by Adam Thielen
After a few moments, a modulated voice boomed from inside one of the SUVs. It was deep and robotic and menacing. “Cepheid has all authority in regards to unregistered awakened.”
“Disperse!” responded Anne. “Tsenka Cho and Taq Jones are guests of the Mage Affairs department.”
“There is no record,” said the voice.
“This is the record,” she replied. “Now leave.”
“We require secondary confirmation,” the voice asserted.
At this, Anne circled twenty degrees around one of the vehicles, exposing one of the Cepheid men to her aim, and raised her gun. “This is the only warning; leave now.”
Tsenka placed herself in front of Daria, preparing to charge at the enemy, while Anne’s own men took aim with their rifles. The officer staring down Anne’s revolver swung his arm toward her, returning the favor.
Anne lowered her aim and shot the man in the leg. Her round penetrated his protective clothing and buried itself in his thigh. He cried out as he fell to the ground. The man next to him, still protected by cover from the front of a sedan, turned his submachine gun on Anne and pulled the trigger.
CLICK. The gun refused to fire.
“Reals?” asked Anne, staring at him. “You were going to shoot the director of Mage Affairs because of a leg wound? How do you see that playing out?”
Anne stepped closer to the wounded man and addressed the rest of his team. “The next one goes in his head. Then your head, then yours, and then yours,” she said, pointing at them one at a time.
After a tense moment, the man who had attempted to shoot Courtemanche helped his wounded comrade back into the SUV, then himself climbed into a sedan. The rest of the men followed his example, abandoning the hunt and driving away.
Anne watched them depart then turned back to Tsenka. “I guess they know you’re here now.”
“Yeah,” said Cho. “Thanks.”
“Shall we go?”
Tsenka walked toward the car she had spotted Taq inside while Daria didn’t move.
“Come along,” said Anne. “I’d like to have a chat with you as well.”
Daria shook her head, looking at the ground, then at Tsenka. “I can’t,” she claimed. “I won’t.”
“I’m going to have to insist,” said Anne.
Tsenka turned and walked back to Daria, stopping close to her face. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t trust her,” she said. “And I have a duty.” She touched Tsenka’s cheek with the backs of her fingers and a message with a com identification number popped up on Cho’s HUD.
“How—”
Cretu moved her hand to Cho’s mouth, placing a fingertip on her lips. “We’ll talk later, but I can’t go with you now.”
Tsenka’s eyes lowered and she turned to Anne. She lifted her gaze and forced a confident smirk. “She’s got other things to do.”
“Is she a friend?” asked Anne. “A foe? I don’t know anything about her, do you? She needs to come in for a debrief.”
“She saved my life,” said Cho. “I do know a little about her, and she needs to go her own way.”
“It’s just not possible,” said Anne. “We aren’t going to hurt her, we just need some answers.”
Tsenka turned as one of the men approached Daria. Cho stepped in front of him and turned again to Courtemanche. “If she doesn’t go free, we have a problem.”
Anne looked at her man then at Tsenka. Her face exhibited no change in expression, but the pause told Cho that she was considering all of her options, calculating outcomes. Then her muscles seemed to relax.
“Very well,” announced Anne. “Leave her be. Now can we go?”
Tsenka nodded then turned to Daria, sending a message to her com ID. Move to those buildings, another rental will be waiting. I expect answers soon.
The vampire waited for the rest of the men to board their vehicles before stepping into the back seat with Jones while Anne sat patiently in the driver’s seat.
Taq turned to Cho, looking at her second set of torn, blood-stained clothing. He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Shall we go back to see Ms. Williams?” asked Tsenka.
Jones sighed.
Anne looked at Cho through the rearview. “I get the feeling she’s going to cancel.”
Episode 8: The Message
Matt Trent pulls his beater into the thin parking stall in the busy Walmart parking lot as the sun falls below the horizon. Inside the store, he grabs a small stockpile of granola bars, soda, and potato chips. He has mapped out a plan. Step one is gathering provisions. Step two will be to establish a base of operations. Step three will be the search, both throughout the town and inside himself for whomever he was looking for.
He pulls out his smartphone and reads the list of names again, then pulls up a browser app and searches it for ‘Frank Kerwin.’ Seventeen hundred results are displayed in response. He adds the word ‘Kansas’ to the search, reducing the haystack. He scrolls through them, but nothing jogs his memory—there are still too many and none mention Hutchinson.
As he strolls toward the self-checkout, he looks around at all of the unfamiliar faces. He feels completely disconnected from the world. His old life is over a hundred miles away and his new one is a nebulous idea. Both are slipping through the cracks in his mind.
Matt pushes the cart back to his car and sees movement out of the corner of his eye. He stops and turns to face a haggard-looking man with a short uneven beard colored equal parts black and gray.
“Uh, hey, man,” says the beggar. “I’m just trying to get home back to Wichita, and I’m out of gas. Anything you can spare?”
“I, umm, don’t tend to carry cash,” says Matt. He hears the crinkling of bags and turns around to see a middle-aged woman with visible dirt in her hair and mud caked to her clothing lifting his groceries out of the metal shopping cart.
