her words had upset her friend. To Izzy, everything was a joke. This conversation was not humorous. Life was more relaxed in the rural areas, but mundanes were still arrested and questioned if the authorities believed they harbored mage sympathies.

  The silence stretched between them, and Eden regretted starting the conversation. She sipped her coffee, relishing the dark taste and real cream. Izzy ordered hers with a mountain of whipped cream and a caramel drizzle. The brew in their small village was probably the dregs of the larger city’s leavings, but it satisfied both women.

  Izzy’s husband worked as a mid-level techie engineer at the Rennert subsidiary in town, one of the few employers for techs other than the university. Izzy was a mundane, but her tech partner ensured they lived in relative comfort. They had a two-bedroom house on the south side. Not only had Izzy bagged a techie, as they joked about when they were high-schoolers, but they loved each other. Eden was happy for her friend, despite being envious of a couple things. One of those was coffee.

  The corner shop was quiet on the Tuesday morning. Izzy wasn’t employed, and Eden worked the night shift, making it easier to meet at slower times. A table of grad students studied by the window, huge textbooks propped open before them and several empty cups littering their workspace. Most techies didn’t need to study so diligently, which meant they were seeking employment in a field different from their natural aptitudes. The thought angered her. If techies could study to better the station allotted to them at birth, why couldn’t mundanes do the same? The coffee shop also included techies avoiding work by poring over their cell phones or digipads. Otherwise, it was empty. The barista, a cute, elfin-like girl with purple tips in her dyed blonde hair danced behind the counter, humming softly.

  Izzy followed Eden’s gaze and kicked her under the table. “Why don’t you ask her out already?” The previous moment's tension faded away.

  “I have no idea if she’s gay, or straight, or whatever,” Eden countered. The prospect of asking anyone on a date spread ice through her veins. The idea was more frightening than the idea of a mage in Canton. Izzy had always been bold, and her marriage to a techie hadn’t changed that. She was faithful, but Eden still saw her wink at handsome men. It was a game to her.

  “Whatever?” Izzy snorted. “Well, neither are you – gay or straight, I mean.”

  Eden shook her head at the other woman but smiled affectionately. Izzy was one of the few people in Eden’s life who had never pressured her to “pick a side.”

  “What about the dreams?” Izzy blurted, serious again. Eden stirred the coffee, watching the liquid pool around the silver utensil with unnecessary fascination. “You still have them. Are they as bad as before?”

  “Sometimes.” Eden avoided Izzy’s sympathetic gaze, focusing on the sunny day beyond the window. “They’ve changed a little,” she began reluctantly. “It seems like something might happen after the crash. It doesn’t end the way it usually does in a blast of fire and screeching metal. I feel separated from it like I’m watching it as an observer.”

  “Have you spoken to your therapist?”

  Eden sighed. “Fuck therapy. They’re just techies weeding out the mundanes who can’t do their jobs so they can remove us from the workforce. If they can’t find a good enough reason to discredit me, they’ll prescribe pills that will make me unable to work. You understand how it is, Izzy. I’m not a techie so they don’t take me seriously. I can’t believe you even talked me into going that one time.”

  Izzy shrugged, a hint of guilt in her expression. She hated to admit it, but Izzy’s life and mindset had changed when she married a techie. She was no longer invisible like the rest of the mundanes. “Maybe you just need to get laid,” Izzy quipped, and Eden glanced at the perky little barista again.

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s do a sleepover this weekend like we used to do. Todd owes me anyway. He can watch the kids, and we can stay up all night playing board games and eating ice cream.”

  Eden smiled wistfully. Ice cream was another treat she only had when she visited Izzy. “I can't. I work until 2 each night. It sounds great, though. I can't think of anything better, besides some crazy sex that is.”

  “What about next weekend?”

  “I’ll check my schedule.” Eden grinned. Girls’ time sounded perfect, and Todd was always nice to her, despite her status as a mundane. Todd’s behavior had nothing to do with Eden, and everything to do with the fact that he worshipped the ground Izzy walked on. Still, Eden wouldn’t complain.

  “Good.” Izzy’s words made it final. She pulled out her simple phone, the frown on her face signaling their pleasant coffee time was coming to an end. “Playdate is almost over.”

  “How are the kids?”

  Izzy frowned. “Still no sign of techie brilliance, but they’re young.” Eden grasped Izzy’s hand in consolation. She desperately wanted to provide Todd with techie children, but their tests only showed mundane intelligence. Izzy was overconfident about everything except her kids. “You’ll call me if you need anything, right?”

  “You mean if something happens, and it’s not a figment of my imagination?”

  Izzy slapped her shoulder playfully. “Anything at all, Eden. You know I’m here for you; that’s why I gave you the super tech phone.”

  Eden laughed. The phone was the most uncomplicated model available. The Office of Mundane Affairs had only a
pproved it because Eden was the backup babysitter for a mid-level techie and his wife. She stood and embraced Izzy in the tightest hug one arm could provide.

  “I don’t deserve a friend like you,” she mumbled into her friend’s rose scented curls.

  “No, you totally do.” Izzy squeezed Eden and gathered her things. “Call me,” she sang as she waved and pranced from the shop.

  Eden sat back down, determined to drink every drop of her coffee before she returned to her apartment. After a surreptitious look around the shop, she poured Izzy’s half-finished cup into her own. She smacked her lips as the caramel settled like a foreign treasure on her tongue.

  Leaning back in her chair, she people-watched. It was a favorite pastime of hers; the primary goal was to separate the mundanes from the techies. She had honed her identification skills to a science. Techies always carried a gadget on them which was the first dead giveaway. They also walked with their heads held high when they weren’t buried in whatever device they held. Their confident bearing screamed of entitlement and a worry-free existence. Mundanes in small towns experienced a better life than those in the cities, but their bodies hunched with the burden of long factory hours and low pay.

  Watching the entitled techies always made her bitter, so she redirected her attention to the screen positioned above the counter. It was a continuous feed of the news in Canton and the local area, broadcast for the benefit of the mundanes who didn’t have access to the internet. The small town of Canton itself didn’t boast many headlines past a few zoning disputes or domestic violence calls. Brenville’s news appeared next. Eden had never visited the closest large city. Mundanes didn’t have a reason or the means to travel.

  Brenville’s news was a monotonous listing of business headlines which held no interest for Eden. As a mundane, the details of the techie world didn't concern her. A Rennert subsidiary owned her factory, though, and her head perked up at the name. Davis Industries was trying to expand into Brenville, and a lot of speculation hovered around whether Rennert Industries would block the attempt.