“Whoa,” he protests. “Hold on, I need—”
Matt does not remember what happens after. He opens his eyes and an intense pain stabs into the back of his skull. He lifts his head to see two new people standing over him. They help him up and inform him that the police are on their way. He feels his pockets. They are empty. His wallet, keys, and phone are gone. He glances around in a panic and looks to unfamiliar faces for answers they can’t give. Something important was on that phone; he is sure of it.
As he waits for the cops to show, he ponders his condition. I’m sick, he posits. Something is wrong with me. Why did I come here?
When authorities arrive, they assure him that his car and possessions will turn up. He declines a ride, as he is not sure where he is going, where he lives, or what he should do next.
He leaves the parking lot and walks down the road. He still remembers his name, but something has gone wrong in his brain. Maybe it was the blow to the head. He doesn’t remember when the problem started, but he feels in his bones that it runs deeper. His anxiety gives way to calm as the remainder of his long-term memory evaporates. Without a past, he no longer cares about his present or future.
The man once called Matt reaches a small park with an inviting doorless restroom. It’s become late in a day that has been long and trying. He ventures inside, places his jacket on the dirty floor, and lies down to get some shut-eye.
* * *
After another change of clothes and a quick bite, Anne drove the three to the Terminus, a grand train station and primary hub to the rest of western UTI for those without the means to fly. And while Tsenka and Taq could have taken the monocopter, Anne assured them the train wouldn’t take much longer and would be the safer option. Jones did not require much convincing, having wanted to travel by train already, and Tsenka just wanted an opportunity to pass out somewhere.
“Is she going to be alright?” asked Anne, jerking her head toward the sleeping Tsenka.
Taq stared at Cho for a moment. “She’ll be fine. Seems to happen regularly. This place is a lot more hostile than we thought.” He turned to Anne, sitti
ng across from him in their cab. The interior was comprised of wooden benches and curtains pinned up between the aisle and the individual rooms. “I don’t think you properly warned us about Cepheid.”
Anne looked out the window at the ruins of villages and townships as they passed. “Cepheid has been very effective at ingraining itself into the government.”
“You mean Liberty versus Prosperity parties.”
“Exactly right,” she said. “And yes, this place can be dangerous. But now you’ve got me. They will keep their distance.”
“They seemed ready to take you down along with us,” said Taq.
“Just a dumb underling,” she dismissed. “So tell me what you’ve been up to the last forty years.”
Taq told her about his work with the agency and his days in and out of the university. He admitted his vampire blood use both in the past and of recent.
“Are you unable to perform without it?” asked Courtemanche.
“I’ve lost most of my ability, yes,” he said, looking down at Anne’s white pumps.
“Interesting.”
“Not my assessment of the condition.”
Anne grinned. “What you experience actually sounds somewhat typical. Much of casting is physiological and not nearly as mysterious as it used to be.”
“It’s to be expected as I get old.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But I think your time consuming blood might have exacerbated it.”
Anne stood and then sat next to Taq. She placed a hand on his knee. Jones didn’t look at her hand, instead focusing on her eyes, trying to peer behind them, to understand what motivated her.
“I know you might resist this,” she started. “After all, you don’t remember me, and you probably don’t trust me. But our department has done a lot of work on linking neurology to Ethereal manipulation, and we know that brain chemistry alterations can hamper spellcasting. In fact, there’s a movement underway to use such drugs to nullify awakened abilities so that confinement becomes obsolete.”
“Sounds nice,” said Taq. “Devil is always in the details. What do you think that will do for me though?”
“I think your oxytocin receptors are damaged,” she hypothesized. “And a mix of treatments to resensitize them along with a catalyst for the production of the chemical might restore some of your power.”
“I see,” said Taq. “And how long is the list of side effects?”
“Let’s see. Shortness of breath, extreme flatulence, sore breasts, baldness, and a small chance of cardiac arrest.”
“Oh,” said Taq with a smile. “That’s not so bad.”
“I jest,” she revealed, smiling back. “Only two of those are true.”
Despite its old-fashioned interior, the exterior of the passenger train was sleek and modern, and its engine ran on steam generated from a large nuclear hotbox located in the locomotive. The train rose to a little over five hundred kilometers per hour, and after two stops and two and a half hours, the transport reached the city of Nagpur.
Though it had a bustling population, the town was composed mostly of shanties and flea markets, with only a few multistory buildings, and one large poverty cube that was likely as nice a place as any in the area to live.
The train station was little more than a small hut with a ticket counter and a boarding platform composed of old distressed lumber. Taq woke Tsenka, and they disembarked together, meeting a rugged-looking four-door car with large wheels lined with absorption foam. A man stepped out of the driver’s side door and greeted Courtemanche before taking his place behind the wheel.
“The roads are a little rough here,” observed Cho as she bounced around the back seat while the wheels collided with rocks large and small jutting out of tracts of compacted dirt decorated with small strips of concrete and asphalt.
“It’s slow going, but the UTI will rebuild all of this eventually,” claimed Anne.
“They’ve got their work cut out,” said Taq.
“What are we walking into here?” asked Cho.
“Nothing I’m sure we can’t handle,” said Anne, gesturing to the driver. “It’s a small lab we know that Cepheid had operated at one time, and before that, it was used by a smaller mage research group that Cepheid swallowed.”
“You said it was still operational,” said Taq.
“Our satellites have observed movement coming and going,” Anne clarified. “Admittedly, that could mean a couple things.”
“Know anything about the guy who killed my contact?” asked Cho.
“Sounds like a warlock,” said Anne, looking to Taq, who nodded. She referred to the type of mage capable of infusing their bodies with magic to become stronger, harder, and faster than humanly possible. “We have a registry, but it wouldn’t be hard for the corp to keep him off the books.”
“A body mage,” said Tsenka. “Like my grandmother.”
“Really?” asked Anne.
“Yes, one of the earlier ones. Now I’m starting to understand the stories about her.”
“Indeed,” said Anne. “They are very dangerous.”
After ten minutes of jarring vibrations, the car approached a chain-link fence with a padlocked gate, surrounding a large ragged turf yard with a small two-story building resting in the middle. It was a pool of green in a sea of gray and brown but had faded into an unnatural blue-tinted hue over time.
Anne’s man scanned com frequencies in hopes of contacting anyone inhabiting the area, then pressed the button on an intercom attached to the fence. With no response, he then pulled his handgun and shot the lock off.
Cho pushed past him, following a path of little white rocks embedded into the earth that carved through the broken turf to a glass door on a metal frame.
“Wait,” said Anne. “There are two cameras pointed our direction. Give me a second.” She held her right hand to the side of her head. “Done. They are frozen.”
Tsenka scanned the ground ahead of her, hoping her synthetic eye would pick up and report any anomalies that would suggest traps hidden amid the turf and rocks. Spotting nothing, she moved onward, confident that her combat suit and reflexes could protect her.
All four made it to the entrance without incident, and after Anne hacked the locks open by interfacing with the building’s security network, it became clear that the facility had not been in use for some time. A thin layer of dust had gathered on the tile flooring and cabinets built into the walls. Footprints and paper cups lent credence to the notion that squatters had found their way inside, though their presence posed more questions than it answered.
Anne and Taq paired up to search the first floor while Tsenka and Anne’s driver searched the second. Taq sat on the floor and closed his eyes.
“Outside of the cameras and locks, the network is empty,” said Anne. “What are you doing down there?”
“I’m going to peer into the Ethereal plane for a moment,” said Taq.
“Will you be alright?”
“I’m not projecting,” he explained. “I just want a look.” And look he did. Though he made it out to be a simple matter of sitting and breathing, inside, the strain was great, and as the darkness of the Ether flooded his vision, his head began to pound. He turned his head around then up and down. Calming himself, he felt the echoes of awakened auras, but he could not sense Desre specifically. He thought maybe he would see the remnants of her red aura, but he saw only his immediate companions.
When he opened his real eyes again, he found Anne staring at him.
“Well?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Maybe we should find lodging here,” said Anne. “We could try a treatment and you could try traveling tomorrow.”
“Perhaps,” said Taq. “But look around. She isn’t here.”
“You still haven’t told me who you are looking for,” said Courtemanche. “Or what made you think she was here.”
“Tsenka has her sources,” said Taq.
“And you came with her. You ar
e a good friend.”
“I was bored,” he claimed, standing.
Anne chuckled as Cho and the driver returned to the lobby.
“I think this was a bust,” said Tsenka.
“I guess our intel is lacking,” said Courtemanche.
“Is it normal for Cepheid to just abandon multiple sites like this?” asked Cho.
Anne shrugged. “It does seem strange.”
“It’s a damn waste of time,” said Cho.
“Maybe if I get up some strength, I can try to scout around tomorrow,” suggested Taq.
“Strength,” echoed Cho. “I, uh… don’t know—”
“Not like that,” Taq assured. “Anne has something new for me to try.”
Taq smiled at Tsenka, who looked at Anne, who smiled at Taq.
“Really,” said Cho. “I’m not sure we can spare a whole day on this.”
Taq nodded and looked to Anne. “I’m not good for much else, Tsenka.”
At this, Cho frowned. “That’s not true.” She turned to Courtemanche. “You’re the UTI; can’t you force Cepheid to allow us inspection of their real sites?”
“I’m afraid not, Ms. Cho. But I do know of one other facility south of here.”
“I thought there were two,” said Cho.
“The other one is in the Pakistan region,” Anne replied.
“So we really shouldn’t waste time sitting around.”
“Tsenka, if I could get another chance at searching the Ether, I think it’s worth the time,” said Taq.
Before Cho could respond, Anne gestured at her driver and added, “I was going to suggest maybe you and Ajay could investigate the Cepheid lab at Bengaluru while Taq and I wait here.”
Tsenka shook her head. “I don’t like that idea. No offense, Taq. I brought you here, and I am responsible for you.”
Jones smirked. “I brought myself here, but yes, it’s mostly your fault. We’ll be fine. We aren’t going to get into trouble.”
Tsenka mulled it over, realizing it was the most efficient way to search for Desre, but the thought of abandoning Taq still made her uneasy.